News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1892-06-02
A VALUABLE LESSON.
EXTRACTED FROM A TEXT APPAR-
EMILY BARREN OF SUGGESTIONS.

gave a fresh illustration this morning OF
ihe power he possesses of extracting
valuable lessons from a text which
preachers have generally neglected as
barren ground. His sermon was based
on the text Psalms Xxi, z, Il answered
thee in the secret place of thunder"
1t is past midnight, and two o'clock il
the morning, far enough from sunset
and sunrise to make the darkness very
thick, and the Egyptian army in pursuit
of the escaping Israelites are on the bot.
tom of the Red sea, its waters having
been set up on either side in masonry OF
sapphire, for God can make a wall as
solid out of water as out of granite, and
the trowels with which these two walls
were built were none the less powerful
because invisible. Such walls hadnever
before been lifted.
When 1 saw the waters of the Red sea
rolling through the Suez canal they were
blue and beautiful and flowing like
other waters, but tonight, as the Egyp-
ans look up to them built into walls,
Wv ON one side ar6spow on the other,
rv must has, IhAdJorrUopins%
fSr it was REORGANIZATION same psemf
that lifted them up might suddenly fling
them PROSTATE. Agreat lantern of cloud
hung over this chasm between the two
walls. The door of that lantern was
opened toward the Israelites ahead, Civ
ing them light, and the back of the Ian
tern was toward the Egyptians, and it
growled and rumbled and Jared with
thunder; not thunder like that which
cheers the earth after a drought, promis-
ing the refreshing shower, but charged
and s~urcharged with threats of doom.
The Egyptian captains lost their pres
ence of mind, and the horses reared and
snorted and would not answer to their
bits, and the chariot wheels got inter
locked and torn off, and the characters
were hurled headlong, and the Red sea
fell on all the host. The confusing and
c~onfounding thunder was in answer to
the prayer of the Israelites. With their
backs cut by the lash, and their feet
bleeding, and their bodies decrepit with
the suffering of whole generations, they
had asked Almighty God to ensepulcher
their Egyptian pursuers in oUe great
sarcophagus, and the splash and the
roar of the Red sea as it dropped to its
natural bed were only the shutting of
the sarcophagus on a dead host. That
is the meaning of the text when God
says, 81 answered thee in the secret place
of thunder"
a POWER M A MYSTERY.
Now thunder, all up and down the
Bible, is the symbol of power. The Egyp-
tan plague of hail was accompanied
with this full diapason of the heavens.
While Samuel and his men were making
a burnt Offering of a lamb, and the Phil
istines were about to attack them, it was
by terrorizing thunder they were dis
comfted. Job, who was a combination
of the Dantesque and the Miltonic, wasA
solemnized on this reverberation of the
heavens, and cried, ''The thunder of his
power, who can understand" and he
challenges the universe by saying, "Canst
thou thunder with a voice like himT''
and he throws Rosa Bonheur's ''Horse
Fair" into the shade by the Bible photo
graph of a warhorse, when he describes
his neck as clothed with thunder" Be-
cause of the power of James and John,
they were called ''the sons of thunder"
The law given on the basaltic crags of
Mount Sinai was emphasized with this
cloudy ebullition. The skies all around
about st. John at Patmos were full of
the thunder of war, and the thunder of
Christly triumph, and the thunder of
resurrection, and the thunder of eternity.
But when my text says, 81 answered
thee in the secret place of thunder" it
suggests there is some mystery about
the thunder. To the ancients the cause
of this bombarding the earth with loud
sound must nave been more of a mys-
terry than it is to us. The l~ightnings,
which were to them wild monsters
ranging through the skies, in our time
have been domesticated. We harness
electricity to vehicles and we cage it in
lamps, and every ~schoolboy knows some
thing about the fact that it is the passage
of electricity from cloud to cloud that
makes-the heavenly racket which we
call thunder. But, after all that chem
istry has taught the world, there are
mysteries about this skye resonance,
and my text, true in the time of the
Psalmist, is true now and always will be
true, that there is some secret about the
place of thunder.
To one thing known about the thun-
der there are a hundred things not
known. After all the scientific batteries
have been doing their work for a thou
sand years to come and learned men
have discoursed to the utmost about
atmospheric electricity and magnetic
electricity and galvanic electricity and
ther1notic electricity and FRACTIONAL cleo
tricity and positive electricity and mega
tive electricity my text will be as sug-
gestive as it is today, when it speaks of
the secret place of thunder.
RESULT OF A woMAN's PRAYERS.
Now right along by a natural law
there is always a spiritual law AS
there is a secret place of natural thun-
der, there is a secret place of moral
thunder. In other words, the religious
power that you see abroad in the church
in the world has a hiding place, and in
many cases tits never discovered at all. /
will use a similitude. / can give only
the dim outline of a particular case, for
many of the remarkable circumstances
l nave forgotten. Many years ago there
was a large church. 1t was character
lied by strange and unaccountable eon-
versions. There were no great revivals,
but individual cases of spiritual arrest
and transformation.
A young man sat in one of the front
pews. He was a graduate of Yale, brill
liant as the north star and VIGOROUSLY
absolute. Everybody knew him ana
liked him for his geniality, but deplored
his moral errantry. 10 please his par
ents he was every Sabbath morning in
church. One day there was a ringing of
the doorbell of the pastor of that church,
and that young man, whelned with re-
pentance, implored prayer and advice,
and passed into complete reformation Of
heart and life. All the ~neighborhood
was astonished and asked, "Why was
this?' His father and mother had said
nothing to him about his souls welfare.
On another aisle of the same church
sat an old miser. He paid his pew rent,
but was hard on the poor, and had no IN
terest in any philanthropy. Piles of
money! And people said, "What a strug-
gle he will have when he quits this life
to part with his bonds and mortgages
One day he wrote to his minister:
"Please to call Immediately. / have a
matter of great Importance about which
want to see you" When the pastor
came in the man could not speak for
emotion, but after awhile he gathered
self control enough to say: 81 have lived
for this world too long. Iwant to know
If you think / can be saved, and, if so,
wish you would tell me how" Upon
his soul the light soon dawned, and the
old miser, not only revolutionized in
heart but in life, began to scatter bene-
factions. and toward all the 0reat chart