Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-11-07
A SERMON TO VOTERS.
DR.. TALMAGE scOURGES THE PHARi-
SEES WHO CORRUPT ELECTIONS.

The Wonderful City of Babylon, Its Great
ness, Its Debauchery and Its Sudden and
Awful Ruin-Is This Nation Running
the Same Course?
BROOKLYN, Nov. 6.-Rev. DIR. Tai
mage today selected for his sermon
subject sufficiently appropriate for these
hines. when throughout the United
States great political questions are being
discussed and the nation is about to go
TO the ballot box and decide who shall
rule in neighborhood, town, city and ma
ton. The text chosen was Revelation
xviii. 10, ALAS, alas, that great city
Babylon, that mighty city, for IN one
hour is thy judgment Gomez
Modern scientists are doing splendid
work in excavating the tomb of a dead
empire holding in its arms dead city
mother and child of the same name,
Babylon. The ancient mound invites
the spades and shovels and crowbars,
while the unwashed natives look on IN
surprise These scientists find yellow
bricks still impressed with the name OF
Nebuchadnezzar, and they go down into
the sarcophagus of a monarchy buried
more than two thousand years ago. May
the explorations of Rawlinson and La
ward and Chevalier and Opperto and
Lotus and Chesney be eclipsed by the
oresent archaeological uncovering!
But is it possible this is all that re-
mains of Babylon-a city once five times
larger than London and twelve times
larger than New York? Walls three
hundred and seventy-three feet high and
ninetv-three feet thick. Twenty-Five
FURNISHED gates on each side, with
streets running clear through to CORE
spending gates ON the other side. Six
hundred and twenty-five squares. More
boInp and wealth and splendOr and sin
than could be found in any five modern
cities combined. A city of palaces and
temples. A city having within it gar
den on an artificial hill four hundred
feet high, the sides of the mountain ter
raced. All this built to keep the kings
wife. Amytis, from becoming homesick
for the mountainous region in which she
had spent her girlhood. The waters CT
the Euphrates spouted up to irrigate this
great altitude into fruits and flowers
and aborescence Gnimaginable-a great
river running from north to south clear
through the city, bridges over 1t, tun-
nels under it, boats on it.
THE DEBAUCHED CITY.
A CITY of baZaarS and market places,
unrivaled for aromatics and unguents,
and high mettled horses with grooms by
their side. and thyme wood, and African
evergreen, and Egyptian linen, and all
STYLES of costly textile fabrics, and rar-
est puppies extracted from sheIltlsh on
the Mediterranean coast, and rarest scar
in
Spain. and worries brought from sue
cessful elephant hunts i'll India, and
diamonds whose flash was repartee to
the sun, fortress within fortress, en-
battlement rising above embattlement.
Great capital of the ages.
But one night, while honest citizens
were asleep, but all the saloons Of satur-
MALTA were liz full blast, and at the
kings castle they had filed the tankards
for the tenth time, and reeling and guf-
fawing and hiccoughing around the
state table were the rulers of the land,
General Cyrus ordered his besieging
army to take shovels and spades, and
they diverted the river from its usual
channel into another direction SO that
the forsaken bed of the river became
the path OH which the besieging army
the conuuerors were inside the outside
trenches. Babylon had fallen, and
hence the sublime threnody of the text
'|Alas, alas, that great city Babylon
that mighty city, for i'll one hour is thy
Judgment GOMEZ"
But do nations die? Oh, yes; there Ii
great mortality among monarchies an(
republics. They are like individuals il
4, have :
middle life; they have decease; the.
have a cradle and grave. Some @
them are assassinated. some destroye'
by their own hand. Let me call tn
roll of some of the dead civilization
and some of the dead cities and let som
one answer for them.
Egyptian civilization, stand VI
Dead answer the ruins of Karna
and Luxor, and from seventy pyramid
ON the east side OF the Nile there come
ND great chorus, crying, Dead, dead
Assyrian empire, stand up and answer
.sDeadr' CRY the charred ruins of Mn
evan. After six hundred years of mas
nificent opportunity, dead. Israelitis
kingdom, stand up. After two hundre
and fifty years of divine interposlt1ol
and of miraculous vicissitude, and of h
roic behavior, and of appalling depravlt.
dead. Phoenicia, stand up and answe
After inventing the alphabet an
giving it to the world, and sent
ing out her merchant caravans
one direction to central Asia, an
sending out her navigators to the A
1antic ocean in another direction, dea
Pillars of Hercules and rocks on whic
the Tyrian fishermen dried their ne
all answer, Dead Phenicia-" Athen
after Phidias, after Demosthenes, aft
ar.1.:-.- .l.al S,,n,-ta afta1.. .a0I