The Goodland republic. [volume] (Goodland, Kan.) 1891-1907, 1892-06-10
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
TALMAcE ON THE SECRET
PLACE OF THUNDER.
A Beautiful Sermon from q Familiar
bible TeXt--How Some Notable Con-
versions Were Effected by Feryent
Prayers.

versions We're Effected by Fervent
Prayers.
1t is past midnight, and 2 o'clock in
the morning, far enough from sunset
and sunrise TO make the darkness very
'hick, and the Egyptian army in pur-
suit OF the escaping Israelites are on
the bottom 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
Aad never before been lifted. When l
saw the waters of the Red sea rolling
through the Suez canal, they were biz g
and beautiful and flowing like other
waters, but tonight, as the Egyptians
look up to them built into walls, now
on one side and now on the other, they
must have been frowning waters, for
1t was probable that the same power
that lifted them up might suddenly
fling them PROSTATE. A great lantern
OF cloud hung over this chasm between
the two walls. The door of that
lantern was opened toward the Is
raelites ahead, giving them light,
and the back of the lantern was
toward the Egyptians, and it growled
and rumbled and Jared with thunder:
not thunder like that which cheers the
earth after a drought, promising the
refreshing shower but charged and
surcharged with threats of doom. The
Egyptian captains lost their presence
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 charioteers
were hurled headlong, and the Red
sea fell on all the host.
The confusing and confounding
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 w til the suffering
of whole genera tions, Il ey had asked
Almighty God to ensepulchre their
Egyptian pursuers in one great sarcoph-
agus, and the splash and the roar of
the Red sea as it dropped to its natural
bed were only the shutting of the
sareophagus on a dead host. That is
the meaning of the text when God
says; II answered thee in the secret
place of thunder"
Now, thunder, all up and down the
bible, is the symbol Of power. Small
wits depreciate the thunder and say,
st is the lightning that strikes" But
God evidently thinks the thunder of
some Importance or he would not make
so much of it, That man must be with
out imagination, and without sensitive
ness and without religion who can
without emotion see the convention of
summer clouds called to order by the
falling gavel of the thunder
bolt. There is nothing in the
natural world that so awes and solemn
ICES me as the thunder. The Egyptian
plague of hail was accompanied with
this full diapason of the heavens.
While Samuel and his men were maxi
ing burnt Offering of a lamb, and the
Philistlnes were about to attack them,
it was by terrorizing thunder they
were discounted. Job, who was q
mbination of the Dantesque and the
Miltonic, was solemnized by this re-
verberation of the heavens, and cried:
1.-The thunder of his power, who
can understand" and he challenges
the universe by saying: "Can'st
thou thunder with voice like him?"
and he throws Rosa Bonheur's "Horse
Fair" into the shade by the bible pho
tograph of war horse, when he de-
scribes his neck as clothed with thun-
der" Because of the power of James
and John, they were called "the sons
of thunder" The law given on the
basaltic crags of Mount Sanai was em-
pathasized 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, Unanswered
thee in the secret place of thunder" 1t
suggests there is some mystery about
the thunder. To the ancients the cause
of this bonn harding the earth with loud
sound must have been more of a mystery
than it is to us. The lightnings, which
were to them wild monsters ranging
through the Skies in our time have been
domesticated. We harness electricity 10
vehicles, and we cage it in lamps, and
every schoolboy knows something
about the fact that it is the
passage of electricity from cloud
to cloud that makes the heav-
emily racket which we call thun-
der But, after all that chemistry has
taught the world, there are mysteries
about this skyey 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 hundred things not
known. After all the scientific bat
teries have been doing their work for
thousand years to come and learned
men have discoursed to the utmost
about atmospheric electricity and mag
netic electricity and galvanie electricity