Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1892-06-02
AT THE TABERNACLE.
DR.. TALMAGE lCLuklnATEs AN Oh
scuRE TEXT.

Ff-HttNtti'% % inc ffNsts
Thee in the Secret Place of Thunder
In the Bible Thunder Is the Type o
Power and Mystery.
BROOKLYN, May Cdr. Talmage gave
a fresh illustration this morning Of the
power he possesses of extracting valuable
lessons from a text which preachers have
generally neglected barren ground. His
sermon was based ON the text Psalms lxxxi
z, Il answered thee in the secret place oil
thunder"
IL is past midnight, and two o'clock in the
morning, far enough from sunset and sun
rise to make the darkness very thic.s, and
the Egyptian army in pursuit of the es-
Gaping 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 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 had never before been lifted.
When | 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 Egyptians look
up to them built into walls, now on one
Hlut anu iibN Va Ntlt ObutEt AHtN MUST nave
been frowning waters. for Il was probable
that the same power that lifted them up
might sudd,nly 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 Egyp-
tians, and Il growled and rumbled and
Inrrgd Rssfb fgatIn1nr. N fhfsnIar ILL. l,nt
which cheers the earth after a d1sught.
promising the refreshing shower, but
charged snd sureharged with threats Of
doom.
The Egyptian captains lost their pres.
enee of mind, and the horses reared and
snorted and would not answer totheir bits.
and the chariot wheels got interlocked 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
Israeltes. 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
one great sarcophagus, and the splash and
the roar of the Red sea as it dropped to its
natural bed We're only the shutting of the
sarcophagus ON dead host That is the
meaning of the text when God says, II an
swered thee in the secret place of thunder"
THE SYMBOL OF POWER
Now, thunder, all up and down the Bible,
is the symbol Of power. The Egyptian
plague of hail was accompanied with this
full diapason of the heavens. While sam
uel and his men were making burnt Of
fering of lamb, and the philistines were
about TO attack them, it was by terrorizing |
thunder they were discounted job |
who was a combination of the Dantesoue |
and the Miltonie, was solemnized on this |
reverberation of the heavens. and cried: |
The thunder of his power, who can un-
derstandi" and he challenges the uni |
verse by saying, "Can'st thou thunder
with a voice like himg" and he throws
Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair" into the
shade by the Bible photograph Of a war
horse, when he describes his neck as
clothed with thunder" Because 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 EN-
phaszed 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 thun-
der of resurrection and the thunder of
eternity.
But when my text says. 81 answered
thee in the secret place Of thunder il sug.
gests there is some mystery about the
thunder. To the ancients the cause Of this
bombarding the earth with loud sound
must have been more of "A mystery than it
is to us. The 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 il in lamps, and every schooIboy
knows something 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
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 thunder
there are a hundred things not known. |
After all the scientific batteries have been {
ioing their work for a thousand years to
come and learned men have discoursed to
lhe utmost about atmospheric electricity {
and magnetic electricity and galvanc cleo
richly and thermotic electricity and fric- 4
.ional electricity and positive electricity |
and negative electricity, my text will be |
As suggestive us il is today, when it speaks
If the secret place of thunder I
NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. LAWS \
Now right along by natural law there {
5 always a spiritual law. As there is a /
secret place OF natural thunder, there il a c
ecret place of moral thunder. In other l
words, the religious power that you see |
abroad in the church and in the world has e
| hiding place. and in many cases it is |
lever discovered at all. will use a simil- '
tude. can give only the dim outline of c
particular case, for many of the remark /
bile circumstances have forgotten Many
ears ago there was a large church. 1t was
characterized by strange and unaccount- :
Ible conversions. There were no great re- t
-ivals, but individual cases of spiritual a
lrrest and transformation. =
young man sat in one of the front pews. t
lie wasA graduate of Yale, brilliant as the i