Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-02-17
TALMAGE in ROME.
LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE COL
OSSEUM'S RUINS,
A Thrilling Picture OF tho Dreadful
Scenes of the Arena Two Thousand
Years Ago-shattered Idols OF Pa
ganIam.

tude OF worshipers In the Brooklyn Tabernacle
joined, dlscoursed from the text. Romans l:l5
81 am ready to preach the Gospel TO you that
are at Rome, also"
Rome! What n city it was when Paul
visited i'll What city it is now!
Rome! The place where Virgil sang
and Horace satirized and Terence
laughed and Catalina conspircd and
Ovid dramatized and Nero tiddled and
Vespasian prosecuted and Sulla legisla-
ted and Cicero Numbered and Aurelius
and Decius and Caligula and Julian
and Hadrian and Constantine and
Augustus reigned, and Paul, the
Apostle, preached the Gospel.
am not much of craftsman, but
have in my memorandum book a
sketch / made in the winter of
1889, when l went out to the
gate through which Paul entered
Rome, and walked up the very street
he walked up to see somewhat how
the city must have looked to him
as he came in on the Gospel err
rand proposed in the text. Palaces on
either side of the street through which
the little missionary advanced. Piled
up wickedness. Enthroned accursed-
ness. Tempted cruelties. Affairs to
sham deities Glorified delusions. Pill
Jared, arched, domed, turreted abomi-
nations Wickedness of all sorts at a
high premium and Righteousness
ninety-nine and three-fourths per cent
off. And now he passes by the foun
dations of a building which is to be al
most unparalleled for vastness You
can see by the walls, which have be-
gun to rise, that here is to be some-
thing enough stupendous to astound
the centuries. Aye, lis the Colosseum
started.
OF the theater at Ephesus where Paul
fought with wild beasts, of the temple
of Diana, of the Parthenon, of Phara-
obs palace at Memphis, and of other
great buildings, the ruins of which
have seen, 1t has been my privilege to
address you, but a member of my fam
lily asked me recently why l had not
spoken to you of the Colosseum at
Rome, since its moral and religious les
sons are so impressive.
Perhaps, while in Rome, the law of
contrast wrought upon me. had Wis.,
tied the Mamertine dungeon where
Paul was incarcerated. / had meas
ured the opening at the top of the dun
geon through which Paul had been let
down and it was twenty three inches
by twenty six The ceiling, at it's
highest point, was seven feet from
the floor, but at the sides of the
room, the ceiling was five feet seven
inches. The room, at the widest,
was fifteen feet There was seat of
rock two and half feet high. There
was a shelf four feet high. The only
furniture was a spiders web suspended
from the roof, which l saw by the
torchlight l carried. There was the
subterraneous passage from the dun
geon to the Roman forum, so that the
prisoner could be taken directly from
prison to trial The dungeon was
built out of volcanic stone from the
Albano Mountains. Oh, it was dis
NAL and terrific place. You never saw
coal hole so lark or SO forbidding
The place was to me a nervous shock,
for / remembered that was the best
thing that the world would afford the
most illusrious being, except One, that
it ever saw, and that from that
place Paul went out to die. From
that spot, / visited the Colos-
scum, one of the most astounding
miracles of architecture that the world
ever saw. Indeed, / saw it morning,
noon and night, for it threw a spell on
me from which / could not break
away. Although now a vast ru. n, the
Colosseum is so we'll preserved that we
can stand in the center and recall all
that 1t once was. 1t is in shape clip
soidal, oval, oblong. 1t is, at its great
est length. 612 feet. After 1t had fur
nished seats for $1,000 people, it had
room for 1000 more to stand, so that
100, 900 people could sit and stand
transfixed by its scenes of courage and
martyrdom and brutality and horror.
Instead of our modern tickets of adj
mission, they entered by ivory
check, and a check dug up near
Rome within few years, was marked:
"Section 6, Lowest Tier, Seat No.
49," You understand that the build
ing was not constructed for an audi
ence to be addressed by human voice,
although tested it with some friends
and could be heard across it, but it was
made only for the seeing and was cir
cular and at any point allowed full
view of the spectacle. The arena in the
center in olden times was strewn with
pounded stone or sand, so as not to be
too slippery with human blood, for if it
were too slippery it would spoil the
fun. The sand flashed here and there
with sparkles of silver and gold, and
Nero added cinnabar and Caligula adj
ded cbrysocolla. The sides of the arena
were composed of smooth marble,
eleven feet high, so that the wild beasts
of the arena could not climb up into
the audience. On the top of these
sides of smooth marble was a metal
railing, having wooden rollers, which
easily revolved, so that if panther
should leap high enough to scale the
wall and with his paw touch any one
of those rollers, il would revolve and
drop him back again into the arena
Back of this marble wall surrounding
the arena was a level platform of
stone, adorned with statues of gods
and goddesses and the artistic effigies
of monarchs and conquerors. Here
were movable seats for the Emperor
and the imperial swine and swinesses
with which he surrounded himself.
Before the place where the Emperor
sat, the gladiators would walk
immed lately after entering the
arena, crying: Hail, Cesari Those
about 10 die salute thee" The
different ranks of spectators were
divided by partitions studded with
mosaics of emerald and beryl and ruby
and diamond. Great masts of wood
arose from ali sides of the building,
from which festoons of flowers were