The Banner-Democrat. [volume] (Lake Providence, East Carroll Parish, La.) 1892-current, 1893-12-02
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
Lessons Taught by the Cemetery
of Dead O. les.
PompeIi's Greatness, Wlckedness and De-
struction-The Ruined Cities Of the
Orient Warning to the Liy-
Ing Cities of To-Day.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took for
the subject of his latest sermon in the
Brooklyn tabernacle "Pompeii and It's
Lessons" basing his discourse on the
text:
Thou hast made OF defenced city ruin
Isaiah xxv..2.
A flash on the night sky greeted us
as we left the rail train at Naples,
Italy. What was the strange illumi-
nation? 1t was the wrath of many
misunderstanding. Giant son OF an
earthquake. Intoxicated mountain OF
Italy. Father of many consternations.
A volcano, burning so long, and yet to
keep on burning until, perhaps, it may
be the very torch that will kindle the
last confagration and set all the world
on fire. 1t eclipses in violence of be-
havior Cotopaxi and Etna and Strom-
boil and Krakatoa. Awful mystery.
Funeral pyre of dead cities. Everlast-
ing paroxysm of mountains. Is seems
like chimney of hell. 1t roars with
fiery "reminiscences of what it has done,
and with threats of worse that it
may yet do. / would not live in
one of the villages at its base for q
present of all Italy. On day in De-
cember, 1881, it threw up ashes that
floated away hundreds and hundreds
of miles, and dropped in Constantine
pie and in the Adriatic sea and in the
Apennines, as well as trampling out at
its own foot the lives of eighteen
thousand people. Biologists have
tried to fathom its mysteries, but the
heat consumed the iron instruments
and drove back the scorched and Bills
tered explorers from the cindery and
crumbling brink. 1t seems like the
asylum of maniac elements. At one
time far back its top had been for
tress, where Spartacus had fought and
was surrounded, and would have been
destroyed had it not been for the
grape vines which clothed the noun
tain side from top to base, and laying
hold of them he climbed hand under
hand to safety in the valley. But for
centuries it has kept its furnace burn
ing as we saw it that night on our ar
rival in November of 1889.
OF course the next day we started to
see some of the work wrought by that
frenzied mountain. "Al out for
Pompeii!' was the cry of the con-
ductor. And now we stand by the
corpse of that dead city. AS we en-
tered the gate and passed between the
walls, l took off my hat, as one natur-
ally does in the presence of some i'm
posing obsequies. That city had been
at one time capital of beauty and
pomp, the home of grand architecture,
exquisite painting, enchanting sculp-
ture, unrestrained carousal and rapt
assemblage. A high wall, twenty feet
thick, three-fourths of it still visible,
encircled the city. On those walls at a
distance of only one hundred yards
from each other, towers rose for armed
men who watched the city. The
streets ran at right angles and from
wall to wall, only one street excepted.
In the days of the city's prosperity, its
towers glittered in the sun; eight
strong gates for ingress and egress;
gate of the Sea Shore, gate of Hercu-
laneum, gate of Vesuvius being per-
haps the most important Yonder
stood the temple of Jupiter, hoisted at
an imposing elevation, and with its six
Corinthian columns of immense girth,
which stood like carved icebergs,
shimmering in the light. There stands
the temple of the Twelve Gods.
Yonder see the temple of Hercules,
and the temple of Mercury, with
affairs of marble and bas-relief, wonder
full enough to astound all succeeding
ages of art. and the temple of 4Escu-
lapius, brilliant with sculpture and
gorgeous with painting. Yonder are
the theaters. partly cut into surrounding
hills and glorified with pictured walls
and entered under arches of imposing
masonry, and with rooms for capti-
waited and applaudatory audiences,
seated or standing in vast semi-circle.
Yonder are the costly and immense
public baths of the city, with more
than the modern ingenuities of Carls-
bad. Notice the warmth of those an
cient tepidariums with lowering ra-
dance of roof, and the vapor of those
caldariums with decorated alcoves, and
the cold dash of their frigidariums,
skillfully intermingled hues, and walls
upholstered with all the colors of the
setting sun, and sofas on which to re-
cline for slumber after the plunge.
Yonder are the barracks of the cele-
brated gladiators. Yonder is the sum-
mer home of Sallust, the Roman his
torian and senator, the architec-
ture as elaborate as his character
was was corrupt. There is resi-
dence of the poet Pansa, with COM
pressed Louvre and Luxembourg
within his walls. There is the home of
Lucretius, with vases and antiquities
enough to turn the head of virtuoso.
Yonder see the Forum, at the highest
place of the city. 1t is entered by two
triumphal arches. 1t is bounded on
three sides by Doric columns. Yonder,
in the suburbs of the city, is the home
of Arrius Diomed, the mayor of the
suburbs. terraced residence of billion
airedom, gardens, fountained, statued,
collonnaded, the cellar of that villa
filed with bottles of rarest wine, a
few drops of which were found eight
cen hundred years afterward. Along
the streets of the city are men of might
and women of beauty formed into
bronze that many centuries had no
power to bedim. Battle scenes on
walls of color which all time can not
efface. Great city of Pompeii! Sc
Seneca and Tacitus and Cicero pro-