Connecticut western news., 1893-10-05
GARDENS OF THE SEA.
REV. DR. TALMAGE ON THE BOTANY
 OF THE BIBLE.

Science and Revelation-The surpassing
 Eloquent Discourse.
 BROOKLYN, Oct. 1.-In his sermon this forenoon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, as in many other discourses, Rev. T. De Witt Talmage took his hearers and read CTS through an untried region of thought and found subject for most practical gospelization in "The Gardens of the Sea-" The text selected was Jonah ii, s, ''The weeds were wrapped about my head"
 ''The Botany of the Bible; or, God Among the Flowers" is fascinating sub ject. I hold in my hand a book which brought from Palestine, bound in olive wood, and within it are pressed flowers which have not only retained their color, but their aroma. Flowers from Bethle- hem, flowers from Jerusalem, flowers from Gethsemane, flowers from Mount of Olives, flowers from Bethany, flowers from Sloan, flowers from the valley of Jehoshaphat, rede anemones and wild mignonette, buttercups. daisies, cycla- mems, camomile, bluebells, ferns, moss es, grasses and wealth of flora that keep me fascinated by the hour, and every time open it it is a new revela- ton. It is the New Testament of the fields. But my text leads us into an- other realm of the botanical kingdom.
 Having spoken to you in course of sermons about "God Everywhere"-on ''The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars;" tThe Ornithology of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds;" ''The Ichthyology of the Bible; or, God Among the Fishes;'' sThe Mineralogy of the Bible; or, God Among the Ame- thysts;" '"The Conchology of the Bible; or, God Among the Shells;" "The Chro- nology of the Bible; or, God Among the Centuries'-I speak now to you about "The Botany of the Bible; or, God In the Gardens of the Sea-" Although I purposely take this morning for consid- eration the least observed and least ap- preciated of all the botanical products of the world, we shall find the contempla- tion very absorbing.
 In all our theological seminaries where we make ministers there ought to be professors to give lessons in natural his tory. Physical science oughtto be taught side by side with revelation. It is the same God who inspires the page of the natural world as the page of the Scrip tural world. What 8 freshening up it would be to our sermons to press into them even a fragment of Mediterranean seaweedl We should have fewer ser mons awfully dry if we initiated our IT s,1 him, we would let a lily bloom, or crow fly, or hen brood her chickens, or crystal of salt flash out the preservative qualities of religion.
 The trouble Is that in many of our theological seminaries men who are so dry themselves they never could get people to come and hear them preach are now trying to teach young men how toppreach, and the student is put between tWO great presses of dogmatic theology .sAnd squeezed until there is no life left in him. Give the poor victim at least one lesson on the botany of the Bible.
 WONDERS OF THE DEEP.
 That was an awful plunge that the rec reant prophet Jonah made when, dropped over the gunwales of the Medi- terranean ship, he sank many fathoms down into tempestuous sea. Both be- fore and after the monster of the deep swallowed him, he was entangled in sea- weed. The jungles of the deep threw their cordage of vegetation around him. Some of this seaweed was anchored to the bottom of the watery abysm, and some of it was afoat and swallowed by the great sea monster, so that, while the prophet was at the bottom of the deep after he was horribly imprisoned he could exclaim and did exclaim in the words of my text, "The weeds were wrapped about my head"
 Jonah was the first to record that there are growths upon the bottom of the sea as well as upon land. The first picture I ever owned was 8 handful of seaweeds pressed on page, and I called them 'the shorn locks of Neptune" These products of the deep, whether brown or green or yellow or purple or red or inter shot of many colors, are most fascinat- ing. They are distributed all over the depths and from Arctic to Antarctic. That God thinks we'll of them conclude from the fact that he has made 5000 species of them. Sometimes these water plants are 400 or TOO feet long, and they cable the sea. One specimen has a growth of 1 ,500 feet.
 On the northwest shore of our country Is 8 seaweed with leaves 80 or 40 feet long, amid which the sea otter makes his home, resting himself on the buoy ancy of the leaf and stem. The thickest jungles of the tropics are not more full of vegetation than ths depths of the sea. There are forests down there and vast prairies all abloom, and God walks there as he walked In the Garden of Eden "in the cool of the day" Oh, what entrance ment, this subaqueous worldl Oh, the God given wonders of the seaweedl It's birthplace is a palace of crystal. The cradle that rocks it is the storm. Its grave Is sarcophagus of beryl and sap phire There is no night down there.
 There are creatures of God on the bot tom of the sea so constructed that, strewn all along, they make Armament be- sprent with stars, constellations and galaxies of imposing luster. The sea feather is a lamplighter. The gymnotus Is an electrician, and he is surcharged with electricity and makes the deep bright with the lightning of the sea. The gorgonia flashes like jewels. There are sea anemones ablaze with light. There are the starfish and the moonfsh, SO called because they so powerfully sug- gest stellar and lunar illumination.
 Oh, these midnight lanterns of the ocean caverns; these processions of flame over the white floor of the deep; these Examinations three miles down under the sea; these gorgeousIy upholstered castles of the Almighty in the under world The author of the text felt the pull of the hidden vegetation of the Mediterranean, whether or not he ap- preciated it's beauty, as he cried out, ''The weeds were wrapped about my head"
 Let my subject cheer all those who had friends who have been buried at sea