Milford chronicle., 1893-02-10
AT THE TABERNACLE.
THE IcHTHYoLoeY AND OTHER NAT
URAL HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.

of Fish In the Bible.
BROOKLYN, Feb. 5.-Rev. I. Dewitt Tai
mage this morning preached to a great au
, dience in the Tabernacle remarkably in
!, teresting and eloquent sermon on ''The Ich
' THEOLOGY of the Bible; or, God Among the
e Fishes" being a continuation of his series
o of discourses on God everywhere. The
e text chosen was Genesis /, 20, 'And God
o said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly
n the moving creatures that hath life"
= What a new book the Bible isl After
So years. preaching from it and discussing
over 900 different subjects founded on the
word Of God the book is as fresh to me as
when / learned, with stretch Of infantile
memory, the shortest verse in the Bible,
"Jesus wept," and l opened few weeks
ago a new realm Of Biblical interest that
neither my pulpit nor any one else's had
ever explored, and having spoken to you in
this course of sermons on God everywhere
concerning the Astronomy Of the Bible;
or, God Among the Stars" the "Chronol-
: ogy of the Bible; or, God Among the Cen
turies;" the "Ornithology Of ths Bible; or,
God Among the Birds" the 'lSIineralogy
of the Bible; OF, God Among the Anne
thysts," this morning, as may be divinely
helped will speak to you about the "Ich-
THEOLOGY of the Bible; OF, God Among the
Fishes"
THE SEA OF MANY NAMES.
Our horses were lathered and tired out,
and their fetlocks were red with the blood
cut out by the rocks and I could hardly
get my feet out of the stirrups as on Satur-
day night we dismounted on the beach of
Lake Galilee The rather liberal supply of
food with which we had started from Jeru-
salem was well nigh exhausted, and the
articles of diet remaining had, by oft repe-
tition three times day for three weeks,
ceased to Appetite I never want to see
fig again, and dates with me are all out Of
date.
For several days the Arab caterer, who
could speak but half dozen English
words, would answer our requests for some
| of the styles CT food with which we had
been delectateJ the first few days by cry
ing out, FINISHED" The most piquant ap-
petizer is abstinence, and the demand Of all
the party was. LET us breakfast on Sun
day morning on fresh fish from Lake Gen
nesareth, )" for you must know that that
lake has four names, and it is worth a pro-
/ fusion of nomenclature, and it is in the
! Bible called Chinnereth, Tiberias, Gennesa-
! reth and Galilee.
10 our extemporized table on Sabbath
morning came broiled perch, only few
hours before lifted out of the sacred waters.
It was natural that our. minds should re
vert to the only breakfast that Christ ever
prepared, and it was on those very shores
| where we breakfasted. Christ had in those
olden times struck two fiints together and
set on fire some shavings or light brush
wood and then put on larger wood, and a
pile of glowing bright Goals was the con-
sequence.
Meanwhile the disciples fishing on the
lake had awfully poor luck" and every
time they drew up. the net it hung dripping
without a futtering fin or squirming scale,
But Christ from the shore shouted to them
and told them where to drop the net, and
l53 big fish rewarded them. Simon and
Nathaniel, having cleaned some of those !
large fish, brought them to the Goals which |
Christ had kindled, and the group who had |
been out all'night and were chill and wet
and hungry sat down and began mastica- |
tion. All that scene came back to us when |
on Sabbath morning, December, 1889, just |
outside the ruins Of ancient Tfberias and |
within sound of the ripping Galilee, we
breakfasted
FISHING a GREAT BIBLE TOPIC.
Now, is it not strange that the Bible i'm
agery is so inwrought from the fisheries
when the Holy Land is, for the most part,
an inland region? Only three lakes, two |
besides the one already mentioned-namely, |
the Dead sea, where fish cannot live at all,
and as soon as they touch it they die, and
the birds swoop on their tiny carcasses, and
the third, the Pools of Heshbon, which are
alternately full and dry. Only three rivers
of the Holy Land, Jabbok, Kishon and Jor-
dan. About all the fish now in the waters
of the Holy Land are the perch, the carp,
the Dream, the minnow, the blenny, the
barbel $50 called because of the barb at its
mouth), the chub the dOgfish, none of
them worth a Delaware shad or an Adiron-
dack trout.
Well, the worlds geography has changed,
and the worlds bill Of fare has changed.
Lake Galilee was larger and deeper and
better stocked than now, and no doubt the
rivers were deeper and the fisheries were
Of far more importance then than now.
Besides that there was the Mediterranean
sea only 35 miles away, and fish were salt
ed or dried and brought inland, and so
much of that article of food was sold in
Jerusalem that fish market gave the
name to one of the gates of Jerusalem near
by, and it was called the fish gate.
The cities had great reservoirs in which
the fish were kept alive and bred. The
Pool Of Gibeon was fshpool. Isaiah and
Solomon refer to fishpools. Large fish were
kept alive and tied fast by ropes to stake
in these reservoirs, a ring having been run
through their gills, and that is the mean
ing of the Scripture passage which says,
"Canst thou put hook into his nose or
bore his jaw through with thOrn@
4 So important was the fish that the god
Dagon, worshiped by the Philistines, was
made half fish and half man, and that is the
meaning of the Lords Indignation when in
Samuel we read that this Dagon, the fish
god, stood beside the ark Of the Lord, and
Dagon was by invisible hands dashed TO
pieces because the Philistines had dared to
make the fish god. That explains the
Scripture passage, 1.-The head of Dagon and
both the palms of his hands were cut off
upon the threshold; only the stump of Da-
Qon was left to him" Now, the stump of
Dagon was the fish part. The top part,
which was the figure Of a man, was dashed
to pieces, and the Lord, by demolishing ev-
erything but the stump or fish part OF the
dol, practically said, ''You may keep your
fish, but know from the way have demol-
ished the rest Of the idol that it is nothing
divine"
THE FISH CANE BEFORE THE LAND ANIMALS.
Iayard and Wilkinson found the fish an
object Of idolatry all through Assyria and
Egypt. The Nile was full of fish, and that
explains the horrors of the plague that
slaughtered the fnny tribe all up and down
that river, which has been and is now the
main artery of Egypt's life In Job you
hear the plunge of the spear into the hip
popotamus as the great dramatic poet cries
out, "Canst thou fill his skin with barbed
irons or his head with fish spears~ Yea,
the fish began to swim in the very first book
Of Genesis, where my text records, And
God said, Let the waters bring forth album
dantly the moving creature that hath life"
Do you realize that the first living thing
that God created was the fish? 1t preceded
the bird, the Quadruped, the human race
The fish has priority Of residence over
every living thing. The next thing done
after God had kindled for our world the
golden chandelier of the sun and the silver
chandelier Of the moon was to make the
n rr41.- ,f laa 44riurir1Io DT IN