Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1893-02-10
GOD as I4 ALL THINGS.
u x II Il
EVEN UNTO THE FISH THAT
SWARM THE SEAS
Talmage breaches on the Ichthyology
OF the Bible-"And God said. Let the
Waters Bring Fourth Abundantly That
Hath Life"

on "GOd Everywhere. The text chosen was
Genesis :so: and God said, Let the waters
bring forth abundantly the moving creature
that hathlife
What new book the Bible is! After
thirty-six years preaching from 1T and
discussing over three thousand differ
ent subjects founded on the word of
God, the book is as fresh to me as
when l learned, with a stretch of in
fantile memory, the shortest verse In
the Bible, "Jesus wept," and opened
few weeks ago a new realm of hibli-
cal interest that neither my pulpit nor
anyone else's had ever explored, and
having spoken to you in this course of
sermons on God Everywhere concern
ing the Astronomy of the Bible or God
Among the Stars, the Chronology of
the Bible or God Among the Centuries,
the ORTHODOXY of the Bible or God
Among the Birds, the Mineralogy of
the Bible or God Among the Anne
thysts, this morning. as / may be di-
yinely helped, will speak to you about
the Ichthyology of the Bible or God
Among the Fishes.
Our horses were lathered and tired
out, and their fetlocks were red with
the blood cut out by the ocks, and l
could hardly get my feet out of the
stirrups as on Saturday night we dis
mounted on the beach of Lake Galilee.
The rather liberal supply of food with
which we had started from Jerusalem
was well-nigh exhausted, and the ar
ticles of diet remaining had, by oft
repetition, three times day for three
weeks, ceased to appetite. | never
want to see a fig again, and dates
with me are all ont of date. For sew
10 81, A Il far ylC
speak but half dozen English words
would answer our requests for some of
the styles of food with which we had
been delectated the first few days, by
crying out, Finished" The most
piquant appetizer is abstinence,
and the demand of all the
party was, "Let us breakfast on Sun
day morning on fresh fish from Lake
Gennesareth," for you must know that
that lake has four names, and it is
profusion of nomenclature, and 1T is in
the Bible called Chinnereth, Tiberias,
Gennesareth and Galilee. To our ex-
temporized table on Sabbath morning
came broiled perch, only few hours
before lifted out of the sacred waters
II was natural that our minds should
revert 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 consequence. Meanwhile, the
disciples, fishing on the lake, had
awfully 'poor luck" and every time
they drew up the net it hung dripping
without fluttering fin or squirming
scale. But Christ. from the shore,
shouted to them, and told them where
to drop the net, and 153 big fish re-
warded them. Simon and Nathaniel
having cleansed 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 AID
began mastication. All that scene
came back to us when on Sabbath
morning, December, 1889, just outside
the ruins of ancient Tiberias and
within sound of the ripping Galilee,
we breakfasted
Now, is it not strange that the
Bible imagery is so inwrought from the
fisheries, when the Holy Land is, for
the most part, an inland region? Only
three lakes, two beside the one already
mentioned, namely, the Dead Sea,
where fish cannot live at all and as
soon as they torch il 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 Jordan. About all the
fish now in the waters of the Holy
Land are the perch, the carp, the
Dream, the minnow, the Henry, the
barbed (so-called because of the barb
at its mouth) the club, the dog-fish,
none of them worth a Delaware shad
or an Adirondack 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 thirty
five miles away, and fish were sailed or
dried and brought inland, and SO much
of that article of food was sold in
Jerusalem that a fish market gave the
name to one of the gates of Jerusalem
nearby, andnit was called the Fish
Gate. The cities had great reservoirs,
The Pool of Gideon was a fish.pool.
Isaiah and Solomon refer to fish-pools.
Large fish were kept alive and tied
fast by ropes to a stake in these reser
voirs, a ring having been run through
their gills, and that is the meaning of
the Scripture passage which says,
"Canst thou put hook into his nose or
bore his jaw through with a thorn?" 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 in
dignatiou, when in 1st Samuel, we
read that this Dagon, the god,
stood beside the ark of the Lord, and
Dagon was by invisible hand dashed
TO pieces, because the Fhilistines had
dared to make the fish a god. That
explains the Scripture passage: "The
head of Dagon and both the palms of
his hands were cut off upon the
threshold; only the stump of Dagon
was left to him." Now the stump of
Dagon was the fish part The
top part, which was the figure of a
man, was dashe5 to pieces, and the
I Lord, by demolislsing everything but
/ the stump or fish part of the idol.