Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1893-10-26

My friends, | cannot tell what prac-
teal suggestion comes to your mind
from this walk through uncovered
Pompeii, but the first thought that a b.
serbs me is that, while art and culture
are important, they cannot save the
morals or the life of a great town.
Much of the painting and sculpture OF
Pompeii was so exquisite that while
some is kept on the walls where il was
hrst penciled, to be admired by those
who go there, whole wagonloads and
whole rooms full of it have been trans
TERED to the Museo Borbonico at
Naples, to be admired by the centuries.
Those Pompeiian artists mixed such
durability OF colors that though their
paintings were buried in ashes and
scorie for seventeen hundred years.
and since they were uncovered many
of them have remained there exposed
TO the rains and winds and winters and
summers OF hundred and thirty years,
the color is as fresh and vivid and true
as though yesterday il had passed from
the easel. Which of our modern paint
ings could stand all that? And vet
10y - NaAS VI OiAHElAtu
art show that the city was sunk to
such depth of abomination that there
was nothing deeper. Sculptured and
petrified and embalmed abomination.
There was a state of public morals
worse than belongs to any city now
standing under the sun. Yet how many
think that all that is necessary is to Gull
tivate the mind and advance the know
ledge, and improve the arts Have you
the impression that eloquence will do
the elevating work? Why, Pompeii
had Cicero half OF every year for It's
citizen. Have you the idea that liter
AZURE is all that is necessary to keep
city right? Why, Sallust, with pen
that was the boast of Roman litera-
ture, had a mansion in that doomed
city. Do you think that sculpture and
art are quite sufficient for the produc-
ton of good morals? Then, correct
your delusion by examining the statues
IN the Temple of Mercury at Pompeii, or
the winged figures of its Parthenon, and
the colonnades and arches of this house
of Diomed BY all means have schools
and Dusseldorf and Dore exhibitions,
and galleries where the genius of all
the centuries can bank itself up in
snowy sculpture, and all bric-a- brac,
and all pure art, but nothing, save the
religion of Jesus Christ, can make a
city moral. IN proportion as churches
and Bibles and Christian printing
presses and revivals of religion abound,
is a city clean and pure. What has
Buddhism or Confucianism or Moham-
mechanism done in all the hundreds of
years of their progress for the elevation
of society? Absolutely nothing. PelSin
and Madras and Cairo are just what |
they were ages ago, except as Chris |
tianity has modified their condition. |
What is the difference between our
and their Pompeii? No diff
ference, except tina. which Christianity |
has wrought. Favor all good art but
take best care of your churches and
your Sabbath-schools and your Bibles
and your family affairs.
Yea. see in our walk to-day through |
Pompeii what sin will do
for a city. We ought 10 be slow TO as
sign the judgments of God. Cities are
afflicted just as good people
are afflicted. and the earthquake and
the cyclone and the epidemic are no
sign in many cases that God is angry
with city, but the distress is sent for
some good and kind purpose, whether
we understand it or not. The law that
applies to individuals may apply TO
Christian cities as well: "All things
work together for good to those that
owe God" But the greatest calamity
If history came upon Pompeii not TO
improve its future condition for il was
obliterated and will never
,e rebuilt. 1t was so bad that it needed
% be buried seventeen hundred years
before even its ruins were fit TO be I'M
covered So Sodom and Gomorrah were
illed with such turpitude that they
we're not only turned under. but have
or thousands of years been kept under
The two greatest cemeteries are the
cemetery in which the sunken ships
re buried all the way between Fire
sland and Fastnet lighthouse, and the
,ther cemetery is the cemetery of dead
tiles | get down on my knees and :
cad the epitapheology of long line
{ them: Here lies Babylon, once
allied 1.-The Hammer of the whole
arth." Dead and buried under piles
+ bitumen and broken pottery and
itrifed brick. And hear wolf howl ,
nd a reptile hiss as am reading 7
his epitaph: Isaiah xiii, 81: THE |
lid beast of the desert shall be there, |
nd their houses shall be full of dole ]
III creatures"
The next tomb kneel before in this !
emetery of cities is Nineveh. Her I
hinged lions are down and the slabs of
labaster have crumbled, and the sculp :
lre that represented her battles is as i
ompletely scattered as the dust of the !,
eroes who fought them. Perhaps l /
Mt my knee into the dust of her
as / stoop to read her
pitaph: Zephaniah 2:14, Now is /,
ineveh a desolatiop and dry like a 7
,ilderness, and fioeks lie down in the i
Iidst of her; all the beasts of the 3
Il