The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-10-20
TALMAGE's SERMON.
Lessons Taught by the Cemetery
OF Dead c. les.
PompeiI's Greatness. vIchedness and De-
structfon-The Ruined Cities OF the
ORIENT a Warning 20 the Llv-
Ing Cities of To-Day.

Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage took for
the subject of his latest sermon in the
Brooklyn tabernacle ''Pompeii and Its
Lessons" basing his discourse on the
text:
Thou hast made Of defenced city ruin
Isaiah xxv-2
A fash on the night sky greeted us
as we left the rail train at Naples,
Italy. What was the strange illumi-
nation2 1t was the wrath of many
centuries-Vesuvius. Giant son of an
earthquake Intoxicated mountain OF
Italy. Father of many considerations.
A volcano, burning SO long, and yet to
keep ON burning until, perhaps, it may
be the very torch that viii lzindle the
last confagration and set all the world
on fire. 1t eclipses I'm violence of be-
havior Cotopaxi and Etna and Strom-
boil and Kralatoa. Awful mystery.
Funeral pyre of dead cities. Everlast-
ing paroxysm of mountains. Is seems
like chimney of hell 1t roars with
fiery Renaissance of what it has done,
and with threats of worse that it
may yet do. I would not live in
present of all Italy. On a day in De-
cember, 1851, it threw up ashes that
fioated away hundreds and hundreds
of miles, and dropped in Constantine
pie and in the Adriatic sea and in the
Apennines, as we'll as trampling out at
its own foot the lives of eighteen
thousand people. Biologists have
tried to fathom it's mysteries, but the
heat consumed the iron instruments
and drove back the scorched and bis
tered explorers from the cindery and
cr-umbling brink. 1t seems like the
asylum of maniac elements. At one
time far back its top had been n 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
ing as we saw it that night on our ar
rival in November of 1889.
OF course the next day we started to
frenzied mountain. San out for
Pompeiig' 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, took off my hat. as one natur-
ally does in the presence of some inn
posing obsequies. That city had been
ut one time a 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 Escu-
lapius, brilliant with sculpture and
gorgeous with painting. Yonder are
the theaters. partly cut into surrounding
hills and gloriied 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
ealdariums with decorated alcoves, and
the cold dash of their frigidariums,
with floors of mosaic and ceilings of all
slxillfully 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 a resi-
pressed Louvre and Luxembourg
Lucretius, with vases and antiquities
enough to turn the head of a 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 So
Seneca and Tacitus and Cicero pro-
nounced it.
Stand with me ON its walls this even
ing of August %, A. d. 20. See the
throngs passing up and down in Tyrian
purple and girdles arabesque and necks
enchanted with precious stones, proud
official in imposing toga meeting tn
slaves carrying trays a-elink with COB
lets and a-smoling with delicacies
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