Baxter Springs news. [volume] (Baxter Springs, Kan.) 1882-1919, 1893-10-07
BOTANY OF THE BIBLE.
DR.. Talnage piscourses on Gods
Wonderful Works.
Jonah's Weeds wer, Glorious Flowers -
The Forests OF the Occan-The
Burial Place OF Those Lost
at Scas

In recent sermon at Brooklyn Rev.
u. Dewitt Talmage took his hearers
through an untried region of thought
and found n subject for most practical
gospelization in THE Gardens of the
the Sea-" The text selected was Jonah
ii. 5: THE weeds were wrapped about
my head" Dr. Talmage said:
Having spoken to you in the course
of sermons about God everywhere: on
the astronomy of the Bible, or God
among the stars; the ornithology of the
Bible, or God among the birds: the
ichthyology of the Bible, or God among
the fishes: the mineralogy of the Bible,
or God among the amethysts; the
chronology of the Bible, or God among
the centuries, speak now to you about
the botany of the Bible, or God in the
gardens of the sea. Although pur-
posely take this morning for considera-
ton the least observed and least appre-
ciated of all the botanical products of
the world we shall find the contempla-
ton very absorbing. In all our theo-
logical seminaries where we make
ministers, there ought to be pro-
fessors to give lessons in natural
history. Physical science ought
to be taught side by side
with Revelation. 1t is the same God
who inspires the page of the natural
world as the page of the Scriptural
world. We should have fewer sermons
awfully dry if we initiated our blessed
Lord, and in our discourses, like him,
we would let lily bloom, or n crow
fly, or hen brood her chickens, or a
crystal of salt flash out the preserva-
tive qualities of religion. The trouble
is that in many of our theological SEM
inaries men who are so dry themselves
they could never get people to come
and hear them preach, are now trying
to teach young men how to preach.
That was an awful plunge that the
recreant prophet Jonah made when.
dropped over the gunwales of the Med
iterranean ship, he sank many fathoms
down into tcmpestuous sea. Both
before 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 aaoat
and swallowed by the great sea mon
astor, SO that, while the prophet was at
the bottom of the deep after he was
horribly imprisoned, and he could eX-
claim and did exclaim in the words OF
any 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 rs upon
land. These products of the deep.
whether brown or green or yellow or
purple or red or intershot of many col
ors, are most fascinating. They are
distributed all over the depths and
from Attic to Antarctic That God
thinks well of them i conclude from
the fact that He has made G.000 species
of them. Sometimes these water
plants are 400 or 700 feet long, and
they cable the sea. The thickest
jungles of the tropics are not more full
of vegetation than the 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." There
arc creatures of God on the bottom OF
the sea so constructed that, strewn all
along, they make armament besprent
with stars, consultations and galaXies
of imposing luster. The author of the
text felt the pull of the hidden vegeta-
ton of the Mediterranean, whether or
not he appreciated its beauty, as he
cries out: 1.-The weeds were wrapped
about my head"
Let my subject cheer all those who
had friends who have been buried ut
sea or in our great American lakes
Which of us brought up on the Allan
tic coast has not had kindred or friend
thus sepulchered? We had the useless
horror of thinking that they were de-
MED proper resting place. We said;
sOh, if they had lived to come ashore,
and had then expired! What an ALE
yiation of our trouble it would have
been to put them in some beautiful
family plot, where we could have
planted flowers and trees over them"
WHY, God did better than we could
have done for them. They were let
down into beautiful gardens. Before
they had reached the bottom they had
rarlands about their brow. In more
elaborate and adorned place than we
could have afforded them they were
put away for the last slumber. The
bodies of our foundered and sunken
friends are girdled and canopied and
housed with such glories as attend no
other Metropolis.
When Sebastopol was besieged in the
Anglo French war, Prince Mentschi-
koff, commanding the Russian navy,
saw that the only way to keep the En-
glish out of the harbor was to sink all
"a tha Russian ships of war in the road