Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-10-02
GARDENS OF THE SEA.
REV. DR.. TALMACE CH THE BOTANY
OF THE Ci5LE.

He Draws a Parallel Between Physical
Wonders of the Depths of the Sea--An
Eloquent Discourse.
BROOKLYN, Oct. LIN his sermon this
forenoon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle, as
in many other discourses, Rev. Z. De
Witt Talmage took his hearers and read
ers through an untried region of thought
and found subject for most practical
gospelization in 1.-THE Gardens of the
Sea-" The text selected was Jonah ii,
8, "The weeds were wrapped about my
head"
r'The Botany of the Bible; or, God
Among the Flowers" iaa fascinating sub
ject. hold in my hand q book which l
brought from Palestine, bound in olive
wood, and within it are pressed flowers
which have not only retained their color,
but their aroma. Flowers from Bethle-
hem, flowers from Jerusalem, flowers
from Gethsemane, flowers from Mount
of Olives, flowers from Bethany, flowers
from Sloan, flowers from the valley of
Jehoshaphat, red anemones and wild
mignonette, buttercups. daisies, cycla-
mems, camomile, bluebel1s, ferns, moss
es, grasses and wealth of fora that
keep me fascinated by the hour, and
every time open it it is q new revela-
ton. 1t is the New Testament Of the
fields. But my text leads US into an
other realm of the botanical kingdom.
Having spoken to you in a course of
sermons about "God Everywhere'-
t'The Astronomy of the Bible; or, God
Among the Stars;' ''The Ornithology of
the Bible; or, God Among the Birds"
tsThe Ichthyology Of the Bible; or, God
Among the Fishes ''The Mineralogy
of the Bible; or, God Among the Anne
thysts;' ''The Conchology Of the Bible;
or, God Among the Shells;'' ''The Chro-
no1ogy of the Bible; or, God Among the
Centuries"-I speak now to you about
ssThe Botany of the Bible; or, God In
the Gardens Of the Sea-" Although I
purposely take this morning for consid-
Grafton the least observed and least ap-
preciated of all the botanical products Of
the world, we shall find the contempla-
ton very absorbing.
/ In all our theological seminaries where
we make ministers there ought to be
professors to give lessons in natural his
tory. Physical science oughtto be taught
side by side with revelation. It is the
same God who inspires the page of the
natural world as the page of the Scrip
tural world. What freshening up it
would be to our sermons to press into
them even fragment of Mediterranean
seaweedl We should have fewer SER
mons awfully dry if we initiated our
blessed Lord, and in our discourse, like
him, we would let a lily bloom, or crow
fly, or a hen brood her chickens, or a
crystal of salt flash out the preservative
qualities of religion.
The trouble is that in many of our
theological Summaries men who are so
dry themselves they never could get
people to come and hear them preach
are now trying to teach young men how
to preach, and the student is put between
two great presses of dogmatic theology
and squeezed until there is no life left
in him. Give the poor victim at least
one lesson on the botany of the Bible.
WONDERS OF THE DEEP.
That was an awful plunge that the rec
reant prophet Jonah made when,
dropped over the gunwales of the Medi-
terranean ship, he sank many fathoms
down into a tempestuous sea. Both be-
fore 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 abys1n, and
some Of it was af1oat and swallowed by
hot 10 no
prophet was at the bottom of the deep
after he was horribly imprisoned he
could exclaim and did cxclaim in the
words of my text, The weeds We're
wrapped about my head"
! Jonah was the first to record that there
are growths upon the bottom of the sea
as well as upon land. The first picture
I ever owned was handful of seaweeda
pressed on page, and [ called them
i'sthe shorn locks of Neptune" These
products Of the deep, whether brown or
green or yellow or purple or red orinter-
shot of many colors, are most fascinat-
ing. They are distributed all over the
depths and from Arctic to Antarctic.
That God thinks well of them conclude
from the fact that he has made 5000
species of them. Sometimes these water
plants are 400 or 700 feet long, and they
cable the sea. One specimen has a
growth of 500 feet.
On the northwest shore of our country
lis a seaweed with leaves 80 or 40 feet
long, amid which the sea otter makes
ibis home, resting himself ON the buoy
fancy of the leaf and stem. 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
iprairies all abloom, and God walks there
as he walked in the Garden of Eden Sin
the cool of the day" Oh, what entrance
;ment, this subaqueous worldl Oh, the
God given wonders of the seaweed! It's