The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-02
THE GARDENS OF THE SEA.
Talmaee breaches on The Botany Of
the Bible.

Bottom Of the Immense Plants
that Gable the Sea. c
BROOKLYN. Oct. I'm his sermon thi!
forenoon I'm the Brooklyn Tabernacle, a:
in many other discourses, Rev. 7, d.
Witt Talmage took his hearers and read
ers through an untried region of thought
and found a subject for most practica
gospelization in The Gardens of the
Sea" The text selected was Jonah 2: >
"The weeds were wrapped about my
head"
The botany of the Bible or God among
the flowers is a fascinating subject.
hold in my hand a book, which l brought
from Palestine bound in olive wood, and
within il are pressed flowers which nave
not only retained their color, but then
aroma; flowers from Bethlehem, flowers
from Jerusalem, flowers from Gethsem-
ane. flowers from Mount of Olives, flowers
from Bethany, flowers from Sloan, flow
ers from the Valley Of JehOshaphat, red
anemones, and wild mignonette, butter
CUPS, daisies, cyClamens, chamOmile,
blue bells, ferns, moSses, grasses and a
wealth of fora that keep me fascinated
by the hour, and every time | open it, IL
is a new revelation. 1t is the New Testa-
ment of the fields. But my text leads me
into another realm of the botanical king
dom.
Having spoken to YOU in a course Of
sermons about God Everywhere: on the
Astronomy Of the Bible, or God among
the Stars the ORTHODOXY 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 Conchology OF
the Bible, or God among the Shells; 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 contemplation
very absorbing. In all our theological
seminaries where we make ministers
there ought to be professors 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. What a
freshening up it would be to our sermons
TO press into them even a fragment of
Mediterranean sea-weed. We should
have fewer sermons awfully dry if we
initiated our blessed Lord, and in our dis
courses, like him, we would let a lily
a u
chickens, or a crystal of salt flash out the
preservative qualities of religion. The
trouble is that in many of our theological
seminaries 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 dog
matte theology and squeezed until there
is no life left in him. Give the poor vic
. hot ,f
the Bible.
That was an awful plunge that the
recreant prophet Jonah made when
dropped over the gunwales of the Medi-
terranean ship, he sank many fathoms
down into the 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 sea-weed was anchored to
the bottom of the watery abysm and
some of ii was atoat and swallowed by
the great sea-monster, so that, while the
prophet was at the bottom of the deep
after he was horribly imprisoned, he
could eXclaim and did eXclaim in the
words of my text: The weeds were
wrapped about my head" Jonah was the
first to irecord that there are
grOwths upon the bottom of the sea as
well as upon land. The first picture
ever owned was handful of sea-weed
pressed on page, and | called
them 1.-The ShOrn Locks of Nep-
tune" These products of the deep,
whether brown or green or yellow or
purple or red or intershot of many col
ors, are most facinating. They are dis
tributed all over the depths and from
Arctic to Antarctic. That God thinks
well of them l conclude from the fact
that he has made six thousand species of
them. Sometimes these water-plants are
four hundred or seven hundred feet long,
and they cable the sel. One specimen has
a growth of fifteen hundred feet. On the
northwest shore of our country is sea-
weed with leaves thirty or forty feet
long, amid which the sea-otter makes
hhls home, resting himself on the buoy
ancy 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
prairies all ablOOm, and God walks there
as he walked in the garden of Eden ''in
the cool of the day. Oh, what entrance
ment, this sub-aqueous world! Oh, the
God-given wonders of the sea-weed Its
birthplace is a palace of crystal The
cradle that rocks ii is the storm Its grave
is sarcOphagus of beryl and sapphire.
There is no night down there. There are
creatures of God on the bottom of the sea
so constructed that, strewn all along, they
make ornament besprent with stars,
consultations and galaxies of imposing
luster. The sea-feather is a lamplighter
The gymuOtus is an electrician, and he is
surcharged with electricity, and makes
the deep bright with the lightning of the
sea. The gorgona flashes like Jewels.
There is the star-fish and the moon-fsh,
so-called because they so powerfully sug-
gest stellar and lunar illumination.
On! these midnight lanterns of the
ocean caverns: these professions of
flame over the white floor Of the
deep; these Examinations three miles
down under the sea these gorgeously up
holstered castles of the Almighty in the
underworld! The author of the text
felt the pull of the hidden vegetation of
the Mediterranean, whether or not he ap-
preclated its beauty, as he cries out:
The weeds were wrapped about my
head"
Let my subject cheer all those who had
friends who have been buried at sea or in
our great American lakes. Which of us
brought up on the Atlantic coast has not
had kindred or friend thus sepulchred2
We had the useless horror of thinking
that they were denied proper resting
place. We said: "Oh, if they had lived
to come ashore, and had then expired /!
What an alienation 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