The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1893-10-28
AT THE TABERNACLE.
Or. TALMAes DlscouRses ON THE
GARDENS OF THE SEA.


BROOKLYN, Oct. lin his sermon this
forenoon In the Brooklyn Tabernacle, as in
many other discourses, Rev. T. De Witt
Talmage took his hearers and readers
through an untried region of thought and
found a subject for most practical gospeli
Lation In The Garden of the Sea-" The
text selected was Jonah II, 8, 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 book which brought from
Palestine, bound In olive wood, aud within
it are pressed flowers, which have not only
retained their color, but their aroma
Flowers from Bethlehem, flowers from
Jerusalem, flowers from Gethsemane,
flowers from Mount of Olives, flowers from
Bethany, flowers from Sloan, flowers
from the valley of Jehoshaphat, red anem-
ones and wild miguonette, buttercups, dai-
sizes, cyclamens, camomile, bluebells, ferns,
moses, grasses and q wealth of fora that
keeps me fas ninated by the hour, and every
time open it, it is new revelation. 1t
is the New testament of the fields. But
my text leads us into another realm Of the
botanical kingdom.
Having spoken to you in a course Of ser
mons about God everywhere-on The As
tronomy of the Bible; or God mong the
Stars" The ORTHODOXY of the B BILE; 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 IL speak now to you
about THE Botany of the Bible; or, God
In the Gardens of the Sea-
BOTANY OF THE BIBLE.
Although ! purposely take this morning
for consideration the least observed and
least appreciated of all the botanical prod
ucts of the world, we shall find the contem-
plation very absorbing. In all our theolog-
ical 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 Scrip
tural world.
What freshening up it would be to our
sermons to press into them even frag-
ment of Mediterranean seaweed! Weshould
have fewer sermons awfully dry if we imi-
tated our blessed Lord, and in our dis
courses, like him, we would let n lily
bloom, or crow fly, or a hen brood her
chickens, or a crystal of salt flash out the
preventative qualities of religion. The trout
BILE is that in many of our theological SEM
inaries 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 victim
at least one lesson on the botany of the
Bible
That was an awful plunge that the re-
creant prophet Jonah made when, dropped
over the gunwales of the Mediterranean
ship, he sank many fathcms down into a
tempestuous sea. Both before and after
the monster of the deep swallowed him, he
was entangled in seaweed The jungles
of the deep threw their cordage of vegeta-
ton around him. Some of this seaweed
was anchored to the bottom of the watery
abysm, and some of it was ufOat and swal-
lowed 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 wrap
ped about my head"
JoNAu's SUBMARINE Discoveries.
Jonah was the first to record that there
are growths upon the bottom of the sea as
we'll as upon land. The first picture l ever
owned was handful of seaweeds pr .ssed on
page, and l called them the shorn locks
of Neptune" These products of the deep,
whether brown or green or yellow or purple
or red or intershot of many colors, are most
fascinating. They are distributed all over
the depths and from Arctic to Antarctic.
That God thinks well of them | conclude
~ To- l., L.
of them. Sometimes these water plants
are 400 or 700 feet long, and they cable the
sea. One specimen has growth of 1,50O
feet
On the northwest shore Of our country Is
a seaweed with leaves 30 or 40 feet long,
amid which the sea otter makes his home,
resting himself on the buoyancy 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 for
ests down there, and vast prairies all
abloom, and God walks there as he walked
in the garden Of Eden lin the cool of the
day" Oh, what enhancement, this sub
aqueous world! Oh, the God given won.
ders of the seaweed Its birthplace is q
palace of crystal The cradle that rocks il
is the storm. Its grave is a 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 al
along they make u armament besprent witt
stars, consultations and galaxies of impos
ing luster The sea feather is a lamplight
or. The gymnotus is an electrician, and he
is surcharged with electricity and makes
the deep bright with the lightning of the
sea, The gorEOnia flashes like jewels. Their,
are sea anemones abaze with light. Their,
are the stariish and moonfish, these called
because they so powerfully suggest stellar
and lunar illumination.
Oh, these midnight lanterns of the ocean
caverns; these professions of flame over the
white floor of the deep; these illuminations
three miles down under the sea- these gor
geously upholstered 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 appreci
ated its beauty, as he cried out The weeds
were wrapped about my head"
THE sEPULCHER OF THE SEA.
Let my subject cheer all those who had
friends who have been buried at sea or il
our great American lakes. Which of Us
brought up ON the Atlantic coast has not
had kindred or friend thus sepulchered
We had the useless horror of thinking that
they were denied proper restingplace. W,
said "Oh, if they had lived to come
ashore and had then EXPIRED What ar
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 bet
ter for them than we could have done fol
them. They were let down into beautiful