The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1894-02-23
A SHINING PATH.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Lightning OF the Sea.
From Which He Makes some Useful De-
auctions for the Benefit OF the HUI
man Family-A Few OBJ
ject Lessons

In a late sermon at Brooklyn Rev.
7. Dewitt Talmage took for his sub
iect: 1.-THE Lightning of the Sea-" the
text selected being Job. xii 81: HE
maketh a path to shine after him."
DIR Talmage said:
If for the next thousand years minis
ters of religion should preach from this
Bible there will yet be texts unex-
pounded, and unexplained, and unap-
preciated. What little has been said
concerning this chapter in Job, from
which my text is taken, bears on the
controversy as to what was really the
leviathan described as disturbing the
sea.
What most interests me is that as it
moved on through the deep it left the
waters flashing and resplendent In
the words of the text: "He maketh a
path to shine after him" What was
that illuminated path? 1t was phos-
phorescence. You find it in the wake
of ship in the night. especially after
rough weather Phosphorescence is
the lightning of the sea That this
figure of speech is correct in distribu-
ting its appearance l am certified by an
incident. After crossing the Allan
tic the first time and writing
from Rasle, Switzerland, to an
American magazine an account of
my voyage, in which nothing more
fascinated me than the phosphores-
eDce in the ships wake, called it the
lightning of the sea. Returning to
my hotel found book of John Rus
kin, and the first sentence my eyes fell
upon was his description of phosphor-
essence, in which he called it 1.-The
lightning of the sea-" Down to the
post Office fastened to get the manu-
script, and with great labor and some
expense got possession of the magazine
article and put quotation marks around
that one sentence, although it was as
original with me as with John Ruskin.
j suppose that nine-tenths of you living
so near the sea coast have watched
this marine appearance called
phosphorescence, and hope that the
other one-tenth may some day be so
happy as to witness it 1t is the waves
of the sea diamonded; it is the infior-
essence of the pillows: the waves of the
sea crimsoned, as was the deep after
the sea. fight of Lepanto; the waves of
the sea on fire. Now, God, who puts in
his Bible nothing trivial or useless,
calls the attention of job. the greatest
scientist of his day, to this phosphor-
essence, and as the leviathan of the
deep sweeps past, points out the fact
that ''he maketh path to shine after
him
Is that true of us now, and will it be
true of us when we have gone? Will
there be subsequent light or darkness?
Will there be trail of gloom or good
cheer? Can any one between now and
the next 100 years say of us truthfully
as the text says of the leviathan of the
deep: He maketh a path to shine
after hnn?" For we are moving on.
While we live in the same house. and
transact business in the same store. and
write on the same table, and chisel
in the same studio. and thresh in the
same barn, and worship in the same
church, we are in motion, and
are in many respects moving on. and
we are not where we were ten years
ago, nor where we will be ten years
hence. Moving on, Look at the fam
lily record, or the almanac, or into the
mirror, and see if any one of you is
where you were. All in motion. Other
feet may trip, and stumble, aud halt,
but the feet of not one moment for the
last sixty centuries has tripped, or
stumbled, or halted. Moving on!
on Heaven moving on. The universe
moving on! Time moving on! Eter-
nifty moving on Therefore. it is absurd
to think that we ourselves can
stop, as we must move with all
the rest Are we like the creature
of the text, making our path to shine
after US? 1t may be a peculiar ques-
ton, but my text suggests it What in
fiuence will we leave in this world.
after we have gone through it?
''None," answers hundreds of voices,
1--WE are not one of the immortals.
Fifty years after we are out of the
world it will be as though we never in
habited it." You are wrong in saying
that pass down through this audi
ence and up through these galleries,
and am looking for some one whom
cannot find. l am looking for one who
will have no influence in this world 100
the man who has the least in.
f1uence. and l inquire into his his
tory and find that by a yes OF
a no he decided some ones eternity. In
time of temptation he gave an affirma-
tive or a negative to some temptation
which another, hearing of, was in
duced to decide in the same way. Clear
on the other side of the next million
years may be the first you hear of the
long reaching influence of that yes OF
no, but hear of it you will We see a
man planting tree, and treading the
sod firmly on either side of it, and
watering it in dry weather, and taking
a great care in its culture. and he never
piuclls any fruit from its bough; but his
children will. We are all planting
trees that will yield fruit hundreds Of
years after we are dead; orchards
of golden fruit, or groves OF
deadly upas. 1 am SO fascinated
with the phosphorescence 10 the
track of a ship that l have
sometimes watched for a long while
and have seen nothing on the face o.
the deep but blackness- The mouth o.
watery cbasms that looked like gaping
Jaws of hell Not spark as big as {
FREELY: not white scroll of serf; not {
taper to illuminate the mighty sepul
cheers of dead ships; darkness 5000 fee
deep. and more thousands of feet lons
and wide. That is the kind of wake
that bad man leaves behind him a,
he plows through the ocean of this life
toward the vaster ocean of the grea