The morning times., 1897-01-18
GREAT MOUNTAINS OF EVIL
Prejudice, Inebriacy, Crime and
War Among Them.
HOW THEY CAN BE LEVELED
A Strong Plea for the Ratifica-
tion of the Treaty of Arbitra-
tion-He Says 1t Is the OppOr-
tunity of Senators-The Gladdest
Event OF Eighteen Centuries.

The Rev Dr. T. Dewitt Talmage preached
at the First Presbyterian Church at the
morning service yesterday on the subject,
Mountains Brought ID own taking as his
text Zachariah, iv:7, "Who art thou,
great mountain? Before ZerubbabeI thou
shalt become plain"
''Zerubbabel,' said DR.. Talmage, twas
the splendid man called to rebuild the de-
stroyed temple at Jerusalem. Stone for
the building had been quarried, and the
trowel had rung at the laying of the cor
ner stone, and all went well, when the
Cutbaeans offered TO help in the work
They We're bad lot of people, and Zerub-
babel declined their help, and then the
trouble began. The Cuthaeans preiudiced
the secretary of the treasury against
Zerubbabel, so that the wages of the car
pentcrs and masons could not be paid, and
the heavy cedar timbers which had been
dragged from Mount Lebanon to the Medi-
terranean and floated in RATS from Beyrout
to Joppa, and were to be drawn by OK
team from Joppa to Jerusalem, had halted,
and as result OF the work OF those
| jealous Cuthaeans for sixteen years the
building Of the temple was stopped.
We'll, the Cuthaeans are not all dead
| yet. They are busy in every neighbor-
hood and every city and every nation of
! every age, heaping obstacles in the way
J OF the cause of God They have piled up
| hindrances above hindrances until they
| have become a hill, and the hill has be-
come mountain, and the mountain has
become an Alp, and there it stands, right
| in the way of all movements for the worlds
| salvation. l Will give you the names of
| some or the high mountains which are
really in the way, and then show you that
those mountains are to be Frustrated,
| torn down, ground up, leveled, put out
of sight, forever.
First, there is the Mountain of preju-
dice, as long as a range of the
Sierra Nevadas. Prejudices against
the Billie as duh look, an in
consistent book, cruel book, an unclean
took, and in every way an unfit book.
The most of them have never read it.
| They think the strata of the rocks contra
| dictthe account in Genesis. The poor Souls
do not know that the Mosaic account a agrees
| exactly with the geological account. No
violin or flute ever Were in better accord
Those preJudiced against the Bible do
not know that the explorations in Egypt
and Palestine and Syria are confirming
the Scriptures-the same facts written on
monuments and on walls of exhumed cities
as written in the Bible. The city of Pithom
has been unburied and its bricks are
| found to have been made without straw,
exactly corresponding with the Bible story
of the prosecuted Hebrews. On terra Gotta
| cylinderrecenuy broughtup from thousands
of years Of burial, the capture of Babylon
10y Cyrus is told. On Babylonia gem
raaanfl- 4 h.. .,F
| man, a woman, and serpent, and the
| hands of the man and woman are stretched
up toward the tree as if to pluck the fruit
Thus the Bible story Of the fan is confirmed.
but what a high mountain of prejudice
against the Bible, against Christia nifty,
| against churches, against all evangelizing
| enterprises mountain that casts its long,
| black shadows over this continent and
over all continents. Geographers tell US
| that Mount Everest is the highest mountain
in the world. Oh, no! The Mountain
of Prejudice against Christianity is higher
than the highest crags that dare the light
nings of Heaven. Before our Zerubbabel
can it ever become plain?
Another mountain OF hindrance is that
of positive and outspoken immorals There
is the Mountain of Inebriacy 1t is piled
lllgH WIFI kegs anu uelnlJpnnS ana de-
canters and hogsheads, on which sit the
victims Of that traffic whose one business
is to rob earth and heaven OF the most
generous and large hearted and splendid of
the human race. If their business was to
take only the mean and stingy and con-
temptible and useless, we would not say
| much. But insobriety takes the best.
Under this power more than 100 900
| men and women are in this country every
year imprisoned, and in different lands an
army OF 100000 drunkards almost shake
the earth with their staggering tread 1t
| causes in this country 800 murders and
400 suicides year. This Mountain of
Inebriacy has not only assaulted the land,
but bonbarded the shipping of the sea, and
some OF the most appalling shipwrecks on
Atlantic and Pacific coast have been the
result. Is il possible that such a Mountain
OF 1nebriacy can ever be made q plain?
"Yonder also is the Mountain of Crime.
with its strata of fraud, and malpractice,
and malfeasance, and blackmail, and bur
glary, and piracy, and embeZZlement, and
hbertinisIn, and theft, all its heights
manned with the desperadoes, the cut
throats, the pickpockets, the thimble-rig-