The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-11-24
GODB ETERNAL PLAN.
WORLD NOT GOVERNED AT HAPHAzARD,
jAB j "a MAGE.
Enumerates Five Things That Have
Been Settled BY Divine Wisdom Fur
nishes Proof In the Past History Of
the World.
downright. Louis Kiopsch, 1899

LII ioSo OL bh1hSc a"
at loose ends and going at h~aphazard
Is in this discourse combated by DR..
Talmage. The text is Psalms cxix, SO,
Forever, o Lord, thy word is settled
in heaven"
This world has been in process of
change ever since it was created
unta born, mountains dying, and
they both have cradle and grave.
Once this planet vas all fluid, and no
being such as you OF I have ever seen
could have lived on 1T a minute. Our
hemisphere turns its face to h sun
and then turns it's back. The axis OF
the earth's revolution has shifted.
The earth's center Of gravity Is chang
ed. Once flowers grew in the arctic
there was snow in the troDlc.
There has been a redistribution OF
land and sea, the land crumbling into
the sea, the sea swallowing the land.
Ice and firehave fought for the pos
session Of this planet The m
composition of it is Different now from
what it once was. Voicanoe once ter
ribly alive are dead, not one throo OF
fiery pulse, not one breath of vaper-
the ocean changing its amount OF sa-
line qualities. The internal fires OF
the earth are gradually eating their
way to the surfaces-uDheaVal and
subsistence of vast realms Of continent.
Moravians in Greenland have remov-
ed their boat poles because the ad-
vancing sea submerged them. Lin
naeuS records that in 81 years a great
stone was 100 feet nearer the water
tina when he wrote. Forests have
been buried by the sea-, and and THAT
was cultured by farmers hoe can be
touched only by sailors anchor. Loch
Nevis Of Scotland and Dingle a of
Ireland and the fiords of Norway
where pleasure boats now float, were
once valleys and glens. Man of the
islands of the sea are tops of sunken
mountains. Six thousand miles OF the
Pacific ocean are sinking. The diane
ter of the earth, according to sclen-
tific announcements, is 1S9 miles less
than it was. The entire c~onfiguration
of the earth is altered. Hills are de
nuded of their forests. The frosts and
the waters and the air lombard the
earth till it surrenders to the assault.
The so called Everlasting hills do
not last. Many railroads companies
cease to build iron bridges because the
iron has a life of it's own, not a Vege-
table life or an animal life, but a me-
tallic. life, and when that life dies the
bridge goes down Oxidation of min
erals is only another term for describ-
ing their death. Moses and sea.
weeds help destroy UHe rochS LHey
decorate.
EARTH'S CHANGES.
The changes Of the inanimate earth
only symbolic the moral changes. So
ciety ever becomes different for better
or Worse. Boundary inc between ma
lions are settled until the next war un-
settles them. Uncertainty strikes
through laws and customs and legis-
lation. The characteristic of this
-r1r1I &c ttInf rnNJ ip~ in it &c cnttIn6
Al Ia time when we hoped that the
arbitration planned last summer at the
Hague, Holland, would forever sheathe
the sword and spike the gun and dis
mantle the fortress the world has on
hand TWO wars which are digging
graves for the flower of English and
American sOldiery. From the presence
of such geological and social and ma
tional and international unrest we
turn with thanksgiving and eXulta-
ton to my text and find that there are
things forever settled, but in higher
ATTITUDES than we have ever trod.
Forever, o Lord, thy word is settled
in heaven"
High up in the palace of the sur at
least five things are settled-that ma
tions which go continuously and per-
sistently wrong perish; that happiness
is the result of spiritual condition and
lot of earthly environment; that this
WOTIQ IS d S~COOInOuSe uOT SpVeIulu OI
d~iSgraceful graduation; that with or
without us THE world is to be made
over into a scene of arborescence and
purity; that all who are adjoined to
the unparalleled One of Bethlehem and
Nazareth and Golgotha will be the
subjects Of a supernal felicity without
any taking on.
Do you doubt my first proposition
that nations which go wrong perish
Wn hoxa in fhic American marion oil
the elements OF permanence and de-
struction. We need not borrow from
others any trowels for upbuilding or
torches for demolition. Elements of
r~uin-nihilism, infidelity, agnosticism,
Sabbath dissertation, %inebriety, sensu-
here. Elements OF safety-God wor-
Shipping men and women by the scores
of millions, honesty, benevolence,
truthfulness, self sacrifice, industry,
sobriety and more religion than has
characterized any nation that has ever
existed; they are all here. The only
question Is as to which of the forces
will gain dominancy-the one class as
cendant, and this United States gov
eminent, / think, will continue as long
as the world exists; the other class as
cendant, n the United States goes
into such small pieces that other gov
ernments would hardly think them
worth picking up.
CEMETERY OF NATIONS.
Have you ever noticed the size Of the
cemetery of dead nations, the vast
Greenwood and Pere lie Chaise, where
mighty kingdoms were buried? Open
the gate and walk through this GENE
terry and read the e%pitaphs. Here lies
Carthage, born 100 years before Rome,
great commercial metropolis on the bay
of Tunis, a part of an empire that gave
the alphabet to the Greeks and their
great language to the Hebrews; her
arms the terror of nations, command
ing at one time $4,000 miles Of coast;
her Hamilcar leading forth 80 myriads,
or 3O0,0 900 in troops; her Hannibal carry
ing out in manhood the oath he had
taken in boyhood to preserve eternal
enmity to Rome, leaving costly and i'm
posing monuments at A~grigentum a
CHASTITY heap Of ruins; Carthage. her
colonies on every coast, her ships plow-
ing every sea; Carthage-wnare are
her spler doris now? All extinglished
Where are her swords? The lest one