Connecticut western news., 1901-12-12
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 WASHINGTON, Dec. 8.-In this dis course Dr. Talmage recites some great events and shows that the world is advancing in the right direction; text Joel Ii, 30, q will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth"
 Dr. Cumming-great and good man. would have told us the exact time of the fulfillment of this prophecy. As stepped into his study in London on my arrival from Paris just after the French had surrendered at Sedan the good doctor said to me: Tt is just what I had told you about France. People laughed at me because l talked about the seven horns and the vials, but foresaw all this from the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation" Not taking any such responsibility in the interpretation of the passage, simply assert that there are in it sug- gestions of many things in our time.
 Our eyes dilate and our heart quick ems in its pulsations as we read of events in the third century, the sixth century, the eighth century, the four teenth century, but there were more farreaching events crowded into the nineteenth century than into any oth- CT, and the last twenty years eclipse any preceding twenty. We read in the daily newspapers of events announced in one paragraph and without any spe- cial emphasis-events which a He rodotus, a Josaphus, a Xenophon, Gib- bon, would have taken whole chapters or whole volumes to elaborate. Look ing out upon our time, we must cry out In the words of the text, Wonders in the heavens and in the earth!"
 I propose to show you that the time in which we live Is wonderful for dis aster and wonderful for blessing, for there must be lights and shades in this picture as in all others. Need I argue that our time Is wonderful for disas- ter? Our world has had rough time since by the hand of God it was bowl ed out into space. 1t Is an epileptic earth . convulsion after convulsion; frosts pounding 1t with sledge ham, mer of iceberg and fires melting it with furnaces seven times heated. It Is wonder to me it has lasted so long. Meteors shooting by on this side and grazing it and meteors shooting by on the other side and grazing it, none of them slowing up for safety. Whole fleets and navies and argosies and fo- tillas of worlds sweeping all about us. Our earth like a fishing smack off the banks of Newfoundland, while the Ma jestic and the St. Paul and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse rush by. Besides that, our world has by sin been dam aged in It's internal machinery, and ever and anon the furnaces have burst and the walking beams of the noun tains have broken, and the islands have shipped sea, and the great hulk of the world has been jarred with acci- dents that ever and anon threatened immediate demolition.
 A Century of Disasters.
 But 1t seems to us as if the last hun dred years were especially character ized by disaster-volcanic, oceanic, ep- idemic. I say volcanic because an earthquake is, only volcano hushed up. When Stromboli and Cotopaxi and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the foundations of the earth beware! Sev- en thousand earthquakes in two cen turies recorded in the catalogue of the British association! Trajan, the em- peror, goes to ancient Antioch and amid the splendors of his reception Is met by an earthquake that nearly de- stroys the emperor's life. Lisbon, fair and beautiful, at o'clock on the 1st of November, 1755, in six minutes 6O,O0O have perished, and Voltaire writes of them, For that region it was the last judgment. nothing wanting but trum- petw Europe and America feeling the throb-1, BOO chimneys in Boston partly or fully destroyed!
 But the disasters of other times have had their counterpart in later times. In 1872 Caracas was caught In the grip of an earthquake, in 1882 in Chile 100000 square miles of land by vol canic force upheaved to four and seven feet of permanent elevation, In 1854 Japan felt the geological agony; Ma ples shaken in 1857, Mexico In 1858; Mendoza, the capital of the Argentine Republic, in 1861; Manila terrorized In 1868; the Hawaiian Islands by such force uplifted and let down in 1871 Nevada shaken In 1871, Antioch In 1872, California in 1872, San Salvador in 1873, while In 1883 what subter- ranean excitement! Ischia, an island of the Mediterranean, a beautiful Ital- ian watering place, vineyard clad, sur rounded by all natural charm and his- torical reminiscence; wonder Capri, the summer resort of the Roman emperors; wonder Naples, the paradise of art. this beautiful island suddenly toppled into the trough of the earth, 5000 mer. rymakers perishing, and some of them so far down beneath the reach of hu. man obsequies that 1t may be said of many a one of them, as it was said of Moses, "The Lord buried him." Italy, all Europe weeping, all Christendom weeping where there were hearts to sympathize and Christians to pray But while the nations were measuring that magnitude of disaster, measuring it not with golden rod like that with which the angel measured heaven, but with the black rule of death, Java of the Indian archipelago, the most fer. tile island of all the earth, is caught in the grip of the earthquake, and noun tain after mountain goes down and city after city until that island, which produces the best beverage of all the world, produced the ghastliest catas trcphe. One hundred thousand peo pie dying, dead! Coming nearer home on Aug. 31, 1886, the great earthquak, which prostrated one-haf of Charles ton, s. c.
 Chnracterfstics of Our Times.
 But look at the disasters cyclonic. A the mouth of the Ganges are three is landslide Hattiah, the Sundeep ant the Dakin Shabazpore. Tn the mid night of October, 1877, on all thos' three islands the cry was, "The wa tersw A cyclone arose and rolled tn, sea over those three islands, and of {