The age-herald., 1901-12-15
Dr. Talrmage's Sermon.

Washington. December S-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, T will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth
 Dr. Cummings-great and good man would have told us the exact time or the fulhllment of this prophecy. As l 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: Ut is just what had told you about France. People laughed at me because l talked about the seven horns and the vials, but I foresaw all this from the book of Daniel and the book of Revelations.' Not talk ing any such responsibility in the inter pretation of the passage I simply assert that there are in it suggestions of many thing in our time.
 Our eyes dilate and our hearts quick ems in it's pulsationsas we read of events in the third century, the sixth century, the eighth century the fourteenth cen tury, but there were more farreaching events crowded into the nineteenth cen tury than into any other, and the last twenty years eclipsed any preceding twenty. We read in the daily newspa- pers of events announced in one para graph and without any special emphasis events which a Herodotus, a Josephus, a Xenophon, a Gibbon, would have taken whole chapters or whole volumes to ela- borate. Looking 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 disaster 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 disasterI. Our world has had rough time since by the hand of God 1t was bowled out into space. It is an epleptic earth-convulsion after convulsion; frosts pounding it with sledge hammer of iceberg and fires melting 1t 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 or them slowing up for safety. Whole fleets and navies and argosies and fiotillas Of worlds sweeping all about us Our earth like a fishing smack on the banks Of New foundland, while the Majestic and the St. Paul and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse rush by. Besides that, our world has by sin been damaged in its internal ma chinery and ever and anon the furnaces have burst, and the walking beams of the mountains have broken, and the islands have shipped a sea, and the great hulk of the world has been jared with acci- dents that ever and anon threatened im- mediate demolition.
 A Century of Disasters.
 But it seems to us as if the last hun dred years were especially characterized by disaster-volcanic, oceanic, epidemic. I say volcanic because an earthquake Is only a volcano hushed up. When Stromboli and Cotopaxi and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the foundations of the earth beware! Seven thousand earth quakes in two centuries recorded in the cataloque of the British association! Trajan. the emperior, goes to ancient Antioch and amid the splendors of his reception is met by an earthquake that nearly destroys the emperor's life. Lis bon, fair and beautiful, at 1 O clock on the 1st of November, 1175 in six minutes 6o- 900 have perished, and Voltaire writes of them, For that region it was the last judgment, nothing wanting but a trum- pet!' Europe and America feeling the throp-1500 chimneys in Boston party 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 Chli 100000 square miles of land by volcanic force up- heaved to four and seven feet of perma- nent elevation in 1854 Japan felt the geo. logical agony; Naples 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 uplfted and let down in 1871; Nevada shaken in lSH, Antioch in 1872, California in 1872, San Salvador in 1873, while in 1883 what subterranean ex- citement! Irchia, an island of the Medi- terranean, a beautiful Italian watering place. vineyard clad, surrounded by all natural charm and historical reminis- cence 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 merrymakers perishng. and some of them so far down beneath the reach of human obsequies that It may be said of many d one of them as it was said of Moses, "The Lord buried him Italy, all Europe weeping, all Christendom weeping where there were
 
 pray. But while the nations were meas. uring that magnitude of disaster. meas uring 1t 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 pro- duces the best beverage of all the world produced the ghastliest catastrophe One hundred thousand people dying, deadi Coming nearer home, on August 31, 1Ss6 the great earthquake which prostrated one-half of Charleston, S. c.
 Characteristics of Our Times.
 But look at the disastrous cyclone. At the mouth of the Ganges are three is- lahds-the Hattiah, the Sundeep and the Dakin Shabazpore. In the midnight of October, 1877, on all those three islands the cry was, ''The watersv" cyclone arose and rolled the sea over those three islands. and of a population of, 34o GOO, 2l5,000 were drowned Only thosA saved who had climbed to the top of the high est trees, Did you ever see a cyclone No? Then pray God you may never see one. l saw cyclone on the ocean, and 1t swept us 800 miles back from our course. and for thirty six hours during the cyclone and after 1t we expected every moment to go to the bottom. They told us before we retired at 9 o'clock that the barometer had fallen but at Il o'clock at night we were awakened with the shock or the waves. All the light out Crash went all the lifeboats Waters rushing through the skylights down into the cabin and down on the furnaces until they hiSsed and smoked in inc dai,,ga