Connecticut western news., 1902-01-23
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WASHINGTON, Jan. 19.-In this dis course Dr. Talmage makes practical use of an occurrence in the orient which has seldom attracted particular attention; text, II Kings vi, 6, ''The iron did swim"
 A theological seminary in the valley of palms, near the river Jordan, had become 50 popular in the time of Elisha, the prophet, that more accom- modations were needed for the stu dents. The classrooms and the dor mitories must be enlarged or an en- tirely new building constructed. What will they do? Will they send up to Jerusalem and solicit contributions for this undertaking? Will they send out agents to raise the money for a new theological seminary? Having raised the money, will they send for cedars of Lebanon and marble from the quar- ries where Ahab got the stone for the pillars and walls of his palace? No; the students propose to build it them selves. They were rugged boys, who had been brought up in the country and who had never been weakened by the luxuries of city life. All they ask is that Elisha, their professor and prophet, go along with them to the woods and boss the job. They start for the work, Elisha and his students. Plenty of lumber in those regions along the Jordan. The sycamore Is a stout, strong tree and good for timber. MT. Gladstone asked me if l had seen in Palestine any sycamore tree more beautiful than the one we stood under at Hawarden. I told him I had not.
 The sycamores near the Jordan are now attacked by Elisha's students, for they must have lumber for the new theological seminary. l suppose some stroke, and they were extemporized axmen. Stand from under! Crash goes one of the trees and another and another. But something now happens so wonderful that the occurrence will tax the credulity of the ages, so won derful that many still think it never happened at all. One of the students, not able to own an ax, had borrowed one. You must remember that while the ax of olden time was much like our modern ax. 1t differed in the fact that instead of the helve or handle being thrust into socket in the iron head the head of the ax was fastened on the handle by a leathern thong, and so 1t might slip the helve. A student of the seminary was swinging his ax against one of those trees, and whether it was at the moment he made his first stroke and the chips flew or was after he had cut the tree from all sides so deep that 1t was ready to fall we are not told, but the ax head and the handle parted. Being near the riverside, the ax head dropped into the river and sank to the muddy bottom. Great was the stu dents dismay. If 1t had been his own ax, 1t would have been bad enough, but the ax did not belong to him. He had no means to buy another for the kind man who had loaned it to him, but God helps the helpless, and he gener- ally helps through some good and sym pathetic soul, and in this case it was Elisha, who was in the woods and on the river bank at the time. He did not see the ax head fly off, and so he asked the student where 1t dropped. He was shown the place where 1t went down into the river. Then Elisha broke off a branch of tree and threw 1t into the water, and the ax head rose from the depths of the river and floated to the bank, so that the student had just to stoop down and take up the restored property. Now you see the meaning of my text, ''The iron did swim"
 The Iron Did Swim.
 Suppose hundred years ago some one had told people that the time would come when hundreds of thou sands of tons of iron would float on the Atlantic and Pacific - iron ships from New York to Southampton, from London to Calcutta, from San Francis co to Canton. The man making such a prophecy would have been sent to an asylum or carefully watched as in- competent to go alone. We have all in our day seen iron swim. Now, if man can make hundreds of tons of metal float, I am disposed to think that the Almighty could make an ax head float.
 What" says some one, would be the use of such miracle" Of vast, of infinite. of eternal importance. Those students were preparing for the min lstry. They had joined the theological seminary to get all it's advantages. They needed to have their faith strengthened; they needed to be per suaded that God can do everything; they needed to learn that God takes notice of little things; that there is no emergency of life where he Is not will ing to help. Standing on the banks of that Jordan, those students of that day Of the recalled ax head had their faith re-enfcrced, and nothing that they had found out in the classrooms of that learned institution had ever done more in the way of fitting them for their coming profession.
 hear from different sources that there Is a great deal of infidelity in some of the theological seminaries of our day. They think that the garden of Eden is an allegory, and that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, and that the book of Job is only a drama, and that the book of Jonah is an unrelia- ble fish story, and that water was not turned into wine, although the bar tender now by large dilution turns wine into water, and that most of the so called miracles of the Old and the New Testaments were wrought by nat ural causes. When those infidels grad uate from the theological seminary and take the pulpits of America as expounders of the Holy Scriptures, what advocates they will be of that gospel for the truth of which the mar tyrs died! Hail the Polycarps and Hugh Latimers and John Knoxes of the twentieth century, believing the Bible is true ill spots! Would to God that some great revival of religion might sweep through all the theolog- ical seminaries of this land, confirming the faith of the coming expounders of