The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-01-09
SOME GREAT EVENTS.
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Worlds Advancement
Says 1t Is in the Right Directions
Present Time Wonderful for
Disaster and Wonderful
for Blessing.
| copyright, 1901, by Louis Klopsch, N. VI
Washington,

iCopyflSnt, INI, Dy Louis hlopScn N. IL
Washington,
In this discourse DR.. Tatmage recites S
some great events and shows that the
world is advancing in the right direc-
ton; text, Joel 2:30: Il will show
| wonders in the heavens and in the
| earth"
DR.. CummiDg-great and good man
would have told US the exact time
of the fulfillment 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: 1T is
just what have told you about France.
| People laughed at me because l talked
about the seven horns and the walls,
but | foresaw all this from the book
of Daniel and the book of Revela ton" "
Not taking any such responsibility in
the Interpretation of the passage, l
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 pufsations as we read of
events in the third century, the sixth
century, the fourteenth century, but
there were more far-reaching events
crowded into the nineteenth century
than into any other, and the last 20
years eclipse any preceding 20. We
read in the daily newspapers of events
| announced in one paragraph and with
out any special emphasis-events
which Herodotus, Josephus, a
Xenophon, a Gibbon would have taken
whole chapters or whole volumes to
elaborate. Looking out upon our
time we must cry out, in the words of
the text: ''Wonders in the heavens
and in the earth"
l 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 1 argue
that our time is wonderful for disas-
ter? Our world has had a rough time
since by the hand of God it was bowled
out into space. 1t is an epileptic earth
-convulsion after convulsion; frosts
pounding it with sledge hammer of
iceberg and fires melting it with fur
naces seven times heated. 1t is a
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
fotillas of worlds sweeping all about
us. Our earth like fishing smack off
the banks of Newfoundland, while the
Majestic and the ST. Paul and the
Besides that, our world has by sin been
damaged in it's internal machinery,
and ever and anon the furnaces have
burst, and the walking beams of the
mountains have broken, and the is
lands have shipped a sea, and the great
hulk of the world has been Jared wit h
| accidents that ever and anon have
threatened immediate demolition.
But it seems to US as if the last hun
dred years were especially character
lied by disaster--volcanic, oceanic,
epidemic. l say volcanic because an
earthquake is only a volcano hushed
| up. When StromDoli and Cotopaxi
and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the
foundations of the earth beware!
Seven thousand earthquakes in two
| centuries recorded in the catalogue of
| the British association Traian, the
emperor, 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 one o'clock on the
1st of November, 1775, in six minutes
| 10000 have perished, and Voltaire
writes of them: For that region it
| was the last judgment, nothing want
ing but trumpet" Europe and
America feeling the throb-1, 500 chin
| neys in Boston partly or fully de-
stroyed!
Look at the disasters epidemic I
speak not of the plague in the fourth
century that ravaged Europe and in
Moscow and the Neapolitan domin-
ions and Marseilles wrought such
| terror in the eighteenth century,
| but l look at the yellow fevers, and
| the choleras and the diphtherias and
| the scarlet fevers and the typhoids
of our time. From Hurdwar, India,
where every twelfth year 100000
devotees congregate, the caravans
brought the cholera, and that one
disease slew $4,000 in IS days in the
| Bossorah. Twelve thousand in one
summer slain by it in India and 1885,
600 in Egypt. Disasters epidemic
Some of the finest monuments in
Greenwood and Laurel Hill and
Mount Auburn are to doctors who
lost their lives battling with southern
epidemic.
But now I turn the leaf in my sub
ject, and I plant the white lilies ane
the palm tree amid the nightshades
and the myrtle. This age no more
characterized by wonders of disaster
than by wonders of blessing-blessine
of longevity; the average of human
life is rapidly increasing. Fort.
years now worth 400 years once. Nov
! ! can travel from Manitoba to New