St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-01-11
SOME GREAT EVENTS.
Dr.. Talmage Discourses on the
Worlds Advancement.

Dr.. Talmage Discourses on tn
i Worlds Advancement.
8ays 1t In In the Right Direction
Present Time Wonderful for
Disaster and Wonderful
for Blessing.
Copyright. 1901, by Louis Klopsch. N. T.
Washington,
In this discourse DIR. Ta.mage recite
some great events and shows that tn
world is advancing in the right direc
ton; text, Joel $3.50: Il will SHOW
wonders in the heavens and in tn,
earth"
DR.. Cumming-great and good mar
would have told US the exact tim,
of the fulfllment of this prophecy
As stepped into his study in Londo1
on my arrival from Paris, just after
the French had surrendered at Sedan
the good doctor said to me: cit is
just what l have told you about France
People laughed at me because talked
about the seven horns and the walls
but foresaw all this from the bool
Not taking any such responsibility il
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 fourteenth century, but
there were more far-reaching events
| crowded into the nineteenth century
than into any other, and the last &c
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 a Herodotus, a Josephus, a
Xenophon, 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"
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 bowled
out into space. It is an epileptic earth
-convulsion after CONFUSION; frosts
pounding it with sledge hammer of
iceberg and fires melting it with fur
naces seven times heated. It 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 of
the banks of Newfoundland, 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 machinery,
and ever and anon the furnaces have
burst, and the walking beams of the
mountains have broken, and the is
lands have shipped sea, and the great
hulk of the world has been Jared with
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. I say volcanic because an
earthquake is only a volcano hushed
up. When Stromooli and Cotopaxi
and Vesuvius stop breathing, let the
foundations of the earth beware!
Seven thousand earthquakes in two
recorded in the catalogue of
the British association! Trajan, 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
$4,000 have persisted, and Voltaire
writes of them: For that region it
was the last judgment, nothing want
ing but a trumpet" Europe and
America feeling the throb-1, 500 chin
neys in Boston partly or fully de-
stroyed!
But the disasters of other times have
had their counterpart in later times.
In 1912 Caracas was caught in the grip
Of an earthquake, in 1882 in Chilli 1OO,-
BOO square miles of land by volcanic
force upheaved to four and seven feet
of permanent elevation, in 1854 Japan
felt the geological agony; Naples
shaken in 1857, Mexico in 1858; Men
doza, the capital of the Argentine Re-
public, in 1861; Manila terrorized in
1863; 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 subterranean ex-
,itement! Ischia, an island of the
beautiful Italian wa
tering place, vineyard clad, surrounded |
by all natural charm and historical |
yonder Capri, the sum-
mer resort of the Roman emperors;
vonder Naples, the paradise of art
his beautiful island suddenly toppled
nto the trough of the earth, 5000
perishing, and some of
hem so far down beneath the reach of |
luman obsequies that it may be said
If many a one Of them, as it was said
If Noses: "The Lord buried him.
italy, all Europe weeping, all Chris
:endom weeping, where there were
hearts to sympathize and Christians to
,ray. But while the nations were
Measuring that magnitude of disaster,
Measuring it not with golden rod like