The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1903-12-01
BGTTELL CHAPEL SERMON.
RET. JOSEPH III. TWIOHELL, OF
HARTFORD,


jegt From IL Chronicles, I6-6-TOId
OF the Strife Between the King Of Is-
rReI and His NeighboFs, and of ths
Fertilization of she Pass of Ramah.
Rev. Joseph H. Twichei, Of Hartford
delivered an interesting sermon at Bat
tell chapel Sunday, taking his subject
from II. Chronicles, 1876, Then Asa, the
king, took all Judah, and they carried
away the stones of Ramah and the tim
Der thereof, wherewith Baasha was
building. and he built Herewith Geba
and Mizpah.
He spoke as follows: The enterprise
of the King of Israel in his project Of
terrifying the height at the Pass of Ra-
NAH was a menace to the adjacent king
dom of Judah. Ramah was on the Dor
der of the two kingdoms between which
at that time unfriendly relations pre-
vailed. This was due in part to move
ment Of population from the former into
the latter, which was the more prosper
Gus, the more desirable to live in on va
rious accounts. King Asa was one of
the good kings of his period. Under his
reign his land enjoyed long rest from
war. He had, moreover, restored from
decay in Jerusalem the cult of the an
cient religion, attractive to pious rule.
The Notifications of Ramah by another
meant the command of the great road
through the hills, that was the thor
oughfare northward for judah, with
power to avert emigration and to inter-
cept commerce; added to that it would
be a perilous coign Of vantage to an i'm
vasion from that quarter. 1t suggested
in fact a scheme of conquest; so that
when King Asa heard that his bad
neighbor suddenly had thousands of
men hauling beams from the forest and
stones from the quarry to Ramah, and
was laying there the foundations of a
strong fortress, he did well to be aIlx-
ious and to determine that something
must be done to interpret that work
He took measures accordingly. But he
did more than stop the work. Having
caused the aggressor to suspend opera
lions and hurry off to meet an attack in
his rear, he forthwith proceeded to Ra-
nah with thousands Of his OWN people,
took the immense materials there gath
cred and out of it fastened to construct
works of defense for himself, two of
them, one at Geba, in an advanced po-
sition further north on the same great
road; a second at Mizpah, another
strategic point on his frontier; thus that
stock Of material came in the event to a
far different use from what had been
designed. Instead of Fort Ramah for
danger it was built into Forts Geba
and Mizpah for safety. 1t was in a
manner reproduction of what King
Asa and the young warrior David did
when he cut off the head of Goliah with
Goliah's own sword; that sword of
which on a subsequent occasion he said
that for his own use there was none like
it. 1t bore resemblance, too, to that
making of gold and silver which was
the spoil of battle with the heather into
the consecrated vessels of the Temple Of
God, Of which mention is recorded in
history; as to this king appropriating
an adversary's supplies Of timber and
stone to the construction of bulwarks Of
protection to his own realm, or the
equivalent Of 1t is an incident Of militia
nv campaigning since wars began.
England took Gibraltar from Spain and
Quebec from France, and they have
been English fortresses ever since. In
our own civil war it happened again
and again In fight that the enemy's
works were taken and reversed, as it
was called, becoming in truth the shell
ter Of their captors, their batteries
wheeled about and firing the other way.
Now the common feature to be noted in
all these various instances is the pass
ing over OF means and instruments that
were hostile to the service of the oppo-
site cause, which things I conceive is
a figure or parable of a transmutation
possible to occur and occurring in the
field of human moral experience. There
the materials of Ramah are capable Of
reconstruction into Geba and Mizpah--
i. e., conditions Of hindrance and frus-
tration are capable of becoming condi-
tions Of furtherance and strength. This
is true as relates both to society and to
the Individual. The force that wrote
for the conservation and advance of CIV
ilization, for the up-lift Of the race, are
largely forces that were savage and
barbarous in their original manifesto
tions, and are as that were "spoils of
the heather, . SO to speak. The man Of
light and blessing, your Cromwell, your
Washington, your, Lincoln, your Glad
stone, is Of the stode of mild progeni-
tors that three thousand years ago
roaned the German forest. 1t is by
subjugations of nature, as we say. that
get nature on the side of man and
make it his servant, whereas before it
was his master much of mans progress
is gained from the beginning. 1t was a
notable saying of Professor Tyndall,
which I cannot quote at length, but
this is the substance of it that while we
are prone to glorify the fruit of modern
discoveries, modern achievements in
science as overlapping all benefits by
such means conferred ON humanity be-
fore our epoch, and to feel that the ages
behind us were comparatively barren Of
them, and the more so the further back
we. look; the fact is that those remote
prehistoric people who transformed the
wild grasses into the grains, who do
mestioated the horse, who caught the
wolf by the throat and gave us the
dog, who lassoed the buffalo and gave
us the COW, contributed more to the
progress of mankind than all the nine