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HE\r; DK. LUMAGE.THE BROOKLYN SI XDAY SERMON.\Subject: “On Galilee,”Text 44 H entered into a ship, and sat 9/i the sea; and the whole multitude was bp the sea on the land.—Mark iv\, 1.It is Monday morning in our Palestine ex-ceriencts, and the skv is n blue Galilee above, as in the boat we sail the blue Galilee beneath. It 1** thirteen miles long and six miles wide, but the. atmosphere is so clear it seems as if t could cast a stone from beach to beach. The lake looks as though it had been let down on silver pulleys from the heavens and were a section of the sea of glass that St. John describes as a part ot the celestial landscape v Lake Galilee is a depression of six hundred feet in which the river Jordan widens and tarries a little, for the river Jordan come* in at its north side and departs from its south side; so this lake has its cradle and its grave.Its white satin cradle is among the shows of Mount Hermon where the Jordan starts, and its sepulchre is the Dead Sea into which the Jordan empties. Lake Como of Italy, Lake Geneva of Switzerland, Lake Lomond of Scotland, Lake Winnipesaukoe of America are larger, but Lke Galilee is the greatest diamond that ever dropped from tho linger ol the GftMid.% and whether encamped on its banks as we were ye-ter lay and worshiping Kt its crystal altars or wading into its wegyes, which make an ordinary bath solemn ^ts a baptism, or now putting out upon its sparkling surface in a boat, it is something to talk about and prav about and sing about until the lips with which we now describe it can neither talk nor pray nor sing.As sometimes a beautiful child in a neighborhood has a half dozen pet names,and some of the neighbors call her by one name and others by another, so this pet lake of the planet has a profusion of names. Ask the Arab as he goes bs what this sheet of water is, and he will call it Tabariyeh. Ask Moses of the Old Testament, and be calls it Sea ofOhinnereth. Ask Matthew, and he calls it Sea of Galilee. Ask Luke, and he calls it Sea of Gennesarefc. A-k John, and he calls it Seaof Tiberias. Ask Josephus and Eusebius, and they have other names ready. But to me it appears a child of the sky, a star of the hills, a rhapsody of the mountains, the baptismal bowl of the world’s temple, the smile of the great God. Many kinds of tish are found in these waters,every kind of tree upon its bank, from those that grow in the torrid zona to those in the frigid, from the plain tothe cedar.Of the two hundred and thirty war ships Josephus manoevred on these* waters—for Josephus was a warrior as well as a historian —there remains not one piece of a hulk, or one patch of a canvas, or one splinter of an oar. But to return to America wo never will until we have had a sail upon this inland sea. Not from a wharf, but from a beach covered with black and white pebbles, wegc on board a boot of about ten or twelve tons, to be propelled partly by sail and partly by oar. The mast leans so far forward that itseems about to fall, but we llnd it was purposely so built, and the rope through a pulley manages to hoist and let down the sail. I t u a rough boat, end as far as possible removed from a Venetian gondola or a sportsman’? yacht. With a common saw and hammer and ax many of you could make a better one. Four barefooted Arabs, instead of sitting down to their oars, stand, as they always dc in rowing, and pull away from shore. J insist on helping, for there is nothing more exhilarating to me than rowing, but 1 soon have enough of the-clumsy oars and tho awkward attempt at wielding them while in standing posture.We put our overcoats and shawls on a small deck in the stern of the boat, the very kind of a deck where Christ lay on a fisherman’s coat when of old a tempest pounced upon the fishing smack of the affrighted disciples. Ospreys and wild ducks and kingfishers fly overhead or dip their wings into the lake, mistaking it for a fragment of fallen sky. Can it bo that those Bible stories about sudden storms on this lake are true? Is it possible that a sea of such seeming placidity of temper could ever rise and rage at the heavens? It does not seem as if this happy family of elements could have ever had a falling out, and the water strike at the clouds and the clouds strike at tho water.Full away, oarsmen! On our right bank are the hot sulphur baths, so hot they are scalding, and the waters must cool off a long while before hau l or foot can endure their temperature. V olcanoes have been boiling these waters for centuries. Four springs roll their resources into two great swimming reservoirs. King Herod here tried to bathe off the results of his excesses, and Pliny andJosephus describe the spurtings out of these volcanic heats, and Josnua and Moses knew about them, and this moment long lines of pilgrims from all parts of tho earth are waiting for their turn to step into thosteaming restoratives.Let the boat, as far as possible and not run aground, hug the western shore of the lake that we may see tho city oi* Tiberias, once a great capital, of the architecture of which a few mosaics and fallen pillars and pedestals, and hero and there a broken and shattered frieze remain, mightily suggestive of the time when Herod Antipas had a palace here and reigned w ith an opulence and pomp and cruelty and abomination that paralyzes the finders ot tho historian when he comes to write it and the fingers of the painter when he attempts to transfer it to canvas. I suppose he was one of t he worst men that ever lived. And what a contrast of character conies at every moment to tho thoughtful traveler in Palestine, whether bo walks thebeach of this lake or -ails as we now do these waters! * ;r'Side by side are the two great characters of this Jake region, Jesus and Herod Anti pa.~. And did any age pr . Luce any such antipodes, any suck antitheses, any such opposite.' Kindne * and cruelty, holiness and filth, generosity and meanness, self-jacrifice and selfishthe supernal and the infernal, midnocm :i : midnight. The father of this Herod Ant ip-s was a genius at assas-- i nation. He could in anufacture more rea -sons for putting people out of this life than any man in all hisi ; He sends for Hyrcanus to come from Babylon to Jerusalem to be made high priest, and slays him. He has bis brother-in-law while in bathing with him drowned by the king’s attendants. He slays his wife and his wife’s mother and two of his sons and his uncle, and filled a volume of atrocities, the last chapter of which was tb~ massacre ol ad the babies atWith such a father ^ Herod the Great you are not surprised that this Herod Antipas, whose palace stood • j. the banks of this lake we now sail, was a C' mb. nation of wolf, reptile and hyena: whii? the Christ who walked yonder oinks ana sailed the-e waters was so good that almost every root of this scenery is associated with .-.'.me wise word or some kindly deed, and all literature and ali art and all arth and all heaven are put to the utmost ffcrt in try big to express how grand ana glorious and lovely He was and is and is tor. TheCh:Istiy and Herodic characters as .afferent as the t* o lakes we visit, and not far apart Gal Lee ar. 1 the Dead Sea; the one fl Oft..* banxed and tae other hr iminom andblasted; the one hovered over by the mercy ot Christ, the other blasted by the wrath of (fou; the oue full ot tinny tribes sporting in the clear depths, the other forever lifeless, the waters of the ona sweet and pleasant tc the taste, the other bitter and sharp and cisgustiug. Awful Dead Sea! Glorious U enuesaret.\\ e will not attempt t * cross the eastern side of ! hi- lake, as 1 had thought to do, foi t ao. e regions are inhabited by a thieviugand murderous race, and one must go thoroughly arm a, and as 1 never shot any one and have no ambition to be shot, I said: “LetUfstay by the western shore. But we look over to rue hills oi Gadara on the other side, down which two thousand swine after Ueiup posses* by the d-*\ ii ran mto the lake, ano bringing down mi Christ for permitting it th»* wrath ol all the stock raisers of that country because «»f this ruining of tho port cosiness. \ ou see that Satan is a spirit of bad taste Why did he not say: “Let me go into those birds, whole flocks of which fly over Galilee?*’ No; that would have been too high. “Why not let. me go into the sheep which wander over these hills;” No; that would have been too gentle. “Rather let me go into these swine. 1 want to be with the denizens of the mire. I want to associate with the inhabitants of the tilth. Great if mud! \ prefer bristle* to wings. 1 would rather root than fly. 1 like snout bettor than wing.”Infidelity scoffs at the idea that t hose swine should have run into the lake. But it was quite natural that under the lioat and burning of t hat demoniac possession they would start for the water to get cooled off. Would that all the swine thus possessed had plungedto the same drowning, for this day the descendants of some of those porcine creatures retain the demons, and as the devils were east out of man into them they now afflict the human race with the devils of scrofula, that comes from eating the unclean meat! The healthiest people on earth are the Israelites, because they follow the bill of fare which God in the book of Leviticus gave to the human race, and ourspIenJTTI French Dr. Pasteur and our glorious German Dr. Koch may go on with their good work of killing parasites in the human system; but until tho world corrects its diet, and goes back to the divine regulation at the beginning, the human race will continue to be possessed of the devils of microbe anil parasite. But. I did not mean to cross over to the eastern side of Lake Galilee even in discussion.Pull away, ye Arab oarsmen! And wecome along the shore near by which stand great precipices of brown and red ami gray limestone crowned by basalt, in the sides of which are vast caverns,sometimes the hiding place of bandits, and sometimes the home of honest shepherds, and sometimes the dwelling place of pigeons and vult ures and eagles. During oue of llerod’s wars his enemies Irid in these mountain caverns and tho sides were too steep for Herod’s army to descend, and tne attempt to climb in the face of armed men would have called down extermination. Bo Herod had great cages of wood, iron-bound, made and filled them with soldiersaud let them down from the top of the precipices until they gave signal t hat they were level with the caverns, and then from these cages they stepped out to tho mouth of the caverns, and having set enough grass and wood on tiro to fill the caverns with smoke and strangulation, the hidden people would comeforth to die; and if not coining forth voluntarily Herod’s men would pull them out with long iron hooks, and Josephus says t.hut one lather, rather than submit to the attacking army flung his wife and seven children down the precipice and then leaped after them to his own doath.Now, ye Arab oarsmen, row on with swifter stroke, for we want before noon to land at Capernaum, the three years’ home ot Jesus. But before arrival there we are to have a new experience. The lake that lmd been a smooth surface begins to break up into roughness. The air, which all tho morning made our sail almost useless, suddenly takes hold of our boat with a grip astonishing. and our poor craft begins to roll and pitch and tumble, anil in five minutes w* pass from a calm to violence. The contour of this lake among the hills is an invitation to hurricanes. I used to wonder why it was that ou so limited a sheet of water a be stormed boat in Christ’s time did not Dutback to snore wnen a hurricane was coming. 1 wonder no more.On that lake an atmospheric fury gives no warniug, and the change we saw in five minutes made uie feel that the boat in which Christ sailed may have been skilfully managed when the tempest struck it and the wild, importunate cry went up, “Lord save us or we perish!” I liad all along that morning been reading from the New Testament the *tory of occurrences on and around that lake. But our Bible was closed now, and it was as much as we could do to hold fast aud wish for the land, if the wind and the waves had continued to increase in violence the following fifteen minutes in the same ratio as in the first five, aud we had been still at their mercy, our bones would have been bleaching in the bottom of Lake Gennesaret instead of our being here to tell the story.But the same power that rescued the fisb-sriiieu of old to-day safely lauded our party. VVhat a Christ for rough weather! All the sailor boys ought to fly to Him as did those Galilean mariners. All you in the forecastle And all you who ran up and down the slippery ratlines, take to sea with you Him who with a quiet word sent the winds back ihrough the mountain gorges. Some of you Jack Tars to whom these words will come need to “Lack ship” and change your course f you are going to cet across this sea of life safely and gain the heavenly harbor. Belay there! Ready about! Helm’s a-lce! Mainsail haul!Star of peace! beam o’er the billow.Blew* the soul that sighs for thee;Bless tbe sailor’s lonely pillow.Far, far at sea.Here at Capernaum, tho Arabs having in their arms carried us ashore to the only dace where our Lord ever had a pastorate, and we stepped amid the rums of the church where He preached again and again and Again—the synagogue whose rich aculptur-ug lay there, not as when others see it in springtime covered with weeds aud loath-iorae with reptiles, but in that December weather completely uncovered to our agitated and intense gaze' On one stone of that, lynagogue the sculpturing of a pot of nanna, an artistic commemoration of the time wnen tho Israelites wore fed by manna n the wilderness, and to wnich sculpturing 3o doubt Christ pointed upward while He was preaching tnat sermon on this very spot n which He said: “Not as our lathersdid eat ii anna and are dead; he that oatetb of this Dread shall live forever.” Wonderful Capernaum ’ Scene of more miracles than any j lace in all the earth' Blind eyes kindling vith the morning. Withered arms made to Duiaate. Lepers blooming into health. The l-i i girl reanimated*These Arab tents which on this December lay i find in Palestine disappear, and I see Capernaum a-it was when Jesus was pastor f ‘L i church here. Look at that wealthy iome. the architecture, the marble front,.he upholstery, the slaves m uniform at theioorway. It i= the re*.dence of a courtier of RerrsL probably Chuza. by name, his wife Ioanna, a Christian disc: pie. But something a the matter. The -haves are in great ex-ntement, and the courtier living there runs iowa tne front steps and takes a ho roe and DUts Litn at :uli run across the country. Theof tnat nobleman i* dymg of typhoidII1ever. YU the doctors have failed to givevlief. Rur about live miles up the country, it Cana, there is a divine doctor, Jesus by mine, aud tin* agonize I father has gone tor£im, and with what earnestness those canmderstand who have had a dying child in he house. This courtier cries to Christ, ‘Come down ere my child die!”While the father is absent, aud at 1 o’clock n the afternoon, the people watching the lyiug boy see a change in the countenance, liid Joanna, the mother, on one side of his •ouch, says: “Why, this darling is getting.veil; the fever bus broken. See theprespira-iou on his forehead. Did any of you give dm any new kind of medicine?” “No, is he answer. The boy turns oil his pillow, nis delirium gone, and asks for something to »at and says: Where's father? ’ Oh, he hasgone up to Cana to get a young doctor ot i bout thirty-one years of age. But no doctoris needed now in this house at Capernaum. l’h • people look at the sun dial to see what time it is, and see it just past noon and 1 o’clock. Then they start out and meet the returning father nml as soon as they come within speaking distance they shout at the top of their voices: “Your boy is gettingwell.” “Is it possible?” says the father, •kWli“n did the change for the bettor take place?” “One o’clock” is the answer. “Why,” says the courtier, “that is just the hour that Jesus said to me ‘Thy son livetb.’ Dueo’clock. . : -Yst.wv gather at tii.• evening meal what;; .idness iv.i all the countenances in thathornvat Caoernnuui' Hr* mother, Joanna,Iris not hid sleep for many nights, and shenow tails off info delightful slumber. Thetattier. Chuza. rh ‘ Ikrodian courtier, worn* u with anxiety as well as by the rapid J on rue} to and irom Caua, is soon in restfulunconsciousness. Joanna was a Christian before, but I warrant she was more of Christian afterward. Did the father Chuza accept the Christ, who had cured his boy9 Is there in all the earth a parent so ungrateful for the convalescence or restoration of an imperiled child us not to go into a room and kneel down and make surrender to the almighty love that came to the rescue?The mightiest agency in the universe is prayer, and it turns even the Almighty. It decides the destinies of individuals, families and nations. During our sad civil war n gentleman was a guest at the White House in Washington, and he gives this incident. He says: “I had been standing three weeks in the White Houso with Mr. Lincoln as his guest. One night—it was just after the battle of Bull Run—-I was restless and could not sleep. I was repeating the part which I was to take in .. public performance. The hour was past midnight. Indeed, it was coming near to tho dawn when I heard low tones iroeeeding from ;i private room whore the ‘resident slept. The door was partly open.I instinctively walked in, and there I saw asight which 1 shall never forget. It. was thePresident kneeling b.Tore an open Bible.“The light was turned low in the room, liis back was turned toward me. For a moment I was silent as I stood looking in amazement and wonder. Then he cried out in tones so pitiful and sorrowful: ‘Oh,ThouGod that beard Solomon in the night when he nraved for wisdom, hear me! I cannot lead this people, 1 cannot guide the affairs of t his nation without Thy help. I am poor and weak and sinful. Oh, God, who didst hourSolomon when he cridd for wisdom, hear me and save the nation!’” You see we don't need to go back to Bible times for evidence that prayer is heard and answered.But some one may say that Christ at Ou pernuum healed that courtier's child, vet would not have done it for one in humblelib*. Why, in that very Capernaum He did the same t iling for a dying slave belonging t the man who had made u present to the town of the church of which Je us was pastor, the synagogue among whose ruins I today leap from fragment to fragment. This was the cure ol a Roman .soldier’s slave,whose only acknowledged rights were the wishes of his owner. And none are now so enslaved or so humble or so sick or so sinfulbut ihe nil-sympathetic Christ is ready to help them, ready to cure them, ready to emancipate them. Hear it! Pardon for all.Mercy for all. Help for all. Comfort for till. Heaven for all. Oh, this lake Galileof What a refreshment for Christ it must have boon after sympathizing with tbe sick, and rairing the dead, and preaching to tho multitudes all day long to come down on these banks in the night time, and feel the cool air r»f the s *a on His hot face, and look up to the stars, the lighted lamps around the heavenly palaces from which lie had descended!Allhe iven ami earth were mill; from tho high post (jf stars io tho hilled lake and mountain count.All heaven and earth were still—though not insleep,But breathless, as we grow whe.. feeling most.“But,” says some one, “why was if that Christ, corning to save the world, should spend so much of His time on and around so solitary a place ax Lake Galilee? There is only one city of any size on it beach, and both the western and eastern shores are asolitude, broken only by the rounds coming from the mud hovels of the degraded. Why did not Christ begin at Babylon the mighty, xt. Athens the learned, at Cairo the historic, at Thebes tho hundred gated, at Rome the triumphant? If Christ was going to save the world, why not go where 1 he world’s people dwell? Would a man wishing to revolutionize for good the American continent, pass his time amid the fishing huts on Hie shores of Newfoundland?”My friends, Galilee was the hub of the w fieri of civilization and art, and the center »■ a population that stagger-* realization. On the shore of tho lake we sail today stood nine great cities—Hey tliopolis, Tarich, Hippos, Gamaia, Choraziri, Capernaum, Beth saida, Magdala, Tiberias—and many villages, the smallest of which had 10,000 inhabitants, according to Josephus, and reaching from the beach back into the country in ill directions. Palaces, temples, coliseurnns, gymnasiums, amphitheatres, towers, gardens terraced on the hillsides, fountains bewildering with sunlight, baths upon whose mosaic floor- kings trod; while this lake,from where he Jordan enters it to where the Jordan leaves it, was beautiful with all styles of shallop or dreadful with all kinds of war gal-ey. Four thousand ships, history says, were it one time upon these waters. Batt les were ought there, which shocked all nations withtheir consequences.Here mingling blood with pur au i sparklio ' foam, In her last throes Judm fought with Korn*.Upon those sea fights looked Vespasian tnd fitu; and Trajan and whole empires.* r mi on * of ffi :se naval encounters so many jf tij*s den I fl ated to the beach they could lot - o»i enough b * entombed, and a plaguewas threatens J. Twelve hundred soldiersescaping from their) vessels of war were onelay massacre I in the amphitheatre at Tiberias. For three hundred year-, that almost continuous city encircling Lake Galilee was she metropolis ot our planet. It was to the very heart of the world that Jesus came to ioothe if sorrows, and pardon its sins, and ic*i its rick, ani emancipate its enslaved andreanimate its dead.And let me church and the world take the mggeEtion Wb le the olitarv place-, arejoi to b 9 neglected, we must strike for the rj eat cities, if this world is ever to no taken orChri t Evangelize all the ear th except she cities an-i in one year the cit.c* would son upt the earth But bring the cff.es an 1 ii. the world will come. Bring London and Inglaa i will come. Br.nz Berlin and Germany v/Di come Bring Paris and Francesoil go me. Bring St. Petersburg and riuaa*a.vill (Mine. Bring Viunn i and Austria will some. Bring t’tiiro and Egypt will come, brin e the n \i\’ thro.* million people iu this •luster of cities on the Atlantic coast and all Aincnei will soon sc tli • salvation of God. Miuist »r. of religion! lot us intensify ourvan ten »:n. Editors and publishers! purify four printing presses! Asylums of mercy! mlarge your plans of endeavor !And instead of this absurd and belittlingtn«i wicked rivalry among our cities as to which happens to have tho most men and women and children, not realizing that tho nore i;-ele-*aiut bad people a city has the .vorse if is off. aad a city which hasten thousand good people is more to be admired than t city with one hundred thousand bad poo »le, let us take a m »rat census, aud sex* how nam - m1 men and good women an* leading forth, h uv larg • a generation of good•hiidivi won will coii-ecrato 1 hemsrives and •OD.vjr’a • l :o round world t• * holiness an Ilotlol Oi», th »u bl-sse I Christ, who didst *oui3 to t j • mighty cit ies encircling Lnko Galilee’ co.ne in mercy to all our great cities of to- lay .Thou a ho didst put Thy hin I on the white mane o the fonnnug billows of Gennesaretand make them Ii • down at Thy feet.hush all the ra .m; passion- of the world’ Oh, Thou blessed (hir.st, n hi on tin* night whei the disciple- were i rviug to cros* this lake and•aheviit ; was eontrary after niua hour?of rowing had made only three miles, didst 30Uias*epput.r on water tnat. at the touch ot I'hy loot, hardeiu* 1 into crystal, meet all out shinning, whet her on placid or stormy seas, and yiy to all Tfiv people now by whatevoi style of tempest tolt;s*d or driven, as I’hou didst t o th“ drenched disciples in t he cyclone “Be of good cheer. It is I. Bo not afraid!Thank God that I have seen this lake of ('hristtv memories, and I can «»} withRobart Me(’hevlie, the ascended ministsr of Scotland, who. seate I on the banks of tins lake, v rot * in lu- last sick days, and just before he crowd th * Jordan, iilt;! the .Ionian that empties into Halite-*, but the .Iordan that emptier into t he “so i oi glass mingled with tire,” these sweot words, lit t * ha played by human lingers, on strung strings of earthly hue, or by angelic lingers on seraphic harps.It h not tint the wild gazelle Comes down to drink thy tide.But llo that was pierced to save from hell tfft w indered by thy side.Graceful j round I nee the mountains luecl, Thou catui. reposing sea;But ab! far more, the beautiful feot * )i «iosns walked o’er thee.O Mavlour! gone to God's ri rht. hati I,Vet the same Saviour still,(travel on rhy heart is this lovely strand And every fragrant hilt.'I olid iiac »»\ ran*.Iuu11f1c\€((1IcIV.Iclt;I\tI1I(I 1V{I1(•\cuItrti* runc \ a 1adba,i?ot0VVhrHCfcu■11ttoaf;Vb
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Mount Vernon Montgomery Monitor
Mount Vernon, Georgia, US
Thu, Jan 01, 1891
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GB 19 Jun 2021
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Mount Vernon Montgomery Monitor
