Greenfield Republican, Greenfield, Hancock County, 22 October 1891 — Page 3

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"WHAT I SAW IN EGYPT,"

!ts the Subject of Dr. Talmage's Sermon. Sunday,

God

Planned the Pyramids—Cheops

W»i

Scoundrel—Monuments Amount to Nothing.

Is Rev. Dr. aim age preached at Brooklyn, Sunday. Subject, ''From the Pyramids to the Acropolis, or

What I Saw in Egypt and Greece Confirmatory of the Scriptures." Text, Isaiah xix, 19-20. He said:

Isaiah no doubt refers to the great pyramid at Gizah, the chief pyramid (Of Egypt. The text speaks of a pillar in Egypt, and this is the greatest pillar ever lifted and the text says it is to be at the border of the land, and this pyramid is at the border of the land: and the text says it shall be for a witness, and the object jof this sermon is to tell what this pyramid witnesses.

We had on a morning of December, .1889, landed in Africa. Amid the lxowling boatmen at Alexandria we had come ashore and taken the rail train for Cairo, Egypt, along the banks of the most thoroughly harnessed river of all the world—the river Nile. We had, at even-tide, entered the city of Caii'O, the city where Christ dwelt while staying in ISgypt during the Herodic persecution. It was our first night in Egypt. iNo destroying angel sweeping through as once, but all the stars •were out and the skies were filled with angels of beauty and angels of light, and the air was balmy as an 'American June. The next morning we were early awake and at the windows, looking upon palm trees in full (glory of leafage and upon gardens of fruits and flowers at the very season •when our homes far away are canopied by bleak skies and the last leaf bf the forest has gone down in the equinoctials.

But how can I describe the thrill tof expectation, for to-day we are to see what all the world has seen or wants to see—the Pyramids. We are mounted for an hour and a half's tfde. We pass on amid bazars btuffed with rugs and carpets, and curious fabrics of all sorts from Smyrna, from Algiers, from Persia, Ifrom Turkey, and through streets jwhere we meet people of all colors and all garbs. Carts loaded with garden productions, priests in gowns, women in jblack veils, Bedoins in long and IBeemingly superfluous apparel, Janissaries in jacket of embroidered gold, out and on toward the great pyramid for though there are sixty-nine pyramids still standing the pyramid Of Gizeli is t.ie monarch of pyramids. We meet camels grunting under their load, and see buffaloes on either side, browsing in pasture fields. The road we travel is for part of the way under clumps of acacia and by long rows of sycamore and tamerisk, but after awhile it is a path of rock and band and we find we have reached the margin of the desert, the great (Sahara Desert, and we cry out to the dragoman as we see a huge pile of rock looming in sight, "Dragotnan, what is that?-' His answer is

The Pyramid." and then it seemed las if ws were living a century every minute. Our thoughts and emotions fwere too rapid and intense for utterlance and we ride on in silence until we come to the foot of the pyramid spoken of in the text, the oldest structure in all the earth, 4,000 years old at least. Here it is. We stand finder the shade of a structure that shuts out all the earth and all the isky, and we look up and strain our vision to appreciate the distant top, land are overwhelmed while we cry "The Pyramid! The pyramid!"

I had started that morning with a (determination of ascending the pyramid. One of my chief objects in oing to Egypt was not only to see he base of that granite wonder but to stand on top of it. Yet the nearer I came to this eternity in stone the more my determination was shaken. Its altitude to me was simply appalling. A great height has always been to me a disagreeable sensation. As we dismounted at the base of the pyramid I said: "Others may go up it but not I. I will satisfy myself with a view from the base. The ascent of it would be to me a foolhardy undertaking. "But after Ijhad given up all idea of ascending, I found my daughter was determined to go. and I could not let her go with strangers, and I changed my mind and we started with guides. It can not be 'done without these helpers. Two or Jthree times foolhardy men have attempted it alone, but their bodies came tumbling down unrecognizable

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lifeless. Each person in our party had two or three guides or helpers. One of them unrolled his turban and tied it around my waist and he held the other end of the turban as a matter of safety. Mauy of the blocks of stone are four or five feet high and beyond any ordinary human stride unless assisted. But two Arabs to pull and two Arabs to push, I found myself rapidly ascend'ing from height to height, and on to altitudes terrific, and, at last, on the 'tip top, we found ourselves on a level space of about thirty feet square. Through clearest atmosphere we looked off upon the desert, and off upon the winding Nile, and off upon the Sphinx, with its features 'of everlasting stone, and yonder upion the minarets of Cairo, clittering in the sun, and yonder upon Memjphis in ruins, and off upon the wreck of empires and the battle-fields of jages, a radius of view enough to fill the mind and shock the nerves and overwhelm one's entire being.

After looking around for awhile,

and a kodak had pictured the group, we descended. The descent was more trying than the ascent, for climbing you need not see the depths beneath, but coming down it was impossible not to see the absyms below. But two Arabs ahead to help us down, and two Arabs to hold us back, we were lowered, hand below hand, until the ground was invitingly near, and amid the jargons of the Arabs we were safely landed* Then came one of the most wonderful feats of daring and agility. One of the Arabs solicited a dollar, saying he would run up and down the pyramids in seven minutes. We would rather have given him a dollar not to go, but this ascent and descent in seven minutes he was determined on, and so by the watch in seven minutes he went to the top and was back again at the base. It was a blood-curdling spectacle.

I said the dominant color of the pyramid was gray, but in certain lights it seems to shake off the gray of centuries and become a blonde, and the silver turns to the golden. It covers thirteen acres of ground. What an antiquity! It was at least 2,000 years old when the baby Christ was carried within sight of it by his fugitive parents, Joseph and Mary. The storms of forty centuries have drenched it, bombarded it, shadowed it, flashed upon it, but there it stands ready to take another forty centuries of atmospheric attack if the world should continue to exist. The oldest buildings of the earth are juniors to this great senior of the centuries. Herodotus says that for ten years preparations were being made for the building of this pyramid. It has 82,111,000 cubic feet of masonry. One hundred thousand workmen at one time toiled in its erection. To bring the stones from the quarries a caseway sixty feet wide was built. The top stones were lifted by machinery such as the world knows nothing of to-day. It is 746 feet each side of the square base. The structure is 450 feet high, higher than the Cathedrals of Cologne, Strasburg, Rouen, St. Peter and St. Paul. No surprise to me that it was put at the head of the Seven Wonders of the world. It has a subterraneous room of red granite called the "King's chamber," and another room called the "Queen's chamber," and the probability is that there are other rooms yet unexplored. The evident design of the architect was to make these rooms as inaccessible as possible. After the work of exploration and all the digging and blasting, if you would enter these subterraneous rooms you must go through a passage only three feet eleven inches high and less than four feet wide. A sarcophagus of red granits stands down under this mountain of masonry. The sarcophagus could not have been carried in after the pyramids were built. It must have been put there before the structure was reared Probably in that sarcophagus once lay a wooden coffin containg a dead King, but time has destroyed the coffin and destroyed the last vestige of human remains. For three thousand years this sepulchral room was unopened and would have been until to-day, probably unopened, had not a superstitious impression got abroad that the heart of the pyramid was filled with silver and gold and diamonds, and under A1 Mamoun, an excavating party went to work and having bored and blasted through a hundred feet of rock they found no opening ahead, and were about to give up the attempt when the workmen lieard a stone roll down into a seemingly hollow place and encouraged by that they resumed their work and came into the underground rooms. The disappointment of the workmen in finding the sarcophagus empty of all silver and gold and precious stones was so great that tney would have assassinated A1 Mamoun, who employed them, had he not hid in another part of the pyramid as much silver and gold as would pay them for their work at ordinary rate of wages, and induced them there to dig till they to their surprise, came upon adequate compensation.

I wonder not that this mountain of lime-stone and red granite has been the fascination of scholars, of scientists, intelligent Christians in all ages. Sir John Herschel, the astronomer, said he thought it had astronomical significance. The wise men who accompanied Napolean's army into Egypt went into profound study of the pyramid. In 1865 Prof. Smyth and his wife lived in the empty tombs near by the pyramid that they might be as continuously as possible close to the pyramid which they were investigating. The pyramid. built more than 4,000 years ago being a complete geometrical figure, wise men have concluded it must have been divinely constructed. Men came through thousands of years to fine architecture, to music, to painting but this was perfect at the world's start, and God must have directed it. All astronomers and geometricians and scientists say that it was scientifically and mathematically constructed before science and mathematics were born. From the Inscriptions on the pyramid, from its proportions, from the points of the compass recognized in its .structure, from the directions in which its tunnels run, from the relative position of the bloolcs that compose it, scientists, Christians and infidels have demonstrated that .the being who planned this pyramids must have known the world's sphericity, and that its motion was rotary, and how many miles it was in diameter and circumference, and how many tons the world weighs, and knew at what point in the heavens certain^ stars would appear at certain periods of time.

Not in the 4,000 years since the putting up of that pyramid has a.

single fact in astronomy or mathemathics been found to contradict the wisdom of that structure. Yet they had not at the age when the pyramid was started an astronomer, an architect or a mathematician worth mentioning Who, then, planned the pyramid? Who! superintended its erection? Who from its first foundation stone to its cap stone erected everything? It must have been God. Isaiah was right when he said in my text, "A pillar shall be^at the border of the land of Egypt and it shall be for a sign and a witnsss." The pyramid is God's first Bible. Hundreds if not thousands of years before the first line of the book of Genesis was written the lesson of the pyramid was written.

Well, of what is this cyclopean masonry a sign and a witness? Among other things, of the prolongation of human work compared with the brevity of human life. In all the 4,000 years this pyramid has only lost eighteen feet width one side of its square at the base changed only from 764 to 746 feet, and the most of that eighteen feet taken off by architects to furnish stone for building in the city of Cairo. -The men who constructed the pyramid worked at it only a few years and then put down the trowel and the compass and the square and lowered the derrick whieh had lifted the ponderous weights, but forty centuries has their work stood and it will be good for forty centuries more. All Egypt has been shaken by terrible earthquakes and cities have been prostrated or swallowed up, but that pyramid has defied all volcanic paroxysms. It has looked upon some of the greatest battles ever fought since the world stood. Where are the men who constructed it? Their bodies gone to dust and even the dust scattered. Even the sarcophagus in which the king's mummy may have slept is empty.

My hearers, remember that those who built the pyramids were common workmen. Not one of them could lift those great stones. It took a dozen of them to lift one stone, and others just wielded a trowel, clicking it on the hard edge or smoothing the mortar between the layers. One hundred thousand men toiled on those sublime elevations. Cheops didn't build the Pyramid. Some boss mason in the world's twilight didn't build the Pyramid. One hundred thousand men built it and perhaps from first to last 200,000 men. So with the pyramids now rising, pyramids of evil oman, pyramids of good. The pyramid of drunkenness rising ever since the time when Noah got drunk on wine, although there was at his time such a superabundance of water. All the saloonists of the ages adding their layers of ale casks and wine pitchers and rum-jugs until the Pyramid overshadows the Great Sahara Desert of desolated homes, and broken hearts, and destroyed eternities. And as the pyramid still rises, layers of human skulls and other mountains of human bones to whiten the peaks reaching into the heavens, hundreds of thousands of people are building that pyramid. So with the pyramid of righteousness. Multitudes" of hands are toiling on the steps—hands infantile, hands octogenearian, masculine hands, female hands, strong hands, weak hands. Some clanging a trowel, some pulling a rope, some measuring the sides. Layers of psalm-books on top of layers of sermons. Layers of prayers on top of layers of holy sacrifice. And hundreds of thousands coming down to sleep their last sleep, but other hundreds of thousands going up to take their places, and the pyramids will continue to rise until the millennial morning gilds the completed works, and the toilers on these heights shall take off their aprons and throw down their trowels, crying, "It is finished."

Further, carrying out the idea of my text, the Pyramid is a sign and a witness that big tombstones are not the best way of keeping one's self affectionately remembered. This pyramid and the sixty-nine other pyramids still standing were built for sepulchers, all this great pile of granite and limestone by which we stand today, to cover the memory of a dead King. It was the great Westminister Abbey of the ancients. Some say that Cheops was the King who built this Pyramid, but it is uncertain. Who was Cheops, anyhow? All that the world knows about him could be told in a few sentences. The only thing certain is that he was bad and that he shut up the temples of worship and that he was hated so that the Egyptians were glad when he was dead. This pyramid of rock 740 feet each side of the square base and 450 feet high wins for him no respect. If a bone of his arm or foot had been found in the sarcophagus beneath the pyramid it would have excited no more veneration than the skeleton of a camel bleaching on ther Libyran desert yea, less veneration for when I saw the carcass of a camel by the roadside on the way to Memphis, I said to myself: "Poor thing. I wonder of what it died."

We say nothing against the marble or the bronze of the necropolis. Let all that sculpture and florescence and arborescence can do for the places of the dead be done, if means will allow it. But if after one is dead there is nothing left to remind the world of him but some pieces of stone there is but little use. Some of the finest monuments are over people who amounted to nothing while they lived, while some of the worthiest men and women have not had above them a stone big enough to tell their name. Joshua, the greatest warrior the world ever saw, no monument Moses, the greatest lawyer that ever lived,no monument Pool, the greatest preacher that ever lived, no monument Christ, the

Savior of the world and the rapture of heaven, no monument. A pyramid over scoundrelly Cheops, but only a shingle with a lead pencil epitaph over many a good man's grave. Some of the finest obituaries have been printed about the worst rascals. To-day at Brussels there is a "pyramid of flowers on the grave of Boulanger, the notorious libertine. Yet it is natural to want to be remembered.

While there seems to be no practical use for post-mortem consideration later than the time of one's great-grandchildren,yet no one wants to be forgotten as soon as the obse-

?saiahare

[uies over. This pyramid, which says is a sign and a witness, demonstrates that neither limestone nor red granite are competent td keep one affectionately remembered neither can bronze neither can Parian marble neither can Aberdeen granite do the work. But there is something out of which to build an everlasting monument and that will keep one freshlj remembered 4,000 years yea, forever and ever. It does not stand in marble yards. It is not to be purchased at mourning stores. Yet it is to be found in every neighborhood, plenty of it, inexhaustible quantities of it. It is the greatest stuff in the universe to build monuments out of. I refer to the memories of those to whom we can do a kindness, the memories of those whose struggles we may alleviate, the memories of those whose souls we may have. All around Cairo and Memphis there are the remains of pyramids that have gone down underthe wearing away of time, and this great pyramid of which Isaiah in the text speaks will vanish if the world lasts long enough and if the world does not last, then with the earth's dissolution the Pyramid will also dissolve. But the memories of those with whom we associate are indestructible. They will be more vivid the other side of the grave than, this side. It is possible for me to do you a good and for you to do me a good that will be vivid in memory as many years after the world is burned up as all the sands of the sea-shore and all the leaves of the forest and all the grass blades of the field and all the stars of heaven added together, and that aggregate multiplied by all the figures that all the book-keepers of all time ever wrote,

That desire to be remembered after we are gone is a divinly implanted desire, and not to be crushed out, but I implore you, seek something better than the immortalization of rock, or bronze or book. Put yourself into the eternity of those whom you help for both worlds, this and the next. Comfort a hundred souls and there will be through all the cycles of eternity at least a hundred souls that will be your monuments.

1

Politeness That Didn't Pay. Cfcifcago Sunday Tribune. She had, gotten off her safety for some reason and was trying to get on again. Some girls can get on a safety without assistance and some can't. She was of the latter class.

A young man dressed in the height of style stopped, watched her make two ineffectual attempts, laughed, and went on.

A business man chuckled as she nearly fell, but did not stop. A well-dressed woman said she ought to be ashamed of herself for enjoying such a masculine sport and continued on her way.

Several people passed in quick succession, and one or two stopped. All seemed to enjoy her discomfiture. The situation became so embarrass, ing to her that she pushed her machine on for half a block and tried again. Then a shabby looking man shuffled up. He saw her predicament, but he didn't laugh. He lifted his dilapidated hat politely and said: "Can't I help you, miss?" "Oh, if you'd be so kind," said the girl, almost discouraged by this time. "Please hold the machine steady."

He held it while she got on. "I'm ever so much obliged to you sir," she said gratefully. Now, if you will give it a push, I'll be all right." "You haven't got a dime for a feller as is broke have you?" he asked. "Why, I'm sorry," she said "but I left my purse at home." "Down you come," he said. "What," she cried. "A dime, or down you come again!' he repeated. "But sir "Down you come," he said again. "I'm no dude, doin' these here polit' things for pretty looks. Fork over a dime."

The case was desperate. He was letting the machine wabble a little, just to show that he meant business. "Come to my home," she said. "How far?" he asked. "Only three blocks." i1-**-i "Then it's got to be a quarter," he asserted. "All right. Give the machine a push and come on."

He gave it a push and then crit d: "Hold on, here. I'm no race horse."

He ran to the corner, but shs was two blocks away on the cross street. "That settles me on the polite act,'' he said. "This here sayfn' that politeness al'ays pays is dead wrong."

In reply to an Inquiry, the American Cultivator says that a little tar on •beep's noses in summer is very

lays the

egg

neces­

sary to protect them from the fly

that

that produces grub in

the

head. Sheep will often dig holes

in

the ground into which to thrust their noses to protect themselves lrom the attacks of the fly but it is far better to tar the nose, and thus save them from all trouble.

Drugs, Medicines, Paints, Oils, Varnishes, Notions, Cigars, Tobaccoes, etc.,

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Johnson Bro's. Charlottesville,

-OF

l.'T. DILLMAN,

Is still leading in low prices. Below is a few figures that competitors don't duplicate.

I

sell

Granulated Sugar 5 cents per pound. Headlight Oil 10 cents per gallon. All Package Cotl'ee "25 cents per pound.

Your attention is called to n»y new stock of

Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes, and the best stock of Gloves ever in town and especially to the prices that go with them. Our goods and prices are sure to suit you.

Respectfully, W. T. DILLMAN, 41 tf Mt. Comfort. Ind.

THE

GieBJifiWIoe Co.

COItYDOX \V. MORRISON. OAK S. MORRISON

C.-W MORRISON & SON

Ice will be furnished.at the

following prices until further

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10 to 50 lbs 50 cts. per hund 50 to 100 lbs 40 cts. per hund 100 lbs 35 cts. per hund 200 lbs 30 cts. per hund

Special prices made ^on

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:otf

UNDERTAKERS.

One door east of Hughes' Bank, on south side of Mtun street. Residence over the store, we have a night bell and cau conveniently be called day or night.-

We are practical undertakers of many years experience as well equipped and stocked as any one in this part of the State, we take great pains to furnish good goods and render as good service as we are competent to do, and our prices, we are confident, are as low at least as those of any other. We have no other business hence we give the funeral business our undivided attention, we hope in the future, as in the past, to receive a liberal portion of the patronage.

We have a branch establishment at Morristown, Oak S. Morrison is in charge at that place aiid C. W. Morrison at Greenfield, but the seryico of either can be had when desired at either place.

O. W. MORRISON" & SON".

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All Repairing, Painting, and Trimming done in the neatest and most substantial manner. All work guaranteed to give entire satisfaction at prices that will please you.

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"WHITE & SON,

PORTVILLE INDIANA.

•7

Dealers In

Ind.

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LD !CE CO.

Farm Notes.

Women make the best and most suo cessful poultry raisers. All farmers should remember tha* thorough cultivation is better than mortgage on the farm.

Lime, gr vel or crushed bones should always be kept where the fowls cathave access to them.

Fowls of all kinds should be provided willi plenty of drinking wator cacii day Hie drill-. iii\r vo*sel should li (hiL.eucii .0'\i liiliug.

urns

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A. P. THOMAS I. .JONES

Our prices as low as the lowest for same quality of goods. Lion Coffee 23c '{u tt Banner Coffee 23c t'. lb Champion Coffee 20c fb A Sugars '20 lb fll.OO Brown Sugar 23 lb $1.00 Salt' Kanawah $l.l0%t,bl'l

Calicos to 7 cents per yard.

Boots, Shoes Hats, Caps, & Gloves

——AND-

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Other Goods at Lowest Prices,

Thanking our patrons for past patronage, we solicit a continuance of your patronage. Yours truly,

THOMAS & JONES,: Willow Branch, Ind.

We are in our new quarters with a full and complete line of all things pertaining to the drug trade. If yon want bargains in Drugs, Medicines, Paints, Oils, Varnishes, Toilet Articles, Soaps, Brushes, Perfumes, Etc. Don't stop uutil yon get to our store.

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A GREAT COUNTRY,

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