Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1893 — ON SACRED SHORES. [ARTICLE]

ON SACRED SHORES.

The Ichthyology of tho BibleBreakfast by the Sea of CiaHlcr—"Lesson of the Fishcf?—Tnlwag®** | ■ . iwryiP»n« „ : •* - .A Dr. Talnrigc preached at Brooklyn, last Sunday. “The Ichthyology or tho God Among the ..Fishes,Uen. L 20— “And ClodEnK' Let the waters bring the moving creatures life.” He said: What a now' book ' the Bible is! After 36 years* preaching from it and discussiii<’ over 4.000 different subjects founded on the God the book :s as fresh to me as when I learned, with a stretch of infantile memory, the shortest verse in the Bible, “J.nsus wept,” and I opened a few weeks ago a new realm of Biblival interest that neither my pulpit nor any one els'e's had ever explored, and having spoken to you in this course of sermons on God everywhere concerning the “Astronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars;” the “Chronology of the Bible; or, God Among the Centuries;” the “Ornithology of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds;" the Mineralogy of the Bible; or, God Among the Amethysts;" this morning, as I may be divinely helped, I will speak to you about the Ichthyology of the Bible; or God Among the Fishes.” Our norses were lathered and tired out. and their fetlocks were cut out by the rocks, and I eould hardly get my feet out- of the stirrups as on Saturday night we dismounted on the beach of Lake Galilee The rather liberal supply of food with which had started from Jerusalem was well nigh exhausted, and the articles of diet remaining had, by oft repetition three times a day for three weeks, ceased to appetize. I never want to see a fig again, and dates with me are all out of daty. For several days the Arab caterer, who could speak but half a dozen English words, would answer our .requests for some of the styles of food with which we had been delectated the first few days by crying out, “Finished." The most piquant appetizer is abstinence, and the demand of all the party was, “Let us breakfast on Sunday morning on fresh fish from Lake Gennesareth,” for you must, know that that lake has four names, and it is worth a profusion of nomenclature, and it is in the Bible called Chinn areth, Tiberias, Gennesareth and Galilee.

To our extemporized table on Sab- : bath morning came broiled perch, } only a few hours before lifted out of the sacred waters. It was natural that cur minds should r evert to the only breakfast that Christ ever prepared, and it was on those very shores where we breakfasted, Christ had in those olden times struck two flints together and set on five some' shavings or light brushw’ood and then put on larger wood, and a pile of glowing bright coals was the consequence. Meanwhile the disciples fishing on ! the lake had awfully “poor luck,’|i and’every time they drew up the net it hung dripping without a flutter- ' ing fin or squirming scale. But ! Christ from the shore shouted to : them and told them where to drop ’ the net. and 153 big fish rewarded | them. Simon and Nathaniel, having ; cleaned some of those large fish, I Drought them to the coals which ; Christ had kindled, and the group who had been out all night and were ' chill and wet and hungry sat down ' and began mastication All that scene came back to us when on Saboath morning, in December, 1889, just outside the ruins of ancient Tiberias and within sound of the rippling Galilee, we breakfasted. Well, the world's geography has changed, and the world’s bill of fare has changed. Lake Galilee was larger and deeper and better stocked than now, and no doubt the rivers were deeper and the fisheries were ; of far more importance then than now. Do ydu realize that the first living thing that God created was the fish? It preceded the bird, the quadruped, the human. The fish has priority of residence over every living thing. The next thing done after God had kindled for our world the golden chandelier of the sun and the silver chandelier of the moon was to make the fish. The first motion of the ' principle of life, a principle that all ■ the thousands of years since have j not been able to define of analyze, the very first stir of life, was in a fish. No wonder that Linnmus and Cuvier and Agassiz and the greatest minds of all the centuries sat enraptured before its anatomy. Oh, its beauty and the adaptedness of its structure to the element in which it must live; the picture gallery on the sides of the mountain trout unveiled as they spring up to snatch the flies; the grayling, called the flower of fishes; the salmon, ascending the Oregon and the Severn, easily leaping the falls that would stop them; the bold perch, the gudgeon, silver and black spotted, the herring, moving in squadrons five miles long; the carp, for cunning called the fox of fishes; the wondrous sturgeons, formerly reserved for the tables of royal families and the isinglaqs made out of their membrane; the tench, called the physician of fishes, because when applied to human ailmeats it is said to be curative; the lampreys, so tempting to the epicurean that too many of them slew Henry ll—aye. the whole world of flakes! The Lord by placing the fish in the

first course of the menu in paradise, i making it precede bird and beast, > indicated to the world the import- ; ance of th e fish as an article of human food. The reason that men and I women lived three and four and five ; and nine hundred years was because i they werekepten parched com and j fish. ~Wc mix up a fantastic food j that kills the most of us before 30 ■ years of age. Custards and whipped I sillabubs and Roman punches, and ' chicken salads at midnight are a gauntlet that few have the strength to run. The reason that the country districts have furnished most of the men and women of our time who are doing the mightest work in merchandise, in mechanics, in law, in medicine, in theology, in legislative and congressional halls, and all the presidents from Washington down—at least those who amounted to anything—is because they were in those country districts of necessity kept on plain diet. No man or woman ever amounted to anything who was brought up ou floating- island or angel cake. What made -the apostles such stalwart men that they could endure anything and achieve everything? Next to divine inspiration, it was because they were nearly all fishermen and lived on fish and a few plain condiments. Paul, though not brought up to swing the net and throw the line, must of necessity have adopted thediet of thepopulation among whom he lived, and you see the phosphorous in his daring plea before F»lix, and the phosphorus in his boldness of all utterances before the wiseacres on Mars hill, and the phosphorus as he went without fright to his beheading, and the phosphorus you see in the lives of all the apostles who moved right on undaunted to certain martyrdom, whether to be-decapitated or flung off precipices or hung in crucifixion. Phosphorus shining in the dark without burning. Indeed the only articles of food that Christ by miracle multiplied were bread and fish which the boy who acted as sutler to the 7,000 people of the wilderness handed over—five barley loaves and two fishes. Know also in order to understand the ichthyology of the Bible that in ! the deeper waters, as those of the i Mediterranean, there were monsters that are now extinct. The fools who became infidels because they cannot understand the engulfment of the recreant Jonah in a sea monster might have saved their souls bystudying a little natural history. “Oh,” says someone, “That story of Jonah was only a fable.” Say others. “It was interpolated by some writer of later times.” Others say, “It was the reproduction of the story of Hercules devoured and then restored by the monster.” But my reply is that history tells us that there were monsters large enough to whelm ships. The extinct ichthyosaurus of other ; ages was thirty feet long, and as late as the sixth century of the Christian era up and down the Mediterranean there floated monsters compared with which a modern whale was a sardine or a, herring, j The shark has again and again been ■ found .to. have. KwallowedA.. man en-..J tire. A fisherman on the coast of i Turkey found a sea monster which ! contained a woman and a purse of ■ gold. Notice also how the Old Testament writers drew similitude from the fisheries. Jeremiah uses such imagery to prophesy destruction, “Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them.” Ezekiel uses the fish imagery to prophesy, “It shall come to pass that the fishers shall stand upon it from En-gedi even to En-eglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many," the explanation of which is that En-gedi and j En-eglaim stood on the banks of the ; Dead sea, in the waters of which no fish can live, but the prophet says that the time will come when these waters will be regenerated and they will be great places for fish*. Furthermore in order that you may understand the ichthyology of the Bible you must know that there were five ways of fishing. Ono was by a fence of reeds and canes, within, which the fish were caught. But the Herodic government forbade that on the shores of Galilee, lest pleasure boats be wrecked by the stakes driven. Another mode was by spearing—the water of Galilee was so clear, good aim could be taken for the transfixing. Another was by hook and line, as where Isaiah says, “The fishers shall also mourn, and they that cast angle into the brook shall lament." And Job say. “Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?” And Haubakkuk says, “They take up all of them with the angle.” Another mode was by casting net or that which was flung from the shore, another, by a dragnet or that which was thrown from a boat and drawn through the sen as the fishing smack sailed on. Suppose Igo around in this audience and ask these Christians when th'jy were converted to God. One would answer, “It was at the time I lost m.y child by membranous croup, and it was the night of bereavement,” or it would be, “It was just after I was swindled out of my-prop-erty, and it was the night of bank- [ ruptcy,” or it would be, “It was during that tirae when I was down with that awful slckuss, and it was the night o! physical suffering,” or it would be “ft was that time when slander took after mo, and I was maligned apd abused, and it was the night of persecution.”' Ah, my

hearers, that is the time for you th go after souls,, vdxai a hlght of trouble is or. them, opsa apt that opportunity to save a soul, for it is the best of all opportunities. But be sure before you start out to the gospel fisheries to get the right kiudrnf bait. “But how," you say, “am I to get it?" My answer is, “Dip for it.” “Where shall I dig for it?” “In the rich Bible grounds." We boys brought, up in the country had to nig for hait before we started for the banks of the Raritan. Wo put the sharp edge of the spade egaiust tho ground and then put our foot on the spade, and with one tremendous plunge.of our strength of body and will wo drove it in up to the handle and then turned over the sod. But make up your mind as to whether you will take the hint of Habukkuk and Isaiaa and Job and use hook and line, or take the hint of Matthew and Luke and Christ and fish with a net, I think manylose their time by> wanting to fish with a net, end they never get r. place to swing the net. In other words, they want to do gospel work on a big scale, or thev will not do it at all. I have seen a man in roughest corduroy outfit come back from the woods loaded down with a string of finny treasures hung over his shoulder, and his gamebag filled, and a dog with his teeth carrying a basket filled with the surplus of an afternoon’s angling, and it was all the result of a hook and line. And in the - eternal world there will be many a man and many a woman that was never heard of outside of a village Sunday school or a prayer meeting buried in a church basement who will come before the throne of God with a multitude of souls ransomed through his or her instrumentality, and yet the work all done through personal interview, one by one, ono by one. God help us amid the gospel fisheries whether we employ hook or net, for the day cometh when we shall see how much depended on our fidelity. Christ himself declared: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore and sat down and gathered the good in the vessel, but cast the bad away. So shall it be at the end of the world — the angels shall come forth and separate the wicked from the just. So in the church on earth, tho saints and hypocrites, the generous and the mean, the chaste and the unclean, are kept in the same membership, but at death the division will be made, and the good will be gathered into heaven, and the bad, however many holy communions they may have celebrated, and however many, rhetorical prayers they may have offered, and however many years their names may have been on the church rolls, will be cast away. God forbid that any of us should be among the “cast away!”