THE 60SPEL ARCHIPELAGO Or. Talmage’s Discourse on the Isle of Patmos. . A Continuation of Obiarvatlom Confirm** tor/ or the Hcrlpluro*—Som* * Beautiful Thought* Told la Beautiful Language* BnooKI.YN, N. V., Not. 8, 1801.—At overflowing congregation at the Brook lyn Tabernnclo thin morning attested the interest the religious public is tak Ing in tho series of sermons Dr. Tal mage is preaching on what he saw, eonlirmatory of the Scriptures, during his tour from the pyramids to the Acropolis. This morning's sermon, the fourth of tho Burie , was on the islands of tho Greok Archipelago. The doeior took two texts: Acts 91:3, “When wo t had discovered Cyprus wo loft it on tho left hund;" and Revelation 1:1), “I, John.was in tho islo that is called l’atmos.” Good bye, Egypt! Although interest ing and instructive beyond any coun try in all the world, excepting the Holy Land, Egypt was to me some what depressing. It was a post-mor tem examination of cities that died 1,000 years ago. The mummies, or wrapped up bodies of the dead, were prepared with reference to the resur reolion day, the Egyptians departing this life wanting their bodies to be kept in os good condition as possible . so that they would be presentable when they wore culled again to occupy them, liut if when Pharaoh comes to resurrection he finds his body looking as I saw his mummy in the museum at Boulae, his soul will become an un willing tenant. The Sphinx also was to me a stern monstrosity, a statue carved out of rook of red granite sixty two feet high and about 143 feet long and having the head of a man and the body of a lion. We sat down in the Band of the African desert to study it. With a cold smile it has looked down upon thousands of years of earthly his tory; Egyptian civilization, Grecian : civilisation, Roman civilization; upon the rise and fall of thrones innumer able; the victory and dofeat of the > armies of centuries. But Egypt will yet come up to the glow of life. Tho liiblo promises it. The missionaries like my friend, good and great Dr. Lansing, are sounding a resurrection trumpet above those Blain empires. There will be sqine other Jo eeph at Memphis. There will be some other Moses on the banks of the Nile. There will be some other Pypatia to teach good morals to the degraded. I Attend of a destroying angel to slay the first-born of Egypt, the angst of the4 New Testament will shake ever lasting life from his wings over a na tion born in a day. When, soon after mv arrival in Egypt, I took part in the solemn and tender obsequies of a mis sionary from our own land, dying there far away from the sepulchres of her fathers, anti saw around her the dusky and weeping congregation of those whom she had come to save, I said to Burself: “Here is self-sacrifloe of the noblest type. Hero is heroism immor tal Here is a queen unto God forever. Hero is something grander than the pyramids. Here is that which thrills the heavens. Here is a specimen of that whioh will yet save the world.” Good-bye, Egypt! This sermon finds ub on the steamer Minerva in the Gre cian archipelago, the islands of the New Testament, and islands Palinian and Johannian in their reminiscence. What Bradshaw's directory is to trav elers in Europe, and what the railroad guide is to travelers in America, the book of the Acts in the Bible is to voyagers in the Grecian, or as 1 shall call it, the Gospel archipelago. The Bible geography of that region is accurate without a shadow of mistake. We are sailing this morning on the name waters that Paul sailed, but in the opposite direction to that which Paul 'Voyaged. He was sailing southward *nd we northward. With him it was: Ephesus, Coos, Rhodes, Cyprus With us it is reversed and it is Cyprus, Rhodes, Coos, Ephesus. There is no book in the world so accurate as tho -divine book. My text says that Paul left Cyprus on the left; we, going in the opposite direction, have it on the right. On our ship Minerva were only two ot three passengers beside ourown ' pai ty, so we had plenty of room to walk the deck and oh, what a night was Christmas night of 1889 in that 'Grecian Archipelago—islands of light above, islands of beauty beneath! It is I a royal family of islands, this Grecian I Archipelago:, the orown of the world's! scenery set with sapphire and emerald, ] and topaz and chrysoprasns and ablaze I with a glory that seems let down out of eelestial landscapes. God evidently made up his mind that just here he would demonstrate the utmost that can be done with islands for the beautifies wuu ui unrioiy sceuery. The steamer had stopped during the Bight and in the morning the ship was M quiet as this floor when we hastened up to the deck and found that we had anchored off the island of Cyorus. in a boat, which the natives rowed stand ing up as is the custom, instead of sit ting down as when we row, we were noon landed on the streets where Paul and ’ .rnabus walked and preached. Yea, when at Antioch Paul and Barna bus got into a fight—as ministers some times did, and sometimes do, for they all have imperfections enough to anchor them to this world till their work is done, I say—when because of that bitter controversy Paul and Bar nabas parted, Barnabas came back here to Cyprus which was his birch fiace. Island wonderful for history! t has been the prize sometimes won by Persia, by Greece, by Egypt, by the Saracens, bv the Crusaders, and last of all, not by s-.vord but by poD, and that pen of the keenest diplomatist of the century. Lord iiecconsfleld, who under a lease which was as good as a pur chase, set Cyprus among the jewels of Victoria's crown. We went out into the excavations from which Ui Cesnota has enriched our American museum wtth antiquities and with no better weapon than our foot we stirred up the ground deep enough to get a tear bottle in which some mourner shed his tears thousands of years ago and a lamp which before Christ was born lighted the feet of some poor pilgrim on his way. That island of Cyprus lia cnough to set an antiquari'an wild. The most of its glory Is the glory of the hast, and the typhoid fevers that swept its coast and the clouds of lo custs that often blackened its skies, (though ¥200,o< 10 woro expended by the british empire in one year for the ex tirpation of these noxious insec's, yet falling to do tlio work) and the fre quent chungeof governmental masters, hinders prosperity. llut when the islands of the sea come to (lod, Cyprus will como with them, and the agri cultural "and commercial opulence which adorned it in ages past will be eclipsed by the agricultural and com mercial and religious triutnphs of the ages to come. Why is the world so stupid that it cannot see that nations ure prospered in temporal things in proportion as they are pros pered in religious things. Godliness is profitable not only for individuals but for nations. Questions of tariff, questions of silver bill, questions of re public or monarchy have not so much to do with a nation's temporal welfare as questions of religion. Give Cyprus to Christ, give England to Christ, give rtmci mu w yivu me worm to Christ,and he will glvo them all a pros perity unlimited. Why Is Hrooklyn one of the queen cities of the earth? lieeau.se it is the queon oity of churches, lilindfold mo and lead me into any city of the earth so that 1 cannot see a street or a warehouse or a homo and then lead me into the churches and then remove the bandage from my eyes and I will tell you from what 1 see in side the consecrated walls, having soen nothing1 outside, what is that city’s merchandise, its literature, its schools, its printing-presses, its government, its homes, its arts, itsscionces, its prosper ity, or its depression, and ignorance, and pauperism and outlawry. Might came down on land and sea and the voyage became tome more and more suggestive and solemn. If you are pacing it alone,a ship s deck in the darkness and at sea is a weird place, ami an active imagination may conjure up almost any shape he will audit shall walk the sea or confront him by the smokestack, or meet him under the captain's bridge. Hut here *1 was alone on ship’s deok, in the Oospel Archipel ago and do you wonder that the sea was populous with the past and that down the ratlines llible memories de scended? Our friends had all gone to their bertha “Captain,” I said, "when will we arrive at the Island of Uhodes?” Looking out from under his glazed cap, he responded in sepulchral voice: "About midnight.” Though it would be keeping unreasonable hours, I con cluded to stay on deok, for I must see llhodca one of the islands associated with the name of the greatest mission ary the world ever saw or ever will see, Paul landed th re and that was enough to make it famous while the world stands and famous In heaven when the world has beoomo a charred wreck Hut there is one island that I longed to see more than any other. I can af ford to miss the princes among the islands, but I must see the king of the Archipelago. The one I longed to see is not so many miles in circumference as Cyprus or Crete or Paros or Naxos or Scio or Mltylene, but 1 had rather, in this sail through the Grecian Arch ipelago, sec that than all the others; for more of the glories of heaven landed there than on all the islands and continents since the world stood. As we come toward it l feel my pulses quicken. “I, John, was in the island that is called Patmos.” It is a pile of rocks twenty-eight miles in circumfer ence. A few cypresses and inferior olives l ump a living out of the earth, and one palm tree spreads its foliage. Hut the barrenness and gloom and loneliness of the island made it a prison for the banished evangelist. Uomitian could not stand hfs ministry and one day, under armed guard, that minister of the Gospel stepped from a tossing boat to these dismal rocks, and walked up to the dismal cavern which w» to be his home, and the place where should pass before him all the con diets of coming time and all the raptures of a coming eternity. Is it not remarkable that nearly all the great revelations of music and poetry and religion have been made to men in banishment—Homer and Milton banished into blindness; Heethoven banished into deafness. Dante wriliug his Divina Commedia during the nine teen years of banishment from his native land; Victor Hugo writing his Les Miserables exiled irom home and country on the island of Guernsey and the brightest visions of the future have been given to those who bv sickness or sorrow were exiled from the outer world into rooms of suffering. Only those who have been imprisoned By very hard surroundings have had great revelations made to them So Patmos; wild, chill and bleak and terriblo was the best island in all the Archipelago, the best place in all the earth for divine revelations, llefore a panorama can be successfully seen the room in which you sit must be darkened and in the presence ol John was to pass such a panorama as no man ever before saw or ever win see in this world, and hence the gloom of his surroundings was a help ratlmr than a hindrance. All the surroundings of the place af fected St. John's imagery when he speaks of heaven. St. John, hungry from enforced abstinence, or having no food except that at which hit nppeiite revolted, thinks of heaven; and as the famished man is apt to dream of boun tiful tables covered with luxuries, so St. John says of the inhabitants of heaven: “they shall hunger no more." Scarcity of fresh water on 1’atmos and the hot tongue of St John's thirst leads him to admire heaven as he says; “They shall thirst no more.” St. John hears the waves of the sea wildly dash ing against the rocks and each wave has a voice and all the waves together make a chorus and they rarnind him of the multudinous anthems of heaven, and he says: “They are like the voice of many waters ” One day, as ' he looked off upon the sea, the waters were very smooth as it is today while wo sail them in the Minerva and they were like glass and the sunlight seemed to set them on tiro, and there was a mingling of white light and in tense flame, and as St. John looked out from his cavern home upon that brilliant sea he thought of the splen dors of heaven and describes them “as a sea of glass mingled with fire.” Yes, eated in the dark caverfl of Patinos, though homesick and hungry and oaded with Uomitian's anathemas, St lohn was the most fortunate man on ■arth because of the panorama that oassed before the mouth of that cavern. Turn down all the lights that we may better see it The panorama passes, and lo! the conquering Christ, r"l>e