Ohio History Journal

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Big Bottom and Its History

Big Bottom and Its History.           17

 

ADDRESS OF C. L. MARTZOLFF.

It is said that a minister's text is but a peg upon which to

hang his sermon. If I were a minister the peg upon which I

would hang this speech would be found

among the jewels of the wonderful mines

of King Solomon - The Book of Proverbs.

"Remove not the ancient landmark, which

thy fathers have set."

Man has ever been a monument builder,

When the Israelites fought with the hosts

of Amalek, when the hands of Moses were

stayed by Aaron and Hur until the going

down of the sun and the Amalekites had

been put to the sword, then it was that

Moses builded an altar as a memorial of the

great victory.

When David the warrior king sent forth his mighty Joab to

wage war upon the Edomites, he celebrated his success by a mon-

ument of triumph, an inscribed tablet carved on the rocks of

Edom after the manner of eastern kings.

But centuries before the Hebrews built their rude memori-

als among the hills of Palestine, the monarchs of the Orient had

erected upon the banks of the Euphrates and the Nile, monu-

ments to commemorate their achievements in war, or to extol

the glories of royalty.

We are told that at the portals of the sculptured palaces of

Nineveh, there were colossal figures of men and beasts carved

from white alabaster; that within the interior stretching for miles

and miles, the builder of the palace ranged the illustrated record

of his exploits. There cut in the walls were represented vast pro-

cessions of warriors, and satraps, and eunuchs, and tributary

kings winding and winding through the corridors until the mind

grows dizzy with the regal splendor and the heart grows sick at

the vanity of kings.

To-day the antiquarian digs down beneath the accumulated

dust of the centuries and from the broken pieces of pottery and

the ruined columns he reads its history.

Vol. XV- 2.