Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches.
The fairs of Tyre
Let us look in upon a world’s fair at Tyre. Ezekiel leads us through one department, and it is a horse fair. Underfed and overdriven for ages, the horses of today give you no idea of the splendid animals which, rearing and plunging and snorting and neighing, were brought down over the planks of the ships, and led into the world’s fair at Tyre, until Ezekiel, who was a minister of religion, and not supposed to know much about, horses, cried out in admiration, “They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses.” Here in another department of that world’s fair at Tyre, led on by Ezekiel the prophet, we find everything all ablaze with precious stones. Like petrified snow are the corals; like fragments of fallen sky are the sapphires; and here is a gate a-blush with all colours. What is that aroma we inhale? It is from the chests of cedar which we open, and find them filled with all kinds of fabric. But the aromatics increase as we pass down this lane of enchantment, and here are cassia and frankincense and balm. Led on by Ezekiel the prophet, we come to an agricultural fair, with a display of wheat from Minnith and Pannag, rich as that of our modern Dakota or Michigan. And here is a mineralogical fair, with specimens of iron and silver and tin and lead and gold. But, halt! for here is purple, Tyrian purple, all tints and shades, deep almost unto the black, and bright almost unto the blue; waiting for kings and queens to order it made into robes for coronation day; purple, not like that which is now made from the orchilla weed, but the extinct purple, the lost purple, which the ancients knew how to make out of the gastropod molluscs of the Mediterranean. Oh, look at those casks of wine from Helbon! See those snow banks of wool from the back of sheep that once pastured in Gilead! Oh, the bewildering riches and variety of that world’s fair at Tyre! (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Great fairs universal
But the world has copied these Bible mentioned fairs in all succeeding ages, and it has had its Louis the Sixth fair at Dagobert, and Henry the First fair on St. Bartholomew’s Day, and Hungarian fairs at Pesth, and Easter fairs at Leipsic, and the Scotch fairs at Perth (bright was the day when I was at one of them), and afterward came the London world’s fair, and the New York world’s fair, and the Vienna world’s fair, and the Parisian world’s fair, and it has been decided that, in commemoration of the discovery of America in 1492, there shall be held in this country in 1892 a world’s fair that shall eclipse all preceding national expositions. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Damascus was thy merchant in the multitude of thy wares of thy making.
Home industries to be encouraged
It is the wisdom of a nation to encourage art and industry, and not to bear hard upon the handicraft-tradesman; for it contributes much to the wealth and honour of a nation to send abroad “wares of their own making,” which may bring them in the “multitude of riches.” (M. Henry,)