The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1888-09-14
TALMAGE TO HIS FLOCK.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR breaches
At THE TABERNACLE.

THE REVEREND DOCTOR breaches
AT THE TABERNACLE.
Gas the Hart Panteth After the Water
Brooks, So Panteth My Soul After Thee,
o ODD Sermon Suggested by . Visit
to the Adirondack.
BROOKLYN, Sept. 9.-The great organ, i'm.
proved and enlarged, rolled out with new
power the long meter doxology at the open
ing Of the service IN the Brooklyn Taber.
nacle today. Tn great auditorium wa
thronged and overlooking. The Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage, ID. D., has returned from his
summer vacation, during which he has
spoken In many parts of the country, and
shaken hands, he says, with about a hun
dred thousand people. He closed his tour
by a visit to the wilderness in upper New
York state, and spending some time among
the hunters. This morning he expounded
passages illustrative of Solomon's acquaint-
ance with natural history.
His text was, Psalm xiii, 1: Gas the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth
my soul after thee, o God" The great
preacher said:
David, who must sometime ave seen q
deer hunt, points us here to a hunted stag
making for the water. The fascinating ami.
NAL called in my text the hart, is the SAM
animal that in sacred and profane literature
is called the stag, the roebuck, the hind, the
gazelle, the reindeer. In central Syria, In
Bible times, there were whole pasture fields
of them, as Solomon suggests when he says:
~ charge you by the binds Of the field.
Their antlers jutted from the long grass as
they lay down. No hunter who has been
long in John Browns rack" will wonder
that in the Bible they were classed among
clean animals, for the dews, the showers, the
lakes washed them as clean as the sky. When
Jacob, the patriarch, longed for ~venison,
Esau shot and brought home a roebuck.
Isaiah compares the sprightliness Of the re-
stored cripple Of millennial times to the long
and quick jump of the stag, saying: "The
lame shall leap as the hart" Solomon ex-
pressed his disgust at a hunter who, having
shot a deer, is too lazy to cook it, saying:
1.-THE slothful man roasteth not that which
he took in hunting" But one day David,
while far from the home from which he had
been driven, and sitting near the door Of a
lonely cave where he had lodged, and on the
banks of a pond or river, hears a pack of
hounds in swift pursuit. Because of the pre-
vious silence of the forest the clangor startles
him, and he says to himself: 81 wonder what
those dogs are afterY' Then there is a crack
ling in the brushwood, and the loud breath
ing of some rushing wonder Of the woods,
and the antlers Of q deer rend the leaves OF
the thicket, and by an instinct which all
hunters recognize, plunges into a pond or
laie or river to cool its thirst, and at the
same time, by its capacity for swifter and
longer swimming, to get away from the
foaming barriers. David says to himself:
"Aha, that is myself Saul after me, Absa-
lon after me, enemies without number after
me; l am chased, their bloody muzzles at my
heels, barking at my good name, barking
after my body, barking after my o oh,
the hounds, the houndsl But look there"
says David, ''that reindeer has splashed into
the water. 1t puts its hot lips and nostrils
into the cool wave that washes the lathered
TANKS, and it swims away from the fiery ca
mines, and it is free at last. Oh, that ]
might find in the deep, wide lake OF Gods
mercy and consolation escape from my pur-
suersi Oh, for the waters Of life and rescued
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
SO panteth my soul after thee, o God"
I have just come from the A~dirondacks,
and the breath of the balsam and spruce and
pine is still on me. The Adirondacks are
now populous with hunters, and the deer are
being slain by the score. Talking a few days
ago with a hunter, I thought I would like to see
whether my text was accurate in its allusion,
and as l heard the dogs baying a little way
off and supposed they were on the track Of a
reindeer, I said to the hunter in rough cordu-
roy: 'Do the deer always make for the water
when they are pursuedT He said: ''Oh,
yes, mister; you see they are a hot n thirsty
animal, and they know where the water is,
and when they hear danger in the distance
| they lift their antlers and n the breeze and
start for the Racquet, or Loon, or Saranac;
and we get into our cedar shell boa or stand
by the runaway with rifle loaded. ready
to blaze away" My friends, that Is
one reason why I like the Bible 80
much-its illusions are so true to nature.
Its cartridges are real cartridges, its
ostriches real ostriches, and its reindeer real
reindeer. / do not wonder that this antlered
| glory of the text makes the hunters eye
sparkle and his cheeks glow and his respira-
ton quicken. To say nothing Of its useful
ness, although it is the most useful of all
game; its flesh delicious, its skin turned into
human apparel, its sinews fashioned into
DOW oLIlukS, v utkc Putbllk uduuIc Ou
cutlery, and the shavings Of its horns, used
as O restorative, taken from the name Of the
hart and called hartshorn. But putting aside
its usefulness, this enchanting creature seems
made out of pracefulness and elasticity.
What an eye, v tn a liquid brightness as If
gathered up from a hundred lakes of sum
setl The horns, a coronal branching into
every possible curve, and after it seems
IOya aduanofn0 into nfhar nrnionfinno IF
exquisiteness, q tree Of polished bone, uplifted
In pride, or swung down for awful combat.
1t is velocity embodied. Timidity imperson-
ated. The enchantment of the woods. Eye
lustrous in life and pathetic in death. The
splendid animal a complete rhythm Of mus
Gle, and bone, and color, and attitude, and
locomotion, whether couched in the grass
among tho shadows, or a living bolt shot
through the forest, or turning at bay to at
tack the hounds, or rearing for its last fall
under the buckshot of the trapper. It is a
splendid appearance that the painters pencil
fails to sketch, and only q hunters dream on
q pillow of hemlock at the foot Of
st. Regis is able to picture. When,
twenty miles from any settlement Ii
comes down at eventide to the lakes
edge to drink among the lily pads and, with
its sharp edged hoof, skaters the crystal Of
Long Lake, it is very picturesque. But only
when, after miles Of pursuit, with heaving
sides and lolling tongue and eyes swimming
in death, the stag leaps from the cliff into
Upper Saranac, can you realize how much
David had suffered from his troubles, and
how much he wanted God when he expressed
himself in the words of the text: GAS the
hart panteth after the water brooks, SO
panteth my soul after thee, 0 God"
Well, now, let all those who have coming
after them the lean hounds Of poverty, or the
black hounds of persecution, or the spotted
hounds of vicissitude, or the pale hounds Of
death, or who are In any wise pursued, fly to
the wide, deep, glorious lake Of divine solacs
and rescue. The most Of the men and wo-
men whom I happen to know at different
times, If not now, ave had troubles after
them, sharp muzzled troubles, swift troubles,
all devouring troubles. Many Of you have
made the mistake Of trying to fight them.
Somebody meanly attacked you, and you at
tackled them; they deprecated you, you de-
preciated them; or they overreached you ina
bargain, and you tried. In Wall street par
lance, to get a corner on them; or you have
had a bereavement, and instead Of being
submissive you are fighting that be-
reavement; you charge on the doctors
who failed to effect q cure; or you charge
on the carelessness Of the railroad company
through which the accident occurred; or you
are q chronic invalid, and you fret and
worry and scold and wonder why you cannot
be well like other people, and you angrily
charge on the neuralgia or the ~laryngitis or
the ague or the sick headache. The fact is
you are q deer at bay. Instead of running
to the waters of divine consolation, and slak-
ing your thirst and cooling your body and
soul In the good cheer Of the Gospel, and
swimming away into the mighty deeps OF
Gods love, you are fighting a whole kennel
Of barriers. A few days ago / saw in the
Adirondachs n dor king acrosat the road and