Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1888-05-02

BROOKLYN, April 22.-The Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage, DID,, preached this morn
ing at the Tabernacle on the subject: 'The
Star Wormwood, or Brilliant Bitterness.
The musical exercises were assisted by the
organ and cornet. Thousands of voices in
the auditorium and in the adjoining parlor
and lecture room and corridor Joined in
singing
"We'll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs.
High as the heavens our voices raise
While earth with her ten thousand tongues
Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise"
Prof. Browan rendered Sonata No. in D
minor, by Guillmant. After DIR. Talmage
had expounded the sarcasm of Elijah at the
Offering of the Baalites he spoke as follows:
Revelation viii, 10 and 11.-"There fell
great etar from heaven, burning, as it
were lamp, and it fell upon the third part
of the rivers, and the fountains of waters;
and the name of the star is called Worm
wood"
Patrick and Lowth, Thomas Scott, Mat
thew Henry, Albert Barnes, and all the
other commentators agree in saying that
the Star Wormwood of my text was Attila,
King of the Huns. He was so called be-
cause he was brilliant as star, and, like
wormwood, he embittered everything he
touched. We have studied the Star of Beth
lehem. and the morning Star of the Revela-
tior, and the Star of Peace, but my subject
this hour calls us to gaze at the star Worm
wood, and my theme might be called Bril-
liant Bitterness.
A more extraordinary character history
does not furnish than this man referred to
in my text, Attila, the King of the Huns.
One day a wounded heifer came limpiDg
along through the fields, and herdsman
followed its bloody track on the grass to see
where the heifer was wounded, and went on
back, further and further, until he came to
a sword fast in the earth, the point down.
ward as though it had dropped from the
heavens, and against the edges of this sword
the heifer had been cut. The herdsman
pulled up that sword and presented it to
Attila. Attila said that sword must have
dropped from the heavens from the grasp
of the god Mars, and it's being given to him
meant that Attila should conquer and gov
ern the whole earth. Other mighty men
have been delighted at being called liberia
tors or the Merciful or the Good, but Attila
called himself and demanded that others
call him the Scourge of God. At the head
of seven hundred thousand troops, mounted
on Cappadocian horses, he swept everything
from the Adriatic to the Black Sea. He
put his iron heel on Macedonia end Greece
and Thrace. He made Milan and Pavia
and Padua and Verona beg for mercy which
he bestowed not. The Byzantine castles to
meet his ruinous levy put up at auction
massive silver tables and vases of solid gold.
A city captured by him, the inhabitants
were brought out and put into three classes:
The first class, those who could bear arms,
who must Immediately enlist under Attila
or be butchered; the second class, the beau
tiful women, who were made captives to the
Huns; the third class, the aged men and
women, who were robbed of everything and
let 90 back to the city to pay heavy tax.
1t was common saying that the grass
never grew again where the hoof of Attila'a
horse had trod. His armies reddened the
waters of the Seine and the Moselle and the
Rhine with carnage, and fought on the
Catalonian plains the iercest battle since
the world stood, three hundred thousand
dead left ON the field. On and on until all
those who could not oppose him with armi
lay prostrate on their faces in prayer and, q
cloud of dust seen in the distance, bishoE
cried: ''It is the aid of God;" and all the