Milford chronicle., 1888-09-14
TALMAGE TO HIS FLOCK.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR breaches
AT THE TABERNACLE.

"As the Hart Panteth After the Water
Brooks, So Panteth My Soul After Thee,
O CODA Sermon Suggested by a Visit
to the Adirondaclxs.
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. The great auditorium was
thronged and overhowing. The Rev. 7. De
Witt Talmage, D. 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 hum
dred thousand people. He closed his tour
BY 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, I; "As the hart
panteth after the water brooks, so panteth
my soul after thee, o God.n The great
preacher said:
David, who must sometime have seen a
deer hunt, points us here to hunted stag
making for the water. The fascinating ami
NAL called in my text the hart, IS the same
animal that in sacred and profane literature
is called the stag, the roebuck, the hind, tho
gazele, the reindeer. In central Syria, IN
Bible times, there were whole pasture fields
of them, as Solomon suggests when he says;
Il charge you by the kinds of the field"
Their antlers jutted from the long grass as
they lay down. No hunter who has been
long in "John Browns track" 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 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 deer, is too lazy to cook it, saying;
s'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 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 afterp 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 deer rend the leaves OF
the thicket, and by an instinct which all
hunters recognize, plunges into pond or
lake 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-
lom after me, enemies without number after
me: am chased their bloody muzzles at my
heels, barking at my good name, barking
after my body, barking after my soul. Oh,
the hounds, the houndsl But look there,
saws David, 'that reindeer has splashed into
the water It puts its hot lips and nostrils
/ into the cool wave that washes the lathered
iianks, 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-
suersl Oh, for the waters of life and rescued
As the hart panteth after the water brooks,
so panteth my soul after thee, o God"
1 have Just come from the Adirondacks,
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 few days
ago with a hunter, l thought l would like to see
whether my text was accurate in its allusion,
and as l heard the dogs baying little way
off and supposed they were on the track Of a
reindeer, said to the hunter in rough cordu-
roy: ''Do the deer always make for the water
when they are pursuedp He said "Oh,
yes, mister; you see they are hot and thirsty
animal, and they know where the water is,
and when they hear danger in the distance
they lift their antlers and snuff the breeze and
start for the Racquet, or Loon, or Saranac
and we get into our cedar shell boat or stand
by the runaway with rifle loaded ready
to blaze away" My friends, that is
one reason why l like the Bible 50
mueh-its illusions are so true to nature,
Its partridges are real partridges, 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
how strings, its antlers putting handles on
cutlery, and the shavings Of its horns, used
as a restorative, taken from the name Of the
hart and called hartshorn. But putting aside
its usefulness, this enchanting creature SCENT
made out of gracefuluess and elasticity
What an eye, with liquid brightness as il
gathered up from a hundred lakes Of sun
setl The horns, a coronal branching into
every possible curve, and after it seems
done. advancing into other projections oi
exquisiteness, a 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 complete rhythm Of mus
Gle, and bone, and color, and attitude, anC
locomotiOn, whether couched in the gras
among the shadows, or a living bolt sho
through the forest, or turning at bay to at
tack the hounds, or rearing for its last tai
under the buckshOt Of the trapper. It is I
splendid appearance that the painters pencil
fails to sketch, and only hunters dream Of
pillow of hemlock at the foot o.
st. Regis Is able to picture. When
twenty miles from any settlement 4
comes down at eventide to the lake
edge to drink among the lily pads aud, with
its sharp edged hoof, skaters the crystal o.
, Long Lake, it is very picturesque But onlI
when. after miles Of pursuit, with heavinl
sides and lollipg tongue and eyes swimming
in DEATH the stag leaps from the cliff int
Upper Saranac, can you realize how muel
David had suffered from his troubles, ans
how much he wanted God when he expresseS
himself in the words Of the text: GAS tn
hart pantetb after the water brooks, s.
panteth my soul after thee, o Godn
Well, now, let all those who have comini
after them the lean hounds Of poverty, or tn
black hounds of persecution, or the spotte'
hounds Of vicissitude or tho pale HOUNDS o
death, or who are in any wise pursued fy 3