The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1888-09-14
TALMAGE TO HIS FLOCK.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR breaches
At THE TABERNACLE.

o Coda Sermon Suggested by . vsit
to the Adirondack.
BROOKLYN, Sept. 0.-The great organ.
improved and enlarged, rolled out with
new power the long meter doxology mt
the opening of the service in the Brook
Ign Tabernacle today. The great audi
forum was thronged and OVERLOOKING
The Rev. T. De Witt Talmage. DID,, has
returned from his summer vacation, dur
ing which he has spoken in many parts
of the country, and shaken hands, he
says, with about hundred 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 &C.
quaintance with natural history.
His text was Psalm xiii, 1: "As the
hart panteth after the water brooks, SO
panteth my soul after thee, o God !"
The great preacher said:
David, who must sometime have seen
deer hunt, points us here to a hunted
stag making for the water. The fasci.
mating animal called in my text the hart,
is the same animal that in sacred and
profane literature Is called the stag, the
roebuck, the hind, the gazelle, the rein
deer. 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 sprightli-
ness Of the restored cripple of millennial
times to the long and quick jump of the
stag, saying: 1.-The lame shall leap as
hart" Solomon expressed his disgust at
hunter who, having shot 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: II
wonder what those dogs are after" Then
there is a cracking in the brushwood,
and the loud breathing of some rushing
wonder of the woods, and the antlers Of
Il Loo - L. -..l~o
by an instinct which all hunters recog-
nize, plunges into pond or lake or river
to cool its thirst, and at the same time by
its capacity for swifter and longer swim
ming, to get away from the foaming har-
riers. David says to himself: ''Aha,
that is myself! Saul after me, Absalom
after me, enemies without number after
me, I 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 hounds! But
look there" says David, ''that reindeer
has splashed into the water. 1t puts it's
hot lips and nostrils into the cool wave
that washes the lathered TANKS, and it
swims away from the fiery CANNES, and
1t is free at last. Oh, that might find
in the Deep wide lake of God S mercy and
consolation escape from my pursuersi
Oh, for the waters of life and rescue!
As the heart panteth after the water
brooks, SO panteth my soul after thee,
o God"
I have just come from the Adiron-
dacks 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, I thought I would like
to see whether my text was accurate
in its allusion, and as I heard the dogs
baying little way off and supposed they
were on the track Of reindeer, and I
said to the hunter in rough corduroy,
"Do the deer always make for the water
when they are pursued" He said, 80,
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 Rae
quet, or Loon, or Saranac, and we get
into our cedar shell boat or stand by the
runaway with rifle loaded ready to
OLaZ0 away. WY 1TJcuUb, UulS ID Ou0
reason why like the Bible SO much
its illusions are 80 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 hun
ter's eye sparkle and his cheek glow and
his respiration quicken. To say nothing
of its usefulness, although it is the most
useful of all game, its flesh delicious, its
skin turned into human apparel, its
sinews fashioned into bow strings, its an
tiers putting handles on cutlery, and the
shavings of its horns used as restora-
tive, taken from the name of the hart
and called hartshorn. But putting aside
its usefulness, this enchanting creature
seems made out of gracefulness and elias
ITCHY. What an eye, with liquid
brightness as if gathered up from hun
bred lakes of sunset! The horns, a
coronal branching into every possible
curve, and after it seems done,
into other projections of
a tree of polished bone,
uplifted in pride, or swung down for
awful combat. 1t is velocity embodied.
impersonated. The enchant-
ment of the woods. Eye lustrous in life
and pathetic in death. The splendid ami
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