The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1890-11-20
THROUGH PALESTINE.
Or. TALMAGe'S THRILLING ACCOUNT
OF BIBLE SCENES.


of Blessing and Curses Once Recited
There-The Valley OF wars-The Great
Battle to he Fought There.
BROOKLYN, Nov, l6.-This morning
in the Academy of Music in this city,
and this evening at The Christian Her
aid service in the New York Academy
of Music, DR., Talmage preached the
eighth of the series of sermons he is
giving on his tour in Palestine. AT
both services the respective buildings
were crowded to the utmost capacity in
five minutes after the doors were open,
ed, and all who care later were I'M
able to get in. DR.. Talmage's subject
was among the Bedouins," and his
text Mum. x, 81: "Forasmuch as thou
knowest how we are to encamp in the
Wilderness"
Night after night we have slept in
tent in Palestine. There are large vii
lagos of Bedouins without house, and
for three thousand years the people of
those places have lived in black tents,
made out Of dyed skins, and when the
winds and storms wore out and tore
loose those coverings others of the
siune kind took their places Noah
lived in tent; Abraham in a tent
Jacob pitched his tent on the mount
ain. Isaac pitched his tent in the val
ley, Lot pitched his tent toward
Sodom. In a tent the woman Jael
nailed Sisora, the general, to the
ground, first having given him sour
milk, called ''leben," as soporiiic to
make him sleep sountly, that being the
effect of such nutrition, as modern
travellers can testify. The Syrian army
in a tent. The ancient battle shout
was, ITO your tents, o Israeli Paul
was a tentlnaker. Indeed, Isaiah,
magnificently poetic. indicates that all
the human race live under blue tent
when he says that God ''stretcheth out
the heavens rs a curtain, and spread
eth them out as tent to dwell in"
and Hezekiah compares death to the
striking of a tent, saying, my age is
removed f"om me as shepherds tent"
In our tent in Palestine tonight |
hear something | never heard before
and hope never to hear again. 1t is
the voice of u hyena amid the rocks
near by. When you may have seen
this monster putting his mouth be
tween the iron bars of menagerie he
is captive and he gives a Inundated
and suppressed cry, But yonder in
the midnight on throne of rocks he
has nothing 10 fear, and he utters him
self in "a loud, resounding, terrific, al
most supernatural sound, splitting up
the darkness into deeper midnight
1t begins with howl and ends with a
sound something like horses whin-
ing. In the hyena's voice are defiance
and strength and blood thirstiness and
crunch of broken bones and death.
THE TELEGRAPH IN PALESTINE.
l am glad to say that for the most
part Palestine is clear of beasts of prey.
The leopards, which jeremiah says
cannot change their spots, have all dis
appeared, and the lions that once were
common all through this land, and
used by all the prophets for illustra-.
tons of cruelty and wrath, have re-
treated before the discharges of gun
powder, of which they have an in
describable fear But for the most
part Palestine is what it originally was.
With the one exception of wire thread
reaching from Joppa to Jerusalem and
from Jerusalem to Nazareth and from
Nazareth to Tiberias and from Tiberias
to Damascus, that one nerve of civil
zation, the Geographic wire for we
found ourselves only few minutes off
from Brooklyn and New York while
standing by Lake Galilee), with that
one exception Palestine is just as it al
ways was.
Nothing surprised ME so much as the
persistence of everything. A sheep or
horse falls dead, and though the sky
may one minute before be clear of all
wings in five minutes after the skies
are black with eagles cawing, screaming,
plunging, fighting for room, contend
ing for largest morsels of the extinct
quadruped. All, now | understand
the force of Christ's illustration when
he said, 'Wheresoever the carcass is
there will the eagles be gathered
together" The longevity of those
eagles is wonderful They live fifty or
sixty and sometimes a hundred years.
All, that explains what David meant
when he said, ''Thy youth is renewed
like the.eagle's."
saw shepherd with the folds of
his coat far bent outward, and | won
dered what was contained in that am
plitude of apparel, and l said to the
dragoman, What has that shepherd
got under his coat" And the drago-
man said, 1T is a very young lamb he is
carrying; it is too young and too weak
and too cold to keep up with the flock
AT that moment saw the lamb put its
head out from under the shepherd S
bosom, and l said, There it is now,
Isaiahs description of the tenderness of
| God-'He shall gather the lambs with
his arm and carry them in his BOSOM +"
Passing by village home in the
Holy Land about noon saw great
crowd in and around private house,
and | said to the dragoman: "David,
what is going on there's" He said
Somebody has recently died there,
and their ncighbors go in for several
days after to sit down and weep with
the bereavcd." There it is, said, the
old scriptur2l custom: And many of
the Jews came to Martha and Mary to
comfort thciu concerning their brother.
Early in the morning, passing by cen-
etery in the Holy Land, saw among
| tie graves about fifty women dress
ed in black, and they were crying
ooh, my childp' "Oh, my husband"
''Oh, my father!' ''Oh, my motherln
Our dragoman told us that every morn
ing very early for three mornings after
burial the women go to the sepul-
! II,