News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-11-20
Through Palestine.
DIR. TALMAGE'S THRILLING AC-
COUNT OF BIBLE SCENES.

EbaI and Gerizfm and the Mighty Opera
of Blessing and Curses Once Recited
There-The Valley of wars-The Great
Battle to BE Fought There.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 16.-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 came later were I'M
able to get in. DR.. Talmage's subject
was among the Bedouins, and his
text Mum. Y, 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 a 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
same kind took their places. Noah
lived in q 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 n tent the woman Jael
nailed Sisera, the general, to the
ground, first having given him sour
milk, called 'leben," as a soporiffc to
make him sleep soundly, 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 tentnaker Indeed. Isaiah,
magnifcently poetic, indicates that all
the human race live under blue tent
when he says that God ''stretcheth out
the heavens as q curtain, and spread
eth them out as tent to dwell in"
and Hezekiah compares death to the
striking of q tent, saying, My age is
removed from me as n shepherd tent.
In our tent in Palestine tonight |
hear something l never heard before
and hope never to hear again. 1t is
the voice of hyena amid the rocks
near by. When you may have seen
this monster putting his mouth be-
tween the iron bars of a menagerie he
is a captive and he gives Inundated
and suppressed cry. But yonder in
the midnight on n throne of rocks he
has nothing to fear, and he utteTs him.
self in a loud, resounding, terrific, al
most supernatural sound, splitting up
the darkness into q deeper midnight.
It 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
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 a wire thread
reaching from Joppa to Jerusalem and
from Jerusalem to Nazareth and from
Nazareth to Liberals and from Liberals
to Damascus, that one nerve of civil
cation, the telegraphic wire Qor we
found ourselves only a 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 4 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. Ali, 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 hundred years
Ali, that explains what David meant
when he said, Thy youth is renewed
like the eagles"
saw shepherd with the folds of
his coat far bent outward, and | won
dered what was contained in that am
plitude of apparel, and | said to the
dragoman, What has that shepherd
got under his coatF' 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 shepherds
bosom, and / said, There it is now,
Isaiah's description of the tenderness of
God-'He shall gather the lambs with
his arm and carry them in his BOSOM"
Passing by a village home in the
Holy Land about noon | saw a great
crowd in and around a private house,
and | said to the dragoman: David,
what is going on there" He said:
Somebody has recently died there,
and their neighbors go in for several
days after to sit down and weep with
the bereaved." There it is, said, the
old scriptural custom: ''And many of
the Jews came to Martha and Mary to
comfort them concerning their brother"
Early in the morning, passing by Gem
etery in the Holy Land, | saw among
the graves about fifty women dress
ed in black, and they were crying
''Oh, nay childr '0h, my husband!"
"Oh, my fatherl" "Oh, my motherl"
Our dragoman told US that every morn
ing very early for three mornings after
a burial the women go to the sepul-
cher, and after that every week very
early for year. As | saw this group
just after daybreak l said, There it is
again, the same old custom referred to
in Luke, the Evangelist. where he says,
Certain women which were early at
the sepulcher.
WHERE JACOB DIGGED WELL.
But here we found ourselves at
Jacobs well, the most famous well in
history, most distinguished for two
things, because it belonged to the old
patriarch after whom it was named,
and for the wonderful things which
Christ said, seated on this well curb, to
the Samaritan woman. We dismount
from our horses in a drilling rain, and
Il IL L