Connecticut western news., 1890-11-19
THROUGH PALESTINE.
OR. TALMAGE'S THRILLING ACCOUNT
 OF BIBLE SCENES.

Ebal and Gerizim 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 ald 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 un-e able to get in. Dr. Talmage's subject was "Among the Bedouins," !" and his text Mum. X, 31: "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 viii lages 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 a 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 tent the woman Jael nailed Sisera, the general, to the ground, first having given him sour milk, called '1eben," as a soporifc 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, ''To your tents, o Israeli" Paul was tentlnaker. Indeed, Isaiah, magnifcently poetic. indicates that all the human race live under blue tent when he says that God "stretcheth out the heavens as 8 curtain, and spread eth them out as tent to dwell in;" and Hezekiah compares death to the striking of 8 tent, saying, My age is removed from me as a shepherds tent. :" In our tent in Palestine tonight I hear something I never heard before and hope never to hear again. It 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 captive and he gives a humiliated and suppressed cry. But wonder in the midnight on 8 throne of rocks he has nothing to fear, and he utters him. self in a loud, resounding, terrific, al most supernatural sound, splitting up the darkness into 8 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.
 I 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- tions 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 Tberias and from Tiberias to Damascus, that one nerve of civili- zation, the telegraphic wire for 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. 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 l 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 An, that explains what David meant when he said, "Thy youth is renewed like the eagles"
 I saw shepherd with the folds of bis coat far bent outward, and I won dered what was contained in that am- plitude of apparel, and I said to the dragoman, "What has that shepherd got under his coat?'' And the drago- man said, "It is a very young lamb he is carrying; it is too young and too weak and too cold to keep up with the flock. J l At that moment saw the lamb put its head out from under the shepherds bosom, and I said, There it is now, | Isaiah's description of the tenderness ot 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 I saw @ 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 ncighbors go in for several days after to sit down and weep with the bereaved" There it is said, the old scrptural custom: And many ot the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. J
 Early in the morning, passing by a cem- etery in the Holy Land, 1 saw among the graves about fifty women dress ed in black, and they were crying
 "Oh, my childr' "Oh, my husband p l NOh lnu fntl,o,.iD .tOil nAN ln0thar D'