Connecticut western news., 1890-12-17
CEDARS OF LEBANON.
DR. TALMAGE'S TWELFTH SERMON
 ON THE HOLY LAND.

ON THE HOLY LAND.
 A Hundred Thousand Axmen Mastered
 the Great Forest, but . Few Trees Still Attest Its MaEnihcence-Whyt the He-
 brew Poets Often Referred to the Cedars.
 BROOKLYN, Dec. 14-Today Dr. Tal- mage preached the twelfth sermon of his series on Palestine and the adjoin ing countries After delivering it in the morning in the Academy of Music in this city, he preached it again in the evening in New York, at the service held under the auspices of The Chris tian Herald. Before commencing bis sermon Dr. Talmage stated that in spite of all the efforts that were being put forth to hasten the completion of his new Tabernacle, the work was on so magnificent scale, and the neces- sity for care in it's construction so i'm perative, that judging by present indi- cations it would not be ready for dedi- cation before Easter.
 He was happy to say, however, that the hospitality of The Christian Herald, through which these Sunday evening services in New York had been held, would be continued, and the publisher of that journal had already secured an extension of the lease of the Academy of Music He would therefore be able to hold services there every Sunday evening until the new Tabernacle was finished
 Owing to the inclemency. of the weather he would discontinue the cus- tom of giving an address out of doors after the regular exercises to the crowd of people who had been unable to gain admission to the Academy, but the publisher of The Christian Herald was endeavoring to obtain the use of church or public building in the neighborhood in which an overflow ser vice could be held. Dr. Talmage then announced as his text Psalms civ, 16, ''The cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted" and preached the following sermon:
 In our journey we change stirrup for wheel It is o'clock in the morning at Damascus, Syria, and we are among the lanterns of the .hostelry waiting for the stage to start. A Mohammedan in high life is putting his three wives on board within an apartment by them selves, and our party occupy the main apartment of one of the most uncom fortable vehicles in which mortals were ever damned and half strangulated. But we must not let the discomforts annul or disparage the opportunities We are rolling on and out and up the mountains of Lebanon, their forehead under a crown of snow, which coronet the fingers of the hottest summer can not cast down.
 We are ascending heights around which is garlanded much of the finest poesy of the Scriptures, and are rising toward the mightiest dominion that botany ever recognized, reigned over by the most imperial tree that ever swayed leafy scepter-the Lebanon cedar; tree eulogized in my text as having grown from a nut put into the ground by God himself, and no human hand had anything to do with it's 1u0 CT0&3S C1 AoB2auOu Wu1Cu he hath planted" THE ARBOREsCENT GIANTS. The average height of this mountain is seven thousand feet, but in one place it lifts it's head to an altitude of ten thousand. No higher than six thou sand feet can vegetation exist, but be low that line at the right season are vineyards and orchards and olive groves and flowers that dash the mountain side with very carnage of color, and fill the air with aromatics that the inspired prophet Hosea, and brated as ''the smell of Lebanon" At 8 height of six thousand feet is grove of cedars, the only descendants of those forests from which Solomon cut timber for the temple, and where at one time there were one hundred thousand az- men hewing out the beams from which great cities were constructed.
 But this nation of trees has by hu- man iconoclasm been massacred until only small group is left. This racs of giants is nearly extinct, but doubtless some of these were here when Hiram, king of Tyre, whence purple came, or dered the destruction of those cedars of Lebanon which the Lord planted. Fron the multitude of uses to which it may be put and the employment of it in the Scriptures the cedar is the divine favorite. When the plains to be seen from the window of this stage in which we ride today are parched under sum- mer heats and not 8 grass blade sur wives the fervidity, this tree stands in luxuriance, defying the summer sun. And when the storms of winter ter rify the earth, and hurl the rocks in avalanche down this mountain side, this tree grapples the hurricane of snow in triumph. and leaves the spent fury at its feet From sixty to eighty feet high are they, the horizontal branches of great sweep with their burden of leaves needle shaped, the top of the tree pyramidal, a throne of foliage on I which might and splenaor and glory sit. But so continuously has the ex- termination of trees gone on, that for the most part the mountains of Leb-
 anon are bare of foliage, while, I am
 sorry to say, the earth in all lands is
 being likewise denuded.
 The ax is staying the forests all round
 the earth. To stop the slaughter God
 opened the coal mines of England and
 Scotland and America and the world,
 practically saying by that, 'sHere is
 fuel; as far as possible lot my trees
 alone" And by opening for the human
 race ti, great quarries of granite and
 showing the human family how to
 make brick God Is practically saying,