News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-11-27
AMONG The HOLY HILLS.
DR.. TALMAGE'S SERMON.

/ Continuation of the Series of Discourses
Describing the Noted Divine's Visit to
the Land of Holy writ-Great Interest
Manifested.
BROOKLYN. n. Y, Nov. 23.-The
interest in the series of sermons in
which Dr. Talmage is describing his
recent tour in Palestine, and lnculcat-
ing gospel lessons suggested by his
! theme. increases from week to week.
There was never so large a crowd at
anv one of the previous eight sermons
! rs there was today around the Brook
Ign Academy of Music in the morning
| and at The Christian Herald service in
the evening to hear the ninth sermon.
| Its subject was among the Holy
Hills, and the text Luke iv, 16: HE
came to Nazareth, where he was
brought up" Following is the sermon:
What a splendid sleep | had last
| night in q Catholic convent, my first
! sleep within doors since leaving Jeru-
| salem. and all of us as kindly treated
as though we had been the pope and
! his college of cardinals passing that
way. Last evening the genial sister
! hood of the convent ordered hundred
! bright eyed Arab children brought out
| to sing for me, and it was glorious!
| This morning | come out on the steps
of the convent and look upon the most
| beautiful village of all Palestine, Its
houses of white limestone. Guess its
name. Nazareth, historical Nazareth;
| one of the trinity of places that all
| Christian travellers must see or feel
| that they have not seen Palestine,
| namely, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, NaZa-
reth. Babyhood, boyhood, manhood
| Of him for whom | believe there are
fifty million people who would now, if
it were required, march out and die
| whether under ak, or down in the
| floods or straight through the fire.
GRAND OLD NAZARETH.
Grand old village is Nazareth, even
putting aside its sacred associations.
First of all, it is clean; and that can
be said of few of the oriental villages.
Its neighboring town of Nablous is the
hlthiest town ever saw, although its
chief industry is the manufacture of
soap. They export all of it. Nazareth
was perhaps unusually clean the morn
ing | speak Of for as we rode into the
village the afternoon before the show
ers which had put our macintoshes to
the test had poured floods through all
the alleys under command of the clouds,
those thorough street commissioners.
Besides that. Nazareth has been the
scene of battles passing it from
ISraelite to MOhammedan and from
Mohammedan to Christian, the most
wonderful of the battles being that in
which twenty-five thousand Turks were
beaten by twenty-one hundred French,
Napoleon Bonaparte commanding, that
greatest of Frenchmen walking these
very streets through which Jesus walked
for nearly thirty years, the morals of
the two, the antipodes, the SHOWS of
Russia and the plaques of Egypt APP
propriately following the one, the dox-
ologies of earth and the halleIuiahs of
heaven appropriately following the
other.
And then this town is so beautifully
situated in a great green bowl, the
sides of the bowl the surrounding fif
teen hills. The God of nature, who is
the God OF the Bible, evidently scooped
out this valley for privacy and separa-
ton from all the world during three
most important decades, the thirty
years of Christ's boyhood and youth,
for of the thirty-three years of Christ's
stay on earth he spent thirty of them
in this town getting ready-a startling
rebuke to those who have no patience
with the long years of preparation
necessary when they enter on any
special mission for the church or the
world.
The trouble is with most young men
that they want to launch their ship
from the drydock before it is ready,
and hence so many sink in the first cy-
clone. Stay in the store as subordi-
nate until you are thoroughly equipped.
Be a good employee in your trade until
you are qualified to be an employer.
Be content with Nazareth until you are
ready for the bu1fetings of Jerusalem.
Ycu may get so gloriously equipped in
the thirty years that you can do more
in three years than most men can
accomplished in a prolonged lifetime.
These little suggestions l am apt to put
into my sermon, hoping to help people
for this world, while / am chiefly anx-
ious to have them prepare for the next
world.
All Christ's boyhood was spent in
this village and its surroundings. There
is the very well called 1.-THE Fountain
of the Virgin" to which by his mothers
side he trotted along holding her hand.
No doubt about it; it is the only well
in the village, and it has been the only
well for three thousand years. This
morning we visit it, and the mothers
have their children with them now as
then Tie work of drawing water in
all ages in those countries has been
women's work. Scores of them are
waiting for their turn at it, three great
and everlasting springs rolling out into
that well, their barrels, their hogs
heads of water, in floods gloriously
abundant. The well is surrounded by
olive groves and wide spaces in which
people talk and children, wearing
charms ON their heads as protection
against the ''evil eye" are playing and
women with their strings of coin on
either side of their face. and in skirts
of blue and scarlet and white and
! green, move on with water jars on their
/ heads.
Mary, suppose, almost always took
| Jesus the boy with her, for she had no
one she could leave him with, being III
humble circumstances and having no
| attendants. | do not believe there was
one of the surrounding fifteen hills that
the boy Christ did not range from bot
tom to top, or one cavern in their sides
he did not explore, or one species of
bird flying across the tops that he could
not call by name, or one of all the
species of fauna browsing on those
sleeps that he had not recognized.
TRAINING WILL TELL
lou see IL itl through Ills serInouS'
If a man becomes q public speaker, in
his orations or discourses you discover
his early whereabouts. What a boy
sees between z and II always sticks to
him. When the apostle Peter preach
es you see the fishing nets with which
he had from his earliest days been fa-
miliar. And when Amos delivers his
prophecy you hear in it the bleating OF
the herds which he had in boyhood at