The enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 188?-1899, 1890-11-19
AMONG THE BEDOUINS." !"
Rev. T. Dewitt Talmage's Eighth
Sermon on His Palestine Tour.
Evidences on Every Hand Showing the
GenuIneness OF tho illustrations
Used In the MISUNDERSTANDING
Jacobs Well and tho Famous
Plain OF Esdraslon.

rs thou knowest how we are to encamp
In the wilder ness" The eloquent
preacher spoke as follows:
Night after night we have slept in
tents in Palestine. There are large
villages 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 these coverings, others Of the
same kind took their places Noah
lived in tent Abraham in q tent
Jacob pitched his tent on the mountain.
Isaac pitched his tent In the valley. Lot
pitched his tent toward Sodom. In q
tent the woman Jael nailed Sisera, the
general, to the ground, first having CIV
on him sour milk called ''leben" as Q
soporific to make him soundly sleep,
that being the effect Of such nutrition,
as modern travellers can testify. The
Syrian army in . tent The ancient
battle-shout was 'To your tents, o
Israelv' Paul was a tent-maker. In
deed, Isaiah, magnifcently poetic, in
dicates that all the human race live un-
der blue tent when he says that God
'etretcheth out the heavens as curtain
and spreadeth them out as tent to
dwell in," and Hezekiah compares death
to the striking Of tont, saying; "My
age Is removed from me as q shepherds
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 tn between the
iron bars Of menagerie, he is captive
and gives h umiliated and suppressed
cry. But yonder In the midnight on
throne Of rocks he has nothing to fear,
and he utters himself in loud, resound-
ing, terrific almost supernatural sound,
splitting up the darkness into deeper
midnight 1t begins with a howl and
ends with q sound something like q
horses whining. In the hyena's voice
are defiance and strength and blood
thirstiness and crunch OF broken bones
and death.
l am glad to say that for the most part
Palestine is clear OF beasts OF prey. The
leopards, which Jeremiah says can not
change their spots, have all disappeared
and the lions that once were common
all through this land and used by all
the prophets for illustrations Of cruelty
and wrath, have retreated before the
discharges OF gunpowder of which they
have an indescribable 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
civilization the telegraphic wire (fos
we found ourselves only few minutes
of from Brooklyn and New York while
standing by Lake Galilee) with that
one exception, Palestine is just as 1t
always was.
Nothing surprises 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, scream
ing, plunging, fighting for room, con-
tending for largest morsels OF tho ex-
tinct quadruped. Ah, now | understand
the force OF Christ's illustration when
he said: "Wheresoever the carcass is
there will the eagles be gathered to-
gether." 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 says, "Thy youth is renewed like
the eagles" saw a shepherd with tho
folds Of his coat far bent outward and I
wondered what was contained In that
amplitude Of apparel and said to the
dragoman, What has that shepherd got
under his coat?" And the dragoman
said: 'It is very young lamb he IS
carrying, 1t is too young and too weak
and too cold to keep up with tho flock.",
At that moment saw the lamb put its
head out from the shepherds bosom,
and said: "There IL is now, Isaiah's
description Of the tenderness OF God
'Ho shall gather the lambs with his
arms, 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
10 the dragoman: David, what Is going
on there2" He said: Somebody has
died there, and their neighbors
70 In for several days after TO sit down
and weep with the bereaved." There II
Is, / said, the old scriptural custom:
And many Of the jews came TO Martha
md Mary to comfort them concerning
heir brother" Early In the morning
passing by q cemetery in the Holy Land
saw among the graves about ffty wo-
men dressed In black, and they we're
,rying: 10, my childr 10, my husbandl"
70, my fatherl' 10, my motherr Our
iragoman told US that every morning
very early for three mornings after q bur
al, the women 90 to tho sepulcher, and
after tat every week very early for q
Gear As l saw this group just after
iaybreak said: there II is again, the
Iamo old custom referred TO in Luke.
he evangelist where he says: Certain
women which we're early at the sepul-
,her."
But here we found ourselves at Ja-
obs we'll, the most famous we'll in his
,ory, most distinguish. d for two things,
because II belonged 10 the old patriarch
'fter whom II was named, and for the
wonderful things which Christ said,
Ieated on this we'll curb, to the Samari-
an woman. We dismount from our
,orses in driszling rain, and our drago-
nan climbing up to tho we'll over the |
a a. ...1 Il