Connecticut western news., 1890-12-10
TABERNACLE PULPIT.
DR. TALMAGE BREACHES A SERMON
 ON DAMASCUS.

pR. TALMAGE BREACHES A SERMON
 ON DAMASCUS.
 cient One-One Good in Mohammedan-
 ism-The Blindness of Paul Is Not
 Greater Than Somo Modern Blindness.
 BROOKLYN, Dec. 7.-The New York Academy of Music was filled with an audience of nearly six thousand per sons at The Christian Herald service this evening, when Dr. Talmage deliv- cred the eleventh sermon of his series on Palestine and the adjoining coun- tries This same sermon, as on pre- vious Sundays, had been preached in the morning to another large audience in the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The subject was Damascus, and the text, "As he journeyed he came near Damascus" Acts ix, 3. Dr. Talmags said:
 In Palestine we spent last night in a mud hovel of one story, but camels and sheep in the basement. Yet never did the most brilliant hotel on any con- tinent seem so attractive to me as that structure. If we had been obliged to stay in tent, as we expected to do that night, we must have perished. A vio- lent storm had opened upon us it's vol leys of hail and snow and rain and wind as if to let us know what the Bible means when prophet and evan gelist and Christ himself spoke of the fury of the elements. The atmos- pheric wrath broke upon us about 1 o'clock in the afternoon and we were until night exposed to it. With hands and feet benumbed and our bodies chilled to the bone, we made our slow way, while high up on the rocks, and the gale blowing the hardest, signal of distress halted the party, for down in the ravines one of the horses had fallen, and his rider must not be left alone amid that wildness of scenery and horror of storm. As the night ap- preached the tempest thickened and blackened and strengthened. Some o1 our attendants, going ahead, had gain ed permission for us to halt for the night in the mud hovel I speak of Our first duty on arrival was the re- suscitation of the exhausted of ou, party. My room was without win dow, and an iron stove without any top in the center of the room, the smoke selecting my eyes in the absence of a chimney. Through an opening ir the floor Arab faces were several times thrust up to see how was progressing But the tempest ceased during the night, and before it was fully day we were feeling for the stirrups of our sad dled horses, this being the day whose long march will bring us to that city whose name cannot be pronounced il the hearing of the intelligent or the Christian without making the blood tt jingle and the nerves to thrill, and put ting the best emotions of the soul into agitation
 During the day we passed Cesares Philippi, the northern terminus O. Christ's journeyings North of that hs | never went We lunch at noon, seated on the fallen columns of one of Herod' palaces.
 IN SIGHT OF DAMASCUS.
 At o'clock in the afternoon, coming to a hilltop, we saw on the broad plai1 l city, which the most famous came l driver of all time, afterward called Mohammed, the prophet and thu founder of the most stupendous sys tenn of error that has ever cursed thu earth, refused to enter because he sait | God would allow man to enter but on, paradise, and he would not enter thi earthly paradise lest he should be de nied entrance to the heavenly. Blu no city that I ever saw so plays hid
 and seek with the traveller. The air i so clear that the distant objects seen close by. You come on the top of
 hill and Damascus seems only a littl
 way off. But down you go into val
 ley, and you see nothing for the nex
 half hour but barrenness and rocks re
 gurgitated by the volcanoes of othe
 ages Up another hill and down again
 Up again and down again. But afte
 your patience is almost exhausted yo'
 reach the last hilltop, and the city o
 Damascus, the oldest city under tn ! whole heavens and built by Noah | grandson, grows upon your vision | Every mile of the journey now be | comes more solemn and suggestive an'
 tremendous
 | This is the very road, for it has beel
 the only road for thousands of years
 the road from Jerusalem to Damascus \ along which a cavalcade of mounted
 officers went, about 1854 years ago
 in the midst of them a fierce little mal
 who made up by magnitude of hatre ! for Christianity for his diminutive stat
 ure, and was the leading spirit and
 though suffering from chrulic intiam , nation of the eyes, from those eye
 flashed more indignation agains
 Christ's followers than any one of tn
 hocsed procession. This little man
 before bis name was changed to Pau
 was called Saul. So many of tn
 mightiest natures of all ages are COT
 densed into smallness of stature.
 The Frenchman who was sometime
 called by his troops "Old One Hundre Thousand, :" was often because of his al
 breviated personal presence styled Lii tie Nap" Lord Nelson, with insignit
 cant stature to start with, and one ey put out at Calvi and his right arm take off at Teneriffc, proves himself at Trs
 falgar the mightiest hero of the E1 ' ,1;e%, pouy TTb, oraatast Of Amer