Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1892-09-23
TALMAGE'SFAREWELL
PREACHED IN FAMOUS CRYS-
tai PALACE, LONDON.
Many Thousands Hear the Great AnNbri-
can Preacher-Presented with Gold
Watch la Commemoration OF His
Tour In Britain.

LONDON, Sept. 18.-The closing week
of the Rev. DIR. Talmage's preaching
tour was marked by several gatherings
which in magnitude and enthusiasm
eclipsed all that had preceded them.
DIR. Talmage addressed a great audi
ence at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham,
the largest building in the suburbs of
London. Prayer meetings invoking
the divine blessing on the services
were held in various churches the pre-
ceding Monday and Tuesday evenings.
Before the sermon, DIR. Talmage was
entertained at banquet in the large
banqueting hall of the Crystal Palace
by 100 distinguished clergymen and
laymen of every denomination, and
from every continent, even including
Australia. A vote of thanks was
moved rehearsing Dr.. Talmage's emf
nent services to God and humanity;
miles and preached in every prominent
city in Great Britain to hundreds of
thousands of eager auditora; collected
vast sums for various English benevo-
lences, and, throughout the entire tour,
paid his own expenses, not retaining
one farthing. DIR. Talmage was then
presented, in behalf of his English ad-
mirers, with a beautiful and costly
gold watch of unique design, inscribed
presented to the Rev. DR.. Talmage at
Crystal Palace, London, in common.
grafton of his preaching tour through
England, in the summer of 1892" DR..
Talmage was then escorted to the
great hall where the vote of thanks
was unanimously endorsed and ratified
by the entire audience.
He then preached his farewell SER
mon and shook hands with hundreds
at the close. This was the second SER
mon ever preached in the Crystal Pal
ace, the first having been delivered by
Pastor Sturgeon thirty-five years ago
on the Crimean war.
Permitted as l was few days ago to
attend the meeting Of the British
Scientific association, at Edinburg, l
found that no paper read had excited
more interest than that by the Rev.
DIR. McCoolx of America on the subject
of spiders. 1t seems that my talented
countryman, banished from his pulpit
for short time by ill-health, had in
the fields and forests given himself to
the study of insects. And surely if it
is not beneath the dignity of God to
make spiders, it is not beneath the
dignity of man to study them.
We are all watching for phenomena.
A sky full of stars shining from Janu-
airy to January calls out not so many
remarks as the blazing of one meteor.
A whole flock of robins take not so
much of our attention as one blunder-
| ing bat darting into the window on a
summer eve. Things of ordinary sound,
and sight, and occurrence, fail to reach
us, and yet no grasshopper ever springs
| up in our path, no moth ever dashes
into the evening candle, no mote
ever floats in the sunbeam that pours
! through the crack of the window
shutter, no barnacle on ships hull,
no burr on a chestnut, no limpet cling
| ing to a rock, no rind of an articholxe
| but would teach us lesson il we were
! not SO stupid. God in his bible
sets forth for our consideration the lily,
and the snowflake, and the locust, and
| the storlx's nest, and the kinds foot,
and the aurora borealis, and the ant
hills. One of the sacred writers, sit
ting amid the mountains, sees n hind
skipping over the rocks. The hind
has such peculiarly shaped foot that
it can go over the steepest places with
out falling, and as the prophet looks
upon that marking of the kinds foot
ON the rocks, and thinks of the divine
care over him, he says: "Thou makest
my feet like kinds feet that /
may walk on high places" And an
other sacred writer sees the ostrich
leaving its egg in the sand of the
desert, and without any care of incu-
baton, walk off; and the scripture
says, that is like some parents, leaving
their children without any wing of
protection or care. In my text, in
spiration opens before us the gate of a
palace, and we are indicted amid the
pomp of the throne and the courtier,
and while we are looking around upon
the magnifcence, inspiration points us
to spider plying its shuttle and weav-
ing its net on the wall. 1t does not
call us to regard the grand surround
ings of the palace, but to a solemn
and earnest consideration of the fact
that: "The spider taketh hold with
her hands, and is in Kings palaces"
1t is not very certain what was the
particular species of insect spoken of
in the text, but shall proceed to learn
from it the exquisiteness of the divine
mechanism. The Kings chamberlain
comes into the palace and looks around
and sees the spider on the wall, and
says: away with that intruder" and
the servant of Solomon's palace comes
with his broom and dashes down the
insect, saying: ''What a loathsome
thing it is" But under microscopic
inspection find it more wondrous of
construction than the embroideries on
the palace wall, and the upholstery
about the windows. All the machin-
cry of the earth could not make any,
! thing so delicate and beautiful as the
prehensile with which that spider
clutches its prey, or as any of its eight