Connecticut western news., 1893-02-09
GOD IS EVERYWHERE.
DR. TALMAGE CONTINUES HIS SER- MONS ON THE BIBLE AND NATURE.

DR. TALMAGE CONTINUES HIS SER
 MONS ON THE BIBLE AND NATURE. The Bible Abounds In Reference to Fish,
 and They Are Indirectly Recommended
 For Food-why Fishermen Were Chosen
 For Apostles.
 BROOKLYN, Feb. 5.-Rev. T. De Witt Talmage this morning preached to @ great audience in the Tabernacle re- markedly interesting and eloquent ser mon on ''The Ichthyology of the Bible; or, God Among the Fishes" being a con tinuation of his series of discourses on God everywhere The text chosen was Genesis i, 20, ''And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the nov ing creature that hath life."
 What a new book the Bible isl After 88 years preaching from it and discuss ing over 1000 different subjects founded on the word of God, the book is as fresh to me as when learned, with stretch of infantile memory, the shortest verse in the Bible, "Jesus wept," and opened few weeks ago a new realm of Biblical interest that neither my pulpit nor any one else's had ever explored, and having spoken to you in this course of sermons on God everywhere concerning the "As- tronomy of the Bible; or, God Among the Stars;" the Chronology of the Bible; or, God Among the Centuries" the ''Or- anthology of the Bible; or, God Among the Birds;" the "Mineralogy of the Bi- ble; or, God Among the Amethysts," :" this morning, as I may be divinely helped, will speak to you about the ''Ichthyology of the Bible; or, God Among the Fishes"
 THE APOSTOLIC FISHERMEN.
 Our horses were lathered and tired out, and their fetlocks were red with the blood cut out by the rocks, and could hardly get my feet out of the stirrups as on Saturday night we dismounted on the beach of Lake Galilee. The rather lib eral supply of food with which we had started from Jerusalem was we'll nigh exhausted, and the articles of diet re- maining had by oft repetition three times day for three weeks ceased to appetite. Inever want to see fig again, and dates with me are all out of date. :.
 For several days the Arab caterer, who could speak but half a dozen English words, would answer our requests for some of the styles of food with which we had been delectated the first few days by crying out, Finished" The most piquant appetizer is abstinence, and the demand of all the party was, "Let us breakfast on Sunday morning on fresh fish from Lake Gennesareth," for you must know that that lake has four names, , and it is worth a profusion of nomen- clature, and it is in the Bible called Chinnereth, Tiberias, Gennesareth and Galilee.
 To our extemporized table on Sabbath morning came broiled perch, only few hours before lifted out of the sacred waters. It was natural that our minds should revert to the only breakfast that Christ ever prepared, and it was on those very shores where we breahasted Christ had in those olden times struck two dints together and set on fire some shavings or light brushwood and then put on larger wood, and pile of glow ing bright coals was the consequence.
 Meanwhile the disciples fishing On the lake had awfully "poor luck, and every time they drew up the net it hung drip ping without fluttering fin or squirm- ing scale. But Christ from the shore shouted to them and told them where to drop the net, and 153 big fish rewarded them. Simon and Nathaniel, having cleaned some of those large fish, brought them to the coals which Christ had kindled, and the group who had been out all night and were chill and wet and hungry sat down and began mastication. All that scene came back to us when on Sabbath morning, December, 1889, just outside the ruins of ancient Tiberias and within sound of the ripping Galilee, we breadasted.
 BIBLE ICHTHYOLOGY.
 Now, is it not strange that the Bible imagery is so inwrought from the fish cries when the Holy Land is, for the most part, an inland region? Only three lakes-two besides the one already men, tioned-namely, the Dead sea, where fish cannot live at all, and as soon as they touch it they die, and the birds swoop on their tiny carcasses, and the third, the Pools of Heshbon, which are alter nately full and dry. Only three rivers of the Holy Land-Jabbok, Kishon and Jor- dan.
 About all the fish now in the waters of the Holy Land are the perch, the carp, the bream, the minnow, the blenny, the barbel (so called because of the barb at its mouth), the chub, the dogfsh, none of them worth Delaware shad or an Adirondack trout. Well, the world s geography has changed, and the worlds bill of fare has changed. Lake Galilee was larger and deeper and better stocked than now, and no doubt the rivers were deeper and the fisheries were of far more importance then than now.
 Besides that, there was the Mediterra- mean sea only 35 miles away, and fish were salted or dried and brought inland, and so much of that article of food was sold in Jerusalem that fish market gave the name to one of the gates of Jerusa- lem near by, and it was called the fish gate. The cities had great reservoirs in which fish were kept alive and bred. The pool of Gibeon was a fshpool. Isaiah and Solomon refer to fishpools. Large fish were kept alive and tied fast by ropes to stake in these reservoirs, ring hav- ing been run through their gills, and that Is the meaning of the Scripture passage which says, "Canst thou put a hook into his nose or bore his jaw through with 8 thorn?
 So important was the fish that the god Dagon, worshiped by the Philistines, was made half fish and half man, and that is the meaning of the Lords indignation when in I Samuel we read that this Dagon, the fish god, stood beside the ark of the Lord, and Dagon was by invisible hands dashed to pieces because the Phil istines had dared to make the fish god That explains the Scripture passage ''The head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the thresh