Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-10-03
A HUNTED ROEBUCK.
REV. DR.. TALMAGE DRAWS A LESSON
FROM THE CHASE

Safety and Refreshment In the Wa.
tiers of Eternal Life.
xCopyright. 1893. by American Press Asso-
ciation.1
WASHINGTON, Oct 2-Dr Talmage,
drawing his illustrations from deer
hunt, in this discourse calls all the pur-
sued and troubled of the earth to come
and slake their thirst at the deed river
OF divine comfort; text, Psalms xiii, /,
~tAs the hart panteth after the water
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee,
o Cod
David, who must some time have seen
a deer hunt, points US here to hunted
stag making for the water. The fasci-
mating animal called in my text the hart
is the same animal that in sacred and
profane literature is called the stag, the
roebuck, the hind, the gazelle, the rein
deer. In central Syria, in Bible times,
there were whole pasture fields of them,
as Solomon suggests when he says, 81
charge you by the kinds of the field. :"
Their antlers jutted from the long grass
as they lay down. No hunter who has
been long in "John Browns tract
will wonder that in the Bible they were
classed among clean animals, for the
dews, the showers, the lakes, washed
them as clean as the sky. When Isaac
the patriarch. longed for venison, Esau
shot and brought home a roebuck. Isaiah
compares the sprightliness of the re-
stored cripple Of milIennial times to the
long and quick jump of the stag, say
ing, "The lame shall leap as the hart. :"
Solomon expressed his disgust at hunt
er who, having shot deer, is too lazy
TO cook it, saying, "The slothful man
roasteth not that which he took in
hunting
But one day David, while far from the
home from which he had been driven,
and sitting near the mouth of lonely
cave where he had lodged, and on the
banks of pond or river, hears pack
of hounds in swift pursuit. Because of
the previous silence of the forest the
clangor startles him, and he says to
himself, 81 wonder what those dogs are
AFTER Then there is a cracking in
the brushwood, and the loud breathing
of some rushing wonder of the woods
and the antlers of deer rend the leaves
OF the thiclzet and by an instinct which
all hunters recognize the creature
plunges into a pool or lake or river to
cool it's thirst and at the same time by
its capacity for swifter and longer
swimming to get away from the foam
ing barriers. David says to himself:
f'Aha, that is myself! Saul after me,
AbSalOm after me, enemies without
number after me; am chased; their
bloody muzzles at my heels, barking at
my good name, barking after my body,
barking after my soul. Oh, the hounds,
the hounds! But look there says Da-
vid to himself; "that reindeer has
splashed into the water. 1t puts it's hot
lips and nostrils into the cool wave that
washes it's lathered TANKS and it swims
away from the fiery CANNES and it is
free at last. Oh, that L might find in
the deep, wide lake of Gods mercy and
consolation escape from my pursuers
Oh, for the waters of life and rescue!
<As the hart .panteth after the water
brooks, SO panteth my soul after thee,
o God.
The Bible True to Nature.
The Adirondacks are now populous
with hunters, and the deer are being
slain by the score. Talking one summer
with a hunter, I thought would like
to see whether my text was accurate in
its allusion, and as heard the dogs bay
ing little way off and supposed they
were on the track of deer, I said to
one of the hunters in rough corduroy,
-tDo the deer always make for water
when they are pursued?' He said: "Oh,
yes, mister. You see they are hot and
thirsty animal, and they know where
the water is, and when they hear dam
ger in the distance they lift their ant
1ers and sniff the breeze and start for
the Raquet or Loon or Saranac, and we
get into our cedar shell boat or stand
by the runaway with rifle loaded and
ready to blaze away"
My friends, that is one reason why
like the Bible SO much-its illusions
are SO true to nature. Its cartridges are
real partridges its ostriches zeal ostrich
es and its reindeer real reindeer. I do
not wonder that this antlered glory of
the text makes the hunters eye sparkle
and his cheek glow and his respiration
quicken. To say nothing of its useful
ness, although it is the most useful of
all game, it's flesh delicious, it's skin
turned into human apparel, its sinews
fashioned into bowstrings, its antlers
putting handles on cutlery and the
shavings of it's horn used as pungent
restorative, the name taken from the
hart and called hartshorn. But putting
aside its usefulness, this enchanting
creature seems made out of gracefulness-
and elasticity. What an eye, with liq-
uid brightness as if gathered up from
hundred lakes at sunset! The horns, a
coronal branching into every possible
curve, and after it seems complete as
Gending into other projections of ex-
quisiteness, tree of polished bone, up
lifted in pride or swung down for awful
cnmhat The hart Is velocity embodied: