The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-10-20
THE HUNTS LESSONS.
DR.. Talmage breaches Upon the
Subject of the Chase.
The Gospel as n Refreshment Graph
IcaIIy Set Forth-RefuEe I'm Gods
Word for Those Pursued
by Trials.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1s99)
WaShiDptCn


hunters to find game in the mountains
Text, Psalm 42:1, ''As the hart pantetI
after the water brooks
David, who must some time have seen
a deer hunt, points us here to hunted
stag making for the water. The fas.
cinating 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
reindeer. In central Syria in Bible
times there were whole pasture fields
of them, as Solomon suggests when he
says: Il 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 restored cripple of millennial times
TO the long and quick jump of the stag,
saying: The lame shall leap as the
hart" Solomon expressed his disgust
at a hunter who, having shot deer, is
too lazy to cook it, saying: "The sloth-
full man roasteth not that which he took
in hunting"
But oneday 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 a 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: Il wonder what those dogs
are after?" Then there is a cracking
in the brushwood and the loud breath
ing of some rushing wonder of the
woods, and the antlers of deer rend
the leaves of the thicket, and by an in
stinct which all hunters recognize it
plunges into a pond or lake or river TO
cool its 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: "Aha! That is
myself! Saul after me, Absalom after
Ill., GutllltS NIlLOul uuUlDGT dlleI Ile.
l 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 David. THAT
hunted deer has splashed into the wa
ter. 1t puts its hot lips and nOstrils into
the cool wave that washes the lathered
fanks, and it swims away from the
fiery CANNES, and it is free at last. Oh,
that 1 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!"
Some of you have just come from the
and the breath of the
balsam and spruce and pine is still on
you. The Adirondacks are now popu-
ous with hunters, and the deer are be-
ing slain by the score. Once while there
talking with hunter / thought would
ike to see whether my text was accu-
-ate in its allusion, and as l heard the
logs baying a little way off and sup
posed they were on the tracks of deer,
said to the hunter in rough cordu-
roy: ''Do the deer always make for
he water when they are pursued?" He
aid: "Oh, yes, mister. You see, they
ire a hot and thirsty animal, and they.
NOW where the water is, and when
hey hear danger in the distance they
lift their antlers and snuff the breeze
md start for Racquet or Loon or Sar-
mac, and we get into our cedar shell
'oat or stand by the runway with rifle
Oaded ready to blaze away"
Ny friends, that is one reason why / |
Ike the Bible so much. It's allusions are
o true to nature. It's partridges are real |
its ostriches real ostriches |
nd its reindeer real reindeer. 1 do not |
Wonder that this antlered glory of the |
ext makes the hunters eye sparkle and |
is cheek glow and his respiration |
uicken, to say nothing of its useful
ess, although it is the most useful of |
II game, its flesh delicious, its skin
urned into human wearing apparel, its
news fashioned into bow strings, its
ntlers putting handles on cutlery and
De shavings of its horns used as a re-
torative, its name taken from the hart
nd called hartshorn. By putting aside
s usefulness this enchanting crea-
IRE seems made out of gracefulness
nd elasticity. What an eye, with a
quid brightness as if gathered up from
hundred lakes at sunset! The horns
coronal branching into every possible
Irve, and, after it seems done, ascend
g into other projections of exquisite
ass, tree of polished bone, uplifted
! pride or swung down for awful COM
at! 1t is velocity embodied, timidity
npersonated, the enchantment of the
oods, eye lustrous in life and pathetic
death, the splendid animal complete
lythm of muscle and bone and color
nd attitude and locomotion, whether
'uched in the grass among the shad-
VS. of living bolt shot through the
rest or turning at bay to attack the
1unds or rearing for its last fall under
e buckshot of the trapper.
1t is a splendid appearance, that the
linter's pencil fails to sketch and only
hunters dream on a pillow of hemlock {
the foot of st. Regis is able to picture.
hen 20 miles from any settlement, il {
mes down at eventide to the lakes
ge TO drink among the ilypods, and ;