187. The Deer Hunt

The Deer Hunt

Psa_42:1 : ’93As the hart panteth after the water brooks.’94

David, who must some time have seen a deer hunt, points us here to a hunted stag on the way to the water. The fascinating 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: ’93I charge you by the hinds of the field.’94 Their antlers jutted from the long grass as they lay down. No hunter who has been long in ’93John Brown’92s tract’94 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, ’93Then shall the lame man leap as a hart.’94 Solomon expressed his disgust at a hunter who, having shot a deer, is too lazy to cook it, saying: ’93The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting.’94 But one day David, while far from the home from which he had been driven, and sitting near the mouth of a lonely cave where he had lodged, and on the banks of a pond or river, hears a pack of hounds in swift pursuit. Because of the previous silence of the forest the clangor startles him, and he says to himself: ’93I wonder what those dogs are after!’94 Then there is a crackling in the brushwood, and the loud breathing of some rushing wonder of the woods, and the antlers of a deer rend the leaves of the thicket, and by an instinct which all hunters recognize, 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 foaming harriers. David says to himself: ’93Aha, that is myself! Saul after me, Absalom after me, enemies without number after me; I 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,’94 says David, ’93that reindeer has splashed into the water. It puts its hot lips and nostrils into the cool wave that washes the lathered flanks, and it swims away from the fiery canines, and it is free at last. Oh, that I might find in the deep, wide lake of God’92s 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.’94

I have just come from the Adirondacks, and the breath of the balsam and spruce and pine is still on me. The Adirondacks are now populous with hunters, and the deer are being slain by the score. Talking a few days ago with a hunter, I thought I would like to see whether my text was accurate in its allusion, and as I heard the dogs baying a little way off, and supposed they were on the track of a deer, I said to the hunter in rough corduroy: ’93Do the deer always start for the water when they are pursued?’94 He said: ’93Oh, yes, mister; you see they are a hot and thirsty animal, and they know where the water is, and when they hear danger in the distance, they lift their antlers and snuff the breeze and start for Racquet or Loon or Saranac; and we get into our cedar shell boat or stand by the runway with rifle loaded ready to blaze away.’94

My friends, that is one reason why I like the Bible so much’97its allusions are so true to nature. Its partridges are real partridges, its ostriches real ostriches, and its reindeer real reindeer. I do not wonder that this antlered glory of the text makes the hunter’92s eye sparkle, and his cheek glow, and his respiration quicken. To say nothing of its usefulness, although it is the most useful of all game, its flesh delicious, its skin turned into human apparel, its sinews fashioned into bow-strings, its antlers putting handles on cutlery, and the shavings of its horns, used as a restorative, its 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 a liquid brightness as if gathered up from a hundred lakes at sunset! The horns, a coronal branching into every possible curve, and after it seems done, ascending into other projections of exquisiteness, a tree of polished bone, uplifted in pride, or swung down for awful combat. It is velocity embodied. Timidity impersonated. The enchantment of the woods. Eye lustrous in life and pathetic in death. The splendid animal a complete rhythm of muscle and bone and color and attitude and locomotion whether crouched in the grass among the shadows, or a living bolt shot through the forest, or turning at bay to attack the hounds, or rearing for its last fall under the buckshot of the trapper.

It is a splendid appearance, that the painter’92s pencil fails to sketch, and only a hunter’92s dream on a pillow of hemlock at the foot of St. Regis is able to picture. When, twenty miles from any settlement, it comes down at eventide to the lake’92s edge, to drink among the lily-pods, and with its sharp-edged hoof, shatters the crystal of Long Lake, it is very picturesque. But only when, after miles of pursuit, with heaving sides and lolling tongue and eyes swimming in death, the stag leaps from the cliff into Upper Saranac, can you realize how much David had suffered from his troubles, and how much he wanted God when he expressed himself in the words: ’93As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.’94

Well, now, let all those who have coming after them the lean hounds of poverty, or the black hounds of persecution, or the spotted hounds of vicissitudes, or the pale hounds of death, or who are in anywise pursued, run to the wide, deep, glorious lake of divine solace and rescue. Most of the men and women whom I happen to have known at different times, if not now, have had troubles, after them, sharp-muzzled troubles, swift troubles, all-devouring troubles. Many of you have made the mistake of trying to fight them. Somebody meanly attacked you, and you attacked them; they depreciated you, and you depreciated them; or they overreached you in a bargain, and you tried, in Wall street parlance, to get a corner on them; or you have had a bereavement, and instead of being submissive, you are fighting that bereavement; you charge on the doctors who have failed to effect a cure; or you charge on the carelessness of the railroad company through which the accident occurred; or you are a chronic invalid, and you fret and worry and scold, and wonder why you cannot be well like other people, and you angrily charge on the neuralgia or the laryngitis or the ague or the sick headache. The fact is, you are a deer at bay. Instead of running to the waters of divine consolation, and slaking your thirst, and cooling your body and soul in the good cheer of the Gos-pel, and swimming way into the mighty deeps of God’92s love, you are fighting a whole kennel of harriers.

A few days ago I saw in the Adirondacks a dog lying across the road, and he seemed unable to get up, and I said to some hunters: ’93What is the matter with that dog?’94 They answered: ’93A deer hurt him.’94 And I saw that he had a great swollen paw and a battered head, showing the antlers struck him. And the probability is that some of you might give a mighty clip to your pursuers; you might damage their business, you might worry them into ill-health, you might hurt them as much as they have hurt you; but, after all, it is not worth while. You only have hurt a hound. Better be off for the Upper Saranac, into which the mountains of God’92s eternal strength look down and moor their shadows. As for your physical disorders, the worst strychnine you can take is fretfulness, and the best medicine is religion. I know people who were only a little disordered, yet have fretted themselves into complete valetudinarianism, while others put their trust in God, and came up from the very shadow of death, and have lived comfortably twenty-five years with only one lung. A man with one lung, but God with him, is better off than a Godless man with two lungs. Some of you have been for a long time sailing around Cape Fear, when you ought to have been sailing around Cape Good Hope. Do not turn back, but go ahead. The deer will accomplish more with its swift feet than with its horns. I saw whole chains of lakes in the Adirondacks, and from one height you can see thirty lakes; and there are said to be over eight hundred in the great wilderness. So near are they to each other that your mountain guide picks up and carries the boat from lake to lake, the small distance between them for that reason called a ’93carry.’94 And the realm of God’92s world is one long chain of bright, refreshing lakes; each promise a lake, a very short carry between them, and though for ages the pursued have been drinking out of them, they are full, up to the top of the green banks; and the same David describes them, and they seem so near together that in three different places he speaks of them as a continuous river, saying: ’93There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God;’94 ’93Thou shalt make them drink of the rivers of thy pleasures;’94 ’93Thou greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water.’94

But many of you have turned your back on that supply, and confront your trouble, and you are soured with your circumstances, and you are fighting society, and you are fighting a pursuing world; and troubles, instead of driving you into the cool lake of heavenly comfort, have made you stop and turn round and lower your head, and it is simply antler against tooth. I do not blame you. Probably, under the same circumstances I would have done worse. But you are all wrong. You need to do as the reindeer does in February and March’97it sheds its horns. The Rabbinical writers allude to this resignation of antlers by the stag when they say of a man who ventures his money in risky enterprises, he has hung it on the stag’92s horns; and a proverb in the far East tells a man who has foolishly lost his fortune to go and find where the deer sheds his horns. My brother, quit the antagonism of your circumstances, quit misanthropy, quit complaint, quit pitching into your pursuers, be as wise as, next spring, will be the deer of the Adirondacks. Shed your horns!

But very many of you who are wronged of the world’97and if in any assembly between Sandy Hook, New York, and Golden Gate, San Francisco, it were asked that all those that had been sometimes badly treated should raise both their hands, and full response should be made, there would be twice as many hands lifted as persons present’97I say many of you would declare: ’93We have always done the best we could and tried to be useful, and why we should become the victims of malignment, or invalidism, or mishap, is inscrutable.’94 Why, do you not know that the finer a deer, and the more elegant its proportions, and the more beautiful its bearing, the more anxious the hunters and the hounds are to capture it? Had that roebuck a ragged fur, and broken hoofs, and an obliterated eye, and a limping gait, the hunters would have said, ’93Pshaw! don’92t let us waste our ammunition on a sick deer.’94 And the hounds would have given a few sniffs of the track, and then darted off in another direction for better game. But when they see a deer with antlers lifted in mighty challenge to earth and sky, and the sleek hide looks as if it had been smoothed by invisible hands, and the fat sides enclose the richest pasture that could be nibbled from the bank of rills, so clear they seem to have dropped out of heaven, and the stamp of its foot defies the jack-shooting lantern and the rifle, the horn and the hound, that deer they will have if they must needs break their neck in the rapids. So if there were no noble stuff in your make-up, if you were a bifurcated nothing, if you were a forlorn failure, you would be allowed to go undisturbed; but the fact that the whole pack is in full cry after you is proof positive that you are splendid game and worth capturing. Therefore sarcasm draws on you its ’93finest bead.’94 Therefore the world goes gunning for you with its best Maynard breech-loader. Highest compliment is it to your talent, or your virtue, or your usefulness. You will be assailed in proportion to your great achievements. The best and the mightiest being the world ever saw had set after him all the hounds, terrestrial and diabolic, and they lapped his blood after the Calvarean massacre. The world paid nothing to its Redeemer but a bramble, four spikes, and a cross. Many who have done their best to make the world better have had such a rough time of it that all their pleasure is in anticipation of the next world, and they would, if they could, express their own feelings in the words of the Baroness of Nairn, at the close of her long life, when asked if she would like to live her life over again:

Would You Be Young Again?

So Would Not I;

One Tear of Memory Given,

Onward I’92ll Hie;

Life’92s Dark Wave Forded O’92er,

All but at Rest On Shore,

Say, Would You Plunge Once More,

With Home so Nigh?

If You Might, Would You Now

Retrace Your Way?

Wander Through Stormy Wilds,

Faint and Astray?

Night’92s Gloomy Watches Fled,

Morning All Beaming Red,

Hope’92s Smile Around Us Shed,

Heavenward, Away!

Yes; for some people in this world there seems no let up. They are pursued from youth to manhood, and from manhood into old age. Very distinguished are Lord Stafford’92s hounds, and the Earl of Yarborough’92s hounds, and the Duke of Rutland’92s hounds; and Queen Victoria pays seven thousand two hundred and ninety dollars per year to her master of buck-hounds. But all of them put together do not equal in number or speed, or power to hunt down the great kennel of hounds of which Sin and Trouble are owner and master.

But what is a relief for all those pursued of trouble and annoyance and pain and bereavement? My text gives it to you in a word of three letters, but each letter is a chariot if you would triumph, or a throne if you want to be crowned, or a lake if you would slake your thirst’97yea, a chain of three lakes, G-O-D, the One for whom David longed and the One whom David found. You might as well meet a stag which, after its sixth mile of running at the topmost speed through thicket and gorge, and with the breath of the dogs on its heels, has come in full sight of Schroon Lake, and try to cool its projecting and blistered tongue with a drop of dew from a blade of grass, as to attempt to satisfy an immortal soul, when flying from trouble and sin with anything less deep and high and broad and immense and infinite and eternal than God. His comfort, why, it embosoms all distress. His arm, it wrenches off all bondage; his hand, it wipes away all tears. His Christly atonement, it makes us all right with the past, and all right with the future, and all right with God, all right with man, and all right forever.

Lamartine tells us that King Nimrod said to his three sons: ’93Here are three vases, and one is of clay, another of amber, and another of gold. Choose now which you will have.’94 The eldest son, having the first choice, chose the vase of gold, on which was written the word ’93Empire,’94 and when opened, it was found to contain human blood. The second son, making the next choice, chose the vase of amber, inscribed with the word ’93Glory,’94 and when opened, it contained the ashes of those who were once called great. The third son took the vase of clay, and opening it, found it empty, but on the bottom of it was inscribed the name of God. King Nimrod asked his courtiers which vase they thought weighed the most. The avaricious men of his court said the vase of gold. The poets said the one of amber. But the wisest men said the empty vase, because one letter of the name of God outweighed a universe.

For him I thirst; for his grace I beg; on his promise I build my all. Without him I cannot be happy. I have tried the world, and it does well enough as far as it goes, but it is too uncertain a world, too evanescent a world. I am not a prejudiced witness. I have nothing against this world. I have been one of the most fortunate, or, to use a more Christian word, one of the most blessed of men, blessed in my parents, blessed in the place of my nativity, blessed in my health, blessed in my field of work, blessed in my natural temperament, blessed in my family, blessed in my opportunities, blessed in a comfortable livelihood, blessed in the hope that my soul will go to heaven through the pardoning mercy of God, and my body, unless it be lost at sea or cremated in some conflagration, will lie down in the gardens of Greenwood among my kindred and friends, some already gone, and others to come after me. Life to many has been a disappointment, but to me it has been a pleasant surprise, and yet I declare that if I did not feel that God was now my friend and ever present help, I should be wretched and terror-struck. But I want more of him. I have thought over this text and preached this sermon to myself until with all the aroused energies of my body, mind, and soul, I can cry out: ’93As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, O God.’94

Through Jesus Christ make this God your God, and you can withstand anything, and everything, and that which affrights others will inspire you. As in time of earthquake, when an old Christian woman was asked whether she was scared, answered: ’93No; I am glad that I have a God who can shake the world,’94 or as in a financial panic, when a Christian merchant was asked if he did not fear he would break, answered: ’93Yes; I shall break when the fiftieth psalm breaks in the fifteenth verse: ’91Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.’92’93 O Christian men and women, pursued of annoyances and exasperations, remember that this hunt, whether a still hunt or a hunt in ull cry, will soon be over. If ever a whelp looks ashamed and ready to slink out of sight it is when in the Adirondacks a deer by one long tremendous plunge into Big Tupper Lake gets away from him. The disappointed canine swims in a little way but, defeated, swims out again, and cringes with humiliated yawn at the feet of his master. And how abashed and ashamed will all your earthly troubles be when you have dashed into the river from under the throne of God, and the heights and depths of heaven are between you and your pursuers.

We are told in Revelation twenty-second and fif-teenth: ’93Without are dogs,’94 by which I conclude there is a whole kennel of hounds outside the gate of heaven, or, as when a master goes in a door, his dog lies on the steps waiting for him to come out, so the troubles of this life may follow us to the shining door, but they cannot get in. ’93Without are dogs!’94 I have seen dogs, and owned dogs, that I would not be chagrined to see in the heavenly city. Some of the grand old watch-dogs who are the constabulary of the homes in solitary places, and for years have been the only protection of wife and child; some of the shepherd dogs that drive back the wolves and bark away the flocks from going too near the precipice; and some of the dogs whose neck and paw Landseer, the painter, has made immortal, would not find me shutting them out from the gate of shining pearl. Some of those old St. Bernard dogs that have lifted perishing travelers out of the Alpine snow; the dog that John Brown, the Scotch essayist, saw ready to spring at the surgeon lest, in removing the cancer, he too much hurt the poor woman whom the dog felt bound to protect; and dogs that we caressed in our childhood days, or that in later time laid down on the rug in seeming sympathy when our homes were desolated. I say, if some soul entering heaven should happen to leave the gate ajar and these faithful creatures should quietly walk in, it would not at all disturb my heaven. But all those human or brutal hounds that have chased and torn and lacerated the world; yea, all that now bite or worry or tear to pieces, shall be prohibited. ’93Without are dogs!’94 No place there for harsh critics or backbiters, or despoilers of the reputation of others! Down with you to the kennels of darkness and despair! The hart has reached the eternal water brooks, and the panting of the long chase is quieted in still pastures, and ’93there shall be nothing to hurt or destroy in all God’92s holy mount.’94 And now do you not think the prayer in Solomon’92s Song, where he compared Christ to a reindeer coming down in the night, would make an exquisitely appropriate peroration to my sermon: ’93Until the day break and the shadows flee away, be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether?’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage