A TRIP ABROAD An Account of a Journey to the Earthly Canaan and the Land of theAncient Pharaohs To Which Are Appended A Brief Consideration of the Geography and History of Palestine, and a Chapter on Churches of Christ in Great Britain BY DON CARLOS JANES 1905 [Illustration: "Striving for the Faith of the Gospel. "Don Carlos Janes. ] _"Go, little booke, God send thee good passage, And specially let this be thy prayere: Unto them all that will thee read or hear, Where thou art wrong, after their help to call, Thee to correct in any part or all. "_ CHAUCER. PREFACE. In this volume the author has made an effort to describe his journey toPalestine and Egypt. It is his desire that the book may be interestingand instructive to its readers. The chapter on the geography ofPalestine, if studied with a good map, will probably be helpful to many. The historic sketch of the land may serve as an outline of the importantevents in the history of that interesting country. It is desired thatthe last chapter may give American readers a better understanding of thework of churches of Christ in Great Britain. This book is not a classic, but the author has tried to give a truthfulaccount of a trip, which, to him, was full of interest and not withoutprofit. No doubt some errors will be found, but even the critical readermay make some allowance when it is known that the writing, with theexception of a small part, was done in a period of eighty days. Duringthis time, the writer was also engaged in evangelistic work, speakingevery day without a single exception, and as often as four times on someof the days. That the careful reading of the following pages may beprofitable, is the desire of THE AUTHOR. BOWLING GREEN, KY. , October 21, 1905. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. Several books have been consulted in preparing this one. "Lands of theBible, " by J. W. McGarvey, has been very helpful. The same is true ofEdmund Sherman Wallace's "Jerusalem the Holy. " Much information has beenobtained from the "Historical Geography of Bible Lands, " by John B. Calkin. Other works consulted were: "Recent Discoveries on the TempleHill, " by James King; the "Bible Atlas, " by Jesse L. Hurlbut; "Galileein the Time of Christ, " by Selah Merrill; "City of the Great King, " byJ. T. Barclay; "Palestine, " by C. R. Conder; Smith's "Bible Dictionary";"Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia"; "Columbian Encyclopaedia, " and"Encyclopaedia Britannica. " The chapter on Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland was readbefore publication by Bro. Ivie Campbell, Jr. , of Kirkcaldy, Scotland, who made some suggestions for its improvement. Bro. J. W. McGarvey, ofLexington, Ky. , kindly read the chapters on the Geography and History ofPalestine, and made some corrections. Selah Merrill, United StatesConsul at Jerusalem, has given some information embodied in the HistoricSketch of Palestine. Acknowledgement of the helpful services of my wife, and of Miss Delia Boyd, of Atpontley, Tenn. , is hereby made. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND CHAPTER II. CROSSING EUROPE CHAPTER III. ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA CHAPTER IV. A FEW DAYS IN GALILEE CHAPTER V. SIGHT-SEEING IN JERUSALEM CHAPTER VI. SIDE TRIPS FROM JERUSALEM CHAPTER VII. EGYPT, THE LAND OF TOMBS AND TEMPLES CHAPTER VIII. GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE CHAPTER IX. HISTORIC SKETCH OF PALESTINE CHAPTER X. CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER I. SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND. When I was a "boy on a farm, " one of my school teachers had a smallmachine, which was sometimes used to print the names of students intheir books. Somehow I came to want a "printing press, " and after awhile I purchased an outfit for fifteen cents, but it was a poor thingand failed to satisfy me. Accordingly, I disposed of it and spent alarger sum for a typewriter, which was little more than a toy. This, too, was unsatisfactory, and I sold it. At a later date, I bought asecond-hand typewriter, which was turned in as part payment for themachine I am now using to write this book, and now, after all thesesuccessive steps, I find myself possessed of a real typewriter. I willalso mention my youthful desire for a watch. I wanted a timepiece andthought I would like for it to be of small size. I thought of it whenawake, and, sometimes, when asleep, dreamed that I actually had thelittle watch in my possession. Since those days of dreams anddisappointments, I have had three watches, and they have all been ofsmall size. In the same way, several years ago, I became possessed of a desire tosee the Land of Promise, the earthly Canaan. I thought about it some, and occasionally spoke of it. There were seasons when the desire leftme, but it would come back again. Some years ago, when I was doingevangelistic work in Canada, the desire returned--this time to stay. Itgrew stronger and stronger until I decided to make the trip, which wasbegun on the eleventh of July, 1904. After traveling many thousands ofmiles, seeing numerous new and interesting sights, making many pleasantacquaintances, and having a variety of experiences, I returned to thehome of my father on the fourteenth day of December, having been absentfive months and three days, and having had a more extensive trip than Ihad at first thought of taking. There is a lesson in the foregoing thatI do not want overlooked. It is this: Whatever we earnestly desire isapt to be worked out in our lives. Deeds usually begin with thoughts. Ifthe thoughts are fostered and cultivated, the deeds will probably beperformed some time. It is, therefore, important that we exercise careas to the kind of thoughts we allow to remain in our hearts. "Keep thyheart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Prov. Iv. 23). On the way to New York, I stopped in Washington and saw some of theinteresting places of the National Capital. The Bureau of Engraving andPrinting, where about six hundred persons were engaged in printing papermoney and stamps, was visited. I also went out to the WashingtonMonument and climbed to the top of the winding stairs, although I mighthave gone up in the free elevator if I had preferred to ride. TheMedical Museum, National Museum, Treasury Building, the White House, theCapitol, and other points of interest received attention, and my shortstay in this city was very enjoyable. I spent a night in Philadelphia, after an absence of more than fouryears, and enjoyed a meeting with the church worshiping on Forty-sixthStreet. It was very pleasant to meet those I had known when I was therebefore, some of whom I had been instrumental in bringing to Christ. InNew York I made arrangements to sail for Glasgow on the S. S. Mongolian, of the Allan Line, which was to sail at eleven o'clock on the fourteenthof July, and the voyage was begun almost as promptly as a railway trainleaves the depot. We passed the Statue of Liberty a few minutes beforenoon, and then I prepared some mail to be sent back by the pilot whotook us down to the sea. The water was smooth almost all the way across, and we reached the desired haven on the eleventh day. I went back to myroom the first morning after breakfast and was lying in my berth when agentleman came along and told me I would have to get up, they weregoing to have _inspection_. I arose and found part of the crew scrubbingthe floor and others washing down a wall. Everything was being put ingood condition for the examination to be given by some of the officerswho passed through each day at about ten o'clock. The seamen knew theinspection was sure to come, and they knew the hour at which it wouldtake place, so they made ready for it. We know that there is a great"inspection" day appointed when God will judge the world, but we do notknow the exact time. It is, therefore, important to be ready always, that the day may not overtake us "as a thief in the night. " Religious services were held on the ship each Lord's day, but I missedthe last meeting. On the first Sunday morning I arose as usual and atebreakfast. As there was no opportunity to meet with brethren and breakbread in memory of the Lord Jesus, I read the account of the giving ofthe Lord's Supper as recorded in Matthew, Mark, and John; also Paul'slanguage concerning the institution in the eleventh chapter of the firstCorinthian letter, and was thankful that my life had been spared untilanother beautiful resurrection morning. At half past ten o'clock I wentinto one of the dining rooms where two ministers were conducting ameeting. The order of the service, as nearly as I can give it, was asfollows: Responsive reading of the twenty-third and twenty-fourthPsalms; prayer; the hymn, "Onward, Christian Soldiers"; reading of thetwenty-ninth Psalm; prayer; the hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light"; an addresson "Knowing God"; prayer; the collection, taken while singing; and thebenediction. The ship furnished Bibles and hymn-books. A large copy ofthe Bible was placed upon a British flag at the head of one of thetables where the speaker stood, but he read from the American RevisedVersion of the Scriptures. The sermon was commenced by some remarks tothe effect that man is hard to please. Nothing earthly satisfies him, but Thomas expressed the correct idea when he said: "Show us the Fatherand it sufficeth us. " The minister then went on to speak of God as "theGod of patience, " "the God of comfort, " "the God of hope, " and "the Godof peace. " It was, with some exceptions, a pleasing and upliftingaddress. There were about thirty persons in attendance, and thecollection was for the Sailors' Orphans' Home in Scotland. The followingis one verse of the closing hymn: "A few more years shall roll, A few more seasons come, And we shall be with those that rest, Asleep within the tomb; Then, oh, my Lord, prepare My soul for that great day, Oh, wash me in thy precious blood And take my sins away. " Before the close of the day, I read the whole of Mark's record of thelife of our Savior and turned my Bible over to Gus, the steward. We hadfood served four times, as usual. The sea was smooth and the day passedquietly. A Catholic gentleman said something at breakfast about "sayinga few prayers" to himself, and I heard a woman, in speaking about goingto church, say she had beads and a prayer-book with her. Later in theday I saw her out on the deck with a novel, and what I supposed to bethe prayer-book, but she was reading the novel. Several of the passengers had reading matter with them. Some readnovels, but my Book was far better than any of these. It has a greaterAuthor, a wider range of history, more righteous laws, purer morals, andmore beautiful description than theirs. It contains a longer and betterlove story than theirs, and reveals a much grander Hero. The Bible bothmoralizes and Christianizes those who permit its holy influence to movethem to loving obedience of the Lord Jesus. It can fill its thoughtfulreader with holy hope and lead him into the realization of that hope. Itis a Book adapted to all men everywhere, and the more carefully it isread the greater the interest in it and the profit from it become. It isthe volume that teaches us how to live here that we may live hereafter, and in the dying hour no one will regret having been a diligent studentof its matchless pages of divine truth and wisdom. The last Lord's day of the voyage the ship reached Moville, Ireland, where a small vessel came out and took off the passengers forLondonderry. The tilled land, visible from the ship, reminded me of alarge garden. Some time that night we anchored in the harbor atGreenock, near the mouth of the River Clyde. About one o'clock thesecond steward came in, calling out: "Janes!" I answered from my berthand heard him call out: "Don Carlos Janes!" Again I answered and learnedthat he had some mail for me. I told him to hand it in, not rememberingthat the door was locked, but that made no difference, for he handed itin anyhow, but the locking arrangement on that door needed repairingafter he went away. I arose and examined the two pieces of mail, whichwere from friends, giving me directions as to where I should go when theship got up to Glasgow, twenty-two miles from the sea. There was but onecase of sea sickness reported on the whole voyage. There was one death, but the corpse was carried into port instead of being buried at sea. The home of Brother and Sister Henry Nelmes, which was my home while Istaid in Glasgow, is nicely located. Brother Nelmes and his wife areexcellent people, and treated me with much kindness. Glasgow is a largeand important city, with many interesting places in it. The MunicipalBuilding with its marble stairs, alabaster balustrade, onyx columns, andother ornamentation, is attractive on the inside, but the exteriorimpressed me more with the idea of stability than of beauty. The oldCathedral, which I visited twice, is in an excellent state ofpreservation, although founded in the eleventh century. There is anextensive burial ground adjoining the Cathedral, and one of theprominent monuments is at the grave of John Knox, the reformer. Theseimpressive words, written from memory, were spoken by the Regent at theburial of Knox, and have been carved upon his monument: "Here lieth hewho never feared the face of man, who was often threatened with dag anddagger, yet hath ended his days in peace and honor. " Carlyle spoke ofhim as a man "fearing God, without any other fear. " One day I visited the birth-place of Robert Burns, at Ayr, a point notfar from Glasgow. I not only saw the "lowly thatched cottage, " but amonument to the poet, "Auld Kirk Alloway, " the "brig o' Doon, " and manyinteresting articles in the museum. When the street car came to astandstill, I had the old church and cemetery on my right hand, and themonument on my left hand, while a man was standing in the road, ahead ofus, blowing a cornet, --and just beyond was the new bridge over the Doon, a short distance below the old one, which is well preserved andprofusely decorated with the initials of many visitors. Along the bankof "bonny Doon" lies a little garden, on the corner of which issituated a house where liquor is sold, if I mistake not. It was beforethis house that I saw the musician already mentioned. As I came up fromthe old "brig o' Doon, " I saw and heard a man playing a violin near themonument. When I went down the road toward the new bridge and lookedover into the garden, I saw a couple of persons executing a cake-walk, and an old man with one leg off was in the cemetery that surrounds theruined church, reciting selections from Burns. Such is the picture Ibeheld when I visited this Ayrshire monument, raised in memory of thesympathetic but unfortunate Scottish poet, whose "spark o' nature'sfire" has touched so many hearts that his birth-place has more visitorsper annum than Shakespeare's has. On the following day I had a pleasant boat-ride up Loch (Lake) Long, followed by a merry coach-ride across to the "bonny, bonny banks of LochLomond, " which is celebrated in song and story. It is twenty-two milesin length and from three-quarters of a mile to five miles wide, and iscalled the "Queen of Scottish lakes. " Ben Lomond, a mountain rising to aheight of more than three thousand feet, stands on the shore, and it issaid that Robert Bruce, the hero of Bannockburn, once hid himself in acave in this mountain. A pleasant boat-ride down the lake brought meback to Glasgow in time to attend a meeting of the brethren in CoplawStreet that night. Leaving my true friends who had so kindly entertained me in Glasgow, Iproceeded to Edinburgh, the city where Robert Burns came intoprominence. In the large Waverley Station a stranger, who knew of mycoming through word from Brother Ivie Campbell, of Kirkcaldy, stopped meand asked: "Is your name Don Carlos Janes?" It was another good friend, Brother J. W. Murray. He said he told some one he was looking for me, andwas told, in return, that he would not be able to find me. His answer tothis was that he had picked out a man before, and he might pick outanother one; and so he did, without any difficulty. After a little timespent in Waverley gardens, I ascended the Walter Scott Monument, whichis two hundred feet high. The winding stairway is rather narrow, especially at the top, and it is not well lighted. As I was coming downthe stairs, I met a lady and gentleman. The little woman was not at allenthusiastic over the experience she was having, and, without knowing ofmy presence, she was wondering what they would do if they were to meetany one. "Come on up and see, " I said, and we passed without any specialdifficulty, but she said she didn't believe "two stout ones could" pass. As she went on up the winding way, she was heard expressing herself inthese words: "Oh, it is a place, isn't it? I don't like it. " Thetourist finds many "places", and they are not all desirable. PrincessStreet, on which the monument is located, is the prettiest street that Ihave ever seen. One side is occupied by business houses and hotels, theother is a beautiful garden, where one may walk or sit down, surroundedby green grass and beautiful flowers. Edinburgh Castle is an old fortification on the summit of a lofty hilloverlooking the city. It is now used as barracks for soldiers, and iscapable of accommodating twelve hundred men. Queen Mary's room is asmall chamber, where her son, James the First of Scotland and the Sixthof England, was born. I was in the old castle in Glasgow where she spentthe night before the Battle of Langside, and later stood by her tomb inWestminster Abbey. Her history, a brief sketch of which is given here, is interesting and pathetic. "Mary Queen of Scots was born in LinlithgowPalace, 1542; fatherless at seven days old; became Queen December 8th, 1542, and was crowned at Stirling, September 9th, 1543; carried toFrance, 1548; married to the Dauphin, 1558; became Queen of France, 1559; a widow, 1560; returned to Scotland, 1561; married Lord Darnley, 1565; her son (and successor), James VI. , born at Edinburgh Castle, 1566; Lord Darnley murdered, February, 1567; Mary married to the Earl ofBothwell, May, 1567, and was compelled to abdicate in favor of herinfant son. She escaped from Lochleven Castle, lost the Battle ofLangside, and fled to England, 1568. She was beheaded February 8th, 1587, at Fotheringay Castle, in the forty-fifth year of her age, almostnineteen years of which she passed in captivity. "Puir Mary was born and was cradled in tears, Grief cam' wi' her birth, and grief grew wi' her years. " In the crown-room are to be seen the regalia of Scotland, consisting ofthe crown, scepter, sword of state, a silver rod of office, and otherjewels, all enclosed in a glass case surrounded by iron work. St. Margaret's Chapel, seventeen feet long and eleven feet wide, standswithin the castle enclosure and is the oldest building in the city. Avery old cannon, called Mons Meg, was brought back to the castle throughthe efforts of Walter Scott, and is now on exhibition. I visited theHall of Statuary in the National Gallery, the Royal Blind Asylum, passedSt. Giles Cathedral, where John Knox preached, dined with BrotherMurray, and boarded the train for Kirkcaldy, where I as easily foundBrother Campbell at the station as Brother Murray had found me inEdinburgh. I had been in correspondence with Brother Campbell for some years, andour meeting was a pleasure, and my stay at Kirkcaldy was very enjoyable. We went up to St. Andrews, and visited the ruins of the old Cathedral, the University, a monument to certain martyrs, and the home of a sisterin Christ. But little of the Cathedral remains to be seen. It wasfounded in 1159, and was the most magnificent of Scottish churches. St. Rule's Tower, one hundred and ten feet high, still stands, and we had afine view from the top. The time to leave Kirkcaldy came too soon, but Imoved on toward Wigan, England, to attend the annual meeting of churchesof Christ. Brother Campbell accompanied me as far as Edinburgh, and Ithen proceeded to Melrose, where I stopped off and visited Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott. It is situated on the River Tweed, a shortdistance from Melrose, and was founded in 1811. By the expenditure of aconsiderable sum of money it was made to present such an appearance asto be called "a romance in stone and lime. " Part of this large house isoccupied as a dwelling, but some of the rooms are kept open for thenumerous visitors who call from time to time. The young lady who wasguide the day I was at Abbotsford, first showed us Sir Walter's study. It is a small room, with book shelves from the floor to the ceiling, thedesk on which Scott wrote his novels sitting in the middle of the floor. A writing-box, made of wood taken from one of the ships of the SpanishArmada, sits on the desk, and the clothes worn by the great novelist ashort time before his death are kept under glass in a case by thewindow, while a cast of his face is to be seen in a small roomadjoining the study. We next passed into the library, which, with thebooks in the study, contains about twenty thousand volumes. In thearmory are numerous guns, pistols, swords, and other relics. There issome fine furniture in one of the rooms, and the walls are covered withpaper printed by hand in China nearly ninety years ago. Perhaps some whoread these lines will recall the sad story of Genivra, who hid herselfin an oaken chest in an attic, and perished there, being imprisoned bythe spring lock. This oaken chest was received at Abbotsford a shorttime before Scott's death, and is now on exhibition. Sir Walter, as theguide repeatedly called him, spent the last years of his life under theburden of a heavy debt, but instead of making use of the bankrupt law, he set to work heroically with his pen to clear up the indebtedness. Hewrote rapidly, and his books sold well, but he was one day compelled tolay down his pen before the task was done. The King of England gave hima trip to the Mediterranean, for the benefit of his health, but it wasof no avail. Sir Walter returned to his home on the bank of the Tweed, and died September twenty-first, 1832. In his last illness, this greatauthor, who had produced so many volumes that were being read then andare still being read, asked his son-in-law to read to him. Theson-in-law asked what book he should read, to which Sir Walter replied:"Book? There is but one Book! Read me the Bible. " In Melrose I visitedthe ruins of the Abbey, and then went on to Wigan. After the annual meeting, I went to Birmingham and stayed a short while. From here I made a little journey to the birth-place of Shakespeare, atStratford-on-Avon, a small, quiet town, where, to the best of myrecollection, I saw neither street cars nor omnibuses. After being inseveral large cities, it was an agreeable change to spend a day in thisquiet place, where the greatest writer in the English tongue spent hisboyhood and the last days of his life on earth. The house where he wasborn was first visited. A fee of sixpence (about twelve cents) securesadmission, but another sixpence is required if the library and museumare visited. The house stands as it was in the poet's early days, with afew exceptions. Since that time, however, part of it has been used as ameat market and part as an inn. In 1847, the property was announced forsale, and it fell into the hands of persons who restored it as nearly aspossible to its original condition. It has two stories and an attic, with three gables in the roof facingthe street. At the left of the door by which the tourist is admitted, isa portion of the house where the valuable documents of the corporationare stored, while to the right are the rooms formerly used as the "Swanand Maidenhead Inn, " now converted into a library and museum. Thewindows in the upstairs room where the poet was born are fully occupiedwith the autographs of visitors who have scratched their names there. Iwas told that the glass is now valuable simply as old glass, and ofcourse the autographs enhance the value. The names of Scott and Carlyleare pointed out by the attendant in charge. From a back window one canlook down into the garden, where, as far as possible, all the trees andflowers mentioned in Shakespeare's works have been planted. For someyears past the average number of visitors to this house has been seventhousand a year. The poet's grave is in Trinity Church, at Stratford, beneath a stone slab in the floor bearing these lines: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear To digg the dust enclosed here. Blest be ye man y spares these stones, And curst be he ty moves my bones. " On the wall, just at hand, is a bust made from a cast taken after hisdeath. Near by is a stained-glass window with the inscription, "America's gift to Shakespeare's church, " and not far away is a cardabove a collection-box with an inscription which informs "visitors fromU. S. A. " that there is yet due on the window more than three hundreddollars. The original cost was about two thousand five hundred dollars. The Shakespeare Memorial is a small theater by the side of the Avon, with a library and picture gallery attached. The first stone was laid in1877, and the building was opened in 1879 with a performance of "MuchAdo About Nothing. " The old school once attended by the poet stillstands, and is in use, as is also the cottage of Anne Hathaway, situateda short distance from Stratford. I returned to Birmingham, and soon wenton to Bristol and saw the orphans' homes founded by George Muller. These homes, capable of accommodating two thousand and fifty orphans, are beautifully situated on Ashley Downs. Brother William Kempster and Ivisited them together, and were shown through a portion of one of thefive large buildings by an elderly gentleman, neat, clean, and humble, who was sent down by the manager of the institution, a son-in-law of Mr. Muller, who died in 1898, at the advanced age of ninety-three years. Wesaw one of the dormitories, which was plainly furnished, but everythingwas neat and clean. We were also shown two dining-rooms, and thelibrary-room in which Mr. Muller conducted a prayer-meeting only a nightor two before his death. In this room we saw a fine, large picture ofthe deceased, and were told by the "helper" who was showing us aroundthat Mr. Muller was accustomed to saying: "Oh, I am such a happy man!"The expression on his face in this picture is quite in harmony with hiswords just quoted. One of his sayings was: "When anxiety begins, faithends; when faith begins, anxiety ends. " Mr. Muller spent seventy years of his life in England and became sothoroughly Anglicized that he wished his name pronounced "Miller. " Hewas the founder of the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home andAbroad" and was a man of much more than ordinary faith. His work beganabout 1834, with the distribution of literature, and the orphan work, ifI mistake not, was begun two years later. "As the result of prayer toGod" more than five millions of dollars have been applied for thebenefit of the orphans. He never asked help of man, but made his wantsknown to God, and those who are now carrying on the work pursue the samecourse, but the collection-boxes put up where visitors can see themmight be considered by some as an invitation to give. The followingquotation from the founder of the orphanages will give some idea of thekind of man he was. "In carrying on this work simply through theinstrumentality of prayer and faith, without applying to any human beingfor help, my great desire was, that it might be seen that, now, in thenineteenth century, _God is still the Living God, and now, as well asthousands of years ago, he listens to the prayers of his children andhelps those who trust in him. _ In all the forty-two countries throughwhich I traveled during the twenty-one years of my missionary service, numberless instances came before me of the benefit which this orphaninstitution has been, in this respect, not only in making men of theworld see the reality of the things of God, and by converting them, butespecially by leading the children of God more abundantly to givethemselves to prayer, and by strengthening their faith. _Far beyond whatI at first expected to accomplish_, the Lord has been pleased to giveme. But what I have _seen_ as the fruit of my labor in this way may notbe the thousandth part of what I _shall_ see when the Lord Jesus comesagain; as day by day, for sixty-one years, I have earnestly labored, inbelieving prayer, that God would be pleased, most abundantly, to blessthis service in the way I have stated. " The objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution are set forth asfollows: "To assist day schools and Sunday-schools in which instructionis given upon scriptural principles, " etc. By day schools conducted onscriptural principles, they mean "those in which the teachers arebelievers; where the way of salvation is pointed out, and in which noinstruction is given opposed to the principles of the Gospel. " In theseschools the Scriptures are read daily by the children. In theSunday-schools the "teachers are believers, and the Holy Scripturesalone are the foundation of instruction. " The second object of theInstitution is "to circulate the Holy Scriptures. " In one year fourthousand three hundred and fifty Bibles were sold, and five hundred andtwenty-five were given away; seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-oneNew Testament were sold, and one thousand five hundred and seventy-fourwere given away; fifty-five copies of the Psalms were sold, andthirty-eight were given away; two thousand one hundred and sixty-threeportions of the Holy Scriptures were sold, and one hundred and sixty-twowere given away; and three thousand one hundred illustrated portions ofthe Scriptures were given away. There have been circulated through thismedium, since March, 1834, three hundred and eleven thousand two hundredand seventy-eight Bibles, and one million five hundred and seventhousand eight hundred and one copies of the New Testament. They keep instock almost four hundred sorts of Bibles, ranging in price from twelvecents each to more than six dollars a copy. Another object of the Institution is to aid in missionary efforts. "During the past year one hundred and eighty laborers in the Word anddoctrine in various parts of the world have been assisted. " The fourthobject is to circulate such publications as may be of benefit both tobelievers and unbelievers. In a single year one million six hundred andeleven thousand two hundred and sixty-six books and tracts weredistributed gratuitously. The fifth object is to board, clothe, andscientifically educate destitute orphans. Mr. Muller belonged to thatclass of religious people who call themselves Brethren, and are calledby others "Plymouth Brethren. " After leaving Bristol, I went to London, the metropolis of the world. The first important place visited was Westminster Abbey, an old church, founded in the seventh century, rebuilt in 1049, and restored to itspresent form in the thirteenth century. Many eminent men and women areburied here. Chaucer, the first poet to find a resting place in theAbbey, was interred in 1400. The place where Major Andre is buried ismarked by a small piece of the pavement bearing his name. On the wallclose by is a monument to him. Here are the graves of Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, and many others, including Kings and Queens of England for centuries. In the Poets'Corner are monuments to Coleridge, Southey, Shakespeare, Burns, Tennyson, Milton, Gray, Spencer, and others, and one bearing theinscription "O Rare Ben Jonson. " There is also a bust of Longfellow, theonly foreigner accorded a memorial in the Abbey. The grave of DavidLivingstone, the African explorer and missionary, is covered with ablack stone of some kind, which forms a part of the floor or pavement, and contains an inscription in brass letters, of which the followingquotation is a part: "All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven'srich blessings come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, whowill help to heal this open sore of the world. " Concerning this interesting old place which is visited by more thanfifty thousand Americans annually, Jeremy Taylor wrote: "Where our Kingsare crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over theirgrandsires to take the crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, thecopy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs toarched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There the warlikeand the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved anddespised princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol ofmortality, and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall beequal to Kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for our sinsshall be less. " While walking about in the Abbey, I also found theselines from Walter Scott: "Here, where the end of earthly things Lays heroes, patriots, bards and kings; Where stiff the hand and still the tongue Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung; Here, where the fretted aisles prolong The distant notes of holy song, As if some Angel spoke again 'All peace on earth, good will to men'; If ever from an English heart, Here let prejudice depart. " Bunhill Fields is an old cemetery where one hundred and twenty thousandburials have taken place. Here lie the ashes of Isaac Watts, the hymnwriter; of Daniel De Foe, author of "Robinson Crusoe, " and of JohnBunyan, who in Bedford jail wrote "Pilgrim's Progress. " The monumentsare all plain. The one at the grave of De Foe was purchased with thecontributions of seventeen hundred people, who responded to a call madeby some paper. On the top of Bunyan's tomb rests the figure of a man, perhaps a representation of him whose body was laid in the grave below. On one of the monuments in this cemetery are the following wordsconcerning the deceased: "In sixty-seven months she was tapped sixty-sixtimes. Had taken away two hundred and forty gallons of water withoutever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation. " Just across the street from Bunhill Fields stands the house onceoccupied by John Wesley (now containing a museum) and a meeting-housewhich was built in Wesley's day. The old pulpit from which Mr. Wesleypreached is still in use, but it has been lowered somewhat. In front ofthe chapel is a statue of Wesley, and at the rear is his grave, andclose by is the last resting place of the remains of Adam Clarke, thecommentator. A trip to Greenwich was quite interesting. I visited the museum and sawmuch of interest, including the painted hall, the coat worn by Nelson atthe Battle of the Nile, and the clothing he wore when he was mortallywounded at Trafalgar. I went up the hill to the Observatory, and walkedthrough an open door to the grounds where a gentleman informed me thatvisitors are not admitted without a pass; but he kindly gave me someinformation and told me that I was standing on the prime meridian. Onthe outside of the enclosure are scales of linear measure up to oneyard, and a large clock. After the trip to Greenwich, I went over the London Bridge, passed thefire monument, and came back across the Thames by the Tower Bridge, apeculiar structure, having two levels in one span, so passengers can goup the stairs in one of the towers, cross the upper level, and go downthe other stairs when the lower level is opened for boats to pass up anddown the river. While in Scotland, I twice crossed the great ForthBridge, which is more than a mile and a half long and was erected at acost of above fifteen millions of dollars. There are ten spans in thesouth approach, eight in the north approach, and two central spans eachseventeen hundred feet long. The loftiest part of the structure is threehundred and sixty-one feet above high-water mark. The Albert Memorial is perhaps the finest monument seen on the wholetrip. The Victoria and Albert Museum contains the original Singersewing-machine, and a printing-press supposed to have been used byBenjamin Franklin, and many other interesting things. The NaturalHistory Museum also contains much to attract the visitor's attention. Here I saw the skeleton of a mastodon about ten feet tall and twentyfeet long; also the tusks of an extinct species of Indian elephant, which were nine feet and nine inches long. There is also an elephanttusk on exhibition ten feet long and weighing two hundred and eightypounds. Madam Tussaud's exhibition of wax figures and relics is both interestingand instructive, and well repays one for the time and expense of avisit. Several American Presidents are represented in life-size figures, along with Kings and others who have been prominent in the affairs ofmen. In the Napoleon room are three of the great warrior's carriages, the one used at Waterloo being in the number. London Tower is a seriesof strong buildings, which have in turn served as a fortress, a palace, and a prison. I saw the site of Anne Boleyn's execution, but that whichhad the most interest for me was the room containing the crown jewels. They are kept in a glass case ten or twelve feet in diameter, in asmall, circular room. Outside of the case there is an iron cagesurrounded by a network of wire. The King's crown is at the top of thecollection, which contains other crowns, scepters, swords, and differentcostly articles. This crown, which was first made in 1838 for QueenVictoria, was enlarged for Edward, the present King. It contains twothousand eight hundred and eighteen diamonds, two hundred andninety-seven pearls, and many other jewels. One of the scepters issupposed to contain a part of the cross of Christ, but the suppositionhad no weight with me. One of the attendants told me the value of thewhole collection was estimated at four million pounds, and that it wouldprobably bring five times that much if sold at auction. As the Englishpound is worth about four dollars and eighty-seven cents, this littleroom contains a vast treasure--worth upwards of a hundred milliondollars. I will only mention Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, theParliament Buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kew Gardens, Hampton CourtPalace, and the Zoological Gardens. I also visited the Bank of England, which "stands on ground valued at two hundred and fifty dollars persquare foot. If the bank should ever find itself pressed for money, itcould sell its site for thirty-two million seven hundred and seventythousand dollars. " It is a low building that is not noted for itsbeauty. If it were located in New York, probably one of the tallbuildings characteristic of that city would be erected on the site. The British Museum occupied my time for hours, and I shall not undertaketo give a catalogue of the things I saw there, but will mention a few ofthem. There are manuscripts of early writers in the English tongue, including a copy of Beowulf, the oldest poem in the language; autographworks of Daniel De Foe, Ben Jonson, and others; the original articles ofagreement between John Milton and Samuel Symmons relating to the sale ofthe copyright of "a poem entitled 'Paradise Lost. '" There was a smallstone inscribed in Phoenician, with the name of Nehemiah, the son ofMacaiah, and pieces of rock that were brought from the great temple ofDiana at Ephesus; a fragment of the Koran; objects illustrating Buddhismin India; books printed by William Caxton, who printed the first book inEnglish; and Greek vases dating back to 600 B. C. In the first verse ofthe twentieth chapter of Isaiah we have mention of "Sargon, the king ofAssyria. " For centuries this was all the history the world had of thisking, who reigned more than seven hundred years before Christ. Withinrecent times his history has been dug up in making excavations in theeast, and I saw one of his inscribed bricks and two very large, human-headed, winged bulls from a doorway of his palace. The carvings from the palace of Sennacherib, tablets from the library ofAsur-Banipal, and brick of Ur-Gur, king of Ur about twenty-fivecenturies before Christ, attracted my attention, as did also thecolossal left arm of a statue of Thotmes III. , which measures about ninefeet. The Rosetta stone, by which the Egyptian hieroglyphics weretranslated, and hundreds of other objects were seen. In the mummy-roomare embalmed bodies, skeletons, and coffins that were many centuriesold when Jesus came to earth, some of them bearing dates as early as2600 B. C. , and in the case of a part of a body found in the thirdpyramid the date attached is 3633 B. C. Being weary, I sat down, and mynote book contains this entry: "1:45 P. M. , August 20. Resting here inthe midst of mummies and sarcophagi thousands of years old. " From the top of the Monument I took a bird's-eye view of the largest ofall earthly cities, or at least I looked as far as the smoky atmospherewould permit, and then returned to my stopping place at Twynholm. As Irode back on the top of an omnibus, the houses of one of the Rothschildfamily and the Duke of Wellington were pointed out. My sight-seeing inScotland and England was now at an end, and the journey so far had beenvery enjoyable and highly profitable. I packed up and went down toHarwich, on the English Channel, where I embarked on the Cambridge forAntwerp, in Belgium. In this chapter I have purposely omitted referenceto my association with the churches, as that will come up forconsideration in another chapter. CHAPTER II. CROSSING EUROPE. Immediately after my arrival in Antwerp I left for a short trip over theborder to Rosendaal, Holland, where I saw but little more thanbrick-houses, tile roofs, and wooden shoes. I then returned to Antwerp, and went on to Brussels, the capital of Belgium. The battlefield ofWaterloo is about nine and a half miles from Brussels, and I had anenjoyable trip to this notable place. The field is farming land, and nowunder cultivation. The chief object of interest is the Lion Mound, anartificial hill surmounted by the figure of a large lion. The mound isascended by about two hundred and twenty-three steps, and from itssummit one has a good view of the place where the great Napoleon met hisdefeat on the fifteenth of June, 1815. There is another monument on thefield, which, though quite small and not at all beautiful, contains animpressive inscription. It was raised in memory of Alexander Gordon, anaide to the Duke of Wellington, and has the following words carved onone side: "A disconsolate sister and five surviving brothers haveerected this simple memorial to the object of their tenderestaffection. " From Brussels I went over to Aix-la-Chapelle, on the frontier ofGermany, where I spent but little time and saw nothing of any greatinterest to me. There was a fine statue of Wilhelm I. , a crucifixionmonument, and, as I walked along the street, I saw an advertisement for"Henry Clay Habanna Cigarren, " but not being a smoker, I can not saywhether they were good or not. In this city I had an amusing experiencebuying a German flag. I couldn't speak "Deutsch, " and she couldn't speakEnglish, but we made the trade all right. My next point was Paris, the capital of the French Republic, and here Isaw many interesting objects. I first visited the church called theMadeleine. I also walked along the famous street _Champs Elysees, _visited the magnificent Arch of Triumph, erected to commemorate thevictories of Napoleon, and viewed the Eiffel Tower, which was completedin 1889 at a cost of a million dollars. It contains about seven thousandtons of metal, and the platform at the top is nine hundred andeighty-five feet high. The Tomb of Napoleon is in the Church of theInvalides, one of the finest places I had visited up to that time. Thespot where the Bastile stood is now marked by a lofty monument. Thegarden of the Tuileries, Napoleon's palace, is one of the pretty placesin Paris. Leaving this city in the morning, I journeyed all day througha beautiful farming country, and reached Pontarlier, in southern France, for the night. My travel in Switzerland, the oldest free state in the world, was veryenjoyable. As we were entering the little republic, in which I spent twodays, the train was running through a section of country that is notvery rough, when, all in a moment, it passed through a tunneloverlooking a beautiful valley, bounded by mountains on the oppositeside and presenting a very pleasing view. There were many otherbeautiful scenes as I journeyed along, sometimes climbing the ruggedmountain by a cog railway, and sometimes riding quietly over one of thebeautiful Swiss lakes. I spent a night at lovely Lucerne, on the Lake ofthe Four Cantons, the body of water on which William Tell figured longago. Lucerne is kept very clean, and presents a pleasing appearance tothe tourist. I could have gone to Fluelin by rail, but preferred to take a boat ridedown the lake, and it proved to be a pleasant and enjoyable trip. Thesnow could be seen lying on the tops of the mountains while the flowerswere blooming in the valleys below. Soon after leaving Fluelin, thetrain entered the St. Gothard Tunnel and did not reach daylight againfor seventeen minutes. This tunnel, at that time the longest in theworld, is a little more than nine miles in length. It is twenty-eightfeet wide, twenty-one feet high, lined throughout with masonry, and costeleven million four hundred thousand dollars. Since I was in Switzerlandthe Simplon Tunnel has been opened. It was begun more than six yearsago by the Swiss and Italian Governments, an immense force of handsbeing worked on each end of it. After laboring day and night for years, the two parties met on the twenty-fourth of February. This tunnel, whichis double, is more than twelve miles long and cost sixteen millions ofdollars. At Chiasso we did what is required at the boundary line of all thecountries visited; that is, stop and let the custom-house officialsinspect the baggage. I had nothing dutiable and was soon traveling onthrough Italy, toward Venice, where I spent some time riding on one ofthe little omnibus steamers that ply on its streets of water. But notall the Venetian streets are like this, for I walked on some that arepaved with good, hard sandstone. I was not moved by the beauty of theplace, and soon left for Pisa, passing a night in Florence on the way. The chief point of interest was the Leaning Tower, which has eightstories and is one hundred and eighty feet high. This structure, completed in the fourteenth century, seems to have commenced to leanwhen the third story was built. The top, which is reached by nearlythree hundred steps, is fourteen feet out of perpendicular. Five largebells are suspended in the tower, from the top of which one can have afine view of the walled city, with its Cathedral and Baptistery, thebeautiful surrounding country, and the mountains in the distance. The next point visited was Rome, old "Rome that sat on her seven hillsand from her throne of beauty ruled the world. " One of the first thingsI saw when I came out of the depot was a monument bearing the letters"S. P. Q. R. " (the Senate and the people of Rome) which are sometimes seenin pictures concerning the crucifixion of Christ. In London there arenumerous public water-closets; in France also there are public urinals, which are almost too public in some cases, but here in Rome the climaxis reached, for the urinals furnish only the least bit of privacy. Oneof them, near the railway station, is merely an indentation of perhapssix or eight inches in a straight wall right against the sidewalk, wheremen, women, and children are passing. By the aid of a guide-book and pictorial plan, I crossed the city fromthe gateway called "Porto del Popolo" to the "Porto S. Paolo, " seeingthe street called the "Corso, " or race course, Piazza Colonna, Fountainof Treves, Trajan's Forum, Roman Forum, Arch of Constantine, Pantheon, Colosseum, and the small Pyramid of Caius Cestus. The Porto del Popolo is the old gateway by which travelers entered thecity before the railroad was built. It is on the Flammian Way and issaid to have been built first in A. D. 402. Just inside the gate is aspace occupied by an Egyptian obelisk surrounded by four Egyptian lions. The Corso is almost a mile in length and extends from the gate justmentioned to the edge of the Capitoline Hill, where a great monument toVictor Emmanuel was being built. The Fountain of Treves is said to bethe most magnificent in Rome, and needs to be seen to be appreciated. Ithas three large figures, the one in the middle representing the Ocean, the one on the left, Fertility, and the one on the right, Health. Womenwho are disposed to dress fashionably at the expense of a deformed bodymight be profited by a study of this figure of Health. Trajan's Forum isan interesting little place, but it is a small show compared with theRoman Forum, which is much more extensive, and whose ruins are morevaried. The latter contains the temples of Vespasian, of Concordia, ofCastor and Pollux, and others. It also contains the famous Arch ofTitus, the Basilica of Constantine, the remains of great palaces, andother ruins. "Originally the Forum was a low valley among the hills, aconvenient place for the people to meet and barter. " The Palatine Hillwas fortified by the first Romans, and the Sabines lived on other hills. These two races finally united, and the valley between the hills becamethe site of numerous temples and government buildings. Kings erectedtheir palaces in the Forum, and it became the center of Roman life. Butwhen Constantine built his capital at Constantinople, the greatness ofthe city declined, and it was sacked and plundered by enemies from thenorth. The Forum became a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish untilit was almost hidden from view, and it was called by a name signifyingcow pasture. It has been partly excavated within the last century, andthe ruined temples and palaces have been brought to light, making itonce more a place of absorbing interest. I wandered around and over andunder and through these ruins for a considerable length of time, andwrote in my note book: "There is more here than I can comprehend. " I was in a garden on top of one part of the ruins where flowers andtrees were growing, and then I went down through the mass of ruins by aflight of seventy-five stairs, which, the attendant said, was built byCaligula. I was then probably not more than half way to the bottom ofthis hill of ruins, which is honeycombed with corridors, stairways, androoms of various sizes. The following scrap of history concerningCaligula will probably be interesting: "At first he was lavishlygenerous and merciful, but he soon became mad, and his cruelty knew nobounds. He banished or murdered his relatives and many of his subjects. Victims were tortured and slain in his presence while dining, and heuttered the wish that all the Roman people had but one neck, that hemight strike it off at one blow. He built a bridge across the Bay ofBaiae, and planted trees upon it and built houses upon it that he mightsay he had crossed the sea on dry land. In the middle of the bridge hegave a banquet, and at the close had a great number of the guests throwninto the sea. He made his favorite horse a priest, then a consul, andalso declared himself a god, and had temples built in his honor. " It issaid that Tiberius left the equivalent of one hundred and eighteenmillions of dollars, and that Caligula spent it in less than a year. Theattendant pointed out the corridor in which he said this wicked man wasassassinated. Near one of the entrances to the Forum stands the Arch of Titus, erectedto commemorate the victory of the Romans over the Jews at Jerusalem inA. D. 70. It is built of Parian marble and still contains awell-preserved figure of the golden candlestick of the Tabernacle carvedon one of its walls. There is a representation of the table of showbreadnear by, and some other carvings yet remain, indicating something of themanner in which the monument was originally ornamented. The Colosseum, commenced by Vespasian in A. D. 72 and finished by Tituseight years later, is a grand old ruin. It is an open theater sixhundred and twelve feet long, five hundred and fifteen feet wide, andone hundred and sixty-five feet high. This structure, capable of seatingeighty-seven thousand people, stands near the bounds of the Forum. It isthe largest of its kind, and is one of the best preserved and mostinteresting ruins in the world. When it was dedicated, the games lastedone hundred days, and five thousand wild beasts were slain. During thepersecution of the Christians it is said to have been the scene offearful barbarities. On the second day I entered the Pantheon, "the best preserved monumentof ancient Rome, " built by Marcus Agrippa, and consecrated to Mars, Venus, and others. It was burned in the reign of Titus and rebuilt byHadrian, and in A. D. 608 Pope Boniface consecrated it as a church. Theinterior is shaped like a vast dome, and the only opening for light is around hole in the top. Raphael, "reckoned by almost universal opinion asthe greatest of painters, " lies buried in the Pantheon behind one of thealtars. I went to Hadrian's Tomb, now the Castle of St. Angelo, and onto St. Peter's. Before this great church-building there is a large openspace containing an obelisk and two fountains, said to be the finest inthe city, with a semi-circular colonnade on two sides containing twohundred and eighty-four columns in four rows, and on the top of theentablature there are ninety-six large statues. There are large figureson the top of the church, representing Christ and the apostles. Theinterior is magnificent. There are three aisles five hundred andseventy-five feet long, and the middle one is eighty-two feet wide. Thebeautifully ornamented ceiling is one hundred and forty-two feet high. In this building, which was completed three hundred and fifty yearsafter it was begun, is the reputed tomb of the Apostle Peter, and manylarge marble statues. There are figures representing boy angels thatare as large as a full-grown man. The Vatican is not far from St. Peter's, and I went up to see the Museum, but got there just as it wasbeing closed for the day. I had a glimpse of the garden, and saw some ofthe Pope's carriages, which were fine indeed. One of the most interesting places that I visited about Rome was the oldunderground cemetery called the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. The visitorsgo down a stairway with a guide, who leads them about the chambers, which are but dimly lighted by the small candles they carry. Thepassages, cut in the earth or soft rock, vary both in width and height, and have been explored in modern times to the aggregate length of sixmiles. Some of the bodies were placed in small recesses in the walls, but I saw none there as I went through, but there were two in marblecoffins under glass. In one of the small chambers the party sang in someforeign language, probably Italian, and while I could not understandthem, I thought the music sounded well. The Circus of Maxentius, fifteenhundred feet long and two hundred and sixty feet wide, is near theCatacombs, as is also the tomb of Caecilla Metella, which is said tohave been erected more than nineteen hundred years ago. It is probablyas much as two miles from the city walls, and I walked on a little wayand could see other ruins still farther in the distance, but I turnedback toward the hotel, and some time after sundown found myself walkingalong the banks of the yellow Tiber in the old city. Two days ofsight-seeing had been well spent in and around the former capital of theworld, and I was ready to go on to Naples the next day. There is a saying, "See Naples and die, " but I did not feel likeexpiring when I beheld it, although it is very beautifully located. Theruins of Pompeii, a few miles distant, had more interest for me thanNaples. I went out there on the tenth of September, which I recollect asa very hot day. Pompeii, a kind of a summer resort for the Romanaristocracy, was founded 600 B. C. And destroyed by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A. D. 79. It was covered with ashes from the volcano, andpart of the population perished. The site of the city was lost, but wasfound after the lapse of centuries and the Italian Government began theexcavations in 1860. Some of the old stone-paved streets, showing theruts made by chariot wheels that ceased to roll centuries ago, have beenlaid bare. Portions of the houses are still standing, and the stonedrinking fountains along the streets are yet to be seen, as are also thestepping stones at the crossings, which are higher than the blocks usedin paving. Some of the walls still contain very clear paintings, some ofwhich are not at all commendable, and others are positively lewd. Onepicture represented a wild boar, a deer, a lion, a rabbit, some birds, and a female (almost nude) playing a harp. There was also a very clearpicture of a bird and some cherries. At one place in the ruins I saw awell-executed picture of a chained dog in mosaic work. It is remarkablehow well preserved some things are here. In the Museum are petrifiedbodies in the positions they occupied when sudden and unexpecteddestruction was poured upon them, well nigh two thousand years ago. Someappear to have died in great agony, but one has a peaceful position. Perhaps this victim was asleep when the death angel came. I saw thepetrified remains of a dog wearing a collar and lying on his back, and achild on its face. One of the men, who may have been a military officer, seemed to have a rusty sword at his side. There were skeletons, both ofhuman beings and of brutes, bronze vessels, and such articles as cakesand eggs from the kitchens of the old city. Mt. Vesuvius is a very famous volcano, standing four thousand feet high, and has wrought a great deal of destruction. In the eruption of 472, itis related that its ashes were carried to Constantinople; in 1066, thelava flowed down to the sea; in 1631, eighteen thousand lives were lost;and in 1794 a stream of lava more than a thousand feet wide and fifteenfeet high destroyed a town. From my hotel in Naples I had a fine view ofthe red light rising from the volcano the evening after I visitedPompeii. Leaving Naples, I went to Brindisi, where I took ship for Patras inGreece. A day was spent in crossing Italy, two nights and a day weretaken up with the voyage to Patras, and a good part of a day wasoccupied with the railroad trip from there to Athens, where the hotelmen made more ado over me than I was accustomed to, but I got throughall right and secured comfortable quarters at the New York Hotel, justacross the street from the Parliament Building. From the little balconyat my window I could look out at the Acropolis. The principal placesvisited the first day were the Stadium, Mars' Hill, and the Acropolis. Leaving the hotel and going through Constitution Square, up PhilhelleneStreet, past the Russian and English churches, I came to the Zappeion, amodern building put up for Olympic exhibitions. The Arch of Hadrian, apeculiar old structure, twenty-three feet wide and about fifty-six feethigh, stands near the Zappeion, and formerly marked the boundary betweenancient Athens and the more modern part of the city. Passing throughthis arch, I soon came to what remains of the temple of the OlympianJupiter, which was commenced long before the birth of Christ andfinished by Hadrian about A. D. 140. Originally this temple, after thatof Ephesus said to be the largest in the world, had three rows of eightcolumns each, on the eastern and western fronts, and a double row of onehundred columns on the northern and southern sides, and contained astatue of Jupiter, overlaid with gold and ivory. Its glory has longsince departed, and only fifteen of the columns are now standing. Alittle farther on is the Stadium, with an arena over five hundred andeighty feet long, and one hundred and nine feet wide. It was originallyconstructed by the orator Lycurgus, about three hundred and fifty yearsbefore Christ, but was being rebuilt when I was there. The seats are onboth sides and around the circular end of the arena, being made on theslope of the hill and covered with clean, white, Pentelic marble, makinga beautiful sight. On the way to Mars' Hill and the Acropolis I passed the monument ofLysicrates, the theater of Bacchus, and the Odeon. This first-mentionedtheater is said to have been "the cradle of dramatic art, " themasterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and others having been renderedthere. The Odeon of Herod Atticus differed from other ancient theatersin that it was covered. Mars' Hill is a great, oval-shaped mass of rock which probably would notbe called a hill in America. The small end, which is the highest part ofit, lies next to the Acropolis, and its summit is reached by going up ashort flight of steps cut in the limestone, and well preserved, considering their age. The bluff on the opposite side from these stepsis perhaps thirty or forty feet high and very rugged. The rock slopestoward the wide end, which is only a few feet above the ground. Iestimate the greatest length of it to be about two hundred yards, andthe greatest width one hundred and fifty yards, but accuratemeasurements might show these figures to be considerably at fault. Ihave spoken of the hill as a rock, and such it is--a great mass of hardlimestone, whose irregular surface, almost devoid of soil, still showswhere patches of it were dressed down, perhaps for ancient altars oridols. The Areopagus was a court, which in Paul's time had jurisdictionin cases pertaining to religion. A vision called Paul into Macedonia, where Lydia was converted and Pauland Silas were imprisoned. In connection with their imprisonment, theconversion of the jailer of Philippi was brought about, after which thepreachers went to Thessalonica, from whence Paul and Silas were sent toBerea. Jews from Thessalonica came down to Berea and stirred up thepeople, and the brethren sent Paul away, but Silas and Timothy were leftbehind. "They that conducted Paul, brought him as far as Athens, " andthen went back to Berea with a message to Silas and Timothy to come tohim "with all speed. " "Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, hisspirit was provoked within him as he beheld the city full of idols. "Being thus vexed, and having the gospel of Christ to preach, he reasonedwith the Jews and devout people in the synagogue and every day in themarketplace with those he met there. He came in contact withphilosophers of both the Epicurean and Stoic schools, and it was thesephilosophers who took him to the Areopagus, saying: "May we know whatthis new teaching is which is spoken by thee?" The Athenians of those days were a pleasure-loving set of idolaters whogave themselves up to telling and hearing new things. Besides the manyidols in the city, there were numerous temples and places of amusement. Within a few minutes' walk was the Stadium, capable of holding fiftythousand persons, and still nearer were the theater of Bacchus and theOdeon, capable of accommodating about thirty and six thousand peoplerespectively. On the Acropolis, probably within shouting distance, stoodsome heathen temples, one of them anciently containing a colossal statueof Athene Parthenos, said to have been not less than thirty-nine feethigh and covered with ivory and gold. In another direction and in plainsight stood, and still stands, the Theseum, a heathen temple at thattime. Take all this into consideration, with the fact that Paul hadalready been talking with the people on religious subjects, and hisgreat speech on Mars' Hill may be more impressive than ever before. "Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I foundalso an altar with this inscription, To an unknown God. What thereforeye worship in ignorance, this I set forth unto you. The God that madethe world and all things therein, he being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is he served by men'shands as though he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to alllife, and breath, and all things; and he made of one every nation of mento dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointedseasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not farfrom each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being;as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also hisoffspring. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think theGodhead is like unto gold, or silver or stone, graven by art and deviceof man. The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked, but now hecommandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as hehath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world inrighteousness by the man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath givenassurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. " The Acropolis is a great mass of stone near Mars' Hill, but rising muchhigher and having a wall around its crest. At one time, it is said, thepopulation of the city lived here, but later the city extended into thevalley below and the Acropolis became a fortress. About 400 B. C. Thebuildings were destroyed by the Persians, and those now standing therein ruins were erected by Pericles. The entrance, which is difficult todescribe, is through a gateway and up marble stairs to the top, wherethere are large quantities of marble in columns, walls, and fragments. The two chief structures are the Parthenon and the Erectheum. TheParthenon is two hundred and eight feet long and one hundred and onefeet wide, having a height of sixty-six feet. It is so large andsituated in such a prominent place that it can be seen from all sides ofthe hill. In 1687 the Venetians while besieging Athens, threw a shellinto it and wrecked a portion of it, but part of the walls and some ofthe fluted columns, which are more than six feet in diameter, are yetstanding. This building is regarded as the most perfect model of Doricarchitecture in the world, and must have been very beautiful before itsclear white marble was discolored by the hand of time and broken topieces in cruel war. The Erectheum is a smaller temple, having a littleporch with a flat roof supported by six columns in the form of femalefigures. The Theseum, an old temple erected probably four hundred years beforeChrist, is the best preserved ruin of ancient Athens. It is a littleover a hundred feet long, forty-five feet wide, and is surrounded bycolumns nearly nineteen feet high. The Hill of the Pynx lies across theroad a short distance from the Theseum. At the lower side there is awall of large stone blocks and above this a little distance is anotherwall cut in the solid rock, in the middle of which is a cube cut in thenatural rock. This is probably the platform from which the speakeraddressed the multitude that could assemble on the shelf or benchbetween the two walls. Some of the principal modern buildings are the Hellenic Academy, theUniversity, Library, Royal Palace, Parliament Building, various churchbuildings, hotels, and business houses. The University, founded in 1837, is rather plain in style, but is ornamented on the front after themanner of the ancients, with a number of paintings, representingOratory, Mathematics, Geology, History, Philosophy, and other lines ofstudy. At one end is a picture of Paul, at the other end, arepresentation of Prometheus. The museum is small and by no means asgood as those to be seen in larger and wealthier countries. The Academy, finished in 1885, is near the University, and, although smaller than itsneighbor, is more beautiful. On the opposite side of the University afine new Library was being finished, and in the same street there is anew Roman Catholic church. I also saw two Greek Catholic church houses, but they did not seem to be so lavishly decorated within as the Romanchurch, but their high ceilings were both beautifully ornamented withsmall stars on a blue background. I entered a cemetery near one of thesechurches and enjoyed looking at the beautiful monuments and vaults. Itis a common thing to find a representation of the deceased on themonument. Some of these are full-length statues, others are carvingsrepresenting only the head. Lanterns, some of them lighted, are to beseen on many of the tombs. There are some fine specimens of thesculptor's art to be seen here, and the place will soon be even morebeautiful, for a great deal of work was being done. In fact, the wholecity of Athens seemed to be prosperous, from the amount of building thatwas being done. The Parliament Building is not at all grand. The Royal Palace is largerand considerably finer. At the head of a stairway is a good picture ofPrometheus tortured by an eagle. The visitor is shown the war room, alarge hall with war scenes painted on the walls and old flags standingin the corners. The throne room and reception room are both open tovisitors, as is also the ball room, which seemed to be more elaboratelyornamented than the throne room. There is a little park of orange andother trees before the palace, also a small fountain with a marblebasin. The highest point about the city is the Lycabettus, a steep rockrising nine hundred and nineteen feet above the level of the sea, andcrowned with a church building. From its summit a splendid view of thecity, the mountains, and the ocean may be obtained. I spent five days in this city, the date of whose founding does not seemto be known. Pericles was one of the great men in the earlier history ofthe old city. He made a sacred enclosure of the Acropolis and placedthere the masterpieces of Greece and other countries. The city is saidto have had a population of three hundred thousand in his day, two-thirds of them being slaves. The names of Socrates, Demosthenes, andLycurgus also belong to the list of great Athenians. In 1040 the Normanscaptured Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, and in 1455 the Turks, commanded by Omar, captured the city. The Acropolis was occupied by theTurks in 1826, but they surrendered the next year, and in 1839 Athensbecame the seat of government of the kingdom of Greece. With Athens, mysight-seeing on the continent ended. Other interesting and curioussights were seen besides those mentioned here. For instance, I hadnoticed a variety of fences. There were hedges, wire fences, fences ofstone slabs set side by side, frail fences made of the stalks of someplant, and embryo fences of cactus growing along the railroad. In Italy, I saw many white oxen, a red ox being an exception that seems seldom tooccur. I saw men hauling logs with oxen and a cart, the long timberbeing fastened beneath the axle of the cart and to the beam of the yoke. In Belgium, one may see horses worked three abreast and four tandem, andin Southern France they were shifting cars in one of the depots with ahorse, and in France I also saw a man plowing with an ox and a horsehitched together. Now the time had come to enter the Turkish Empire, andowing to what I had previously heard of the Turk, I did not look forwardto it with pleasure. CHAPTER III. ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA. The Greek ship _Alexandros_ left the harbor of Piraeus in the forenoonof Lord's day, September eighteenth, and anchored outside the breakwaterat Smyrna, in Asia Minor, the next morning. The landing in Turkishterritory was easily accomplished, and I was soon beyond the customhouse, where my baggage and passport were examined, and settled down atthe "Hotel d'Egypte, " on the water front. This was the first time thepassport had been called for on the journey. The population of Smyrna isa mixture of Turks, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Italians, Americans, andNegroes. The English Government probably has a good sizedrepresentation, as it maintains its own postoffice. The city itself isthe main sight. The only ruins I saw were those of an old castle on thehill back of the city. The reputed tomb of Polycarp is over this hillfrom Smyrna, between two cypress trees, but I do not know that I foundthe correct location. Near the place that I supposed to be the tomb isan aqueduct, a portion of it built of stone and a portion of metal. As Iwent on out in the country I entered a vineyard to get some grapes, notknowing how I would be received by the woman I saw there; but she wasvery kind-hearted, and when I made signs for some of the grapes, she atonce pulled off some clusters and gave them to me. She also gave me achair and brought some fresh water. More grapes were gathered and put inthis cold water, so I had a fine time eating the fruit as I sat there inthe shade watching a little boy playing about; but I could not conversewith either of them on account of not knowing their language. On the wayback to the city I stopped at the railway station to make inquiriesabout a trip to Ephesus. Most of the streets in Smyrna are narrow and crooked, but there is onerunning along the water front that is rather attractive. On one side isthe water, with the numerous vessels that are to be seen in thissplendid harbor, and on the other side is a row of residences, hotels, and other buildings. The people turn out in great numbers at night andwalk along this street, sometimes sitting down at the little tables thatare set in the open air before places where different kinds of drinksare dispensed. Here they consume their drinks and watch the freeperformances that are given on an open stage adjoining the street andthe grounds where they are seated. Perhaps the most peculiar thing aboutit all is the quiet and orderly behavior of this great crowd of people. While in this city I had occasion to go to the "Banque ImperialeOttoman, " and learned that it was open in the forenoon and afternoon, but closed awhile in the middle of the day. I saw a street barber plyinghis trade here one day. A vessel of water was put up under thecustomer's chin, and held there by keeping the chin down. The barberhad his strop fastened to himself, and not to the chair or a wall, as wesee it at home. Great quantities of oats were being brought down fromthe interior on camels. The sacks were let down on the pavement, andlaborers were busy carrying them away. A poor carrier would walk up to asack of grain and drop forward on his hands, with his head between them, and reaching down almost or altogether to the pavement. The sack ofgrain was then pulled over on his back, and he arose and carried itaway. Some poor natives were busy sweeping the street and gathering upthe grain that lost out of the sacks. There seems to be a large amountof trade carried on at this port. Several ships were in the harbor, andhundreds of camels were bringing in the grain. There are now manymosques and minarets in Smyrna, where there was once a church of God. (Revelation 2:8-11. ) On Wednesday, September twenty-first, I boarded a train on the OttomanRailway for Ayassalouk, the nearest station to the ruins of Ephesus, aonce magnificent city, "now an utter desolation, haunted by wildbeasts. " We left Smyrna at seven o'clock, and reached Ayassalouk, fiftymiles distant, at half-past nine. The cars on this railway were enteredfrom to side, as on European railroads, but this time the doors werelocked after the passengers were in their compartments. Ayassalouk is apoor little village, with only a few good houses and a small population. At the back of the station are some old stone piers, that seem to havesupported arches at an earlier date. On the top of the hill, as on manyhilltops in this country, are the remains of an old castle. Below thecastle are the ruins of what I supposed to be St. John's Church, builtlargely of marble, and once used as a mosque, but now inhabited by alarge flock of martins. I visited the site of Ephesus without the services of a guide, walkingalong the road which passes at some distance on the right. I continuedmy walk beyond the ruins, seeing some men plowing, and others caring forflocks of goats, which are very numerous in the East. When I turned backfrom the road, I passed a well, obtaining a drink by means of the ropeand bucket that were there, and then I climbed a hill to the remains ofa strong stone building of four rooms. The thick walls are several feethigh, but all the upper part of the structure has been thrown down, and, strange to say, a good portion of the fallen rocks are in three of therooms, which are almost filled. It is supposed that Paul made a journeyafter the close of his history in the book of Acts; that he passedthrough Troas, where he left a cloak and some books (2 Tim. 4:13); wasarrested there, and probably sent to Ephesus for trial before theproconsul. Tradition has it that this ruined stone building is the placewhere he was lodged, and it is called St. Paul's Prison. From the top ofits walls I could look away to the ruins of the city proper, about amile distant, the theater being the most conspicuous object. There are several attractions in Ephesus, where there was once a churchof God--one of the "seven churches in Asia"--but the theater was thechief point of interest to me. It was cut out of the side of the hill, and its marble seats rested on the sloping sides of the excavation, while a building of some kind, a portion of which yet remains, was builtacross the open side at the front. I entered the inclosure, the outlinesof which are still plainly discernible, and sat down on one of the oldseats and ate my noonday meal. As I sat there, I thought of the scenethat would greet my eyes if the centuries that have intervened sincePaul was in Ephesus could be turned back. I thought I might see theseats filled with people looking down upon the apostle as he fought forhis life; and while there I read his question: "If after the manner ofmen I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me" if the deadare not raised up? (I Cor. 15:32). I also read the letter which Jesuscaused the aged Apostle John to write to the church at this place (Rev. 2:1-7), and Paul's epistle to the congregation that once existed inthis idolatrous city of wealth and splendor. As I was leaving this spot, where I was so deeply impressed with thoughts of the great apostle tothe Gentiles, I stopped and turned back to take a final look, when Ithought of his language to Timothy, recorded in the first eight versesof the second epistle, and then I turned and read it. Perhaps I was notso deeply impressed at any other point on the whole journey as I washere. The grand old hero, who dared to enter the city which was"temple-keeper of the great Diana, " this temple being one of the "SevenWonders of the World, " and boldly preach the gospel of Christ, realizing that the time of his departure was at hand, wrote: "I havefought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept thefaith: Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; andnot to me only, but also to all them that have loved his appearing. "Meditating on the noble and lofty sentiment the apostle here expressesin connection with his solemn charge to the young evangelist, I havefound my sentiments well expressed in Balaam's parable, where he says:"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his"(Num. 23:10). Near the front of the theater, on the left as one comes out, is quite aspace, which seems to have been excavated recently, and farther to theleft excavations were being made when I was there. An ancient lamp, afluted column, and a headless statue were among the articles taken out. The workmen were resting when I viewed this part of the ruins, and anold colored man gave me a drink of water. Beginning a little to theright of the theater, and extending for perhaps fifteen hundred or twothousand feet, is a marble-paved street, along which are strewn numerousbases, columns, and capitals, which once ornamented this portion of thegreat city; and to the right of this are the remains of some mightystructure of stone and brick. In some places, where the paving blockshave been taken up, a water course beneath is disclosed. While walkingaround in the ruins, I saw a fine marble sarcophagus, or coffin, ornamented with carvings of bulls' heads and heavy festoons of oakleaves. J. S. Wood, an Englishman, worked parts of eleven years, from 1863 to1874, in making excavations at Ephesus. Upwards of eighty thousanddollars were spent, about fifty-five thousand being used in a successfuleffort to find the remains of the Temple of Diana. I followed thedirections of my guide-book, but may not have found the exact spot, asBrother McGarvey, who visited the place in 1879, speaks of theexcavations being twenty feet deep. "Down in this pit, " he says, "liethe broken columns of white marble and the foundation walls of thegrandest temple ever erected on earth"; but I saw nothing like this. When Paul had passed through Galatia and Phrygia, "establishing all thedisciples, " "having passed through the upper country, " he came toEphesus, and found "about twelve men" who had been baptized "into John'sbaptism, " whom Paul baptized "into the name of the Lord Jesus. " He thenentered into the Jewish meeting place and reasoned boldly "concerningthe kingdom of God. " Some of the hardened and disobedient spoke "evil ofthe Way, " so Paul withdrew from them and reasoned "daily in the schoolof Tyrannus. And this continued for the space of two years; so that allthey that dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews andGreeks. " The Lord wrought special miracles by Paul, so that the sickwere healed when handkerchiefs or aprons were borne from him to them. Here some of the strolling Jews "took upon them to name over them thathad the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, I adjure you byJesus, whom Paul preacheth. " When two of the sons of Sceva undertook todo this, the man possessed of the evil spirit "leaped on them andmastered both of them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled outof the house naked and wounded. " There were stirring times in Ephesus inthose days. Fear fell upon the people, "and the name of the Lord Jesuswas magnified. " Many of the believers "came confessing, and declaringtheir deeds. And not a few of them that practiced magical arts broughttheir books together and burned them in the sight of all; and theycounted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces ofsilver. " "So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed. " "And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way. For acertain man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines ofDiana, brought no little business unto the craftsmen; whom he gatheredtogether, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye knowthat by this business we have our wealth. And ye see and hear that notalone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hathpersuaded and turned away much people, saying that they are no gods thatare made with hands: and not only is there danger that our trade comeinto disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana bemade of no account, and that she should even be deposed from hermagnificence, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when theyheard this they were filled with wrath, and cried out, saying, Great isDiana of the Ephesians. And the city was filled with the confusion: andthey rushed with one accord into the theater, having seized Gaius andAristarchus, men of Macedonia, Paul's companions in travel. And whenPaul was minded to enter in unto the people, the disciples suffered himnot. And certain also of the Asiarchs, being his friends, sent unto himand besought him not to adventure himself into the theater. Sometherefore cried one thing, and some another: for the assembly was inconfusion; and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. And they brought Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews putting himforward. And Alexander beckoned with the hand and would have made adefense unto the people. But when they perceived that he was a Jew, allwith one voice about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana ofthe Ephesians. And when the town clerk had quieted the multitude, hesaith, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there who knoweth not that thecity of the Ephesians is temple-keeper of the great Diana, and of theimage which fell down from Jupiter? Seeing then that these things cannot be gainsaid, ye ought to be quiet, and to do nothing rash. For yehave brought hither these men, who are neither robbers of temples norblasphemers of our goddess. If therefore Demetrius, and the craftsmenthat are with him, have a matter against any man, the courts are open, and there are proconsuls: let them accuse one another. But if ye seekanything about other matters, it shall be settled in the regularassembly. For indeed we are in danger to be accused concerning thisday's riot, there being no cause for it: and as touching it we shall notbe able to give an account of this concourse. And when he had thusspoken, he dismissed the assembly" (Acts 19:23-41). As I was leaving the ruins, I stopped, sat down in sight of the spotwhere I supposed the temple stood, and read the speech of Demetrius, andthought his fears were well founded. Their trade has come intodisrepute, "the temple of the great goddess" has been "made of noaccount, " and "she whom Asia and all the world" worshiped has been"deposed from her magnificence. " Portions of the temple are now onexhibition in the British Museum, in London, and portions have beencarried to different other cities to adorn buildings inferior to the onein which they were originally used. "From the temple to the moresouthern of the two eastern gates of the city, " says McGarvey, "aretraces of a paved street nearly a mile in length, along the side ofwhich was a continuous colonnade, with the marble coffins of the city'sillustrious dead occupying the spaces between the columns. Theprocessions of worshipers, as they marched out of the city to thetemple, passed by this row of coffins, the inscriptions on which wereconstantly proclaiming the noble deeds of the mighty dead. " The canaland artificial harbor, which enabled the ships of the world to reach thegates of the city, have disappeared under the weight of the hand oftime. In some places the ground is literally covered with small stones, and even in the theater, weeds, grass and bushes grow undisturbed. Howcomplete the desolation! Before leaving Ayassalouk on the afternoon train, I bought some grapesof a man who weighed them to me with a pair of balances, putting thefruit on one pan and a stone on the other; but I didn't object to hisscales, for he gave me a good supply, and I went back and got some more. I also bought some bread to eat with the grapes, and one of the numerouspriests of these Eastern countries gave me some other fruit on thetrain. I was abroad in the fruit season, and I enjoyed it very much. Ihad several kinds, including the orange, lemon, grapes, pomegranates, figs, olives, and dates. Perhaps I had nothing finer than the large, sweet grapes of Greece. The next day after the trip to Ephesus, Iboarded the _Princess Eugenia_, a Russian ship, for Beyrout, in Syria. Soon after leaving Smyrna the ship stopped at a port of disinfection. The small boats were lowered, and the third-class passengers werecarried to the disinfecting establishment, where their clothes wereheated in a steam oven, while they received a warm shower bath withoutexpense to themselves. A nicely dressed young German shook his headafterwards, as though he did not like such treatment; but it was notspecially disagreeable, and there was no use to complain. That evening, the twenty-second of September, we sailed into a harbor onthe island of Chios, the birth-place of the philosopher Pythagoras. Itis an island twenty-seven miles long, lying near the mainland. The nextmorning we passed Cos and Rhodes. On this last mentioned island oncestood the famous Colossus, which was thrown down by an earthquake in 224B. C. The island of Patmos, to which John was banished, and upon which hewrote the Revelation, was passed in the night before we reached Cos. Itis a rocky, barren patch of land, about twenty miles in circumference, lying twenty-four miles from the coast of Asia Minor. On thetwenty-fourth the _Princess Eugenia_ passed the southwestern end of theisland of Cyprus. In response to a question, one of the seamen answeredme: "Yes, that's Kiprus. " I was sailing over the same waters Paulcrossed on his third missionary tour on the way from Assos to Tyre. He"came over against Chios, " "came with a straight course unto Cos, andthe next day unto Rhodes, " and when he "had come in sight of Cyprus, leaving it on the left hand (he) sailed unto Syria and landed at Tyre"(Acts 20:15 and 21:1-3). On the evening of Lord's day, September twenty-fifth, the ship passedTripoli, on the Syrian coast, and dropped down to Beyrout, where Istopped at the "Hotel Mont Sion, " with the waves of the Mediterraneanwashing against the foundation walls. At seven o'clock the next morningI boarded the train for Damascus, ninety-one miles distant, and we weresoon climbing the western slope of the Lebanon Mountains by a cograilway. When we were part way up, the engine was taken back and hitchedto the rear end of the train. After we were hauled along that wayawhile, it was changed back to the front end again. In these mountainsare vineyards and groves of figs, olives, and mulberry trees, but mostof the ground was dry and brown, as I had seen it in Southern Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor. Beyond the mountains is a beautiful plain, whichwe entered about noon, and when it was crossed, we came to theAnti-Lebanon Mountains, and reached the old city in the evening. Damascus, with its mixed population of Moslems, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Jews, and others, is the largest city in Syria, and it hasprobably been continuously inhabited longer than any other city onearth. Away back in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis we read ofAbraham's victory over the enemies who had taken Lot away, whom Abrahampursued "unto Hobah, which is on the left of Damascus, " and in the nextchapter we read of "Eliezer of Damascus, " who Abraham thought would bethe possessor of his house. Rezon "reigned in Damascus, and he was anadversary to Israel all the days of Solomon" (1 Kings 11:23-25). Elishawent to Damascus when Ben-Hadad was sick (2 Kings 8:7-15); Jeroboamrecovered the city, which had belonged to Judah (2 Kings 14:28); andJeremiah prophesied of the city (Jeremiah 49:23-27). It was probably thehome of Naaman, the Syrian leper, and here Paul was baptized intoChrist. For a long time the Arabs have considered Damascus as "an earthlyreflection of Paradise, " but an American or European would consider aplace no better than it is as being far from the Paradise of Divinemaking. But it is not entirely without reason that these people havesuch a lofty conception of the old city. The Koran describes Paradise asa place of trees and streams of water, and Damascus is briefly describedin those words. There are many public drinking fountains in the city, and owing to the abundance of water, there are many trees. The riverAbana, one of the "rivers of Damascus" (2 Kings 5:12), flows through thecity, but the most of its water is diverted by artificial channels. Ihad some difficulty in finding the American Consular Agent, and it is nowonder, for the place is not the most prominent in Damascus by a gooddeal, and the escutcheon marking it as the place where the AmericanGovernment is represented is not on the street, but over a door in akind of porch. The Agent was not in, so I retraced my steps to theFrench consulate, which is near by. I was kindly received by a gentlemanwho could speak English, and after we had had a good, cool drink oflemonade, he went with me to the "Hotel d'Astre d'Orient, " in the"street which is called Straight. " The next morning I found the AmericanAgent in his office. Then I went to the postoffice, and after beingtaken upstairs and brought back downstairs, I was led up to a littlecase on the wall, which was unlocked in order that I might look throughthe bunch of letters it contained addressed in English, and I was madeglad by receiving an epistle from the little woman who has since takenmy name upon her for life. After reading my letter, I went out andwalked up the mountain side far enough to get a bird's-eye view of thecity, and it was a fine sight the rich growth of green trees presentedin contrast with the brown earth all around. Returning to the city, Iwalked about the streets, devoting some of my time to the bazaars, orlittle stores, in which a great variety of goods are offered for sale. Ialso saw several kinds of work, such as weaving, wood-turning andblacksmithing, being carried on. The lathes used for turning wood arevery simple, and are operated by a bow held in the workman's right hand, while the chisel is held in his left hand and steadied by the toes onone or the other of his feet. It is a rather slow process, but they canturn out good work. One gentleman, who was running a lathe of this kind, motioned for me to come up and sit by his side on a low stool. Iaccepted his invitation, and he at once offered me a cigarette, which Icould not accept. A little later he called for a small cup of coffee, which I also declined, but he took no offense. "The street which iscalled Straight" is not as straight as might be supposed from its name, but there is probably enough difference between its course and that ofothers to justify the name. When Paul was stricken with blindness on his way here (Acts 9:1-30), hewas directed to enter the city, where he would be told all things thatwere appointed for him to do. He obeyed the voice from heaven, andreached the house of Judas in Straight Street. When I reached thetraditional site of the house of Ananias, in the eastern part of thecity, near the gate at the end of Straight Street, I found agood-natured woman sitting on the pavement just inside the door openingfrom the street to what would be called a yard in America. The "house"has been converted into a small church, belonging to the Catholics, andit is entirely below the surface. I went down the stairs, and found asmall chamber with an arched ceiling and two altars. I also went out andvisited the old gateway at the end of the street. The masonry is aboutthirteen feet thick, and it may be that here Paul, deprived of hissight, and earnestly desiring to do the will of the Lord, entered thecity so long ago. I then viewed a section of the wall from the outside. The lower part is ancient, but the upper part is modern, and the portionthat I saw was in a dilapidated condition. "In Damascus, " Paul wrote tothe Corinthians, "the governor, under Aretas the king, guarded the cityof the Damascenes in order to take me: and through a window was I letdown in a basket by the wall, and escaped his hands" (2 Cor. 11:32, 33). In some places there are houses so built in connection with the wallthat it would not be a very difficult thing to lower a man from one ofthe windows to the ground outside the city. Mention has already been made of the Arab's opinion of Damascus, and nowI wish to tell how it appeared through my spectacles. The view from thedistance is very pleasing, but when one comes inside the wall and beginsto walk about the streets, the scene changes. The outside of thebuildings is not beautiful. The streets are narrow, crooked, and usuallyvery dirty; in some cases they are filthy. It seems that all kinds ofrubbish are thrown into the streets, and the dogs are scavengers. Perhaps no other city has so many dogs. At one place up along the Abana, now called the Barada, I counted twenty-three of these animals, and afew steps brought me in sight of five more; but there is some filth thateven Damascus dogs will not clean up. Some of the streets are roughlypaved with stone, but in the best business portion of the city that Isaw there was no pavement and no sidewalk--it was all street from onewall to the other. I saw a man sprinkling one of the streets with watercarried in the skin of some animal, perhaps a goat. When I came out ofthe postoffice, a camel was lying on the pavement, and in another partof the city I saw a soldier riding his horse on the sidewalk. Down in"the street which is called Straight" a full-grown man was going alongas naked as when he was born. Perhaps he was insane, but we do not evenallow insane men to walk the streets that way in this country. Carriagesare used for conveying passengers, but freight is usually moved on thebacks of horses, camels, donkeys, or men. Some wagons and carts are tobe seen, but they are not numerous. It is remarkable what loads arepiled upon the donkeys, probably the commonest beasts of burden inDamascus. Sometimes the poor little creatures are almost hidden fromview by the heavy burdens they are required to bear, which may consistof grapes to be sold, or rubbish to be carried out of the city. Sometimes they are ridden by as many as three people at once. If thegospel were to get a firm hold on these people, the donkeys would farebetter. About 333 B. C. , Damascus came under the control of Alexander the Great. Antiochus Dionysius reigned there three years, but was succeeded byAretas of Arabia in 85 B. C. Under Trajan it became a Roman provincialcity. The Mongols took it in 1260, and the Tartars plundered it in 1300. An enemy marched against it in 1399, but the citizens purchased immunityfrom plunder by paying a "sum of a million pieces of gold. " In 1516, when Selim, the Turkish Sultan, marched in, it became one of theprovincial capitals of the Turkish Empire, and so continues. There was avery serious massacre here in 1860. All the consulates, except theBritish and Prussian, were burned, and the entire Christian quarter wasturned into ruins. In the two consulates that were spared many liveswere preserved, but it is said that "no fewer than six thousandunoffending Christians . . . Were thus murdered in Damascus alone, " and"the whole number of the Christians who perished in these days of terroris estimated at fourteen thousand. " A number of the leaders wereafterward beheaded, and a French force, numbering ten thousand, was sentinto the country. The Mohammedans have about two hundred mosques andcolleges in this city, which was once far advanced in civilization. I left Damascus and returned toward the coast to Rayak, where I took thetrain on a branch line for Baalbec, the Syrian city of the sun, a placehaving no Biblical history, but being of interest on account of thegreat stones to be seen there. No record has been preserved as to theorigin of the city, but coins of the first century of the Christian erashow that it was then a Roman colony. It is situated in the valley ofthe Litany, at an elevation of two thousand eight hundred and forty feetabove the sea. The chief ruins are in a low part of the valley by theside of the present town, and are surrounded by gardens. Within theinclosing wall are the remains of the temple of Jupiter and the templeof the sun. The hand of time and the hand of man have each had a sharein despoiling these ruins, but they still speak with eloquence of theirgrandeur at an earlier date. The wall is so low on the north that it issupposed to have been left unfinished. Here are nine stones, each saidto be thirty feet long, ten feet thick and thirteen feet high, and theyare closely joined together without the use of mortar. Just around thecorner are three others still larger, and built in the wall about twentyfeet above the foundation. Their lengths are given as follows:sixty-three feet; sixty-three feet and eight inches; and sixty-fourfeet. They are thirteen feet high and about ten feet thick. Some may beinterested in knowing how such large building blocks were moved. McGarvey says: "It is explained by the carved slabs found in the templeof Nineveh, on which are sculptured representations of the entireprocess. The great rock was placed on trucks by means of levers, a largenumber of strong ropes were tied to the truck, a smooth track of heavytimbers was laid, and men in sufficient number to move the mass werehitched to the ropes. " Some of the smaller stones have holes cut inthem, as if for bars, levers, or something of that kind, but the facesof these big blocks are smooth. "A man must visit the spot, ride roundthe exterior, walk among the ruins, sit down here and there to gaze uponits more impressive features, see the whole by sunlight, by twilight, and by moonlight, and allow his mind leisurely to rebuild it andre-people it, ere he can comprehend it. "--_McGarvey_. There were some of the native girls out by the ruins who tried to sellme some of their needle work, but I was not disposed to buy. One of themattempted to make a sale by saying something like this: "You're verynice, Mister; please buy one. " I told her there was a little girl inAmerica who thought that, too, and went on. There is a rock in thequarry at Baalbec that is larger than any of those in the ruins, although it was never entirely cut out, the length of which issixty-eight feet, and the width varies from about thirteen feet at oneend to seventeen feet at the other. It is about fourteen feet thick, andthe estimated weight is fifteen hundred tons. Some of the stones in aruined building, once a tomb, standing on the hill above the town, giveforth a metallic ring when struck. Farther on is a small cemetery, inwhich some of the headstones and footstones are as much as nine feetapart. If the people buried there were that long, surely "there weregiants in the land in those days. " I went down on the opposite side ofthe hill from the tomb and entered a vineyard, where an old man treatedme with kindness and respect. The modern town is poorly built of smallstones and mud, but there are some good buildings of dressed stone, among which I may mention the British Syrian School and the Grand NewHotel. I staid at another hotel, where I found one of those pre-occupiedbeds which travelers in the East so often find. About midnight, after Ihad killed several of the little pests, I got up and shaved bycandle-light, for I wasn't sleepy, and there was no use to waste thetime. Leaving Baalbec, I went down to Rayak and on to Beyrout again. This oldcity is said to have been entirely destroyed in the second centurybefore Christ. It was once a Roman possession, and gladiatorial combatswere held there by Titus after the destruction of Jerusalem. Anearthquake destroyed it in 529, and the British bombarded it in 1840. The population is a great mixture of Turks, Orthodox Greeks, UnitedGreeks, Jews, Latins, Maronites, Protestants, Syrians, Armenians, Druses, and others. A great many ships call here, as this is the mostimportant commercial city in Syria. The numerous exports consist ofsilk, olive oil, cotton, raisins, licorice, figs, soap, sponges, cattle, and goats. Timber, coffee, rice, and manufactured goods are imported. Atone time Arabic was the commonest language, and Italian came next, butnow, while Arabic holds first place, French comes second. The British, Austrians, Russians, and perhaps the French, maintain their ownpostoffices. Considerable efforts are being made by American, British, and other missionary institutions to better the condition of thenatives. The American Mission, conducted by the Presbyterians, has beenin operation more than seventy years. A few years ago they had onehundred and forty-three schools and more than seven thousand pupils. TheChurch of Scotland has a mission for the Jews. The British SyrianMission was established in 1864. Beyrout has comparatively little of interest for the traveler. I walkedout to the public garden one morning and found it closed, but I do notthink I missed much. As I went along from place to place, I hadopportunity to see the weavers, wood-turners, and marble-cutters attheir work. I stopped at a small candy factory, equipped with whatseemed to be good machinery for that kind of work. One day I watchedsome camels get up after their burdens of lumber had been tied on. Theykept up a peculiar distressing noise while they were being loaded, butgot up promptly when the time came. When a camel lies down, his legsfold up something like a carpenter's rule, and when he gets up, he firststraightens out one joint of the fore legs, then all of the hind legs, and finally, when the fore legs come straight, he is standing away up inthe air. The extensive buildings of the American College were visited, also the American Press, the missionary headquarters of Presbyterians inAmerica. On the third of October the Khedivial steamer _Assouan_ camealong, and I embarked for Haifa, in Galilee. CHAPTER IV. A FEW DAYS IN GALILEE. Years ago, when I first began to think of making the trip I am nowdescribing, I had no thought of the many interesting places that I couldeasily and cheaply visit on my way to Palestine. I did not then think ofwhat has been described on the foregoing pages. Now I have come to theplace where I am to tell my readers the story of my travels in the Landof Promise, and I want to make it as interesting and instructive aspossible. It is important to have a knowledge of the geography of allthe lands mentioned, but it is especially important to know the locationof the various places referred to in Palestine. These pages will be moreprofitable if the reader will make frequent reference to maps of theland, that he may understand the location of the different placesvisited. I shall first describe my trip across the province of Galilee, and take up my sight-seeing in Judaea in other chapters. The ancient Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon were on the coastbetween Beyrout and Haifa, where I entered Galilee on the fourth ofOctober, but we passed these places in the night. Haifa, situated at thebase of Mount Carmel, has no Biblical history, but is one of the twoplaces along the coast of Palestine where ships stop, Jaffa being theother. Mount Carmel is fourteen miles long, and varies in height fromfive hundred and fifty-six feet at the end next to the sea to eighteenhundred and ten feet at a point twelve miles inland. There is amonastery on the end next to the Mediterranean, which I reached after adusty walk along the excellent carriage road leading up from Haifa. After I rested awhile, reading my Bible and guide-book, I walked out tothe point where the sea on three sides, the beautiful little plain atthe base of the mountain, Haifa, and Acre across the bay, all made upone of the prettiest views of the whole trip. Owing to its proximity tothe sea and the heavy dews, Carmel was not so dry and brown as much ofthe country I had seen before. By the direction of Elijah, Ahab gathered the prophets of Baal, numbering four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah, fourhundred more, at some point on this mountain, probably at the easternend, passed on my way over to Nazareth later in the day. "And Elijahcame near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping betweenthe two sides? If Jehovah be God, follow him; but if Baal, then followhim" (1 Kings 18:21). He then proposed that two sacrifices be laid onthe wood, with no fire under them; that the false prophets should callon their god, and he would call on Jehovah. The God that answered byfire was to be God. "All the people answered and said, It is wellspoken. " The prophets of Baal called upon him from morning till noon, saying, "O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped about the altar that was made. And it came to pass atnoon that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god:either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is on a journey, orperadventure he sleepeth and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, andcut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, till theblood gushed out upon them. And it was so, when midday was past, thatthey prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening oblation;but there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. "The sincerity, earnestness, and perseverance of these people arecommendable, but they were _wrong_. Sincerity, although a most desirabletrait, can not change a wrong act into acceptable service to God, norcan earnestness and perseverance make such a change. It is necessaryboth to be honest and to do the will of our heavenly Father. After waterhad been poured over the other sacrifice till it ran down and filled thetrench around the altar, Elijah called on Jehovah, and in response tohis petition "the fire of Jehovah fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water thatwas in the trench. " Elijah then took the false prophets down to thebrook Kishon, at the base of the mountain, and killed them. Acre is theAcco of the Old Testament, and lies around the bay, twelve mile fromHaifa. It is said that the Phoenicians obtained the dye called Tyrianpurple there, and that shells of the fish that yielded it are yet to befound along the beach. Napoleon besieged the place in 1799, and used amonastery, since destroyed, on Mount Carmel for a hospital. After hisretreat, Mohammedans killed the sick and wounded soldiers who had beenleft behind, and they were buried near the monastery. Acre was calledPtolemais in apostolic times, and Paul spent a day with the brethrenthere as he was on his way down the coast from Tyre to Jerusalem. (Acts21:7. ) About noon I entered a carriage for Nazareth, in which there were fourother passengers: a lady connected with the English Orphanage inNazareth, and three boys going there to attend the Russian school. Abouttwo miles from Haifa we crossed the dry bed of the Kishon, as thisstream, like many others in Palestine, only flows in the wet season. Ourcourse led along the base of Carmel to the southeast, and the supposedplace of Elijah's sacrifice was pointed out. Afterwards Mount Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan were slain, came in sight, and later we sawLittle Hermon with Nain upon it, Endor below it on one side, and Jezreelnot far away in another direction. We saw a good portion of the Plain ofEsdraelon, and Mount Tabor was in sight before we entered Nazareth, which lies on the slope of a hill and comes suddenly into view. Nazareth is not mentioned in the Old Testament, and the references to itin the New Testament are not numerous. When Joseph returned from Egyptin the reign of Archelaus, the son of Herod, he was afraid to go intoJudaea, "and being warned of God in a dream, he withdrew into the partsof Galilee, and came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it mightbe fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, that he should be called aNazarene" (Matt. 2:19-23). I do not know the age of Jesus when Josephand Mary came with him to Nazareth, but "his parents went every year toJerusalem at the feast of the passover"; and we are told that the childwas twelve years old at the time his parents missed him as they werereturning from the feast, and later found him in the temple hearing theteachers and asking them questions. In this connection we are told that"he went down with them and came to Nazareth; and he was subject untothem" (Luke 2:51). Luke also informs us that Jesus, "when he began toteach, was about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23). Thus we have aperiod of eighteen years between the incident in the temple and thebeginning of his public ministry, in which Jesus resided in Nazareth. The greater part of his earth life was spent in this Galilean city, where he was subject unto his parents. It is a blessed thing that somuch can be said of our Savior in so few words. It is highly commendablethat children be subject unto their parents, who love them dearly, andwho know best what is for their health, happiness, and future good. After his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, "Jesus returned inthe power of the spirit into Galilee, . . . And he came to Nazareth, wherehe had been brought up: and he entered, as his custom was, into thesynagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. " When the roll of theScriptures was handed to him, he read from the opening verses of thesixty-first chapter of Isaiah, then "he closed the book, and gave itback to the attendant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in thesynagogue were fastened on him" as he told them: "To-day hath thisscripture been fulfilled in your ears, " and although they "wondered atthe words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth, " they were notwilling to accept his teaching, and as he continued to speak, "they wereall filled with wrath, . . . And they rose up, and cast him forth out ofthe city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city wasbuilt, that they might throw him down headlong. But he, passing throughthe midst of them, went his way. And he came down to Capernaum, a cityof Galilee" (Luke 4:14-31). Having made arrangements for a carriage the evening I arrived inNazareth, before daylight the next morning I started to drive toTiberias, on the Sea of Galilee. When I went down stairs, at abouthalf-past three o'clock, I found a covered rig with two seats, and threehorses hitched to it side by side. I filed no objection to the size ofthe carriage, nor to the manner in which the horses were hitched. As thedriver could not speak English and the passenger could not speak Arabic, there was no conversation on the way. As we drove out of Nazareth, Iobserved a large number of women at the Virgin's Fountain, filling theirjars with water. At a distance of a little more than three miles wepassed through Kefr Kenna, the "Cana of Galilee, " where Jesus performedhis first miracle. (John 2:1-11. ) The road to Tiberias is not allsmooth, but is better than might be supposed. With three horses and alight load, we were able to move along in the cool of the morning at alively gait, passing a camel train, an occasional village, oliveorchard, or mulberry grove. After a while the light of the moon grewpale, and about six o'clock the great round sun came above the horizonin front of us, and it was not long until a beautiful sheet of water sixmiles long--the Sea of Galilee--came suddenly into view. We rolled alongthe winding curves of the carriage road, down the slope of the hill, andthrough a gateway in the old wall, to Tiberias, on the west shore of"Blue Galilee. " According to Josephus, Herod Antipas began to build a new capital cityabout sixteen years before the birth of Jesus, and completed it in A. D. 22. He named this new city Tiberias, in honor of the emperor, but itdoes not appear to have been a popular place with the Jews, and butlittle is said of it in the New Testament (John 21:1), yet it was not aninsignificant place. The Sanhedrin was transferred from Sepphoris, theold capital, to the new city, and here the school of the Talmud wasdeveloped against the gospel system. The ancient traditional law, calledthe "Mishna, " is said to have been published here in A. D. 200, and thePalestinian Gemara (the so-called Jerusalem Talmud) came into existenceat this place more than a century later. The Tiberian pointing of theHebrew Bible began here. The present population is largely composed ofJews, about two-thirds of the inhabitants being descendants of Abraham. They wear large black hats or fur caps, and leave a long lock of hairhanging down in front of each ear. There is little in Tiberias tointerest the traveler who has seen the ruins of Rome, Athens andEphesus. The seashore bounds it on one side and an old stone wall runsalong at the other side. I walked past some of the bazaars, and saw themosque and ruined castle. About a mile down the shore are the hotsprings, which, for many centuries, have been thought to possessmedicinal properties. I tried the temperature of one of the springs, andfound it too hot to be comfortable to my hand. As I returned toTiberias, I had a good, cool bath in the sea, which is called by avariety of names, as "the sea of Tiberias, " "sea of Galilee, " "sea ofGenessaret, " and "sea of Chinnereth. " It is a small lake, thirteen mileslong, lying six hundred and eighty-two feet below the level of theMediterranean. The depth is given as varying from one hundred and thirtyto one hundred and sixty-five feet. It is really "Blue Galilee, " and thesight of it is an agreeable change to the eye after one has beentraveling the dry, dusty roads leading through a country almostdestitute of green vegetation. In the spring, when the grass is growingand the flowers are in bloom, the highlands rising around the sea mustbe very beautiful. Several places mentioned in the New Testament were situated along theSea of Galilee, but they have fallen into ruin--in some cases into utterruin. One of these was Bethsaida, where Jesus gave sight to a blind man(Mark 8:22-26), and fed a multitude of about five thousand. (Luke9:10-17. ) It was also the home of Philip, Andrew, and Peter. (John1:44. ) It is thought by some that James and John also came from thisplace. On the northwestern shore was Chorazin, situated in theneighborhood of Bethsaida; also Capernaum, once the home of Jesus; andMagdala, the name of which "has been immortalized in every language ofChristendom as denoting the birth-place of Mary Magdalene, or better, Mary of Magdala. " Safed is a large place on a mountain above the sea insight of the Nazareth road, and was occupied by the French in 1799. Itis said that the Jews have a tradition that the Messiah will come fromthis place. On the way back to Nazareth the driver stopped at the springof Kefr Kenna and watered his horses and rested them awhile. Hundreds ofgoats, calves, and other stock were being watered, and I saw an oldstone coffin being used for a watering trough. After another night in Nazareth, I was ready to go out to Mount Tabor. For this trip I had engaged a horse to ride and a man to go along andshow me where to ride it, for we did not follow a regular road, if, indeed, there is any such a thing leading to this historic place, whichis about six miles from Nazareth. It was only a little past fouro'clock in the morning when we started, and the flat top of themountain, two thousand and eighteen feet above sea level, was reached atan early hour. Mount Tabor is a well-shaped cone, with a good road forhorseback riding leading up its side. There is some evidence that therewas a city here more than two hundred years before Christ. Josephusfortified it in his day, and part of the old wall still remains. According to a tradition, contradicted by the conclusion of modernscholars, this is the mount of transfiguration. By the end of the sixthcentury three churches had been erected on the summit to commemorate thethree tabernacles which Peter proposed to build (Matt. 17:1-8), and nowthe Greek and Roman Catholics have each a monastery only a shortdistance apart, separated by a stone wall or fence. The extensive viewfrom the top is very fine, including a section of Galilee from theMediterranean to the sea of Tiberias. In the Book of Judges we read that Israel was delivered into the handsof the Canaanites, and was sorely oppressed for twenty years. Theprophetess Deborah sent for Barak, and instructed him with a messagefrom God to the end that he should take "ten thousand men of thechildren of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun" unto Mount Tabor. This he did, and Sisera assembled his nine hundred chariots "fromHarosheth of the Gentiles unto the river Kishon. So Barak went down fromMount Tabor and ten thousand men after him. . . . Howbeit, Sisera fledaway on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, "and she drove a tent-pin through his temples while he was lying asleep, (Judges 4:1-23. ) The song of Deborah and Barak, beginning with thewords, "For that the leaders took the lead in Israel, for that thepeople offered themselves willingly, bless ye Jehovah, " is recorded inthe fifth chapter of Judges. I was back in Nazareth by ten o'clock, and spent some hours lookingaround the city where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary the words:"Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee" (Luke 1:28). These hours, with what time I had already spent here, enabled me to seeseveral places of interest. Tradition points out many places connectedwith the lives of Joseph and Mary, but tradition is not always reliable, for it sometimes happens that the Greeks and the Romans each have adifferent location for the same event. This is true with regard to thepoint where the angry people were about to throw Jesus over "the brow ofthe hill" (Luke 4:29). I saw no place that struck me as being the onereferred to in the Scriptures, and in reply to an inquiry, a lady at theEnglish Orphanage, who has spent twenty years in Nazareth, said shethought it was some place on that side of the town, but the contour ofthe hill had probably changed. She also mentioned that the relics takenout in excavations were all found on that side, indicating that the oldcity had been built there. When Brother McGarvey visited Palestine, hefound two places that corresponded somewhat with Luke's reference to theplace. Concerning one of them he wrote: "I am entirely satisfied thathere is where the awful attempt was made. " I was shown the "place ofannunciation" in the Latin monastery. On the top of a column stands thefigure of a female, probably representing the Virgin, and a bit of ruinthat is said to date back to the time of Constantine is pointed out. Here, I was told, stood the first church building erected in Nazareth. One of the "brothers" took the key and went around to a buildingsupposed to stand on the site of Joseph's carpenter shop. It is a smallchapel, built about 1858 over the ruins of some older structure. In thefloor of marble or stone there are two wooden trapdoors, which areraised to show the ruins below. Over the altar in the end opposite thedoor is a picture to represent the holy family, and there are some otherpictures in different parts of the little chapel. From here I went tothe Virgin's Fountain. If it be true that this is the only spring inNazareth, then I have no doubt that I was near the spot frequentlyvisited by the Nazarene maid who became the mother of our Lord. I saynear the spot, for the masonry where the spring discharges is about ahundred yards from the fountain, which is now beneath the floor of aconvent. The water flows out through the wall by two stone spouts, andhere the women were crowded around, filling their vessels or waiting fortheir turn. The flow was not very strong, and this helps to explain whyso many women were there before daylight the morning I went to Tiberias. I saw one woman, who was unable to get her vessel under the stream ofone of the spouts, drawing down a part of the water by sticking a leafagainst the end of the spout. I also visited some of the bazaars andwent to the Orphanage. This missionary institution is nicely situated ina prominent place well up on the hill, and is managed entirely by women, but a servant is kept to do outside work. They treated me very kindly, showing me about the building, and when the girls came in to supper theysang "the Nazareth Hymn" for me. One of the occupations of the people here is manufacturing a knife withgoat horn handles that is commonly seen in Palestine. Many of the womengo about the streets with their dresses open like a man's shirt whenunbuttoned, exposing their breasts in an unbecoming manner. The same istrue of many women in Jerusalem. About one-third of the mixed populationare Jews; the other two-thirds are Mohammedans and professingChristians, made up of Orthodox Greeks, United Greeks, Roman Catholics, Maronites (a branch of the Greek Church), and Protestants. I went backto Haifa and spent a night. The next morning I boarded the Austrian ship_Juno_ for Jaffa. When I first landed here I had trouble with theboatman, because he wanted me to pay him more than I had agreed to pay, and on this occasion I again had the same difficulty, twice as muchbeing demanded at the ship as was agreed upon at the dock; but I wasfirm and won my point both times. While in Galilee I had crossed theprovince from sea to sea; I had visited the city in which Jesus spentthe greater part of his earth life, and the sea closely connected withseveral important things in his career. I had ascended Carmel, and fromthe top of Tabor I had taken an extensive view of the land, and now Iwas satisfied to drop down the coast and enter Judaea. CHAPTER V. SIGHT-SEEING IN JERUSALEM. Before leaving the ship at Jaffa I was talking with Mr. Ahmed, agentleman from India, who had spent some time in Egypt, and had traveledextensively. He claimed to be a British subject, and was able to speakseveral languages. While we were arranging to go ashore together, oneof the many boatmen who had come out to the ship picked up my suit-casewhile my back was turned, and the next thing I saw of it he was takingit down the stairs to one of the small boats. By some loud and emphatictalk I succeeded in getting him to put it out of one boat into another, but he would not bring it back. Mr. Ahmed and I went ashore with anotherman, whom we paid for carrying us and our baggage. I found the suit-caseon the dock, and we were soon in the custom house, where my baggage andpassport were both examined, but Mr. Ahmed escaped having his baggageopened by paying the boatman an additional fee. As we arrived in Jaffatoo late to take the train for Jerusalem that day, we waited over nightin the city from whence Jonah went to sea so long ago. We lodged at thesame hotel and were quartered in the same room. This was the first andonly traveling companion I had on the whole journey, and I was a littleshy. I felt like I wanted some pledge of honorable dealing from my newlyformed acquaintance, and when he expressed himself as being a Britishsubject, I mentioned that I was an American and extended my hand, saying: "Let us treat each other right. " He gave me his hand with thewords: "Species man, species man!" He meant that we both belonged to thesame class of beings, and should, therefore, treat each other right, avery good reason indeed. A long time before, in this same land, Abrahamhad expressed himself to Lot on a similar line in these words: "Letthere be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between myherdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren" (Gen. 13:8). On Saturdaywe moved our baggage over to the depot and boarded the train forJerusalem. On the way to the depot an old gentleman, whom I would haveguessed to be a German, passed me. When I entered the car it was my lotto ride by him. He learned that I had been to Bristol, England, and hadvisited the orphan homes founded by George Muller, and he remarked: "Youare a Christian, then. " He probably said this because he thought noother would be interested in such work. It developed that he was aconverted Jew, and was conducting a mission for his people in the HolyCity. Without telling him my position religiously, I inquired concerningdifferent points, and found his faith and mine almost alike. This newacquaintance was D. C. Joseph, whose association I also enjoyed afterreaching Jerusalem. It was late in the afternoon of October ninth when we got off the trainat the Jerusalem station, which is so situated that the city can notbe seen from that point. By the time we had our baggage put away in anative hotel outside the city walls it was dark. We then started outto see if there was any mail awaiting me. First we went to the Turkishoffice, which was reached by a flight of dark stairs. Mr. Ahmed wentup rather slowly. Perhaps he felt the need of caution more than I did. According to my recollection, they handed us a candle, and allowed us toinspect the contents of a small case for the mail. We found nothing, sowe made our way down the dark stairway to the German office, situatedon the ground floor, nicely furnished and properly lighted, but therewas no mail there for me, as mail from America goes to the Austrianoffice, inside the Jaffa gate. The next day was Lord's day, and for the time being I ceased to bea tourist and gave myself up mainly to religious services. I firstattended the meeting conducted by Bro. Joseph at the mission to Israel. It was the first service I had attended, and the first opportunity thathad come to me for breaking bread since I left London, the last ofAugust. After this assembly of four persons was dismissed, I went to theservices of the Church of England and observed their order of worship. The minister was in a robe, and delivered a really good sermon of aboutfifteen minutes' duration, preceded by reading prayers and singingpraise for about an hour. By invitation, I took dinner with Miss Dunn, an American lady, at whose house Bro. Joseph was lodging. As she hadbeen in Jerusalem fifteen years and was interested in missionary work, I enjoyed her company as well as her cooking. After dinner I went to alittle iron-covered meeting-house called the "tabernacle, " where a Mr. Thompson, missionary of the Christian Alliance, of Nyack, New York, wasthe minister. At the close of the Sunday-school a gentleman asked somequestions in English, and the native evangelist, Melki, translated theminto Arabic. By request of Mr. Thompson, I read the opening lesson andoffered prayer, after which he delivered a good address on the great, coming day, and at the close the Lord's Supper was observed. Iunderstood that they did this once a month, but it is attended to weeklyat the mission where I was in the morning. At the tabernacle I made theacquaintance of Mr. Stanton, a Methodist minister from the States; Mr. Jennings, a colored minister from Missouri, and Mr. Smith, an Americangentleman residing in Jerusalem. There was another meeting in thetabernacle at night, but I staid at the hotel and finished some writingto be sent off to the home land. Monday was a big day for me. Mr. Ahmed and I went down inside the Jaffagate and waited for Mr. Smith, who was our guide, Mr. Jennings, and aMr. Michelson, from California. Mr. Smith had been a farmer in America, but had spent three years at Jerusalem and Jericho. He was wellacquainted with the country, and we could depend upon what he told us. Add to all this the fact that he went around with us without charge, andit will be seen that we were well favored. On this Monday morning westarted out to take a walk to Bethany, the old home of that blessedfamily composed of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. We passed the Church ofthe Holy Sepulcher, walked along the street called the Via Dolorosa, andsaw several of the "stations" Jesus is supposed to have passed on theway to the execution on Calvary. We passed the traditional site of the"house of the rich man, " the "house of the poor man, " and the TempleArea. After passing the Church of St. Anne, we went out of the citythrough St. Stephen's gate, and saw the Birket Sitti Mariam, or Poolof Lady Mary, one hundred feet long, eighty-five feet wide, and oncetwenty-seven and a half feet deep. It is supposed that Stephen was ledthrough the gate now bearing his name and stoned at a point not fardistant. Going down the hill a few rods, we came to the Church of St. Mary, a building for the most part underground. It is entered by astairway nineteen feet wide at the top, and having forty-seven stepsleading to the floor thirty-five feet below. We went down, and inthe poorly lighted place we found some priests and others singing orchanting, crossing themselves, kissing a rock, and so on. This churchprobably gets its name from the tradition that the mother of Jesus wasburied here. Just outside the church is a cavern that is claimed by someto be the place of Christ's agony, and by others, who may have given thematter more thought, it is supposed to be an old cistern, or place forstoring olive oil or grain. Perhaps I would do well to mention here thattradition has been in operation a long time, and the stories she haswoven are numerous indeed, but often no confidence can be placed inthem. I desire to speak of things of this kind in such a way as not tomislead my readers. It was near this church that I saw lepers for thefirst time. The valley of the Kidron is the low ground lying betweenJerusalem and the Mount of Olives. The water flows here only in the wetpart of the year. Crossing this valley and starting up the slope of theMount of Olives, we soon come to a plot of ground inclosed by a highstone wall, with a low, narrow gateway on the upper side. This place isof great interest, as it bears the name "Garden of Gethsemane, " and isprobably the spot to which the lowly Jesus repaired and prayed earnestlythe night before his execution, when his soul was "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. " It is really a garden, filled with flowers, and olivetrees whose trunks, gnarled and split, represent them as being very old, but it is not to be supposed that they are the same trees beneath whichJesus prayed just before Judas and "the band of soldiers and officers"came out to arrest him. There is a fence inside the wall, leaving apassageway around the garden between the wall and the fence. Where thetrees reach over the fence a woven-wire netting has been fixed up, tokeep the olives from dropping on the walk, where tourists could pickthem up for souvenirs. The fruit of these old trees is turned into oliveoil and sold, and the seeds are used in making rosaries. At intervalson the wall there are pictures representing the fourteen stations Jesuspassed as he was being taken to the place of crucifixion. This gardenis the property of the Roman Catholics, and the Greeks have selectedanother spot, which they regard as the true Gethsemane, just as eachchurch holds a different place at Nazareth to be the spot where theangry Nazarenes intended to destroy the Savior. Leaving the garden, we started on up the slope of Olivet, and passed thefine Russian church, with its seven tapering domes, that shine like thegold by which they are said to be covered. It appears to be one of thefinest buildings of Jerusalem. As we went on, we looked back and had agood view of the Kidron valley and the Jews' burial place, alongthe slope of the mountain, where uncounted thousands of Abraham'sdescendants lie interred. Further up toward the summit is the Church ofthe Lord's Prayer, a building erected by a French princess, whose bodyis now buried within its walls. This place is peculiar on account of atleast two things. That portion of Scripture commonly called "the Lord'sprayer" is here inscribed on large marble slabs in thirty-two differentlanguages, and prayer is said to be offered here continually. There isanother church near the Damascus gate, where two "sisters" are said tobe kneeling in prayer at all hours. I entered the beautiful place atdifferent times, and always found it as represented, but it should notbe supposed that the same women do all the praying, as they doubtlesshave enough to change at regular intervals. The Church of the Creed is, according to a worthless tradition, the place where the apostles drew up"the creed. " It is under the ground, and we passed over it on the wayto the Church of the Lord's Prayer. The Mount of Olives is two thousandseven hundred and twenty-three feet above sea level, and is about twohundred feet higher than Mount Moriah. From the summit a fine view ofJerusalem and the surrounding country may be obtained. The Russians haveerected a lofty stone tower here. After climbing the spiral stairwayleading to the top of it, one is well rewarded by the extensive view. Looking out from the east side, we could gaze upon the Dead Sea, sometwenty miles away, and more than four thousand feet below us. We visitedthe chambers called the "Tombs of the Prophets, " but the name is not asufficient guarantee to warrant us in believing them to be the burialplaces of the men by whom God formerly spoke to the people. On the wayto Bethany we passed the reputed site of Beth-page (Mark 11:1), and sooncame to the town where Jesus performed the great miracle of raisingLazarus after he had been dead four days. (John 11:1-46. ) The placepointed out as the tomb corresponds to the Scripture which says "It wasa cave" where they laid him. Twenty-six steps lead down to the chamberwhere his body is said to have lain when the "blessed Redeemer" criedwith a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth. " Whether this is the exact spotor not, it is probably a very ancient cave. One writer claims that itis as old as the incident itself, and says these rock-cut tombs are theoldest landmarks of Palestine. Tradition points out the home of Lazarus, and there is a portion of an old structure called the Castle of Lazarus, which Lazarus may never have seen. Bethany is a small village, occupiedby a few Mohammedan families, who dislike the "Christians. " On therising ground above the village stands a good modern stone house, owned by an English lady, who formerly lived in it, but her servant, aMohammedan, made an effort to cut her throat, and almost succeeded inthe attempt. Naturally enough, the owner does not wish to live therenow, so we found the building in the care of a professing Christian, who treated us with courtesy, giving us a good, refreshing drink, andpermitting us to go out on the roof to look around. From this point we turned our footsteps toward Jerusalem, "about fifteenfurlongs off"--that is, about two miles distant. (John 11:18. ) Whenwe reached the lower part of the slope of Olivet, where the tombs ofdeparted Jews are so numerous, Mr. Michelson and Mr. Jennings went onacross the Kidron valley and back to their lodging places, while Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Smith and I went down to Job's well, in the low ground belowthe city. The Tower of Absalom, the Tomb of James, and the Pyramidof Zachariah were among the first things we saw. They are all burialplaces, but we can not depend upon them being the actual tombs of thosewhose names they bear. The first is a peculiar monument nineteen andone-half feet square and twenty-one feet high, cut out of the solidrock, and containing a chamber, which may be entered by crawling througha hole in the side. On the top of the natural rock portion a structureof dressed stone, terminating in one tapering piece, has been erected, making the whole height of the monument forty-eight feet. The Jews havea custom of pelting it with stones on account of Absalom's misconduct, and the front side shows the effect of their stone-throwing. The Grottoof St. James is the traditional place of his concealment from the timeJesus was arrested till his resurrection. The Pyramid of Zachariah isa cube about thirty feet square and sixteen feet high, cut out of thesolid rock, and surmounted by a small pyramid. It has many names cutupon it in Hebrew letters, and there are some graves near by, as this isa favorite burial place. Some of the bodies have been buried between themonument and the wall around it in the passage made in cutting it out ofthe rock. Going on down the valley, we have the village of Siloam on thehill at our left, and on the other side of the Kidron, the southeasternpart of the Holy City. St. Mary's Well is soon reached. This spring, which may be the Gihon of 1 Kings 1:33, is much lower than the surfaceof the ground, the water being reached by two flights of stairs, one containing sixteen steps, the other fourteen. The spring isintermittent, and flows from three to five times daily in winter. Itflows twice a day in summer, but in the autumn it only flows once in theday. When I was there, the spring was low, and two Turkish soldiers wereon duty to preserve order among those who came to get water. The Pool of Siloam, fifty-two feet long and eighteen feet wide, isfarther down the valley. The spring and the pool are about a thousandfeet apart, and are connected by an aqueduct through the hill, which, owing to imperfect engineering, is seventeen hundred feet long. Froma Hebrew inscription found in the lower end of this passageway it waslearned that the excavation was carried on from both ends. A littlebelow the Pool of Siloam the valley of the Kidron joins the valley ofHinnom, where, in ancient times, children were made "to pass through thefire to Moloch" (2 Kings 23:10). Job's Well, perhaps the En Rogel, onthe northern border of Judah (Joshua 15:7), is rectangular in shape andone hundred and twenty-three feet deep. Sometimes it overflows, but itseldom goes dry. When I saw it, no less than six persons were drawingwater with ropes and leather buckets. The location of Aceldama, thefield of blood, has been disputed, but some consider that it was on thehill above the valley of Hinnom. There are several rock-cut tombs alongthe slope of the hill facing the valley of Hinnom, and some of them arebeing used as dwelling places. The Moslems have charge of a buildingoutside the city walls, called David's Tomb, which they guard verycarefully, and only a portion of it is accessible to visitors. Near thisplace a new German Catholic church was being erected at a cost of fourhundred thousand dollars. We entered the city by the Zion gate, andpassed the Tower of David, a fortification on Mount Zion, near the Jaffagate. On the ship coming down from Beyrout I had a conversation with a man whoclaimed to have been naturalized in the United States, and to havegone to Syria to visit his mother, but, according to his story, he wasarrested and imprisoned by the Turks. After being mistreated in thefilthy prison for some time, he secured his release by bribing a soldierto post a letter to one of the American authorities. He expressed adesire to visit Jerusalem, but seemed afraid to get back into Turkishterritory. Learning that I was going there, he wrote a letter to theArmenian Patriarch, and I presented it one day. In a few minutes Mr. Ahmed and I were led into the large room where the Patriarch was seatedin his robe and peculiar cap. Meeting a dignitary of the Armenian Churchwas a new experience to me. I shook hands with him; Mr. Ahmed made somesigns and sat down. In the course of our limited conversation he saidrather slowly: "I am very old. " Replying to a question, he informed methat his age was eighty years. I was on the point of leaving, but hehindered me, and an attendant soon came in with some small glasses ofwine and a little dish of candy. The Patriarch drank a glass of wine, and I took a piece of the candy, as also did Mr. Ahmed, and then we tookour leave. The eleventh day of October, which was Tuesday, was occupied with a tripto Hebron, described in another chapter devoted to the side trips I madefrom Jerusalem, but the next day was spent in looking around the HolyCity. Early in the morning the Mamilla Pool, probably the "upper pool"of 2 Kings 18:17, was seen. One author gives the dimensions of thispool as follows: Length, two hundred and ninety-one feet; breadth, onehundred and ninety-two feet; depth, nineteen feet. It is filled withwater in the rainy season, but was empty when I saw it. Entering thecity by the Jaffa gate, I walked along David and Christian Streets, andwas shown the Pool of Hezekiah, which is surrounded by houses, and wassupplied from the Mamilla Pool. The next place visited was that interesting old building, the Church ofthe Holy Sepulcher, where our Lord is supposed to have been buried inJoseph's new tomb. Jerusalem has many things of great interest, but somefew things are of special interest. The Temple Area and Calvary are ofthis class. I am sure my readers will want to know something of each, and I shall here write of the latter. No doubt the spot where Jesus wascrucified and the grave in which he was buried were both well known tothe brethren up to the destruction of the city in the year seventy. Before this awful calamity the Christians made their escape, and whenthey returned they "would hardly recognize the fallen city as the onethey had left; the heel of the destroyer had stamped out all semblanceof its former glory. For sixty years it lay in ruins so complete thatit is doubtful if there was a single house that could be used as aresidence; during these years its history is a blank. " There is nomention of the returned Christians seeking out the site of eitherthe crucifixion or burial, and between A. D. 120 and A. D. 136 Hadrianreconstructed the city, changing it to a considerable extent, and namingit Aelia Capitolina. This would tend to make the location of Calvarymore difficult. Hadrian built a temple to Venus, probably on the spotnow occupied by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Eusebius, writingabout A. D. 325, speaks of Constantine's church built on the site ofthis temple. It is claimed that Hadrian's heathen temple was erectedto desecrate the place of Christ's entombment, and that Constantine'schurch, being erected on the site of the temple, and regarded as theplace called Calvary, fixes this as the true site; but whether thechurch and temple were on the same site or not, the present churchstands where the one built by Constantine stood, and is regarded by themass of believers as the true location. Constantine's church stood two hundred and eighty years, being destroyedby Chosroes II. , of Persia, in A. D. 614, but was soon succeeded byanother structure not so grand as its predecessor. In 1010, in the"reign of the mad caliph Hakem, " the group of churches was entirelydestroyed, and the spot lay desolate for thirty years, after whichanother church was erected, being completed in eight years. Thisbuilding was standing in 1099, the time of the Crusaders, but wasdestroyed by fire in 1808. This fire "consumed many of the most sacredrelics in the church. Marble columns of great age and beauty crumbled inthe flames. The rich hangings and pictures were burned, along with lampsand chandeliers and other ornaments in silver and gold. The lead withwhich the great dome was lined melted, and poured down in streams. " Thebuilding now standing there was finished in 1810 at a cost of nearlythree millions of dollars, one-third of this, it is said, being expendedin lawsuits and Mohammedan bribes. It is the property of severaldenominations, who adorn their separate chapels to suit themselves. The church is entered from a court having two doors or gates. Worshiperspass through the court, and stop at the left-hand side of the door andkiss the marble column, which clearly shows the effect of this practice. Just inside of the building there is a guard, composed of members of theoldest Mohammedan family in the city. The reader may wonder why an armedguard should be kept in a church house, but such a reader has not seenor read of all the wickedness that is carried on in the support ofsectarianism. Concerning this guard, which, at the time of the holy firedemonstration, is increased by several hundred soldiers, Edmund ShermanWallace, a former United States Consul in this city, says in his"Jerusalem the Holy": "This Christian church has a Moslem guard, whoseduty it is to keep peace among the various sects who profess belief inthe Prince of Peace. * * * It is a sickening fact that Moslem bruteforce must compel Christians to exercise, not charity toward each other, but common decency and decorum. But it is a fact nevertheless, and willremain apparent to all so long as priestcraft takes the place of NewTestament Christianity and superstition supplants religion. " A little beyond this guard is the "Stone of Unction, " upon which manybelieve Jesus was prepared for burial, but the original stone for whichthis claim was made is not now visible, being covered with the presentslab to keep it from being worn out by the kissing of pious pilgrims. It is eight and a half feet long and four feet wide. Pilgrims sometimesbring the goods for their burial robes here and measure them by thisstone. Some large candles stand by it, and above it are eight finelamps, belonging to the Greek and Roman Catholics, the Copts, andArmenians. Not far away is a small stone, which I understood was calledthe place where the women watched the preparation by Joseph of Arimatheaand Nicodemus. (John 19:38-42. ) In the center of the rotunda, with its entrance facing the east, is theChapel of the Sepulcher, the holiest place in all this holy building. Passing through the small door, the visitor finds himself in the Chapelof the Angels, a very small room, where a piece of stone, said to havebeen rolled away from the grave by the angels, is to be seen. Stoopingdown, the visitor passes through a low opening and enters the Chapel ofthe Sepulcher proper, a room only six and a half feet long and six feetwide. The "tomb" is at the right hand of the entrance, occupying abouthalf of the floor, above which it rises two feet. It is covered withmarble, so that even if this were the very spot where the Lord andSavior was laid by the hands of kind friends, the modern visitor wouldnot know what it looked like when that event took place. The littlechapel, capable of accommodating about six people at a time, containssome pictures and forty-three silver lamps, the property of the Copts, Armenians, Greek and Roman Catholics. A priest stands on guard, so thatno damage may be done to any part of the place. The Greek chapel, the largest, and to my notion the finest that I saw, is just in front of the sepulcher. From its having two sections and apartition, I was reminded of the tabernacle of the wilderness journey. Services were being conducted once while I was there, and I saw thePatriarch and others, gorgeously robed, going through with a servicethat was at least spectacular, if not spiritual. At one point in theexercises those participating came down close to where I was standing, passed around the spot designated "the center of the world, " and wentback again to the farther end of the richly ornamented room. One of thepriests, with hair reaching down on his shoulders, bore a silver vessel, which I suppose contained burning incense. The long hair, beautifulrobes, the singing, praying, and such things, made up a service thatreminded me of the days of Solomon and the old priesthood. The demonstration of the "holy fire" takes place in this church once ayear, and there are thousands who believe that the fire passed out fromthe Chapel of the Angels really comes from heaven. This occurs on theSaturday afternoon preceding Easter, and the eager, waiting throng, apart of which has been in the building since the day before, soon hasits hundreds of little candles lighted. As the time for the appearanceof the fire approaches the confusion becomes greater. Near the entranceto the sepulcher a group of men is repeating the words: "This is thetomb of Jesus Christ;" not far from them others are saying: "This isthe day the Jew mourns and the Christian rejoices;" others expressthemselves in the language: "Jesus Christ has redeemed us;" andoccasionally "God save the Sultan" can be heard. Mr. Wallace, from whose book the foregoing items are gleaned, in tellingof a fight which took place at one stage of the service, describes it as"a mass of wriggling, struggling, shrieking priests and soldiers, eachapparently endeavoring to do all the possible injury to whomever hecould reach. * * * But the fight went on. Greek trampled on Armenian, and Armenian on Greek, and Turk on both. Though doing his very best, thecommanding officer seemed unable to separate the combatants. The buglerang out time after time, and detachment after detachment of soldiersplunged into the mêlee. * * * This went on for fifteen minutes. Justhow much damage was done nobody will ever know. There were a numberof bruised faces and broken heads, and a report was current that twopilgrims had died from injuries received. " This disgraceful and wickeddisturbance is said to have been brought about by the Armenians wantingtwo of their priests to go with the Greek Patriarch as far as theChapel of the Angels. And it is furthermore said that the defeat of theArmenians was brought about, to some extent at least, by the muscularstrength of an American professional boxer and wrestler, whom theGreeks had taken along in priestly garb as a member of the Patriarch'sbodyguard. It is not surprising that Mr. Wallace has written: "TheChurch of the Holy Sepulcher gives the non-Christian world the worstpossible illustration of the religion of Him in whose name it stands. " As I was going through the city, I saw a camel working an olive press. The poor blindfolded animal was compelled to walk in a circle sosmall that the outside trace was drawn tightly over its leg, causingirritation; but seeing the loads that are put upon dumb brutes, and mentoo, sometimes, one need not expect much attention to be given to thecomfort of these useful servants. Truly, there is great need for therefining, civilizing, and uplifting influence of the gospel here in thecity where it had its earliest proclamation. I also visited two gristmills operated by horses on a treadmill, which was a large wooden wheelturned on its side, so the horses could stand on it. I was not pleasedwith the nearness of the manure in one of these mills to the materialfrom which the "staff of life" is made. The German Protestant Church of the Redeemer is a fine structure on theMuristan, completed in 1898. The United States consulate is near theAustrian postoffice inside of the Jaffa gate. I went there and restedawhile, but saw the consul, Selah Merrill, at his hotel, where I alsomet Mrs. Merrill, and formed a favorable opinion of both of them. Here Ileft my belt, checks, and surplus money in the care of the consul. Continuing my walk on Wednesday, I passed one of the numerous threshingfloors of the country. This one was the face of a smooth rock, but theyare often the ground on some elevated spot, where a good breeze can behad to blow away the chaff, for the grain is now threshed and cleaned bythe primitive methods of long ago. After the grain has been tramped out(1 Cor. 9:9), the straw, now worn to chaff, is piled up, and when afavorable wind blows, a man tosses it in the air with a wooden fork. Thegrain falls in a pile at his feet and the chaff is carried asidesome distance. When this operation has been carried on as long as isprofitable, the wheat and what chaff remains in it are thrown into theair with a wooden shovel, called in our Bibles a "fan. " (Matt. 3:12. )The final cleaning is done by washing the grain, or with a sieve. The Tombs of the Kings, which may never have contained a king, areextensive and interesting. They are surrounded by a wall, and to reachthem the visitor must go down a very wide stairway. The steps probablydo not number more than twenty-five, but the distance from one side ofthe stairs to the other is twenty-seven feet. There are channels cut inthe rock to carry the water that comes down these steps to the cisterns, two in number, one of which is a good-sized room cut in the rock at theside of the stairway. It contained about three feet of water when I sawit, although there had been no rain in Jerusalem for half a year. Theother one, at the bottom of the stairs, is much larger, and was empty. The vaulted roof is supported by a column, and there are steps leadingfrom one level of the floor to another. Turning to the left at the foot of the big stairway, we passed throughan arch cut through the rock into a court made by excavating the earthand stone to a depth of perhaps twenty feet. It is ninety feet long andeighty-one feet wide. The entrance to the tombs is by a vestibule cut inthe rock at one side of the court, and it appears that this once had arow of pillars along the front, like veranda posts. We went down a fewsteps and stooped low enough to pass through an opening about a yardhigh. Beyond this we found ourselves in a good-sized room, cut in thesolid rock. There are five of these rooms, and so far as the appearanceis concerned, one might suppose they had been made in modern times, butthey are ancient. The bodies were usually buried in "pigeon-holes" cutback in the walls of the rooms, but there are some shelf tombs, whichare sufficiently described in their name. One room seems never to havebeen completed, but there are burial places here for about forty people. One of the interesting things about these tombs is the rolling stone bywhich they were closed. It is a round rock, resembling a millstone. Theheight is a little over three feet and a half, and the thickness sixteeninches. It stands in a channel cut for the purpose, but was rolledforward before the entrance when it was desirable to have the tombsclosed. When Jesus was buried, a "great stone" was rolled to the mouthof the sepulcher, and the women thought of this as they went to the tombon the first day of the week, saying: "Who shall roll us away the stonefrom the door of the tomb?" (Mark 16:3. ) They went on and found the tombopen; so, also, we may often find the stone rolled away if we will goforward in the discharge of our duties, instead of sitting down to mournat the thought of something in the distance which seems too difficult. On our way to the tombs just mentioned, we passed the American Colony, a small band of people living together in a rather peculiar manner, but they are not all Americans. I understood that there had been nomarriages among them for a long time until a short while before I wasin Jerusalem. Some of them conduct a good store near the Jaffa gate. Wepassed an English church and college and St. Stephen's Church on the wayto Gordon's Calvary. This new location of the world's greatest tragedyis a small hill outside the walls on the northern side of the city. TheChurch of the Holy Sepulcher stands on ground which for fifteen hundredyears has been regarded as the true site of our Lord's death and burial, but since Korte, a German bookseller, visited the city in 1738, doubtshave been expressed as to the correctness of the tradition. Jesus"suffered without the gate" (Heb. 13:12), and "in the place where he wascrucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new tomb wherein wasman never yet laid" (John 19:41), and it appears to have been near apublic road. (Mark 15:29. ) In 1856 Edward Robinson, an American, offeredproof that the site sustained by the old tradition was inside the citywalls at the time of the crucifixion, and more recent discoveries, madein excavating, confirm his proof. The new Calvary meets the requirementsof the above mentioned scriptures, and gets its name "Gordon's Calvary, "from the fact that General Gordon wrote and spoke in favor of this beingthe correct location, and a photographer attached his name to a view ofthe place. In the garden adjoining the new Calvary I visited a tomb, which some suppose to be the place of our Lord's burial. On the way back to my lodging place we passed the Damascus gate, themost attractive of all the old city gates, and one often representedin books. It was built or repaired in 1537, and stands near an oldergateway that is almost entirely hidden by the accumulated rubbish ofcenturies, only the crown of the arch now showing. As we went on wepassed the French Hospice, a fine modern building, having two largestatues on it. The higher one represents the Virgin and her child, theother is a figure of the Savior. The Catholic church already mentioned, where two sisters are to be seen in prayer at all times, is near theHospice. It is a rather impressive sight to stand in this beautiful butsilent place, and see those women in white robes kneeling there almostas motionless as statues. Thursday and a part of Friday was taken up with a trip to Jericho, butwe got back in time to spend the afternoon in looking around Jerusalem, and we had an interesting visit to the home of Mrs. Schoenecke, a Germanlady, whose father, named Schick, spent fifty-six years of his life inJerusalem. From what information Mr. Schick could gather from the Bible, Josephus, the Talmud, and his personal observations during the time thePalestine Exploration Fund was at work, he constructed large models ofthe ancient temples that stood on Mount Moriah from the days of Solomonto the time of Herod and Christ. I was told that the original modelswere sold to an American college for five thousand dollars. Mr. Schick then constructed the models shown to us, and explained by Mrs. Schoenecke. We were also shown a model of the tabernacle used whileIsrael was marching to the promised land. The Wailing Place is a rectangle one hundred feet long by fifteen feetwide on the outside of the Temple Area, on the western side, where thewall is about sixty feet high. Some of the stones in this section are oflarge size, and authorities admit that they are of Solomon's time, butthe wall in which they now stand may be a reconstruction. The Jews comehere on the Sabbath, beginning at sundown on Saturday, for a servicewhich one author describes as follows: "Nearest to him stood a row ofwomen clad in robes of spotless white. Their eyes were bedimmed withweeping, and tears streamed down their cheeks as they sobbed aloudwith irrepressible emotion. Next to the women stood a group ofPharisees--Jews from Poland and Germany. * * * The old hoary-headed mengenerally wore velvet caps edged with fur, long love-locks or ringletsdangling on their thin cheeks, and their outer robes presented astriking contrast of gaudy colors. Beyond stood a group of Spanish Jews. * * * Besides these there are Jews from every quarter of the world, whohad wandered back to Jerusalem that they might die in the city of theirfathers, and be buried in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, under the shadow ofthe Temple Hill. The worshipers gradually increased in number until thecrowd thronging the pavement could not be fewer than two hundred. It wasan affecting scene to notice their earnestness; some thrust their handsbetween the joints of the stones, and pushed into the crevices, as faras possible, little slips of paper, on which were written, in the Hebrewtongue, short petitions addressed to Jehovah. Some even prayed withtheir mouths thrust into the gaps, where the weather-beaten stones wereworn away at the joints. * * * The congregation at the Wailing Place isone of the most solemn gatherings left to the Jewish Church, and, as thewriter gazed at the motley concourse, he experienced a feeling of sorrowthat the remnants of the chosen race should be heartlessly thrustoutside the sacred inclosure of their fathers' holy temple by men of analien race and an alien creed. " So far as I know, all writers give theseworshipers credit for being sincere, but on the two occasions when Ivisited the place, I saw no such emotion as described in the foregoingquotation. The following lines are often rehearsed, the leader readingone at a time, after which the people respond with the words: "We sit insolitude and mourn. " "For the place that lies desolate; For the place that is destroyed; For the walls that are overthrown; For our majesty that is departed; For our great men who lie dead; For the precious stones that are buried; For the priests who have stumbled; For our kings who have despised Him. " This solemn practice has been observed for about twelve hundred years, but the same place may not have been used all the time. "She is become awidow, that was great among the nations! She that was a princess amongthe provinces is become tributary! Jerusalem hath grievously sinned;therefore she is become as an unclean thing" (Lam. 1: 1, 8). On Friday evening we entered some of the many synagogues yet to be foundin Jerusalem and observed the worshipers. On Saturday we went to theHouse of Industry of the English church, where boys are taught to work. Olive wood products are made for the tourist trade. We passed a placewhere some men were making a peculiar noise as they were pounding wheatand singing at their work. This pounding was a part of the process ofmaking it ready for food. An old lady was standing in an open doorspinning yarn in a very simple manner. We watched her a few minutes, andI wanted to buy the little arrangement with which she was spinning, butshe didn't care to part with it. She brought out another one, and let mehave it after spinning a few yards upon it. I gave her a Turkish coinworth a few cents, for which she seemed very thankful, and said, as Mr. Ahmed explained: "God bless you and give you long life. I am old, andmay die to-day. " She told us that she came from Mosul, away beyond theSyrian desert, to die in Jerusalem. We visited the synagogue of theCaraite Jews, a small polygamous sect, numbering in this assemblyabout thirty persons. They also differ from the majority of Hebrews inrejecting the Talmud, but I believe they have a Talmud of their own. Their place of worship is a small room almost under the ground, where wewere permitted to see a very fine old copy of the Hebrew Scriptures, ourOld Testament. The work was done by hand, and I was told the man whodid it was sixteen years of age when he began it, and was sixty when hefinished the work, and that the British Museum had offered five thousanddollars for the book. Some of these people speak English, and weconversed with one woman who was quite intelligent. They kindlypermitted us to go up and view the city from the housetop. In the afternoon we visited the Temple Area, an inclosure of aboutthirty-five acres, in the southeastern part of the city, including theMosque of Omar (more appropriately called the Dome of the Rock), theMosque El Aksa, and Solomon's Stables. For Christians to enter thisinclosure, it is necessary to notify their consul and secure the serviceof his _cavasse_, an armed guard, and a Turkish soldier, both ofwhom must be paid for their services. Thus equipped, we entered theinclosure, and came up on the east front of the Dome of the Rock, probably so named from the fact that the dome of this structure standsover an exposed portion of the natural rock, fifty-seven feet long, forty-three feet wide, and rising a few feet above the floor. Afterputting some big slippers on over our shoes, we entered the buildingand saw this great rock, which tradition says is the threshing floorof Araunah, and the spot where Melchizedek sacrificed. It is also thetraditional place where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, and it is believedthat David built an altar here after the angel of destruction had putup his sword. It is furthermore supposed that the great altar of burntofferings stood on this rock in the days of Solomon's Temple, whichis thought to have been located just west of it. This is the probablelocation of Zerubbabel's Temple, and the one enlarged and beautifiedby Herod, which was standing when Jesus was on earth, and continued tostand until the awful destruction of the city by the Roman army in A. D. 70. The modern visitor to this fine structure would have no thought of theancient temple of God if he depended upon what he sees here to suggestit. All trace of that house has disappeared. The Dome of the Rock, saidto be "the most beautiful piece of architecture in Jerusalem, " belongsto the Turks. It has eight sides, each about sixty-six and a half feetlong, and is partly covered with marble, but it is, to some extent, in astate of decay. Between the destruction of the temple and the erectionof this building a heathen temple and a church had been built on thespot. The Mosque El Aksa was also visited, but it is noted more for its sizethan the beauty of its architecture. The Turkish Governor of Palestinecomes here every Friday to worship at the time the Sultan is engagedin like manner in Constantinople. Solomon's Stables next engaged ourattention. We crossed the Temple Area to the wall on the southeasternborder, and went down a stairway to these underground chambers, whichwere made by building about a hundred columns and arching them over andlaying a pavement on the top, thereby bringing it up on a level withthe rest of the hill. The vaults are two hundred and seventy-three feetlong, one hundred and ninety-eight feet wide, and about thirty feethigh. They were not made for stables, but were used for that purpose inthe middle ages, and the holes through the corners of the square stonecolumns show where the horses were tied. A large portion of thesechambers has been made into a cistern or reservoir. After a visit to what is called the Pool of Bethesda and the Church ofSt. Anne, we went outside the city wall on the north side and enteredwhat looks like a cave, but upon investigation proves to be an extensiveunderground quarry. These excavations, called Solomon's Quarries, extend, according to one authority, seven hundred feet under the hillBezetha, which is north of Mt. Moriah. The rock is very white, and willtake some polish. Loose portions of it are lying around on the floorof the cavern, and there are distinct marks along the sides where theancient stone-cutters were at work. In one part of the quarries we wereshown the place where visiting Masons are said to hold lodge meetingssometimes. Vast quantities of the rock have been taken out, and this isprobably the source from whence much of the building material of the oldcity was derived. The trip to the quarries ended my sight-seeing for the week. The nextmorning I went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and witnessed a partof the service of the Greek Catholics. At a later hour I went around tothe mission conducted by Bro. Joseph, and, with the little congregationthere assembled, broke bread in memory of Him who in this city, almosttwo thousand years ago, gave his life for the sins of the world, afterhaving instituted this supper, a monumental institution, representingto our minds the cost of the world's redemption. In the afternoon Iattended the preaching service in Mr. Thompson's tabernacle, and visitedthe Abyssinian church, near Mr. Smith's house. This Abyssinian house iscircular, and has a small, round room in the center, around which thecongregation stands and worships, leaning on their staves, for the placeis void of seats. At night I preached in the tabernacle on the question:"What must I do to be saved?" Melki, the native evangelist, translatedfor me as I went along, and the congregation paid good attention andseemed pleased to have heard me. I know I am pleased to have hadopportunity to "preach the word" in the city from whence it was firstpublished to the world. One of the first sights beheld when I started out on Monday morning wasa foundation, laid at the expense of a woman who intended to build ahouse for the "hundred and forty-four thousand. " It represents one ofthe many peculiar religious ideas that find expression in and aroundJerusalem. We went on to the railway station, where I saw a young man, aJew, leave for that far-off land called America. Next the Leper Hospitalwas visited. This well-kept institution is in the German colony, and hadseveral patients of both sexes. A lady, who spoke some English, kindlyshowed me through the hospital, and explained that the disease is notcontagious, but hereditary, and that some lepers refuse to enter thehospital because they are forbidden to marry. The patients were ofvarious ages, and showed the effects of the disease in different stages. In some cases it makes the victim a sad sight to look upon. I rememberone of these poor, afflicted creatures, whose face was almost coveredwith swollen and inflamed spots. Some were blind, and some had lostpart or all of their fingers by the disease. One man's nose was partlyconsumed. At Bishop Gobat's school we were kindly received, and given a good, refreshing drink. The founder of this school, a member of the Englishchurch, was one of the pioneers in Jerusalem mission work, and stoodvery high in the estimation of the people. His grave is to be seen inthe cemetery near the school, where one may also see the supposed siteof the ancient city wall. Besides the Leper Hospital, we visited anotherhospital under German control, where patients may have medical attentionand hospital service for the small sum of one _mejidi_, about eightycents, for a period, of fifteen days, but higher fees are charged inother departments. We soon reached the English hospital, maintained bythe Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews. It isbuilt on a semi-circular plan in such a way that the wards, extendingback from the front, admit light from both sides. This institution isfree to the Jews, but I understand Mohammedans were not admitted withouta fee. The Syrian Orphanage had about three hundred children in it, who werebeing instructed in books and in manual labor. Those who can see aretaught to work in wood, to make a kind of tile used in constructingpartitions, and other lines of useful employment. They had some blindchildren, who were being taught to make baskets and brushes. On the wayback to Mr. Smith's I stopped at the Jewish Library, a small two-storybuilding, having the books and papers upstairs. They have a raised mapof Palestine, which was interesting to me, after having twice crossedthe country from sea to sea. The last Thursday I was in the city I went with some friends to theIsraelite Alliance School, an institution with about a thousand pupils, who receive both an industrial and a literary education. We wereconducted through the school by a Syrian gentleman named Solomon Elia, who explained that, while the institution is under French control, English is taught to some extent, as some of the pupils would goto Egypt, where they would need to use this language. The boys areinstructed in wood-working, carpentry, copper-working, and other linesof employment. We saw some of the girls making hair nets, and otherswere engaged in making lace. Both of these products are sent out ofPalestine for sale. The institution has received help from some of theRothschild family, and I have no doubt that it is a great factor for theimprovement of those who are reached by it. Jerusalem is well suppliedwith hospitals and schools. The Greek and Roman Catholic churches, theChurch of England, and numerous other religious bodies have a footinghere, and are striving to make it stronger. Their schools and hospitalsare made use of as missionary agencies, and besides these there is aTurkish hospital and numerous Mohammedan schools. On Friday I had an opportunity to see a man measuring grain, as isindicated by the Savior's words: "Give, and it shall be given unto you;good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall theygive into your bosom. For with what measure ye mete, it shall bemeasured to you again" (Luke 6:38). He filled his measure about full, and then shook it down thoroughly. He next filled it up and shook itdown until he evidently thought he had all he could get that way, so hecommenced to pile it up on top. When he had about as much heaped up aswould stay on, he put his hands on the side of the cone opposite himselfand gently pulled it toward him. He then piled some more on the farside, and when he had reached the limit in this way, he carefullyleveled the top of the cone down a little, and when he could no longerput on more grain, he gently lifted the measure and moved it around tothe proper place, where it was quickly dumped. In the evening Mr. Smithand I walked out on Mount Scopus, where Titus had his camp at the timeof the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, as foretold by our Lord andMaster in the twenty-fourth of Matthew. As we went along, Mr. Smith pointed out the watershed between theMediterranean and the Dead Sea. The view from Scopus is very extensive. We could look away to the north to Nebi Samwil, where the Prophet Samuelis supposed by some to have been buried. Ramallah, the seat of a schoolmaintained by the Society of Friends, is pointed out, along with Bireh, Bethel, and Geba. Nob, the home of the priests slain by command of Saul(1 Samuel 22:16), and Anathoth, one of the cities of refuge (Joshua21:18), are in sight. Swinging on around the circle to the east, thenorthern end of the Dead Sea is visible, while the Mount of Olives isonly a little distance below us. Across the valley of the Kidron liesthe Holy City, with her walls constructed at various periods and undervarious circumstances, her dome-shaped stone roofs, synagogues, mosques, and minarets, being "trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times ofthe Gentiles be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24). Here, with this panorama spreadout in the evening light, I may say my sight-seeing in the City of theGreat King came to an end. I lacked but a few hours of having been in the city two weeks, when Iboarded the train for Jaffa on my way to Egypt. The most of the time Ihad lodged in the hospitable home of Mr. Smith, where I had a cleanand comfortable place to rest my tired body when the shadows of nightcovered the land. I had received kind treatment, and had seen manythings of much interest. I am truly thankful that I have been permittedto make this trip to Jerusalem. Let me so live that when the fewfleeting days of this life are over, I may rest with the redeemed. Whendays and years are no more, let me enjoy, in the NEW JERUSALEM, theblessedness that remains for those that have loved the Lord. "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven fromGod, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a greatvoice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is withmen, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, andGod himself shall be with them, and be their God: and he shall wipe awayevery tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shallthere be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things havepassed away" (Revelation 21:2-4). CHAPTER VI. SIDE TRIPS FROM JERUSALEM. Early on Tuesday morning, the eleventh of October, I set out bycarriage, with some other tourists, for a trip to Bethlehem, Solomon'sPools, and Hebron. Bethlehem is about five miles south of Jerusalem, andHebron is a little southwest of the Holy City and twenty miles distant. We started from the Jaffa gate and passed the Sultan's Pool, otherwiseknown as Lower Gihon, which may be the "lower pool" of Isaiah 22:9. "Theentire area of this pool, " says one writer, "is about three and a halfacres, with an average depth, when clear of deposit, of forty-two anda half feet in the middle from end to end. " We drove for two miles, orperhaps more, across the Plain of Rephaim, one of David's battlefieldssoon after he established himself in Jerusalem. Here he was twicevictorious over the Philistines. In the first instance he asked Jehovah:"Shall I go up against the Philistines? Wilt thou deliver them intomy hand?" The answer was: "Go up; for I will certainly deliver thePhilistines into thy hand. " In this battle the invaders were routed anddriven from the field. "And they left their images there; and David andhis men took them away. " But "the Philistines came up yet again, andspread themselves in the valley of Rephaim. And when David inquired ofJehovah, he said, Thou shalt not go up: make a circuit behind them, andcome upon them over against the mulberry trees. And it shall be, whenthou hearest the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then is Jehovah gone out beforethee to smite the hosts of the Philistines. " David obeyed the voice ofthe Lord, and smote his enemies from Geba to Gezer. (2 Samuel 5:17-25. ) On the southern border of the plain stands the Greek convent called MarElyas. This is about half way to Bethlehem, and the city of the nativitysoon comes into view. Before going much farther the traveler sees awell-built village, named Bet Jala, lying on his right. It is supposedto be the ancient Giloh, mentioned in 2 Samuel 15:12 as the home ofAhithophel, David's counselor, for whom Absalom sent when he conspiredagainst his father. Here the road forks, one branch of it passing BetJala and going on to Hebron; the other, bearing off to the left, leadsdirectly to Bethlehem, which we passed, intending to stop there as wereturned in the evening. At this place we saw the monument erected tomark the location of Rachel's tomb, a location, like many others, indispute. When Jacob "journeyed from Bethel and there was still somedistance to come to Ephrath, " Rachel died at the birth of Benjamin, "andwas buried in the way to Ephrath (the same is Bethlehem). * * * AndJacob set up a pillar upon her grave" (Gen. 35:16-20). The spot, whichfor many centuries was marked by a pyramid of stones, is now occupiedby a small stone building with a dome-shaped roof, at the east side ofwhich is a room, open on the north, with a flat roof. For hundreds ofyears tradition has located the grave at this place, which is indeednear Bethlehem, but in 1 Samuel 10:2 it is mentioned as being "in theborder of Benjamin, " which has occasioned the belief that the truelocation is some miles farther north. Before long we came to Solomon's Pools. We first stopped at a doorway, which looks like it might lead down to a cellar, but in reality the dooris at the head of a flight of stairs leading down to what is known asthe "sealed fountain" (Song of Solomon 4:12). The door was fastened, and we were not able to descend to the underground chamber, which isforty-one feet long, eleven and a half feet wide, with an arched stoneroof, all of which, except the entrance, is below the surface. A largebasin cut in the floor collects the water from two springs. After risinga foot in the basin, the water flows out into a channel more than sixhundred feet long leading down to the two upper pools. These greatreservoirs, bearing the name of Israel's wisest monarch, are still in agood state of preservation, having been repaired in modern times. The first one is three hundred and eighty feet long, two hundred andtwenty-nine feet wide at one end, two hundred and thirty feet wide atthe other, and twenty-five feet deep. The second pool is four hundredand twenty-three feet long, one hundred and sixty feet wide at the upperend, two hundred and fifty feet wide at the lower end, and thirty-ninefeet deep at that end. The third pool is the largest of all, having alength of five hundred and eighty-two feet. The upper end is one hundredand forty-eight feet wide, the lower end two hundred and seven feet, and the depth at the lower end is fifty feet. The pools are about onehundred and fifty feet apart, and have an aggregate area of six and aquarter acres, with an average depth approaching thirty-eight feet. Theupper two received water from the sealed fountain, but the lower one wassupplied from an aqueduct leading up from a point more than three milesto the south. The aqueduct from the sealed fountain leads past thepools, and winds around the hills to Bethlehem and on to the TempleArea, in Jerusalem. It is still in use as far as Bethlehem, and could beput in repair and made serviceable for the whole distance. An offerto do this was foolishly rejected by the Moslems in 1870. The onlyhabitation near the pools is an old khan, "intended as a stopping placefor caravans and as a station for soldiers to guard the road and thepools. " The two upper pools were empty when I saw them, but the thirdone contained some water and a great number of frogs. As we went on toHebron we got a drink at "Philip's Well, " the place where "the eunuchwas baptized, " according to a tradition which lacks support by thepresent appearance of the place. Towards noon we entered the "valley of Eschol, " from whence the spiessent out by Moses carried the great cluster of grapes. (Num. 13:23. )Before entering Hebron we turned aside and went up to Abraham's Oak, avery old tree, but not old enough for Abraham to have enjoyed itsshade almost four thousand years ago. The trunk is thirty-two feet incircumference, but the tree is not tall like the American oaks. It isnow in a dying condition, and some of the branches are supported byprops, while the lower part of the trunk is surrounded by a stone wall, and the space inside is filled with earth. The plot of ground on whichthe tree stands is surrounded by a high iron fence. A little farther upthe hill the Russians have a tower, from which we viewed the country, and then went down in the shade near Abraham's Oak and enjoyed ourdinner. Hebron is a very ancient city, having been built seven and a half yearsbefore Zoar in Egypt. (Num. 13:22. ) Since 1187 it has been under thecontrol of the Mohammedans, who raise large quantities of grapes, manyof which are made into raisins. Articles of glass are made in Hebron, but I saw nothing especially beautiful in this line. The manufacture ofgoat-skin water-bottles is also carried on. Another line of work which Isaw being done is the manufacture of a kind of tile, which looks like afruit jug without a bottom, and is used in building. Hebron was one ofthe six cities of refuge (Joshua 20:7), and for seven years and a halfit was David's capital of Judah. It is very historic. "Abraham moved histent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, andbuilt there an altar unto Jehovah. " (Gen. 13:18. ) When "Sarah died inKiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), in the land of Canaan, * * * Abrahamcame to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. " At this time the worthyprogenitor of the Hebrew race "rose up from before his dead, and spokeunto the children of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner withyou: give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may burymy dead out of my sight. " The burial place was purchased for "fourhundred shekels of silver, current money of the land. * * * And afterthis Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave in the field of Machpelahbefore Mamre (the same is Hebron), in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 23:1-20). Years after this, when both Abraham and his son Isaac hadpassed the way of all the earth and had been laid to rest in this cave, the patriarch Jacob in Egypt gave directions for the entombment of hisbody in this family burial place. "There they buried Abraham and Sarahhis wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there Iburied Leah" (Gen. 49:31), and here, by his own request, Jacob wasburied. (Gen. 50:13. ) Joshua, the successor of Moses, "utterlydestroyed" Hebron (Joshua 10:37), and afterwards gave it to Caleb, towhom it had been promised by Moses forty-five years before. (Joshua14:6-15. ) Here Abner was slain (2 Samuel 3:27), and the murderers ofIshbosheth were put to death. (2 Samuel 4:12. ) The most interesting thing about the town is the "cave of Machpelah, "but it is inaccessible to Christians. Between 1167 and 1187 a church wasbuilt on the site, now marked by a carefully guarded Mohammedan mosque. It is inclosed by a wall which may have been built by Solomon. We wereallowed to go in at the foot of a stairway as far as the seventh step, but might as well have been in the National Capitol at Washington so faras seeing the burial place was concerned. In 1862 the Prince of Wales, now King of England, was admitted. He was accompanied by Dean Stanley, who has described what he saw, but he was permitted neither to examinethe monuments nor to descend to the cave below, the real burial chamber. As the body of Jacob was carefully embalmed by the Egyptian method, itis possible that his remains may yet be seen in their long resting placein this Hebron cave. (Gen. 50:1, 2. ) Turning back toward Jerusalem, we came to Bethlehem late in theafternoon, and the "field of the shepherds" (Luke 2:8) and the "fieldsof Boaz" (Ruth 2:4-23) were pointed out. The place of greatest interestis the group of buildings, composed of two churches, Greek and Latin, and an Armenian convent, all built together on the traditional siteof the birth of the Lord Jesus. Tradition is here contradicted byauthorities partly on the ground that a cave to which entrance is madeby a flight of stairs would probably not be used as a stable. Thiscave is in the Church of St. Mary, said to have been erected in 330 byConstantine. Descending the stairs, we came into the small cavern, whichis continually lighted by fifteen silver lamps, the property of theGreeks, Latins, and Armenians, who each have an interest in the place. Beneath an altar, in a semi-circular recess, a silver star has been setin the floor with the Latin inscription: "_Hic de Virgine Maria JesusChristus Natus est. _" An armed Turkish soldier was doing duty near this"star of Bethlehem" the evening I was there. The well, from which it issaid the "three mighty men" drew water for David, was visited. (2 Samuel23:15. ) But the shades of night had settled down upon the little townwhere our Savior was born, and we again entered our carriages and droveback to Jerusalem, having had a fine day of interesting sight-seeing. Onthe Wednesday before I left Jerusalem, in the company of Mrs. Bates, Iagain visited Bethlehem. Thursday, October thirteenth, was the day we went down to Jericho, theDead Sea, and the Jordan. The party was made up of the writer, Mr. Ahmed, Mr. Jennings, Mrs. Bates, four school teachers (three ladies anda gentleman) returning from the Philippines, and the guides, Mr. Smithand Ephraim Aboosh. We went in two carriages driven by natives. "Acertain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell amongrobbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him halfdead" (Luke 10:30). This lonely road is still the scene of occasionalrobberies, and the Turkish Government permits one of its soldiers toaccompany the tourist for a fee, but we did not want to take thisescort, as neither of the guides feared any danger. Accordingly we tookan early start without notifying the soldiers, and reached Jericho, about twenty miles away, in time to visit Elisha's Fountain beforedinner. The road leads out past Bethany, down by the Apostles' Fountain, on past the Khan of the Good Samaritan, and down the mountain to theplain of the Jordan, this section of which is ten miles long and sevenmiles wide. Before the road reaches the plain, it runs along a deepgorge bearing the name Wady Kelt, the Brook Cherith, where the prophetElisha was fed by the ravens night and morning till the brook dried up. (1 Kings 17:1-7. ) We also saw the remains of an old aqueduct, and of areservoir which was originally over five hundred feet long and more thanfour hundred feet wide. Elisha's Fountain is a beautiful spring somedistance from the present Jericho. Doubtless it is the very spring whosewaters Elisha healed with salt. (2 Kings 2:19-22. ) The ground aboutthe Fountain has been altered some in modern times, and there is now abeautiful pool of good, clear water, a delight both to the eye and tothe throat of the dusty traveler who has come down from Jerusalem seeingonly the brown earth and white, chalky rock, upon which the unveiled sunhas been pouring down his heat for hours. The water from the spring nowruns a little grist mill a short distance below it. After dinner, eaten in front of the hotel in Jericho, we drove over tothe Dead Sea, a distance of several miles, and soon we were all enjoyinga fine bath in the salt water, the women bathing at one place, the menat another. The water contains so much solid matter, nearly three and athird pounds to the gallon, that it is easy to float on the surface withhands, feet and head above the water. One who can swim but little infresh water will find the buoyancy of the water here so great as to makeswimming easy. When one stands erect in it, the body sinks down aboutas far as the top of the shoulders. Care needs to be taken to keep thewater out of the mouth, nose and eyes, as it is so salty that it is verydisagreeable to these tender surfaces. Dead Sea water is two and a halfpounds heavier than fresh water, and among other things, it containsnearly two pounds of chloride of magnesium, and almost a pound ofchloride of sodium, or common salt, to the gallon. Nothing but some verylow forms of animal life, unobserved by the ordinary traveler, can livein this sea. The fish that get into it from the Jordan soon die. Thosewho bathe here usually drive over to the Jordan and bathe again, toremove the salt and other substances that remain on the body after thefirst bath. The greatest depth of the Dead Sea is a little over thirteenhundred feet. The wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah stood here someplace, but authorities disagree as to whether they were at the northernor southern end of the sea. In either case every trace of them has beenwiped out by the awful destruction poured on them by the Almighty. (Gen. 18:16 to 19:29) The Jordan where we saw it, near the mouth, and at the time we saw it, the thirteenth of October, was a quiet and peaceful stream, but thewater was somewhat muddy. We entered two little boats and had a shortride on the river whose waters "stood, and rose up in one heap, a greatway off, " that the children of Israel might cross (Joshua 3:14-17), andbeneath whose wave the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was baptized by thegreat prophet of the Judaean wilderness. (Matt. 3:13-17. ) We also gotout a little while on the east bank of the stream, the only time I was"beyond Jordan" while in Palestine. After supper, eaten in Jericho, wewent around to a Bedouin encampment, where a dance was being executed--adance different from any that I had ever seen before. One of thedancers, with a sword in hand, stood in the center of the ground theywere using, while the others stood in two rows, forming a right angle. They went through with various motions and hand-clapping, accompaniedby an indescribable noise at times. Some of the Bedouins were sittingaround a small fire at one side, and some of the children were having alittle entertainment of their own on another side of the dancing party. We were soon satisfied, and made our way back to the hotel and laid downto rest. The first Jericho was a walled city about two miles from the presentvillage, perhaps at the spring already mentioned, and was the first citytaken in the conquest of the land under Joshua. The Jordan was crossedat Gilgal (Joshua 4:19), where the people were circumcised with knivesof flint, and where the Jews made their first encampment west of theriver. (Joshua 5:2-10. ) "Jericho was straitly shut up because of thechildren of Israel, " but by faithful compliance with the word of theLord the walls fell down. (Joshua 6:1-27. ) "And Joshua charged them withan oath at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before Jehovah, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: with the loss of hisfirst-born shall he lay the foundation thereof, and with the loss of hisyoungest son shall he set up the gates of it. " Regardless of this curse, we read that in the days of Ahab, who "did more to provoke Jehovah, theGod of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel that were beforehim, * * * did Hiel the Beth-elite build Jericho: he laid the foundationthereof with the loss of Abiram his first-born, and set up the gatesthereof with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the wordof Jehovah, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun" (1 Kings 16:33, 34). "The Jericho * * * which was visited by Jesus occupied a still differentsite, " says Bro. McGarvey. The present Jericho is a small Arab village, poorly built, with a few exceptions, and having nothing beautiful in oraround it but the large oleanders that grow in the ground made moist bywater from Elisha's Fountain. We had satisfactory accommodations at thehotel, which is one of the few good houses there. Jericho in the time ofour Lord was the home of a rich publican named Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10), and was an important and wealthy city, that had been fortified by Herodthe Great, who constructed splendid palaces here, and it was here that"this infamous tyrant died. " The original Jericho, the home of Rahab theharlot, was called the "city of palm trees" (Deut. 34:3), but if themodern representative of that ancient city has any of these trees, theyare few in number. Across the Jordan eastward are the mountains of Moab, in one of which Moses died after having delivered his valedictory, asrecorded in Deuteronomy. (Deut. 34:1-12. ) From a lofty peak the Lordshowed this great leader and law-giver a panorama of "all the land ofGilead unto Dan. * * * And Jehovah said unto him, This is the land whichI sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give itunto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thoushalt not go over thither. So Moses the servant of Jehovah died there inthe land of Moab, according to the word of Jehovah. And he buried himin the valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-peor: but no manknoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. " Early Wednesday morning we began our toilsome journey back to Jerusalem, having nearly four thousand feet to climb in the twenty milesintervening. We stopped awhile at the Khan of the Good Samaritan, whichstands near some old ruins, and may not be far from the place to whichthe Good Samaritan carried his poor, wounded fellow-man so long ago. Here I bought some lamps that look old enough, but may be quite modernimitations of the kind that were carried in the days of the wise andfoolish virgins. A stop was also made at the Apostles' Fountain, nearBethany, where I saw an Arab working bread on his coat, which was spreadon the ground. Over by the Damascus gate I one day saw a man feeding hiscamel on his coat, so these coarse cloth garments are very serviceableindeed. We got back to Jerusalem in time to do a good deal ofsight-seeing in the afternoon. The following Tuesday was occupied with a trip on "donkey-back" to NebiSamwil, Emmaus, Abu Ghosh, and Ain Kairim. Our party was small thistime, being composed of Mr. Jennings, Mr. Smith, the writer, and a"donkey-boy" to care for the three animals we rode, when we dismountedto make observations. He was liberal, and sometimes tried to tell uswhich way to go. We went out on the north side of the city and came tothe extensive burial places called the "Tombs of the Judges. " Near by isan ancient wine press cut in the rock near a rock-hewn cistern, whichmay have been used for storing the wine. En Nebi Samwil is on anelevation a little more than three thousand feet above the sea and aboutfour hundred feet higher than Jerusalem, five miles distant. From thetop of the minaret we had a fine view through a field glass, seeing thecountry for many miles around. This is thought by some to be the Mizpahof the Bible (1 Kings 15:22), and tradition has it that the prophetSamuel was buried here. A little north of Nebi Samwil is the site ofancient Gibeon, where "Abner was beaten, and the men of Israel, beforethe servants of David" (2 Samuel 2:12-17). We next rode over to El Kubebeh, supposed by some to be the Emmaus ofNew Testament times, where Jesus went after his resurrection and sat atmeat with his disciples without being recognized. (Luke 24:13-25. ) Theplace has little to attract one. A modern building, which I took to bethe residence of some wealthy person, occupies a prominent position, andis surrounded by well-kept grounds, inclosed with a wall. The Franciscanmonastery is a good sized institution, having on its grounds the remainsof a church of the Crusaders' period, over which a new and attractivebuilding has been erected. One section of it has the most beautifulfloor of polished marble, laid in patterns, that I have ever seen. Italso contains a painting of the Savior and the two disciples. We went outside of the monastery to eat our noon-day lunch, but beforewe finished, one of the monks came and called us in to a meal attheir table. It was a good meal, for which no charge was made, and Iunderstand it is their custom to give free meals to visitors, for theybelieve that Jesus here sat at meat with his two disciples. We enjoyedtheir hospitality, but drank none of the wine that was placed before us. Our next point was Abu Ghosh, named for an old village sheik who, "withhis six brothers and eighty-five descendants, was the terror of thewhole country" about a century ago. Our object in visiting the spot wasto see the old Crusaders' church, the best preserved one in Palestine. The stone walls are perhaps seven or eight feet thick. The roof is stillpreserved, and traces of the painting that originally adorned the wallsare yet to be seen. A new addition has been erected at one end, and theold church may soon be put in repair. The last place we visited before returning to Jerusalem was Ain Kairim, a town occupied mainly by the Mohammedans, and said to have been thehome of that worthy couple of whom it was written: "They were bothrighteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances ofthe Lord blameless" (Luke 1:6). The portion occupied by the Latins andGreeks is very beautifully situated on the side of the mountain. Thestone houses, "whited walls, " and green cypresses make quite a prettypicture. The Church of St. John, according to tradition, stands on thespot where once dwelt Zacharias and Elizabeth, the parents of John, thegreat forerunner of Jesus. Night came upon us before we got back to ourstarting place, and as this was my first day of donkey riding, I wasvery much fatigued when I finally dismounted in Jerusalem; yet I arosethe next morning feeling reasonably well, but not craving another donkeyride over a rough country beneath the hot sun. On Saturday, the twenty-second of October, I turned away from Jerusalem, having been in and around the place almost two weeks, and went back toJaffa by rail. After a few miles the railway leads past Bittir, supposedto be the Beth-arabah of Joshua 15:61. It is also of interest from thefact that it played a part in the famous insurrection of Bar Cochbaagainst the Romans. In A. D. 135 it was captured by a Roman force aftera siege of three and a half years. Ramleh, a point twelve miles fromJaffa, was once occupied by Napoleon. Lydda, supposed to be the Lod ofEzra 2:33, was passed. Here Peter healed Aeneas, who had been palsiedeight years. (Acts 9:32-35. ) Jaffa is the Joppa of the Bible, and has a good deal of interestinghistory. When "Jonah rose to flee unto Tarshish from the presence ofJehovah, " he "went down to Joppa and found a ship going unto Tarshish:so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them toTarshish from the presence of Jehovah. " (Jonah 1:3. ) His unpleasantexperience with the great fish is well known. When Solomon was about tobuild the first temple, Hiram sent a communication to him, saying: "Wewill cut wood out of Lebanon as much as thou shalt need; and will bringit to thee in floats by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up toJerusalem" (2 Chron. 2:16). In the days of Ezra, when Zerubbabelrepaired the temple, we read that "they gave money also unto the masons, and to the carpenters; and food, and drink, and oil, unto them of Sidon, and to them of Tyre, to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, untoJoppa, according to the grant that they had of Cyrus king of Persia"(Ezra 3:7). It was the home of "a certain disciple named Tabitha, " whomPeter was called from Lydda to raise from the dead. (Acts 9:36-43. )Simon the tanner also lived in Joppa, and it was at his house that Peterhad his impressive vision of the sheet let down from heaven prior to hisgoing to Caesarea to speak the word of salvation to Cornelius and hisfriends. (Acts 10:1-6. ) The city is built on a rocky elevation rising one hundred feet abovethe sea, which has no harbor here, so that vessels do not stop when thewater is too rough for passengers to be carried safely in small boats. Extensive orange groves are cultivated around Jaffa, and lemons are alsogrown, and I purchased six for a little more than a cent in Americanmoney. Sesame, wine, wool, and soap are exported, and the imports areconsiderable. The train reached the station about the middle of the day, and the ship did not leave till night, so I had ample time to visit the"house of Simon the tanner. " It is "by the sea side" all right, butlooks too modern to be impressive to the traveler who does not acceptall that tradition says. I paid Cook's tourist agency the equivalent ofa dollar to take me through the custom house and out to the ship, and Ido not regret spending the money, although it was five times as much asI had paid the native boatman for taking me ashore when I first came toJaffa. The sea was rough--very rough for me--and a little woman at myside was shaking with nervousness, although she tried to be brave, andher little boy took a firm hold on my clothing. I don't think that I wasscared, but I confess that I did not enjoy the motion of the boat as itwent sliding down from the crest of the waves, which were higher thanany I had previously ridden upon in a rowboat. As darkness had come, itwould have been a poor time to be upset, but we reached the vessel insafety. When we came alongside the ship, a boatman on each side of thepassenger simply pitched or threw him up on the stairs when the risingwave lifted the little boat to the highest point. It was easily done, but it is an experience one need not care to repeat unnecessarily. I was now through with my sight-seeing in the Holy Land and aboard theAustrian ship _Maria Teresa_, which was to carry me to the land of theancient Pharaohs. Like Jonah, I had paid my fare, so I laid down tosleep. There was a rain in the night, but no one proposed to throw meoverboard, and we reached Port Said, at the mouth of the Suez Canal, thenext day. CHAPTER VII. EGYPT, THE LAND OF TOMBS AND TEMPLES. The _Maria Teresa_ landed me in Port Said, Egypt, Lord's day, Octobertwenty-third, and at seven o'clock that evening I took the train forCairo, arriving there about four hours later. I had no difficulty infinding a hotel, where I took some rest, but was out very early the nextmorning to see something of the largest city in Africa. The populationis a great mixture of French, Greeks, English, Austrians, Germans, Egyptians, Arabians, Copts, Berbers, Turks, Jews, Negroes, Syrians, Persians, and others. In Smyrna, Damascus, and Jerusalem, cities of theTurkish empire, the streets are narrow, crooked, and dirty, but hereare many fine buildings, electric lights, electric cars, and good, widestreets, over which vehicles with rubber tires roll noiselessly. I first went out to the Mokattam Heights, lying back of the city, at anelevation of six hundred and fifty feet. From the summit an extensiveview can be obtained, embracing not only the city of Cairo, with itsmany mosques and minarets, but the river beyond, and still fartherbeyond the Gizeh (Gezer) group of the pyramids. The side of the Heightstoward the city is a vast quarry, from which large quantities of rockhave been taken. An old fort and a mosque stand in solitude on the top. I went out by the citadel and passed the mosque tombs of the Mamelukes, who were originally brought into the country from the Caucasus asslaves, but they became sufficiently powerful to make one of theirnumber Sultan in 1254. The tombs of the Caliphs, successors of Mohammedin temporal and spiritual power, are not far from the Heights. As I was returning to the city, a laborer followed me a little distance, and indicated that he wanted my name written on a piece of paper he wascarrying. I accommodated him, but do not know for what purpose he wantedit. I stopped at the Alabaster Mosque, built after the fashion of one ofthe mosques of Constantinople, and decorated with alabaster. The outsideis full of little depressions, and has no special beauty, but the insideis more attractive. The entrance is through a large court, paved withsquares of white marble. The floor of the mosque was nicely covered withcarpet, and the walls are coated for a few feet with alabaster, andabove that they are painted in imitation of the same material. Thenumerous lamps do much towards making the place attractive. Theattendant said the central chandelier, fitted for three hundred andsixty-six candles, was a present from Louis Philippe, of France. A clockis also shown that came from the same source. The pulpit is a platformat the head of a stairway, and the place for reading the Koran is asmall platform three or four feet high, also ascended by steps. Withinan inclosure in one corner of the building is the tomb of Mohammed Ali, which, I was told, was visited by the Khedive the day before I wasthere. The most interesting part of the day was the afternoon trip to the ninepyramids of the Gizeh group. They may be reached by a drive over theexcellent carriage road that leads out to them, or by taking one of theelectric cars that run along by this road. Three of the pyramids arelarge and the others are small, but one, the pyramid of Cheops, is builton such magnificent proportions that it is called "the great pyramid. "According to Baedeker, "the length of each side is now seven hundred andfifty feet, but was formerly about seven hundred and sixty-eight feet;the present perpendicular height is four hundred and fifty-one feet, while originally, including the nucleus of the rock at the bottom andthe apex, which has now disappeared, it is said to have been fourhundred and eighty-two feet. * * * In round numbers, the stupendousstructure covers an area of nearly thirteen acres. " It is estimated that two million three hundred thousand blocks of stone, each containing forty cubic feet, were required for building thisancient and wonderful monument, upon which a hundred thousand men aresaid to have been employed for twenty years. Nearly all of the materialwas brought across from the east side of the Nile, but the granite thatentered into its construction was brought down from Syene, near Assouan, five hundred miles distant. Two chambers are shown to visitors, one ofthem containing an empty stone coffin. The passageway leading to thesechambers is not easily traversed, as it runs at an angle like a stairwaywith no steps, for the old footholds have become so nearly worn out thatthe tourist might slip and slide to the bottom were it not for hisArab helpers. A fee of one dollar secures the right to walk about thegrounds, ascend the pyramid, and go down inside of it. Three Arabs gowith the ticket, and two of them are really needed. Those who wentwith me performed their work in a satisfactory manner, and while notpermitted to ask for "backshish, " they let me know that they wouldaccept anything I might have for them. The ascent was rather difficult, as some of the stones are more than a yard high. It is estimated thatthis mighty monument, which Abraham may have looked upon, containsenough stone to build a wall around the frontier of France. Of the SevenWonders of the World, the Pyramid of Cheops alone remains. The otherattractions here are the Granite Temple, and some tombs, from one ofwhich a jackal ran away as we were approaching. I got back to Cairoafter dark, and took the eight o'clock train for Assouan. This place is about seven hundred miles from Port Said by rail, and isa good sized town. The main street, fronting the river, presentsa pleasing appearance with its hotels, Cook's tourist office, thepostoffice, and other buildings. Gas and electricity are used forlighting, and the dust in the streets is laid by a real streetsprinkler, and not by throwing the water on from a leathern bag, as Isaw it in Damascus. The Cataract Hotel is a large place for tourists, with a capacity of three hundred and fifty people. The Savoy Hotel isbeautifully located on Elephantine Island, in front of the town. Tothe south of the town lie the ancient granite quarries of Syene, whichfurnished the Egyptian workmen building material so long ago, and stilllack a great deal of being exhausted. I saw an obelisk lying here whichis said to be ninety-two feet long and ten and a half feet wide in thebroadest part, but both ends of it were covered. In this section thereis an English cemetery inclosed by a wall, and several tombs of thenatives, those of the sheiks being prominent. Farther to the south is a great modern work, the Nile dam, a mile and aquarter long, and built of solid masonry. In the deepest place it is onehundred feet high, and the thickness at the bottom is eighty-eight feet. It was begun in 1899, and at one time upwards of ten thousand men wereemployed on the works. It seemed to be finished when I was there, but afew workmen were still engaged about the place. The total cost has beenestimated at a sum probably exceeding ten millions of dollars. There areone hundred and eighty sluices to regulate the out-flow of the water, which is collected to a height of sixty-five feet during the inundationof the Nile. The dam would have been made higher, but by so doing PhilaeIsland, a short distance up the river, would have been submerged. The remains on this island are so well preserved that it is almost amisnomer to call them ruins. The little island is only five hundredyards long and sixty yards wide, and contains the Temple of Isis, Templeof Hathor, a kiosk or pavilion, two colonnades, and a small Nilometer. In the gateway to one of the temples is a French inscription concerningNapoleon's campaign in Egypt in 1799. All the buildings are of stone, and the outside walls are covered with figures and inscriptions. Some ofthe figures are just cut in the rough, never having been finished. Here, as elsewhere in Egypt, very delicate carvings are preserved almost asdistinct as though done but recently. The guard on the island was notgoing to let me see the ruins because I held no ticket. After a littledelay, a small boat, carrying some diplomatic officers, came up. Thesegentlemen, one of whom was a Russian, I think, tried to get the guard tolet me see the place with them, but he hesitated, and required them togive him a paper stating that I was there with them. Later, when I gotto the place where the tickets were sold, I learned that Philae Islandwas open for visitors without a ticket. Perhaps the guard thought hewould get some "backshish" from me. I made an interesting visit to the Bisharin village, just outside ofAssouan, and near the railroad. The inhabitants are very dark-skinned, and live in booths or tents, covered with something like straw matting. I stopped at one of the lodges, which was probably six feet wide andeight feet long, and high enough to enable the occupants to sit erect onthe floor. An old man, naked from the waist up, was sitting outside. Ayoung woman was operating a small hand mill, and one or two other womenwere sitting there on the ground. They showed me some long strings ofbeads, and I made a purchase at a low price. While at this lodge, for Ican not call it a house, and it is not altogether like a tent, abouta dozen of the native children gathered around me, and one, who couldspeak some English, endeavored to draw out part of my cash by repeatingthis speech: "Half a piaster, Mister; thank you very much. " The girlshad their hair in small plaits, which seemed to be well waxed together. One of the boys, about ten years of age, clothed in a peculiar manner, was finely formed, and made a favorable impression on my mind. I wouldlike to see what could be made of him if he were taken entirely awayfrom his unfavorable surroundings and brought up with the care andattention that many American boys receive. He and another lad went withme to see the obelisk in the granite quarry, and I tried to teach themto say: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. " As Iwas repeating the first word of the sentence and trying to induce one ofthem to follow me, he said, "No blessed, " and I failed to get either ofthem to say these beautiful words. In Egypt and other countries thereare millions of persons just as ignorant of the gospel and just as muchin need of it as the curly-headed Bisharin lad who conducted me to thegranite quarry. I took a pleasant boat ride across the river, past the beautiful groundsof the Savoy Hotel, to the rock tombs of the great persons of ancientElephantine. I tarried a little too long at the tombs, or else did notstart soon enough, for darkness came upon us soon after leaving them. For some distance the boatman walked on the shore and towed the boatwith a long rope, while I tried to keep it off of the rocks with therudder. There was not enough wind to make the sail useful, and as wewere passing around the end of Elephantine Island we drifted againstthe rocks, but with no other loss than the loss of some time. It was mydesire to see the Nilometer on the island, and I did see it, but notuntil after I had sent the boatman to buy a candle. This ancientwater-gauge was repaired in 1870, after a thousand years of neglect. The following description by Strabo is taken from Baedeker's _Guide toEgypt_: "The Nilometer is a well, built of regular hewn stones, on thebank of the Nile, in which is recorded the rise of the stream--not onlythe maximum, but also the minimum, and average rise, for the water inthe well rises and falls with the stream. On the side of the well aremarks measuring the height for the irrigation and other water levels. These are published for general information. * * * This is of importanceto the peasants for the management of the water, the embankments, thecanals, etc. , and to the officials on account of the taxes, for thehigher the rise of the water, the higher the taxes. " It needs to besaid, however, that this "well" is not circular, but rectangular, andhas a flight of steps leading down to the water. On the way back to Cairo I stopped at Luxor, on the site of the ancientcity of Thebes. The chief attraction here is the Temple of Luxor, sixhundred and twenty-one feet long and one hundred and eighty feet wide. In recent times this temple was entirely buried, and a man told me heowned a house on the spot which he sold to the government for about fourhundred and fifty dollars, not knowing of the existence of a templeburied beneath his dwelling. Some of the original statues of Rameses II. Remain in front of the ruins. I measured the right arm of one of thesefigures, from the pit where it touches the side to the same point infront, a distance of about six feet, and that does not represent theentire circumference, for the granite between the arm and the body wasnever entirely cut away. Near by stands a large red granite obelisk, with carvings from top to bottom. A companion to this one, for they werealways erected in pairs, has been removed. In ancient times a pavedstreet led from this temple to Karnak, which is reached by a short walk. This ancient street was adorned by a row of ram-headed sphinxes on eachside. Toward Karnak many of them are yet to be seen in a badly mutilatedcondition, but there is another avenue containing forty of these figuresin a good state of preservation. The first of the Karnak temples reached is one dedicated to the Thebanmoon god, Khons, reared by Rameses III. The Temple of Ammon, called "thethrone of the world, " lies a little beyond. I spent half a day on thewest side of the river in what was the burial ground of ancient Thebes, where also numerous temples were erected. My first stop was before theruins of Kurna. The Temple of Sethos I. Originally had ten columnsbefore it, but one is now out of place. The Temple Der el Bahri bore anEnglish name, signifying "most splendid of all, " and it may not havebeen misnamed. It is situated at the base of a lofty barren cliff of ayellowish cast, and has been partially restored. In 1881 a French explorer discovered the mummies of several Egyptianrulers in an inner chamber of this temple, that had probably beenremoved to this place for security from robbers. In the number were theremains of Rameses II. , who was probably reigning in the boyhood days ofMoses, and the mummy of Set II. , perhaps the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and I saw both of them in the museum in Cairo. The Ramasseum is another large temple, built by Rameses II. , who issaid to have had sixty-nine sons and seventy daughters. There are alsoextensive remains of another temple called Medinet Habu. About a half amile away from this ruin are the two colossal statues of Memnon, which were surrounded by water, so I could not get close to them. Thefollowing dimensions of one of them are given: "Height of the figure, fifty-two feet; height of the pedestal on which the feet rest, thirteenfeet; height of the entire monument, sixty-five feet. But when thefigure was adorned with the long-since vanished crown, the originalheight may have reached sixty-nine feet. * * * Each foot is ten andone-half feet long. * * * The middle finger on one hand is four and ahalf feet long, and the arm from the tip of the finger to the elbowmeasures fifteen and one-half feet. " All about these temples are indications of ancient graves, from whichthe Arabs have dug the mummies. As I rode out, a boy wanted to sell me amummy hand, and another had the mummy of a bird. They may both have beencounterfeits made especially for unsuspecting tourists. There are alsoextensive rock-cut tombs of the ancient kings and queens, which arelighted by electricity in the tourist season. I did not visit them onaccount of the high price of admission. The government has very properlytaken charge of the antiquities, and a ticket is issued for six dollarsthat admits to all these ruins in Upper Egypt. Tickets for any oneparticular place were not sold last season, but tourists were allowed tovisit all places not inclosed without a ticket. While in Luxor I visited the American Mission Boarding School for Girls, conducted by Miss Buchanan, who was assisted by a Miss Gibson and fivenative teachers. A new building, with a capacity for four hundredboarders, was being erected at a cost of about thirty-five thousanddollars. This would be the finest building for girls in Egypt whenfinished, I was told, and most of the money for it had been given bytourists. I spent a night in Luxor, staying in the home of Youssef Saïd, a native connected with the mission work. His uncle, who could not speakEnglish, expressed himself as being glad to have "a preacher of JesusChrist" to stay in his house. Leaving Luxor, I returned to Cairo for some more sight-seeing, and I hada very interesting time of it. In Gen. 41:45 we read: "Pharaoh calledJoseph's name Zaphenath-paneah; and gave him to wife Asenath, thedaughter of Potipherah, priest of On. " Heliopolis, meaning city of thesun, is another name for this place, from whence the wife of Josephcame. It is only a few miles from Cairo, and easily reached by railway. All that I saw of the old city was a lonely obelisk, "probably theoldest one in the world, " standing in a cultivated field and surroundedby the growing crop. It is sixty-six feet high, six feet square at thebase, and is well preserved. The Ezbekiah Gardens are situated in the best portion of Cairo. Thisbeautiful park contains quite a variety of trees, including the banyan, and is a resort of many of the people. Band concerts are held, and asmall entrance fee is taken at the gate. On the thirtieth of the month I visited the Museum, which has beenmoved to the city and installed in its own commodious and substantialbuilding. This vast collection of relics of this wonderful old countryaffords great opportunities for study. I spent a good deal of time thereseeing the coffins of wood, white limestone, red granite, and alabaster;sacrificial tables, mummies, ancient paintings, weights and measures, bronze lamps, necklaces, stone and alabaster jars, bronze hinges, articles of pottery, and many other things. It is remarkable how someof the embalmed bodies, thousands of years old, are preserved. I lookeddown upon the Pharaoh who is supposed to have oppressed Israel. The bodyis well preserved, but it brought thoughts to me of the smallness of thefleshly side of man. He who once ruled in royal splendor now lies therein very humble silence. In some cases the cloths wrapped around thesemummies are preserved almost perfectly, and I remember a gilt mask thatwas so bright that one might have taken it for a modern product. Afterthe body was securely wrapped, a picture was sometimes painted over theface, and now, after the lapse of centuries, some of these are veryclear and distinct. I saw a collection of scarabaei, or beetles, whichwere anciently worshiped in this country. Dealers offer figures of thiskind for sale, but the most of them are probably manufactured for thetourist trade. On Lord's day, October thirtieth, I attended the evening services at theAmerican Mission, and went to Bedrashen the following day. This is thenearest railway station to Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, now anirregular pile of ruined mud bricks. I secured a donkey, and a boy tocare for it and tell me where to go. We soon passed the dilapidatedruins of the old capital. Two prostrate statues of great size were seenon the way to the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, which is peculiar in that itis built with great offsets or steps, still plainly visible, althoughlarge quantities of the rock have crumbled and fallen down. TheDepartment of Antiquities has posted a notice in French, Arabic andEnglish, to the effect that it is dangerous to make the ascent, and thatthe government will not be responsible for accidents to tourists whoundertake it. I soon reached the top without any special difficulty, and with no more danger, so far as I could see, than one experiencesin climbing a steep hill strewn with rocks. I entered another pyramid, which has a stone in one side of it twenty-five feet long and about fiveand a half feet high. Some more tombs were visited, and the delicatecarving on the inner walls was observed. In one instance a harvest scenewas represented, in another the fish in a net could be discerned. TheSerapeum is an underground burial place for the sacred bull, discoveredby Mariette in 1850, after having been buried since about 1400 B. C. Inthose times the bull was an object of worship in Egypt, and when onedied, he was carefully embalmed and put in a stone coffin in one of thechambers of the Serapeum. Some of these coffins are twelve feet high andfifteen feet long. Before leaving Cairo, I went into the famous Shepheard's Hotel, where Ireceived some information about the place from the manager, who lookedlike a well-salaried city pastor. The Grand Continental presents abetter appearance on the outside, but I do not believe it equalsShepheard's on the inside. I was now ready to turn towards home, so Idropped down to Port Said again, where there is little of interest tothe tourist except the ever-changing panorama of ships in the mouth ofthe Suez Canal, and the study of the social condition of the people. Mydelay in the city while waiting for a ship gave me a good deal oftime for writing and visiting the missionaries. The Seamen's Rest isconducted by Mr. Locke, who goes out in the harbor and gathers upsailors in his steam launch, and carries them back to their vesselsafter the service. One night, after speaking in one of these meetings, Irode out with him. The American Mission conducts a school for boys, andFeltus Hanna, the native superintendent, kindly showed me around. ThePeniel Mission is conducted by two American ladies. The British andForeign Bible Society has a depot here, and keeps three men at workvisiting ships in the harbor all the time. I attended the servicesin the chapel of the Church of England one morning. With all thesereligious forces the city is very wicked. The street in which my hotelwas located was largely given up to drinking and harlotry. On the ninth of November the French ship _Congo_ stopped in the harbor, and I went down late in the evening to embark, but the authorities wouldnot permit me to go aboard, because I had not been examined by themedical officer, who felt my pulse and signed a paper that was nevercalled for, and I went aboard all right. The ship stopped at Alexandria, and I went around in the city, seeing nothing of equal interest toPompey's Pillar, a monument standing ninety-eight feet and nine incheshigh. The main shaft is seventy-three feet high and nearly thirty feetin circumference. We reached Marseilles in the evening of Novembersixteenth, after experiencing some weather rough enough to make meuncomfortable, and several of the others were really seasick. I hadseveral hours in Paris, which was reached early the next day, and theUnited States consulate and the Louvre, the national museum of France, were visited. From Paris I went to London by way of Dieppe and NewHaven. I left summer weather in Egypt, and found that winter was on handin France and England. London was shrouded in a fog. I went back to myfriends at Twynholm, and made three addresses on Lord's day, and spokeagain on Monday night. I sailed from Liverpool for New York on the _SS. Cedric_ November twenty-third. We were in the harbor at Queenstown, Ireland, the next day, and came ashore at the New York custom house onthe second of December. The _Cedric_ was then the second largest ship inthe world, being seven hundred feet long and seventy-five feet broad. She carries a crew of three hundred and forty, and has a capacity forover three thousand passengers. On this trip she carried one thousandthree hundred and thirty-six, and the following twenty classes of peoplewere represented: Americans, English, French, German, Danes, Norwegians, Roumanians, Spanish, Arabs, Japanese, Negroes, Greeks, Russian Jews, Fins, Swedes, Austrians, Armenians, Poles, Irish, and Scotch. A greatstream of immigrants is continually pouring into the country at thispoint. Twelve thousand were reported as arriving in one day, and arecent paper contains a note to the effect that the number arriving inJune will exceed eighty thousand, as against fifty thousand in Juneof last year. "The character of the immigrants seems to grow steadilyworse. " My traveling companion from Port Said to Marseilles and from Liverpoolto New York was Solomon Elia, who had kindly shown me through theIsraelite Alliance School in Jerusalem. I reached Philadelphia the sameday the ship landed in New York, but was detained there with brethrenon account of a case of quinsy. I reached home on the fourteenth ofDecember, after an absence of five months and three days, in whichtime I had seen something of fourteen foreign countries, having a veryenjoyable and profitable trip. CHAPTER VIII. GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. This section of country has been known by several names. It has beencalled the "Land of Canaan, " the "Land of Israel, " the "Land ofPromise, " the "Land of the Hebrews, " and the "Holy Land. " Canaan wassimply the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, extendingfrom Mt. Lebanon on the north to the Desert of Arabia on the south. Danwas in the extreme northern part, and Beer-sheba lay in the southern endof the country, one hundred and thirty-nine miles distant. The averagewidth of the land is about forty miles, and the total area is in theneighborhood of six thousand miles. "It is not in size or physicalcharacteristics proportioned to its moral and historical position as thetheater of the most momentous events in the world's history. " Palestine, the land occupied by the twelve tribes, included the Land of Canaan anda section of country east of the Jordan one hundred miles long and abouttwenty-five miles wide, occupied by Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe ofManasseh. The Land of Promise was still more extensive, reachingfrom "the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates, "embracing about sixty thousand square miles, or a little less thanthe five New England States. The country is easily divided into fourparallel strips. Beginning at the Mediterranean, we have the MaritimePlain, the Mountain Region, the Jordan Valley, and the EasternTable-Land. The long stretch of lowland known as the Maritime Plain is dividedinto three sections. The portion lying north of Mt. Carmel was calledPhoenicia. It varies in width from half a mile in the north to eightmiles in the south. The ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon belonged tothis section. Directly east of Mt. Carmel is the Plain of Esdraelon, physically a part of the Maritime Plain. It is an irregular triangle, whose sides are fourteen, sixteen, and twenty-five miles respectively, the longest side being next to Mt. Carmel. Here Barak defeated the armyof Sisera under Jabin, and here Josiah, king of Judah, was killed in abattle with the Egyptians under Pharaoh-necoh. The Plains of Sharon and Philistia, lying south of Carmel, are usuallyregarded as the true Maritime Plain. Sharon extends southward fromCarmel about fifty miles, reaching a little below Jaffa, and has anaverage width of eight miles. The Zerka, or Crocodile river, whichtraverses this plain, is the largest stream of Palestine west of theJordan. There are several other streams crossing the plain from themountains to the sea, but they usually cease to flow in the summerseason. Joppa, Lydda, Ramleh, and Caesarea belong to this plain. Herodthe Great built Caesarea, and spent large sums of money on its palace, temple, theater, and breakwater. The Plain of Philistia extends thirty or forty miles from the southernlimits of Sharon to Gaza, varying in width from twelve to twenty-fivemiles. It is well watered by several streams, some of which flow all theyear. Part of the water from the mountains flows under the ground andrises in shallow lakes near the coast. Water can easily be found here, as also in Sharon, by digging wells, and the soil is suitable for theculture of small grains and for pasture. During a part of the year theplain is beautifully ornamented with a rich growth of brightly coloredflowers, a characteristic of Palestine in the wet season. Gaza figures in the history of Samson, who "laid hold of the doors ofthe gate of the city, and the two posts, and plucked them up, bar andall, and put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of themountain that is before Hebron. " Ashkelon, on the coast, is connectedwith the history of the Crusades. Ashdod, or Azotus, is where Philip wasfound after the baptism of the eunuch. It is said that Psammetichus, an ancient Egyptian king, captured this place after a siege oftwenty-seven years. Ekron and Gath also belonged to this plain. The ridge of mountains lying between the coast plain and the Jordanvalley form the backbone of the country. Here, more than elsewhere, the Israelites made their homes, on account of the hostility of theinhabitants in the lowlands. This ridge is a continuation of the Lebanonrange, and extends as far south as the desert. In Upper Galilee themountains reach an average height of two thousand eight hundred feetabove sea level, but in Lower Galilee they are a thousand feet lower. InSamaria and Judaea they reach an altitude of two or three thousand feet. The foot-hills, called the Shefelah, and the Negeb, or "South Country, "complete the ridge. The highest peak is Jebel Mukhmeel, in NorthernPalestine, rising ten thousand two hundred feet above the sea. Mt. Tabor, in Galilee, is one thousand eight hundred and forty-three feethigh, while Gerizim and Ebal, down in Samaria, are two thousand eighthundred and fifty feet and three thousand and seventy-five feetrespectively. The principal mountains in Judaea are Mt. Zion, twothousand five hundred and fifty feet; Mt. Moriah, about one hundred feetlower; Mount of Olives, two thousand six hundred and sixty-five feet, and Mt. Hebron, three thousand and thirty feet. Nazareth, Shechem, Jerusalem, and Hebron belong to the Mountain Region. The Jordan Valley is the lowest portion of the earth's surface. No otherdepressions are more than three hundred feet below sea level, but theJordan is six hundred and eighty-two feet lower than the ocean at theSea of Galilee, and nearly thirteen hundred feet lower where it entersthe Dead Sea. This wonderful depression, which includes the Dead Sea, forty-five miles long, and the valley south of it, one hundred miles inlength, is two hundred and fifty miles long and from four to fourteenmiles in width, and is called the Arabah. The sources of the Jordanare one hundred and thirty-four miles from the mouth, but the numerouswindings of the stream make it two hundred miles long. The Jordanis formed by the union of three streams issuing from springs at anelevation of seventeen hundred feet above the sea. The principal sourceis the spring at Dan, one of the largest in the world, as it sends fortha stream twenty feet wide and from twenty to thirty inches deep. Thespring at Banias, the Caesarea Philippi of the Scriptures, is theeastern source. The Hashbany flows from a spring forming the westernsource. A few miles south of the union of the streams above mentionedthe river widens into the waters of Merom, a small lake nearly on alevel with the Mediterranean. In the next few miles it descends rapidly, and empties into the Sea of Galilee, called also the Sea of Chinnereth, Sea of Tiberias, and Lake of Gennesaret. In the sixty-five miles fromthe Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea the fall is about six hundred feet. The rate of descent is not uniform throughout the whole course of theriver. In one section it drops sixty feet to the mile, while there isone stretch of thirteen miles with a descent of only four and a halffeet to the mile. The average is twenty-two feet to the mile. The widthvaries from eighty to one hundred and eighty feet, and the depth fromfive to twelve feet. Caesarea Philippi, at the head of the valley, Capernaum, Magdala, Tiberias, and Tarrichaea were cities on the Sea ofGalilee. Jericho and Gilgal were in the plain at the southern extremity, and Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, upon which the wrath of God waspoured, were somewhere in the region of the Dead Sea. The Eastern Table-Land has a mountain wall four thousand feet highfacing the river. This table-land, which is mostly fertile, extendseastward about twenty miles, and terminates in the Arabian Desert, whichis still higher. Here the mountains are higher and steeper than thosewest of the Jordan. Mt. Hermon, in the north, is nine thousand twohundred feet high. South of the Jarmuk River is Mt. Gilead, threethousand feet high, and Mt. Nebo, lying east of the northern end of theDead Sea, reaches an elevation of two thousand six hundred and seventyfeet. Besides the Jarmuk, another stream, the Jabbok, flows into theJordan from this side. The Arnon empties into the Dead Sea. The northernsection was called Bashan, the middle, Gilead, and the southern part, Moab. Bashan anciently had many cities, and numerous ruins yet remain. In the campaign of Israel against Og, king of Bashan, sixty citieswere captured. Many events occurred in Gilead, where were situatedJabesh-Gilead, Ramoth-Gilead, and the ten cities of the Decapolis, withthe exception of Beth-shean, which was west of the Jordan. From thesummit of Mt. Pisgah, a peak of Mt. Nebo, Moses viewed the Landof Promise, and from these same heights Balaam looked down on theIsraelites and undertook to curse them, Moab lies south of the Arnonand east of the Dead Sea. In the time of a famine, an Israelite, namedElimelech, with his wife and sons, sojourned in this land. After thedeath of Elimelech and both of his sons, who had married in the land, Naomi returned to Bethlehem, accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitess, who came into the line of ancestry of David and of theLord Jesus Christ. Once, when the kings of Judah, Israel, and Edominvaded the land, the king of Moab (when they came to Kir-hareseth, the capital) took his oldest son, who would have succeeded him on thethrone, "and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall. " At thisthe invaders "departed from him and returned to their own land. " The political geography of Palestine is so complicated that it can notbe handled in the space here available. Only a few words, applicableto the country in New Testament times, can be said. The provinces ofGalilee, Samaria, and Judaea were on the west side of the Jordan, whilethe Decapolis and Perea lay east of that river. The northern provinceof Galilee, which saw most of the ministry of Jesus, extended from theMediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, and a much greater distance fromthe north to the south. It was peopled with Jews, and was probably amuch better country than is generally supposed, as it contained a largenumber of cities and villages, and produced fish, oil, wheat, wine, figs, and flax. "It was in Christ's time one of the gardens of theworld--well watered, exceedingly fertile, thoroughly cultivated, andcovered with a dense population. "--_Merrill_. Samaria, lying south of Galilee, extended from the Mediterranean to theJordan, and was occupied by a mixed race, formed by the mingling of Jewswith the foreigners who had been sent into the land. When they weredisfellowshiped by the Jews, about 460 B. C. , they built a temple on Mt. Gerizim. The province of Judaea was the largest in Palestine, and extended fromthe Mediterranean on the west to the Dead Sea and the Jordan on theeast. It was bounded on the north by Samaria, and on the south by thedesert. Although but fifty-five miles long and about thirty miles wide, it held out against Egypt, Babylonia, and Rome. The Decapolis, or region of ten Gentile cities, was the northeasternpart of Palestine, extending eastward from the Jordan to the desert. Perea lay south of the Decapolis, and east of the Jordan and Dead Sea. The kingdom of Herod the Great, whose reign ended B. C. 4, includedall of this territory. After his death the country was divided intotetrarchies. Archelaus ruled over Judaea and Samaria; Antipas ("Herodthe tetrarch") had control of Galilee and Perea; Philip had a section ofcountry east of the Sea of Galilee, and Lysanius ruled over Abilene, asmall section of country between Mt. Hermon and Damascus, not includedin the domain of Herod the Great. Herod Agrippa was made king byCaligula, and his territory embraced all that his grandfather, Herod theGreat, had ruled over, with Abilene added, making his territory moreextensive than that of any Jewish king after Solomon. He is the "Herodthe king" who killed the Apostle James and imprisoned Peter. Afterdelivering an oration at Caesarea, he died a horrible death, "becausehe gave not God the glory. " At his death, in A. D. 44, the country wasdivided into two provinces. The northern section was ruled by HerodAgrippa II. Till the Jewish State was dissolved, in A. D. 70. He was the"King Agrippa" before whom Paul spoke. The southern part of the country, called the province of Judaea, was ruled by procurators having theirseat at Caesarea. When Jerusalem was destroyed in A. D. 70, the countrywas annexed to Syria. The climate depends more upon local conditions than on the latitude, which is the same as Southern Georgia and Alabama, Jerusalem being onthe parallel of Savannah. In point of temperature it is about the sameas these localities, but in other respects it differs much. The year hastwo seasons--the dry, lasting from the first of April to the first ofNovember, and the rainy season, lasting the other five months, duringwhich time there are copious rains. One authority says: "Were the oldcisterns cleaned and mended, and the beautiful tanks and aqueductsrepaired, the ordinary fall of rain would be quite sufficient for thewants of the inhabitants and for irrigation. " The summers are hot, thewinters mild. Snow sometimes falls, but does not last long, and ice isseldom formed. Palestine is not a timbered country. The commonest oak is a low, scrubbybush. The "cedars of Lebanon" have almost disappeared. The carobtree, white poplar, a thorn bush, and the oleander are found in somelocalities. The principal fruit-bearing trees are the fig, olive, datepalm, pomegranate, orange, and lemon. Grapes, apples, apricots, quinces, and other fruits also grow here. Wheat, barley, and a kind of corn areraised, also tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelons, and tobacco. The groundis poorly cultivated with inferior tools, and the grain is tramped outwith cattle, as in the long ago. Sheep and goats are the most numerous domestic animals, a peculiarity ofthe sheep being the extra large "fat tail" (Lev. 3:9), a lump of purefat from ten to fifteen inches long and from three to five inches thick. Cattle, camels, horses, mules, asses, dogs and chickens are kept. CHAPTER IX. HISTORIC SKETCH OF PALESTINE. In the ancient Babylonian city called Ur of the Chaldees lived thepatriarch Terah, who was the father of three sons, Abram, Nahor, andHaran. Lot was the son of Haran, who died in Ur. Terah, accompanied byAbram, Sarai, and Lot, started for "the land of Canaan, " but they "cameunto Haran and dwelt there, " "and Terah died in Haran. " "Now Jehovahsaid unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, andfrom thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee: and I willmake of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy namegreat; and be thou a blessing: and I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse: and in thee shall all thefamilies of the earth be blessed. " So Abram, Sarai, and Lot came intothe land of Canaan about 2300 B. C. , and dwelt first at Shechem, but "heremoved from thence unto the mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitchedhis tent, having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. " Abram did notremain here, but journeyed to the south, and when a famine came, heentered Egypt. Afterwards he returned to the southern part of Canaan, and still later he returned "unto the place where his tent had been atthe beginning, between Bethel and Ai. * * * And Lot also, who went withAbram, had flocks, and herds, and tents. " On account of some discordbetween the herdsmen of the two parties, "Abram said unto Lot, Let therebe no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between myherdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren. " Accepting his uncle'sproposition, Lot chose the well watered Plain of the Jordan, "journeyedeast, " "and moved his tent as far as Sodom, " but "Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron. " Some time after this Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, entered the regionoccupied by Lot, and overcame the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela, carrying away the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, "and they took Lot * * * and his goods. " "And there came one that hadescaped, and told Abram the Hebrew, " who "led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued as far asDan. " As a result of this hasty pursuit, Abram "brought back all thegoods, and also brought back his brother Lot, and his goods, and thewomen also, and the people. " "The king of Sodom went out to meet" Abramafter his great victory, and offered him the goods for his services, but the offer was refused. Abram was also met by "Melchizedek, king ofSalem, " who "brought forth bread and wine, " and "blessed him. " Beforehis death, the first Hebrew saw the smoke from Sodom and Gomorrah goingup "as the smoke of a furnace, " and he also passed through the severetrial of sacrificing his son Isaac. At the age of one hundred andseventy-five "the father of the faithful" "gave up the ghost, and diedin a good old age, an old man and full of years, * * * and Isaac andIshmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, " at Hebron, whereSarah had been laid to rest when the toils and cares of life were over. From Abraham, through Ishmael, descended the Ishmaelites; throughMidian, the Midianites; and through Isaac, the chosen people, calledIsraelites, from Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel. Theinteresting story of Joseph tells how his father and brothers, withtheir families, were brought into Egypt at the time of a famine, wherethey grew from a few families to a great nation, capable of maintainingan army of more than six hundred thousand men. A new king, "who knewnot Joseph, " came on the throne, and after a period of oppression, theexodus took place, about 1490 B. C. , the leader being Moses, a man eightyyears of age. At his death, after forty years of wandering in thewilderness, Joshua became the leader of Israel, and they crossed theJordan at Gilgal, a few miles north of the Dead Sea, capturing Jerichoin a peculiar manner. Two other incidents in the life of Joshua maybe mentioned here. One was his victory over the Amorites in theneighborhood of Gibeon and Beth-horon, where more were slain by thehailstones which Jehovah cast down upon them than were killed by Israelwith the sword. It was on this occasion that Joshua said: "Sun, standthou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Aijalon. Andthe sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation had avengedthemselves of their enemies. * * * And there was no day like that beforeor after it. " The other event is the complete victory of Israel over theimmense army of Jabin, king of Hazor, fought at the Waters of Merom, inGalilee. The combined forces of Jabin and several confederate kings, "even as the sand that is upon the sea-shore in multitude, with horsesand chariots very many, " were utterly destroyed. Then came the allotmentof the territory west of the Jordan to the nine and a half tribes, asReuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh had been assigned land eastof the river. The allotment was made by Joshua, Eleazer, the priest, "and the heads of the fathers' houses of the tribes of the children ofIsrael. " The period of the Judges, extending from Joshua to Saul, over threehundred years, was a time in which Israel was troubled by severalheathen tribes, including the Moabites, Ammonites, Midianites, Amalekites, and Canaanites. The most troublesome of all were thePhilistines, who "were repulsed by Shamgar and harassed by Samson, " butthey continued their hostility, capturing the Ark of the Covenant in thedays of Eli, and finally bringing Israel so completely under their powerthat they had to go to the Philistines to sharpen their tools. The cry was raised: "Make us a king to judge us, like all the nations. "Although this was contrary to the will of God, and amounted to rejectingthe Lord, the Almighty gave directions for making Saul king, when therebellious Israelites "refused to hearken to the voice of Samuel, " andsaid: "Nay, but we will have a king over us. " Two important events inSaul's reign are the battle of Michmash and the war with Amalek. In thefirst instance a great host of Philistines were encamped at Michmash, and Saul, with his army, was at Gilgal. Samuel was to come and offer asacrifice, but did not arrive at the appointed time, and the soldiersdeserted, till Saul's force numbered only about six hundred. In hisstrait, the king offered the burnt offering himself, and immediatelySamuel appeared, heard his explanation, and declared: "Thou hast donefoolishly; thou hast not kept the commandment of Jehovah thy God. * ** Now thy kingdom shall not continue. " Saul's loyalty to God was againtested in the affair with Amalek, and his disobedience in sparing Agagand the best of the cattle and sheep should be better known and moreheeded than it is. Concerning this, the prophet of God chastised him, saying: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearkenthan the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, andstubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected theword of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king. " The darkpicture of Saul's doings is here and there relieved by the unadulteratedlove of Jonathan and David, "which, like the glintings of the diamond inthe night, " takes away some of the deepest shadows. The next king, Jesse's ruddy-faced shepherd boy, was anointed by Samuelat Bethlehem, and for seven and a half years he reigned over Judah fromhis capital at Hebron. Abner made Ish-bosheth, the only surviving sonof Saul, king over Israel, "and he reigned two years. But the house ofJudah followed David. " Abner, who had commanded Saul's army, becameoffended at the king he had made, and went to Hebron to arrange withDavid to turn Israel over to him, but Joab treacherously slew him inrevenge for the blood of Asahel. It was on this occasion that Daviduttered the notable words: "Know ye not that there is a prince and agreat man fallen this day in Israel?" Afterwards Rechab and Baanah slewIsh-bosheth in his bedchamber and carried his head to David, who was sodispleased that he caused them to be killed, and their hands and feetwere cut off and hanged up by the pool in Hebron. Then the tribes ofIsrael came voluntarily and made themselves the subjects of King David, who captured Jebus, better known as Jerusalem, and moved his capital tothat city. During his reign the Philistines were again troublesome, anda prolonged war was waged against the Ammonites. During this war Davidhad his record stained by his sinful conduct in the matter of Uriah'swife. David was a fighting king, and his "reign was a series of trials andtriumphs. " He not only subdued the Philistines, but conquered Damascus, Moab, Ammon, and Edom, and so extended his territory from theMediterranean to the Euphrates that it embraced ten times as much asSaul ruled over. But his heart was made sad by the shameful misconductof Amnon, followed by his death, and by the conspiracy of Absalom, therebellion following, and the death of this beautiful son. "The story ofDavid's hasty flight from Jerusalem over Olivet and across the Jordan toescape from Absalom is touchingly sad. 'And David went up by the ascentof the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up, and he had his headcovered, and went barefoot. ' Then what a picture of paternal love, which the basest filial ingratitude could not quench, is that of Davidmourning the death of Absalom, 'The king was much moved, and went up tothe chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O, my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would I had died for thee, OAbsalom, my son, my son!'" After finishing out a reign of forty years, "the sweet singer of Israel" "slept with his fathers, and was buried inthe city of David. " His son Solomon succeeded him on the throne, and had a peaceful reign offorty years, during which time the Temple on Mount Moriah was erected, being the greatest work of his reign. David had accumulated muchmaterial for this house; Hiram, king of Tyre, furnished cedar timberfrom the Lebanon mountains, and skilled workmen put up the building, into which the Ark of the Covenant was borne. This famous structure wasnot remarkable for its great size, but for the splendid manner in whichit was adorned with gold and other expensive materials. Israel's wisestmonarch was a man of letters, being the author of three thousandproverbs and a thousand and five songs. His wisdom exceeded that of allhis contemporaries, "and all the earth sought the presence of Solomon tohear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart. " A case in point is thevisit of the Queen of Sheba, who said: "The half was not told me; thywisdom and prosperity exceed the fame which I heard. " But the glory ofhis kingdom did not last long. "It dazzled for a brief space, like theblaze of a meteor, and then vanished away. " Nehemiah says there was noking like him, "nevertheless even him did foreign women cause to sin. " Solomon's reign ended about 975 B C. , and his son, Rehoboam, wascoronated at Shechem. Jereboam, the son of Nebat, whose name isproverbial for wickedness, returned from Egypt, whence he had fled fromSolomon, and asked the new king to make the grievous service of hisfather lighter, promising to support him on that condition. Rehoboamcounseled "with the old men, that had stood before Solomon, " and refusedtheir words, accepting the counsel of the young men that had grown upwith him. When he announced that he would make the yoke of his fatherheavier, the ten northern tribes revolted, and Jereboam became king ofwhat is afterwards known as the house of Israel. The kingdom lastedabout two hundred and fifty years, being ruled over by nineteen kings, but the government did not run smoothly. "Plot after plot was formed, and first one adventurer and then another seized the throne. " Besidesthe internal troubles, there were numerous wars. Benhadad, of Damascus, besieged Samaria; Hazael, king of Syria, overran the land east of theJordan; Moab rebelled; Pul (Tiglath-pileser), king of Assyria, invadedthe country, and carried off a large amount of tribute, probablyamounting to two millions of dollars; and thirty years later he enteredthe land and carried away many captives. At a later date the peoplebecame idolatrous, and Shalmaneser, an Assyrian king, reduced them tosubjection, and carried numbers of them into Assyria, and replaced themwith men from Babylon and other places. By the intermarriage of Jewsremaining in the country with these foreigners a mixed race, calledSamaritans, sprang up. The southern section of the country, known as the kingdom of Judah, wasruled over by nineteen kings and one queen for a period of about threehundred and seventy-five years. Asa, one of the good kings, was areligious reformer--even "his mother he removed from being queen, because she had made an abominable image for an Asherah; and Asa cutdown her image and burnt it at the brook Kidron. " But he, like manyother reformers, failed to make his work thorough, for "the high placeswere not taken away: nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect withJehovah all his days. " Joash caused a chest to be placed "at the gate ofthe house of Jehovah, " into which the people put "the tax that Moses, the servant of God, laid upon Israel in the wilderness, " until theyhad gathered an abundance of money, with which the house of God wasrepaired, for the wicked sons of Athaliah had broken it up and bestowedthe dedicated things upon the Baalim. But after the death of Jehoida, the priest, Joash was himself led into idolatry, and when Zechariah, theson of Jehoida, rebuked the people for turning from God, they stoned himto death by the order of King Joash. The last words of the dyingmartyr were: "The Lord look upon it and require it. " This is strangelydifferent from the last expression of Stephen, who "kneeled down, andcried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. "Amaziah returned "from the slaughter of the Edomites, " and set up thegods of the idolatrous enemies he had whipped, "to be his gods. " Ahazwas a wicked idolater, worshiping Baal and sacrificing his own sons. In strong contrast with such men as these we have the name ofHezekiah, whose prosperous reign was a grand period of reformation andimprovement. He was twenty-five years old when he came on the throne, and in the twenty-nine years he ruled, "he removed the high places, andbrake the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. " The brazen serpent, made by Moses in the wilderness, had become an object of worship, butHezekiah called it "a piece of brass, " and broke it in pieces. Thepassover had not been kept "in great numbers in such sort as it iswritten, " so Hezekiah sent messengers from city to city to call thepeople to observe the passover. Some "laughed them to scorn, and mockedthem, " but others "humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem, " and inthe second month the "very great assembly * * * killed the passover. * ** So there was great joy in Jerusalem; for since the time of Solomon theson of David, king of Israel, there was not the like in Jerusalem. " Manasseh, the next king, reëstablished idolatry, and his son Amon, who ruled but two years, followed in his footsteps. Josiah, who nextoccupied the throne, was a different kind of a man. "He did that whichwas right in the eyes of Jehovah, and walked in all the way of David hisfather, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left. " In hisreign, Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law in the temple, anddelivered it to Shaphan the scribe, who read it, and took it to the kingand read it to him. "And it came to pass when the king heard the wordsof the book of the law, that he rent his clothes, " and commanded thatinquiry be made of the Lord concerning the contents of the book. As aresult, the temple was cleansed of the vessels that had been used inBaal worship, the idolatrous priests were put down, the "houses of thesodomites, " that were in the house of Jehovah, were broken down, thehigh places erected by Solomon were defiled, and a great reformation wasworked. Zedekiah was the last king in the line. In his day, Nebuchadnezzar, kingof Babylon, invaded the land, and besieged Jerusalem for sixteen months, reducing the people to such straits that women ate the flesh of theirown children. When the city fell, a portion of the inhabitants werecarried to Babylon, and the furnishings of the temple were taken awayas plunder. Zedekiah, with his family, sought to escape, going outover Olivet as David in his distress had done, but he was captured andcarried to Riblah, thirty-five miles north of Baalbec, where his sonswere slain in his presence. Then his eyes were put out, and he wascarried to Babylon. In this way were fulfilled the two prophecies, thathe should be taken to Babylon, and that he should not see it. Thus, with Jerusalem a mass of desolate, forsaken ruins, the Babylonianperiod was ushered in. Some of the captives rose to positions of trustin the Babylonian government. Daniel and his three associates areexamples. During this period Ezekiel was a prophet. No doubt the frameof mind of most of them is well expressed by the Psalmist: "By therivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept when we rememberedZion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged up our harps. " The Medo-Persian period began with the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, whobrought the Jews under his rule. The captives were permitted to returnto Palestine, and Zerubbabel soon had the foundations of the templelaid; but here the work came to a standstill, and so remained forseventeen years. About 520 B. C. , when Darius was king of Persia, thework was resumed, and carried on to completion. For some years theservice of God seems to have been conducted in an unbecoming manner. Nehemiah came upon the stage of action, rebuilt the city walls, requiredthe observance of the Sabbath, and served as governor twelve yearswithout pay. Ezra brought back a large number of the people, repairedthe temple, and worked a great reformation. Under his influence, thosewho had married foreign wives put them away, and "some had wives by whomthey had children. " As the Samaritans were not allowed to help build thetemple, they erected one of their own on Mt Gerizim. A few Samaritansstill exist in Nablus, and hold services on Gerizim. "After Nehemiah, the office of civil ruler seems to have become extinct. " The Greek period begins with the operations of Alexander the Great inAsia, 333 B. C. , and extends to the time of the Maccabees, 168 B. C. AfterAlexander's death, his empire fell into the two great divisions of Egyptand Syria. The Egyptian rulers were called Ptolemies, and those ofSyria were called the Selucidae. For one hundred and twenty-five yearsPalestine was held by Egypt, during which time Ptolemy Philadelphus hadthe Septuagint version of the Old Testament made at Alexandria. Syria next secured control of Palestine. The walls of Jerusalem weredestroyed, and the altar of Jehovah was polluted with swine's flesh. Wenow hear of an aged priest named Mattathias, who at Modin, a few milesfrom Jerusalem, had the courage to kill a Jew who was about to sacrificeon a heathen altar. He escaped to the mountains, where he was joined bya number of others of the same mind. His death soon came, but he leftfive stalwart sons like himself. Judas, called Maccabeus, became theleader, and from him the whole family was named the Maccabees. He beganwar against the Syrians and apostate Jews. The Syrians, numbering fiftythousand, took up a position at Emmaus, while the Maccabees encamped atMizpah. Although greatly outnumbered, they were victorious, as theywere in another engagement with sixty thousand Syrians at Hebron. Judasentered Jerusalem, and repaired and cleansed the temple. Thus theMaccabean period was ushered in. After some further fighting, Judaswas slain, and Simon, the only surviving brother, succeeded him, andJerusalem was practically independent. His son, John Hyrcanus, was thenext ruler. The Pharisees and Sadducees now come prominently into Jewishaffairs. The Essenes also existed at this time, and dressed in white. After some time (between 65-62 B. C. ), Pompey, the Roman general, enteredthe open gates of the city, but did not capture the citadel for threeweeks, finally taking advantage of the day of Pentecost, when the Jewswould not fight. The Roman period began with the slaughter of twelvethousand citizens. Priests were slain at the altar, and the temple wasprofaned. Judaea became a Roman province, and was compelled to paytribute. Herod the Great became governor of Galilee, and later the Roman senatemade him king of Judaea. He besieged Jerusalem, and took it in 37 B. C. "A singular compound of good and bad--mostly bad--was this King Herod. "He hired men to drown a supposed rival, as if in sport, at Jerichoon the occasion of a feast, and in the beginning of his reign heslaughtered more than half of the members of the Sanhedrin. The agedhigh priest Hyrcanus was put to death, as was also Mariamne, the wifeof this monster, who was ruling when the Messiah was born at Bethlehem. Herod was a great builder, and it was he who reconstructed the temple onmagnificent lines. He also built Caesarea, and rebuilt Samaria. Afterhis death, the country was divided and ruled by his three sons. Achelausreigned ingloriously in Jerusalem for ten years, and was banished. Judaea was then ruled by procurators, Pilate being the fifth one ofthem, ruling from A. D. 26-36. In the year A. D. 65 the Jews rebelledagainst the Romans, after being their subjects for one hundred andtwenty-two years. They were not subdued until the terrible destructionof the Holy City in A. D. 70, when, according to Josephus, one millionone hundred thousand Jews perished in the siege, two hundred andfifty-six thousand four hundred and fifty were slain elsewhere, and onehundred and one thousand seven hundred prisoners were sold into bondage. The Temple was completely destroyed along with the city, which for sixtyyears "lay in ruins so complete that it is doubtful whether there was asingle house that could be used as a residence. " The land was annexed toSyria, and ceased to be a Jewish country. Hadrian became emperor in A. D. 117, and issued an edict forbidding the Jews to practice circumcision, read the law, or to observe the Sabbath. These things greatly distressedthe Jews, and in A. D. 132 they rallied to the standard of Bar Cochba, who has been styled "the last and greatest of the false Messiahs. " TheRomans were overthrown, Bar Cochba proclaimed himself king in Jerusalem, and carried on the war for two years. At one time he held fifty towns, but they were all taken from him, and he was finally killed at Bether, or Bittir. This was the last effort of the Jews to recover the land byforce of arms. Hadrian caused the site of the temple to be plowed over, and the city was reconstructed being made thoroughly pagan. For twohundred years the Jews were forbidden to enter it. In A. D. 326 theEmpress Helena visited Jerusalem, and built a church on the Mount ofOlives. Julian the Apostate undertook to rebuild the Jewish temple inA. D. 362, but was frustrated by "balls of fire" issuing from underthe ruins and frightening the workmen. In A. D. 529 the Greek emperorJustinian built a church in the city in honor of the Virgin. ThePersians under Chosroes II. Invaded Palestine in A. D. 614 and destroyedpart of Jerusalem. After fourteen years they were defeated and Jerusalemwas restored, but the Mohammedans under Omar captured it in A. D. 637. The structure called the Dome of the Rock, on Mt. Moriah, was built bythem in A. D. 688. The Crusades next engage our attention. The first of these militaryexpeditions was made to secure the right to visit the Holy Sepulcher. Itwas commenced at the call of the Pope in 1096. A force of two hundredand seventy-five thousand men began the march, but never enteredPalestine. Another effort was made by six hundred thousand men, whocaptured Antioch in 1098. A little later the survivors defeated theMohammedan army of two hundred thousand. Still later they enteredJerusalem, and Godfrey of Bouillon was made king of the city in 1099. Byconquest he came to rule the whole of Palestine. The orders of KnightsHospitallers and Knights Templars were formed, and Godfrey continued inpower about fifty years. In 1144 two European armies, aggregating onemillion two hundred thousand men, started on the second crusade, whichwas a total failure. Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, conquered Jerusalemin 1187, and the third crusade was inaugurated, which resulted insecuring the right to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem free from taxes. Thepower of the Crusaders was now broken. Another band assembled atVenice in 1203 to undertake the fourth crusade, but they never enteredPalestine. The fifth effort was made, and Frederick, Emperor of Germany, crowned himself king of Jerusalem in 1229, and returned to his nativeland the next year. The Turks conquered Palestine in 1244 and burnedJerusalem. Louis IX. Of France led the seventh crusade, another failure, in 1248. He undertook it again in 1270, but went to Africa, and PrinceEdward of England entered Palestine in 1271 and accepted a truce for tenyears, which was offered by the Sultan of Egypt. This, the eighth andlast crusade, ended in 1272 by the return of Edward to England. In 1280Palestine was invaded by the Mamelukes, and in 1291 the war of theCrusaders ended with the fall of Acre, "the last Christian possession inPalestine. " Besides these efforts there were children's crusades for theconversion or conquest of the Moslems. The first, in 1212, was composedof thirty thousand boys. Two ship loads were drowned and the third wassold as slaves to the Mohammedans. In 1517 the country passed to the control of the Ottoman Empire, and soremained until 1832, when it fell back to Egypt for eight years. Thepresent walls around Jerusalem, which inclose two hundred and ten acresof ground, were built by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1542. In 1840Palestine again became Turkish territory, and so continues to this day. The really scientific exploration of the land began with the journeyof Edward Robinson, an American, in 1838. In 1856 the United StatesConsulate was established in Jerusalem, and twelve governments are nowrepresented by consulates. Sir Charles Wilson created an interest in thegeography of Palestine by his survey of Jerusalem and his travels inthe Holy Land from 1864 to 1868. Palestine was surveyed from Dan toBeer-sheba and from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the years from 1872to 1877. The Siloam inscription, the "only known relic of the writing ** * of Hezekiah's days, " was discovered in 1880. The railroad from Jaffato Jerusalem was opened in 1892. Within the last ten years severalcarriage roads have been built. Protestant schools and missions havebeen established at many important places. The population of the city isnow about fifty-five thousand souls, but they do not all live inside ofthe walls. What the future of Palestine may be is an interesting subjectfor thought. CHAPTER X. CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN GREAT BRITAIN. No doubt many of my readers will be specially interested in knowingsomething of my experience and association with the brethren across thesea, and it is my desire to give them as fair an understanding of thesituation as I can. There are five congregations in Glasgow, having amembership of six hundred and seventy-eight persons. The oldest one ofthese, which formerly met in Brown Street and now meets in ShawlandsHall, was formed in 1839, and has one hundred and sixty-one members. TheCoplaw Street congregation, which branched from Brown Street, and is nowthe largest of the five, dates back to 1878, and numbers two hundred andnineteen. It was my privilege to attend one of the mid-week services ofthis congregation and speak to those present on that occasion. I alsomet some of the brethren in Edinburgh, where two congregations have amembership of two hundred and fifty-three. At Kirkcaldy, the home of myworthy friend and brother, Ivie Campbell, Jr. , there is a congregationof one hundred and seventy disciples, which I addressed one Lord's daymorning. In the evening I went out with Brother and Sister Campbell andanother brother to Coaltown of Balgonie, and addressed the little bandworshiping at that place. My next association with the brethren was at the annual meeting of"Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland, " convened at Wigan, England, August second, third, and fourth. While at Wigan I went out toPlatt Bridge and spoke to the brethren. There are ninety members in thiscongregation. One night in Birmingham I met with the brethren in CharlesHenry Street, where the congregation, formed in 1857, numbers twohundred and seventy-four, and the next night I was with the Geach Streetcongregation, which has been in existence since 1865, and numberstwo hundred and twenty-nine members. Bro. Samuel Joynes, now ofPhiladelphia, was formerly connected with this congregation. While I wasin Bristol it was my pleasure to meet with the Thrissell Street church, composed of one hundred and thirty-one members. I spoke once in theirplace of worship and once in a meeting on the street. The last band ofbrethren I was with while in England was the church at Twynholm, London. This is the largest congregation of all, and will receive considerationlater in the chapter. The next place that I broke bread was in a littlemission to the Jews in the Holy City. To complete a report of my publicspeaking while away, I will add that I preached in Mr. Thompson'stabernacle in Jerusalem, and spoke a few words on one or both of theLord's days at the mission to which reference has already been made. Ialso spoke in a mission meeting conducted by Mr. Locke at Port Said, Egypt, preached once on the ship as I was coming back across theAtlantic, and took part in a little debate on shipboard as I went out onthe journey, and in an entertainment the night before I got back to NewYork. In this chapter I am taking my statistics mainly from the Year Bookcontaining the fifty-ninth annual report of the churches in GreatBritain and Ireland co-operating for evangelistic purposes, embracingalmost all of the congregations of disciples in the country. Accordingto this report, there were one hundred and eighty-three congregations onthe list, with a total membership of thirteen thousand and sixty-three, at the time of the annual meeting last year. (Since writing this chapter, the sixtieth annual report of thesebrethren across the sea has come into my hands, and the items in thisparagraph are taken mainly from the address of Bro. John WyckliffeBlack, as chairman of the annual meeting which assembled in August ofthis year at Leeds. The membership is now reported at thirteen thousandeight hundred and forty-four, an increase of about eight hundred memberssince the meeting held at Wigan in 1904. In 1842 the British brotherhoodnumbered thirteen hundred, and in 1862 it had more than doubled. Afterthe lapse of another period of twenty years, the number had more thandoubled again, standing at six thousand six hundred and thirty-two. In 1902, when twenty years more had passed, the membership had almostdoubled again, having grown to twelve thousand five hundred andthirty-seven. In 1842 the average number of members in each congregationwas thirty-one; in 1862 it was forty; in 1882 it had reached sixty-one;and in 1902 it was seventy-two. The average number in each congregationis now somewhat higher than it was in 1902. ) Soon after the meeting was convened on Tuesday, "the Conferencerecognised the presence of Mrs. Hall and Miss Jean Hall, of Sydney, N. S. W. , and Brother Don Carlos Janes, from Ohio, U. S. A. , and cordiallygave them a Christian welcome. " The address of welcome and the addressof the chairman, Brother James Anderson, of Fauldhouse, Scotland, cameearly in the day. The meeting on Wednesday opened with worship and ashort address, followed by reports from the General Sunday-school, Reference, General Training, and Magazine Committees. One interestingfeature of the proceedings of this day was the conference paper by Bro. T. J. Ainsworth on the subject of "The Relation of Christianity to theSocial Questions of the Day. " Besides a discussion of this paper, therewas a preaching service at night. Thursday, the last day of the meeting, was occupied, after the morning worship and short address, with thereports of committees and the appointment of committees. At the socialmeeting at night several brethren, who had been previously selected, spoke on such subjects as seemed good to them. Bro. W. A. Kemp, ofMelbourne, Australia, and the writer were the only speakers notresidents of the British Isles. At the close of the meeting thefollowing beautiful hymn was sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne": Hail, sweetest, dearest tie, that binds Our glowing hearts in one; Hail, sacred hope, that tunes our minds To harmony divine. It is the hope, the blissful hope Which Jesus' words afford-- The hope, when days and years are past, Of life with Christ the Lord. What though the northern wintry blast Shall howl around our cot? What though beneath an eastern sun Be cast our distant lot? Yet still we share the blissful hope His cheering words afford-- The hope, when days and years are past, Of glory with the Lord. From Burmah's shores, from Afric's strand, From India's burning plain, From Europe, from Columbia's land, We hope to meet again. Oh, sweetest hope, oh, blissful hope, Which His own truth affords-- The hope, when days and years are past, We still shall be the Lord's. No lingering look, no parting sigh, Our future meeting knows; There friendship beams from every eye, And love immortal glows. Oh, sacred hope, the blissful hope, His love and truth afford-- The hope, when days and years are past, Of reigning with the Lord. I am not willing to accept everything done in the annual meeting, butthe hearty good will manifested and the pleasant and happy associationsenjoyed make it in those respects very commendable. These brethrenare very systematic and orderly in their work. Some one, who has beendesignated beforehand, takes charge of the meeting, and everything movesalong nicely. When a visiting brother comes in, he is recognized andmade use of, but they do not turn the meeting over to him anddepend upon him to conduct it. The president of the Lord's day morningmeeting and part or all of the officers sit together on the platform. The following is the order of procedure in one of the meetings whichI attended: After singing a hymn and offering prayer, the brotherpresiding announced the reading lessons from both Testaments, at thesame time naming two brethren who would read these scriptures. Afterthey had come forward and read the lessons before the church, anotherhymn was sung, and certain definite objects of prayer were mentionedbefore the congregation again engaged in that part of the worship. Twoprayers were offered, followed by the announcements, after which abrother delivered an address. Then the president made mention of thevisitors present, and an old gentleman from the platform extended "theright hand of fellowship" to some new members before the contributionwas taken and the Lord's supper observed, a hymn being sung betweenthese two items. A concluding hymn and prayer closed the service, whichhad been well conducted, without discord or confusion. A brother in Wigan gave me a statement of the work of one of thecongregations there in the winter season. On the Lord's day they haveschool at 9:20 A. M. And at 2 P. M. ; breaking the bread at 10:30 A. M. , andpreaching the gospel at 6:30 P. M. At this evening meeting the Lord'stable is again spread for the benefit of servants and others who werenot able to be at the morning service. This is a common practice. Theyoung people's social and improvement class meets on Monday evening, ameeting for prayer and a short address is held on Tuesday evening, andthe Band of Hope, a temperance organization for young people, meetson Wednesday evening. The singing class uses Thursday night, and theofficers of the church sometimes have a meeting on Friday night. During the life of Bro. Timothy Coop much money was spent in an effortto build up along the lines adopted by the innovators here in America. Bro. Coop visited this country, and was well pleased with the operationsof the congregations that had adopted the modern methods, and he wasinstrumental in having some American evangelists to go to England, anda few churches were started. I was told that there are about a dozencongregations of these disciples, called "American brethren" by theother English disciples, with a membership of about two thousand, andthat it is a waning cause. The rank and file of these British brethren are more conservative thanthe innovators here at home, but they have moved forward somewhat inadvance of the churches here contending for apostolic simplicity incertain particulars. A few of the congregations use a musicalinstrument in gospel meetings and Sunday-school services, and some haveorganizations such as the Band of Hope and the Dorcas Society. Theorganization of the annual meeting is said to be only advisory. Thefollowing lines, a portion of a resolution of the annual meeting of 1861will help the reader to form an idea of the purpose and nature of theorganization: "That this Coöperation shall embrace such of the Churchescontending for the primitive faith and order as shall willingly beplaced upon the list of Churches printed in its Annual Report. That theChurches thus coöperating disavow any intention or desire to recognizethemselves as a denomination, or to limit their fellowship to theChurches thus coöperating; but, on the contrary, they avow it both aduty and a pleasure to visit, receive, and coöperate with ChristianChurches, without reference to their taking part in the meetings andefforts of this Coöperation. Also, that this Coöperation has for itsobject evangelization only, and disclaims all power to settle matters ofdiscipline, or differences between brethren or Churches; that if in anyinstance it should see fit to refuse to insert in or to remove from theList any Church or company of persons claiming to be a Church, it shalldo so only in reference to this Coöperation, leaving each and everyChurch to judge for itself, and to recognize and fellowship as it mayunderstand the law of the Lord to require. " The question of delegate voting with a view to making the action of theannual meeting more weighty with the congregations was discussed at theWigan meeting, but was voted down, although it had numerous advocates. One of the brethren, in speaking of the use of instrumental music in thesinging, said they try not to use it when they worship the Lord, but Iconsider the use they make of it is unscriptural, and it puts the churchin great danger of having the innovation thrust into all the services atsome future time. All of these churches could learn a valuable lessonfrom some of our home congregations that have been rent asunder by theunholy advocacy of innovations. But there are some very commendable things about these brethren. Inoticed careful attention being given to the public reading of theScriptures, and the congregation joins heartily in the singing. I aminformed that every member takes part in the contribution withoutexception. They do not take contributions from visitors and children whoare not disciples. The talent in the congregation is well developed. Inthis they are far ahead of us. While there are not many giving theirwhole time to evangelistic work, there are many who are acceptablespeakers. One brother said they probably have a preacher for eachtwenty-five members. Men heavily involved in business take time toattend the meetings. For instance, one brother, who is at the head of afactory employing about a thousand people, and is interested in miningand in the manufacture of brick besides, is an active member of thecongregation with which he worships. The brethren in general arefaithful in the matter of being present at the breaking of bread. Whenvisiting brethren come in, they are given a public welcome, and aresometimes pointed out to the congregation. Also, when brethren returnfrom a vacation or other prolonged absence, they are given a welcome. They pray much. The week-night meeting for prayer and study of the Bibleis largely taken up with prayer. I like the way they point out definiteobjects of prayer. For instance, two sisters are leaving for Canada;some one is out of employment, and some have lost friends by death. These matters are mentioned, and some one is called on to lead theprayer, and these points are included in his petition to the Lord. Sometimes but one brother is asked to lead in prayer; sometimes morethan one are designated, and at other times they leave it open for someone to volunteer. The following hymn was sung in one of these meetingswhich I attended: LET US PRAY. Come, let us pray; 'tis sweet to feel That God himself is near; That, while we at his footstool kneel, His mercy deigns to hear; Though sorrows crowd life's dreary way, This is our solace--let us pray. Come, let us pray; the burning brow, The heart oppressed with care, And all the woes that throng us now, May be relieved by prayer; Jesus can smile our griefs away; Oh, glorious thought! come, let us pray. Come, let us pray; the mercy-seat Invites the fervent prayer, And Jesus ready stands to greet The contrite spirit there; Oh, loiter not, nor longer stay From him who loves us; let us pray. They do not publish as many papers as we do, but have one weeklyjournal, the _Bible Advocate_, edited by Bro. L. Oliver, of Birmingham, which has a general circulation, reaching almost four thousand copies. One feature of the paper last summer was the publication of the Life ofElder John Smith as a serial. The colored covers of the _Bible Advocate_contain a long list of the hours and places of worship of congregationsin different parts of the country, and even outside of the British Islesin some cases. In some instances the local congregation publishes apaper of its own, affording a good medium through which to advertise themeetings and to keep distant brethren informed of the work that is beingdone, as well as to teach the truth of God. A book room is maintained in Birmingham, where the British and Americanpublications may be purchased. They were using a hymn-book (words only)of their own and a tune-book published by others, but a new hymnbook wasunder consideration when I was among them last year. A list of isolatedmembers is kept, and persons elected by the annual meeting conduct acorrespondence with these brethren. The following are extracts from someof the letters received in reply to those that had been sent out: "I amhoping that the day will come when I can leave this district and get toone where I can have the fellowship of my brethren; but meanwhile I amglad and thankful to be held in remembrance of my brethren and to be onyour list, and I pray God to help your work, for I have still hope inHim, and know He has not given me up. " Another brother says: "Though Ican not say that I have anything important or cheering to write, yet Ican say that I am rejoicing in the salvation of God, which is in ChristJesus our Lord. My isolation from regular church fellowship has beenso long that I have almost given up the hope of enjoying it again inArbroath; but still my prayer is that the Lord would raise up some hereor send some here who know the truth, and who love the Lord with theirwhole heart, and would be able and willing to declare unto the peoplethe whole counsel of God concerning the way of salvation. " A Sisters'Conference was held in connection with the annual meeting, and aTemperance Conference and Meeting was held on Monday before the annualmeeting opened. Missionary work is being carried on in Burmah, Siam, and South Africa. In Burmah some attention has been given to translating and publishing apart of the Psalms in one of the languages of that country. "Muchtime has been spent in the villages by systematic visitation, bythe distribution of literature, and by seizing upon any and everyopportunity of speaking to the people. Street meetings have beenconstantly held, visitors received on the boat, the gospel preached fromthe Mission-boat to the people sitting on the banks of the river, andalso proclaimed to the people in their homes, in the villages, and inthe fields, and on the fishing stations. Although there were but twobaptisms during the year the congregation numbers fifty-one. " Thebrethren in Siam were working where the rivers, numerous canals, andcreeks form the chief roadways. The Year Book contains the followingconcerning the medical missionary in this field: "His chief work duringthe year has been rendering such help as his short medical training hasfitted him to give. For a time twelve to twenty patients a day cameto him for treatment. After a while the numbers fell off, he thoughtbecause all the sick in the neighborhood had been cured. " "The littlechurch in Nakon Choom * * * now consists of two Karens, one Burman, one Mon, two Chinamen, and two Englishmen. As several of these do notunderstand the others' language, the gift of tongues would seem notundesirable. " In South Africa there are congregations at Johannesburg, Pretoria, Bulawayo, Cape Town, and Carolina. The church in Bulawayonumbers about fifty members, nearly all of whom are natives "who areeager learners. " I saw more of the workings of the church at Twynholm than any othercongregation visited, as I stayed at Twynholm House while in London bothon the outward trip and as I returned home. Of the seven congregationsin this city, Twynholm is the largest, and is the largest in the Britishbrotherhood, having a membership of above five hundred. This church wasestablished in 1894 with twenty-five members, and has had a good growth. They open the baptistery every Lord's day night, and very frequentlyhave occasion to use it. There were fifty-three baptisms last year, andtwenty-one others were added to the membership of the church. At theclose of a recent church year the Band of Hope numbered five hundred andfifteen, and the Lord's day school had twelve hundred and fifty pupilsand one hundred and two teachers. I think it was one hundred and sixtylittle tots I saw in one room, and down in this basement there wereabout fifty more. I was told that there were more children attendingthan they had accommodation for, but they disliked to turn any of themaway. The Woman's Meeting had one hundred and sixteen members; the TotalAbstinence Society, one hundred and fifty; and the membership of theYouths' Institute and Bible Students' Class were not given. Fivethousand copies of _Joyful Tidings_, an eight-page paper, are given awayeach month. The following announcement from the first page of this paperwill indicate something of the activities of this congregation: CHURCH OF CHRIST, Twynholm Assembly Hall, Fulham Cross, S. W. REGULAR SERVICES AND GATHERINGS. _LORD'S DAY. _ 9:45 A. M. --Bible Students' Class. 11:00 A. M. --Divine Worship and "The Breaking of Bread". (Acts 2:42, etc. ) 2:45 P. M. --Lord's Day Schools. 3:00 P. M. --Young Men's Institute. 4:00 P. M. --Teachers' Prayer Meeting (first Lord's day in the month). 6:30 P. M. --_Evangelistic Service_. 7:45 P. M. --Believers' Immersion (usually). 8:10 P. M. --"The Breaking of Bread" (Continued). _MONDAY. _ 2:30 P. M. --Woman's Own Meeting. 7:00 P. M. --Band of Hope. 8:30 P. M. --Social Gathering for Young People (over fourteen). 8:30 P. M. --Total Abstinence Society (last Monday night in the month). _THURSDAY. _ 8:00 P. M. --Mid-week Service for Prayer, Praise, and Public Exposition of the Word. 9:00 P. M. --Singing Practice. _FRIDAY. _ 8:00 P. M. --Teachers' Preparation Class and Devotional Meeting. (Open to all). Seat all Free and Unappropriated. No Public Collections. Hymn-books provided for Visitors. This Church of Christ earnestly pleads for the complete restoration ofthe primitive Christianity of the New Testament, for the cultivation ofpersonal piety, and benevolence, and for loving service for Jesus theChrist. Twynholm is the name given to a piece of property, originally intendedfor a hotel, situated in the western part of London, at the intersectionof four streets in Fulham Cross. These streets make it a place easilyreached, and the numerous saloons make the necessity for such aninfluence as emanates from a church of God very great. There is a good, commodious audience-room at the rear, and several smaller rooms aboutthe premises. The front part is owned and controlled by a brother whohas a family of Christians to live there and run the restaurant on thefirst floor and the lodging rooms on the two upper floors, where thereare accommodations for a few young men. Here I had a desirable room, andwas well cared for by the brother and sister who manage the house. Therestaurant is not run for profit, but to afford the people a place toeat cheaply and to spend time without going where intoxicants are sold. The patrons are allowed to sit at the tables and play such games asdominoes, the aim being to counteract the evil influences of that partof the city as far as possible. One night I attended a meeting of theBand of Hope in a big basement room at Twynholm, where a large numberof small children were being taught to pray, and were receiving goodinstruction along the line of temperance. Several older persons were onduty to preserve order among these children, many of whom had doubtlesscome from homes where little about order and good behavior is evertaught. Soon after this meeting I went up on the street, and there, neara saloon with six visible entrances, a street musician was playing hisorgan, while small girls, perhaps not yet in their teens, were beingencouraged to dance. At Twynholm I also attended the Social Hour meeting, which was anenjoyable affair. A program of recitations, songs, etc. , was rendered. This also, I suppose, is to offset some of the evil agencies of thegreat city and keep the young people under good influences. The Woman'sMeeting convenes on Monday afternoon. The leaders of the meeting areladies of the church, who are laboring for the betterment of an inferiorclass of London women. I spoke before this meeting, by request, andwas, so far as I now recollect, the only male person present. It is thecustom to use the instrument in connection with the singing in thismeeting, but I asked them to refrain on this occasion. An orphans' homeis also conducted, having members of this congregation as its managers. It is a very busy church, and for being busy and diligent it is to becommended, but I believe there is too much organization. But here, aselsewhere in Britain, there are many very commendable things about thebrethren. I have already spoken of system in their proceedings. Theyoutline their work for a given period of time, specifying the Scripturesto be read, the leaders of the meetings, and who is to preach on eachLord's day night. Then, for the sake of convenience, these schedulesare printed, and they are carefully followed. This is far ahead of thehaphazard method, or lack of method, at home, where brethren sometimescome together neither knowing what the lesson will be nor who willconduct the meeting. Whatever may be the faults of these disciples in the old country, itmust be said to their credit that they are kind and hospitable tostrangers, and make a visiting brother welcome. The talent in theircongregations is better developed than it is here, and their meetingsare conducted in a more orderly and systematic manner. They are morefaithful in the observance of the Lord's supper than many in this land. The percentage of preachers giving their whole time to the work is lessthan it is here, but the number who can and do take part in the publicwork of the church is proportionately larger than it is here. I will now close this chapter and this volume with the address ofBrother Anderson, chairman of the annual meeting held last year atWigan: DEAR BRETHREN:--In accepting the responsible and honorable position inwhich you have placed me, I do so conscious of a defect that I hope youwill do your best to help and bear with. Please speak as distinctly aspossible, so that I may hear what is said. There may be other defectsthat I might have helped, but please do your best to help me in thisrespect. I heartily thank you for the honor conferred upon me. Whether I deserveit or not, I know that it is well meant on your part. We prefer honorto dishonor; but what one may count a great honor, another may lightlyesteem. The point of view is almost everything in these matters; but ifpositions of honor in the kingdoms of the earth are lightly esteemed, positions of honor in the kingdom of God have a right to be esteemedmore highly. We are met in conference as subjects of the kingdom of God, as heirs ofeverlasting glory, having a hope greater than the world can give, anda peace that the world can neither give nor take away. To preside oversuch a gathering, met to consider the best means of spreading the Gospelof Christ among men, is a token of respect upon which I place a veryhigh value. The fact that it came unexpectedly does not lessen thepleasure. I know that you have not placed me here on account of my tact andbusiness ability to manage this conference well. Had I possessed thesequalities in a marked degree, you would no doubt have taken notice ofthem before this time. I know that you only wish to pay a token ofrespect to a plain old soldier before he lays aside his harness, and, brethren, I thank you for that. For forty-four years I have enjoyed sweet and uninterrupted fellowshipin this brotherhood. For over forty years my voice has been heard in thepreaching of the Gospel of the Grace of God. For close on thirty yearsall my time has been given to the proclamation and defense of NewTestament truth as held by us as a people. Every year has added strengthto the conviction that God has led me to take my stand among thepeople who of all the people on the earth are making the best and mostconsistent effort to get back to the religion established by Christ andhis apostles. I therefore bless the day that I became one of you. Had our position been wrong, I have given myself every opportunity ofknowing it. Circumstances have compelled me to examine our foundationsagain and again. I have been called upon to defend our faith, whenattacked, times not a few. Whatever may be the effect that I have hadupon others, my own confidence has been increased at every turn. To-dayI am certain that if the New Testament is right, we can not be farwrong; and if the New Testament can not be trusted, there is an end tothe whole matter. But the claims of Christ and the truth of the NewTestament are matters upon which a doubt never rises. As years roll on, it becomes more easy to believe and harder to doubt. Knowledge, reason, and experience now supply such varied yet harmonious and converginglines of evidence that a doubt seems impossible. Difficulties we mayhave, and perhaps must have, as long as we live, but we can certainlyrise above the fog land of doubt. Considering all this, it gives me morepleasure to preside over this gathering than over any other voluntarygathering on earth. It is a voluntary gathering. We do not profess tobe here by Divine appointment. It is a meeting of heaven's freemen toconsider the best means of advancing the will of God among men. Whilemet, may we all act in a manner worthy of the great object which bringsus together. Faith, forbearance and watchfulness will be required as long as we live, if we wish to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. Allthose who set out for a complete return to Jerusalem have not held ontheir way; some have gone a long way back and others are going. Whathas happened in other lands may happen here, unless we watch and arefaithful. The more carefully we look into matters, we shall be theless inclined to move. Putting all God's arrangements faithfully andearnestly to the test, and comparing them with others, increases ourfaith in them. Faithfulness increases faith. This keeps growing uponyou till you become certain that only God's means will accomplish God'sends. Sectarianism, tested by experience, is a failure. The time was when our danger in departing from our simple plea ofreturning to the Bible alone lay in our being moved by clerical andsectarian influences. To the young in particular in the present day thatcan hardly be called our greatest danger. The influences at work toproduce doubt in regard to the truth of the Bible were never so great asthey are now. This used to be the particular work of professed infidels;now it is more largely the work of professed Christian scholars. If youwish to pass for a "scholar, " you must not profess to believe the OldTestament. You must not say too much against the truth of that book, oryou may be called in question, but you can go a good long way beforethere is much danger. Jesus believed that old book to be the word of God. But he was not a"scholar. " He was the son of a country joiner, and you must not expecthim to rise too far above his environment. It surprises me that the"scholars" have not called more attention to the ignorance of Jesus inthis respect. They will no doubt pay more attention to this later on;for as _Christian_ "scholars" it becomes them to be consistent, and Ihave no doubt that they will shortly, in this respect, make up for losttime. To expect that none of our young people will be influenced by thisparade of scholarship is to expect too much. But faith in Christ shouldkeep them from rushing rashly out against a book that Christ professedto live up to and came to fulfill. This battle of the scholars over thetruth of the Bible is only being fought. We have no wish that it shouldnot be fought. Everything has a right to be tested with caution andfairness, and when the battle is lost, it will be time enough for us topass over to the side of the enemy. This question as to the truth of theOld Testament will be settled, and as sure as Christ is the Son of God, and has all power in heaven and on earth, it will be settled upon thelines of the attitude which he took up towards that book, and it will besettled to the disgrace of those who professed to believe in Jesus, but deserted his position before full examination was made. That notranscriber ever made a slip, or that no translator ever made a mistake, is not held by any one. But the day that it is proved that the OldTestament is not substantially true, faith in Christ and Christianitywill get a shake from which it will never recover. We have not lost faith in the Bible. There is no need for doing so. Theword of the Lord will endure forever. But meantime, brethren, let us befaithful, prayerful, and cautious, and be not easily moved from the rockof God's word by the pretensions of "scholars" or of science, falsely socalled. I do not know that there is any necessary connection between the two, but a belief in evolution and scholarly doubts about large portions ofthe Old Testament, as a rule, go together. You must not profess to knowanything of science in many quarters if you doubt evolution. In the bulkof even religious books it is referred to as a matter that science hassettled beyond dispute. To expect that many of our young people will notbe so far carried along by this current is to expect too much. Many ofthem will be carried so far; it is a question of how many and how far. There perhaps never was a theory before believed by as many educatedpeople without proof as the theory of evolution. It is an unprovedtheory; there is not a fact beneath it. That you have low forms of life, and forms rising higher and higher till you get to man, is fact. Butthat a higher species ever came from a lower is without proof. Let thosewho doubt this say when and where such a thing took place, and name thewitnesses. Not only are there no facts in proof of it, but it flies inthe face of facts without number. If like from like is not established, then nothing can be established by observation and experience. Whatother theory do we believe which contradicts all that we know to be truein regard to the subject to which it refers? Not only does it contradict fact and experience, it contradicts reason. If you listen to the voice of reason, you can no more believe that thegreater came from the less than you can believe that something came fromnothing. We are intuitively bound to believe that an effect can not begreater than its cause. But the theory of evolution contradicts this atevery step along the whole line. I am anxious to find the truth in regard to anything that has a bearingupon my belief in God or religion. But in trying to find the truth, Ihave never regretted being true to myself. To slavishly follow othersis, to say the least of it, unmanly. I do not believe in evolutionbecause God has so made me that I can not. Wherever man came from, hesprang not from anything beneath him. When a man asks me to believe athing that has not facts, but only theory to support it, --said theorycontradicting fact, experience and reason, --he asks me more than I cangrant. The thing is absurd, and must one day die. I am agreeably surprised that we, as a people, have suffered so littleas yet from the sources of error referred to. Still they are all livingdangers, and if we would hold fast the faith once for all delivered tothe saints, we must see to our own standing, and as God has given usopportunity let us be helpful to others. Our ground is God-given andwell tested. The fellowship with God and with each other that it hasbrought to us has given us much happiness here. Let us be faithful andearnest the few years that we have to remain here, and our happinesswill be increased when the Lord comes to reward us all according to ourworks.