My Palestine Recollections
Unknown Author
Table of Contents
My Palestine Recollections. 1. The City of Joppa
I TWICE landed in Joppa. The first occasion was Sunday, the 11Th, and the second was Saturday, the 31St of August. Between those dates I visited Jerusalem, Sychar, Nazareth, Tiberias, Damascus and other places, the subjects of these happy recollections: I advisedly speak of them as “happy recollections”: for although I have frequently heard of those who have made a tour in Palestine speaking of the feelings of disappointment which came over them as they trod the streets of her cities and those holy fields of which Milton wrote so tenderly and in such beautiful language, I was myself a stranger to such impressions. Reader, will you come with me? for I have a desire to revisit those scenes. I can quite believe that I might experience some disappointment if I were to do so literally, and in the flesh, for I am obliged to hear of the intrusion of the railway engineer, and the sound of the steam whistle on those plains of sacred interest. So if you please we will speak of Palestine as I saw it, and as our acquaintance with what the Bible tells us of that land, both in the Old and New Testaments, may enable us, with its histories both in the past and in the future; for it has been truly said that the prophecies of the Bible are God’s history of the future. Here let me introduce a singular coincidence in connection with my first landing in Joppa. I was seated in an Arab boat, gazing towards the shore, in the hope of recognizing the figure of my friend Mr. Youhannah El Karey, who had promised to meet me there, when I heard my name called from a boat coming from the shore. On answering, I was informed that the speaker was a Mr. Floyd, a German gentleman residing in the city, and that Mr. El Karey had asked him to fetch me ashore. Finding that I had already engaged a boatman, he climbed over the gunwales of the boat, and, seated together, we passed safely between the rocks, and were met at the landing stairs by good Mr. El Karey. Before taking leave of Mr. Floyd, let me explain a little further my allusion to a “singular coincidence.” Several years later I had entered the Dover Express train in London, intending to alight at the Herne Hill Junction. I found I had one fellow-passenger, and he was disposed to enter into conversation. He very soon spoke of his native home being Joppa, and looking steadily at him, I soon recognized my old friend, and extending my hand as I said: “How do you do, Mr. Floyd?” It is needless to add that for the remainder of that brief journey in company, we made good use of the opportunity to speak of the places and people with which we were both acquainted. Let us endeavor to do the same, kind reader. Our opportunity for intercourse is also a very brief one: let us use it and imagine we are treading together the streets of Joppa, where the power of the name of Jesus was displayed in the raising of Dorcas from the dead, and that wonderful revelation was made to the Apostle Peter, through the vision of the great sheet let down from heaven, that he was not to esteem any man common or unclean, but preach the Gospel to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews. Or, as we visit Jerusalem, the City of the great King, or Sychar, where Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah to the woman of Samaria, or Galilee, the scene of so many of His miracles, let us seek to make a full use of our opportunities. I think that so long as memory lasts I shall cherish the recollection of hearing the little children of a school gathered in Joppa by a devoted missionary laborer, Miss Arnott, repeat Scripture portions and sing very sweetly the Arabic translations of some of the children’s hymns which we sing in Sunday Schools at home. Yes, indeed, if we would avoid those feelings of disappointment in our rambles in Palestine to which we were alluding, we have only to bring the name of Jesus into the scene.
“There is a Name I love to hear,
I love to speak its worth:
It sounds like music in mine ear,
The sweetest Name on earth.”
T. J.
My Palestine Recollections. 2. Our Faces Towards Jerusalem
WE longed to see “the city that men call beautiful,” but before we started on our journey we visited the house which has the reputation of being on the site of that of Simon the Tanner. One circumstance which occurred there was indeed calculated to make me think of Peter going to the housetop to pray. We had reached the flat roof of the house, and were exploring the little surroundings, when I discovered that I had done something which provoked the anger of the owner of the house, who was with us. My friend Mr. El Karey soon explained that my offence consisted in having trod upon the carpet on the housetop on which they kneel to pray without having first taken off my boots. The two Scriptures “Take thy shoe from off thy feet,” and “Peter went up upon the house-top to pray,” were thus strikingly brought to my mind. The meaning of the name Joppa is “Beauty.” What a lovely name for the place of our first walk together in Palestine! And where can we find beauty but in Him who is the Chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely? It is the seaport for Jerusalem. It was there the timber of cedarwood from Lebanon was landed, to be taken up to Jerusalem and built into the Temple of Solomon. I can truly say I found it a place of beauty, for in many other things which I have not yet mentioned it brought to my mind the words and miracles of Him “who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.” Among other circumstances, I particularly noticed the blind beggar by the wayside, calling out, as did Bartimaeus of old, when he heard the footsteps of the travelers passing by. We could not help him as to his blindness, but let his cry, Ateeni, Allah ya terk (“Give to me and God will give to you”), awaken in us the desire to be more ready to tell unto all that Name of Power and Peace: “JESUS,” that gives sight to the “inly blind,” joy to the “mourners,” life to the “spiritually dead.”
In keeping with its name of “Beauty,” Joppa is indeed richly environed, with the sea on its front and the orange groves and gardens in the rear. We did not enter the latter, but could see something of them from the housetop, and as we left the city for a night’s ride to Jerusalem, we could form some little—it was but little—impression of their luxuriant beauty. Much more might I say of Joppa, but the horses are saddled and the mule laden. In the house of Mr. Floyd, where on the 11Th of the month already referred to we knelt together and commended ourselves, and those dear to but distant from us, to the keeping and guidance of the Lord, we afterwards, on the 21St, gave thanks to Him, as faithful to His word and promise, who had kept us on our going out as well as our coming in to the land made beautiful with His beauty, as Mr. Cheyne writes of the Sea of Galilee—
“Graceful around thee the mountains meet,
Thou calm, reposing sea:
But oh, far more! the beautiful feet
Of Jesus walked o’er thee.”
Let us rise from our knees, and as we bid farewell to our kind entertainer take our seats in the saddle and set our faces towards Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem, whither the tribes go up” (Ps. 122:4). We too would say: “Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem” (verse 2). Let us do so by the aid of “recollections.” We had not proceeded many miles along the Ramleh road after clearing the orange groves and vineyards of Joppa before we came upon a party of Jewish pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem: they were halted on account of the sickness of one of their number. This and many other subsequent circumstances of our journey through the country brought to remembrance different Scripture narratives of the healing of the sick, especially those in the Gospels and the Book of Acts. We did not “pass by on the other side,” like the Priest and Levite in Luke 10, but felt that in our conduct we came very far short of the “certain Samaritan” who “came where he was.”
S. J.
My Palestine Recollections. 3. Going Towards Jerusalem
THOSE who travel in Palestine even now, are constantly struck by the similarity of the scenes witnessed, to those described in the New Testament. By the wayside the sick and distressed are constantly seen, and so, after a few words of sympathy and regret at our inability to administer remedies for the sick pilgrim, to whom we referred in our last paper, we left the distressed company and resumed our journey. How often it is thus with us in our intercourse with fellow-pilgrims in their soul troubles! If our own consciences were more “exercised by reason of use,” and our souls led by the Spirit through the Word into a deeper communion with the Great Physician, we should no doubt be often more quick to detect the needs of others, and privileged to become the messengers of a word of healing, exhortation, or comfort according to His discernment of their needs. In the case referred to it may be that if we had taken the trouble to search the saddle-bags we might have found something there that would have helped in a little measure in the alleviation of the sufferings of the sick pilgrim. I here recall that a few miles before we overtook this party my companion had pointed out to me a sycamore-tree with its wide-spreading branches reaching a good way over the road, so strikingly calculated to remind me of the narrative of Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10. If we turn back to verse 31 of the preceding chapter, we read how the Lord “took unto Him the twelve and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished, for he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge Him, and put Him to death: and the third day He shall rise again.” Then follows the narrative of blind Bartimaeus, in response to whose cry we read that “Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto Him,” and Jesus healed him, and he “followed Him, glorifying God: and all the people when they saw it gave praise unto God”: and then succeeds the narrative of Zacchaeus, and how the Lord Jesus, when He came to the place beneath the boughs of the sycamore-tree, looked up and said to him, “Make haste and come down, for to-day I must abide at thy house.” Blessed Jesus! Thou when “going up to Jerusalem,” well knowing all the things that should be done unto Thee there, didst stay Thy footsteps to call to Thee the blind beggar of Jericho, that Thou mightest heal him, and bring glory to God: and again, didst stop beneath the sycamore-tree to call Zacchaeus down from thence, and make known to him the salvation Thou hadst brought to his house, ere Thou wentest on Thy way to where, at the place which is called Calvary, they crucified Thee, and Thy precious blood was shed which made these eternal blessings all sure for Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, and every soul that obeys Thy loving call to come and receive salvation from Thy pierced hand. Oh, teach us by these Thy marvelous acts of grace to be more ready to tell others what a Saviour Thou art.
“Go with the Name of Jesus to the dying,
And speak that Name in all its living power:
Why should the fainting heart grow chill and weary?
Canst Thou not watch with Me one little hour?
“One little hour! and then the glorious crowning,
The golden harp-strings and the victor’s palm:
One little hour! and then the Hallelujah!
Eternity’s long, deep, thanksgiving psalm.”
T. J.
My Palestine Recollections. 4. Going Towards Jerusalem
THIS night’s ride across the Plain of Sharon was not only at too late a season in the year to enable me to appreciate the floral luxuriance which still in so good a measure characterizes it, but the darkness concealed many a landscape feature which my companion could otherwise have pointed out. So although, the young moon having some time set, I could not descry the traditional Azekah, Gibeon, or the Valley of Ajalon, rendered so memorable by the words of Joshua, in Josh. 10:12, and the Lord’s response to His servant’s voice when “the sun stood still and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies,” other circumstances occurred calculated to bring to mind Scriptures equally impressive and instructive.
Our muleteer not having filled the water-skin before leaving Joppa, relying as he said upon a roadside well before reaching Ramleh, which well he likewise failed to discover, we were anxiously looking out for means to quench our thirst when seven horsemen joined our little company. One of them proved to be the Governor of Es-Salt, which is Ramoth-Gilead: another was the Mufti of Nablus: and they and their attendants being mounted on well-bred Arab horses, our humble barbs seemed to instinctively improve their pace and carriage in emulation of the superior mounts of our new companions. Salutes and wayfaring compliments having been exchanged, one of the party unbuckled his girdle, to which was attached the leather water bottle, from which I took a most refreshing draught of cold spring water, not very long before filled at the fountain. I returned the bottle to the owner, asking my companion to express my thanks in the vernacular, and to say how it brought to my mind the words in the Gospel about the “Living Water.” At one of the villages we passed hearing the cock crow brought to my remembrance the words of the Lord to Peter, “Before the cock crow thou shalt deny Me thrice” (Luke 22:61). In Mark 14:30 we find the words “Before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny Me thrice.” In this surely the Lord’s tender grace is manifest who gave His disciple a second admonition although he had not paid heed to the first; and as the cock crows more loudly when the morning draws near than in his first crowing near midnight, may we not learn that often, if we do not attend to the first warnings the Lord sends us, He may, in love and wisdom, find it necessary to visit us with more solemn admonitions? Perhaps the history of Job most strikingly illustrates this principle.
My Palestine Recollections. 5. The City That Men Call the Perfection of Beauty
WE took leave of our fellow-travelers, and at 6:30 my companion halted his horse, and addressing me, said, “What do you see before you?” It was Jerusalem. There were Zion and Moriah. No temple of Jehovah, but the Mosque of the Khalif Omar. Still it was Jerusalem, although “trodden down by the Gentiles,” until, yes, “until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24).
We arrived at the house of Mr. Audi Azam, a Christian manufacturer, dwelling on Mount Zion. We knocked at the outer gate, and soon the faithful household servant, Monsoul by name, came to the wicket, and being assured as to who we were, he opened the gate, took charge of our horses, and announced our arrival to good Mr. Azam. He in turn soon appeared, when the oft-told Oriental greetings were enacted, of falling on the neck (alternately over the right and left shoulder) and exchanging the kiss of peace. Not long after, kind Mrs. Azam was also introduced, and her voice could afterwards be heard (like Sarah’s in the inner tent) calling to Monsoul to assist her in the hospitable preparations going on for our refreshment and entertainment. Then at the table, without interrupting the conversation, our well-beloved Gaius, Mr. Azam, gave his orders by a movement of his hand, which the eyes of Monsoul, constantly watching, interpreted aright, and brought the fresh dishes or the water, the coffee, or whatever his master saw to be required. This recalled the beautiful use of the figure in Ps. 123:2, “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God.”
In the accompanying sketch which I made of the reception vestibule of Mr. A.’s house, one of the servants is shown partaking of the meal after the master and guests have first been filled (Luke 17:8). There is in Acts 12:12-17, an account of which, I believe, the sketch affords an appropriate illustration. The little wicket in the large outer gate at which a man is shown to be entering is sometimes spoken of as the “Needle’s Eye.” For anyone to enter by it he must needs stoop (may we say become as a little child?), while for the entry of a camel the larger gate (within which the wicket is framed) must needs be thrown open. The passage from the wicket to the door of the house will be seen to be a portion of the garden covered with the vine trained on a trellis.
If in thought we substitute for the figures shown in the sketch, the company described in the above verses, gathered together praying for Peter, and imagine the wicket to correspond with the door of the gate at which Peter knocked, we can recognize the path under the trellis of vines as corresponding with the ground crossed and re-traversed by the damsel named Rhoda, when she brought word how Peter stood before the gate, and when they would not believe the good news, “she constantly affirmed that it was even so.” The trellis of vines brings Cant. 2:3, Micah 4:4, and other precious scriptures to mind.
T. T.
My Palestine Recollections. 6. Sitting in the Dust
THIS expression, which is applied to the virgin daughter of Babylon in Isa. 47:1, and is akin to the passage in chap. 3:26, applied to Jerusalem herself, “She, being desolate, shall sit upon the ground,” was brought vividly to my mind by what I witnessed in the first walk we took in Jerusalem. Leaving the house of our kind friend, Mr. Audi Azam, we entered the City by the Jaffa gate, and sought out the Jews’ place of wailing. This is a stone-paved court, adjoining the boundary wall of the Haram or Sacred Enclosure, upon which once stood the Temple of Solomon, but now the Mosque of Omar, dedicated to the worship of Allah, the Arabic name for God, but through the intercession of the false prophet, Mahomet. Five times during the day and night does the muezzin or crier, from the minaret of the mosque, cry out:
“La illah ilia Allah,
wa Mahmoud el
RasAl lillah.”
“God is God, and Mahomet is the prophet of God,” and then calls upon the “faithful” to pray. It is a striking spectacle, and much impressed me when I witnessed it on the deck of our steamer, between Alexandria and Joppa, to see, at the “hour for prayer,” the Mahomedan pilgrims spreading their garments on the deck and, kneeling down, with their faces towards Mecca, repeat their prayers as above-mentioned. But we are now in the presence of a few of the remnants of the nation to whom the Lord gave the Land of Promise, and placed His name in Jerusalem. They regard, no doubt rightly, these venerable stones of the wall as having been built one upon another in the days of King Solomon: not stones of the Temple—for all they have been thrown down, according to the word of the Lord Jesus in Matt. 24:2—but part of the retaining wall which enabled that part of the Tyropman valley to be raised to the level of the higher ground adjoining, on which the Temple was built. Look at them: some of them are literally “sitting upon the ground.” Listen to them: they are reading passages from the Book of Lamentations, or other Scriptures which tell of the Lord’s judgments on His people for their unfaithfulness to Him. But what are those two doing? They have gone up to the wall. Notice that one—he takes a little scrap of paper on which a prayer in Hebrew is written, and presses it into a crevice between two of the great stones. That written prayer was sent to him by some one of his nation living in Europe, with a present of money, and a request that he would put the written prayer as near to the place of the Temple as he can. Now, see, they both press their lips to the joints of the stones, and pour in their prayers toward the holy place of old, which they truly believe God will yet again cause to resound with His praise.
My Palestine Recollections. 7. The Jews' Place of Wailing
IT seems almost impossible to realize that the day is coming when Israel will be raised from the dust, and yet it is written, “Whereas thou halt been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations” (Isa. 60:5). We might notice much more about this deeply interesting place, but let us withdraw: though not to forget the lessons to be learned from the voices of Lamentation and of Prayer, with the spectacle of them that sit in the dust.
Our next visit will bring the subject again to our minds: for we proceed to the depot of the Bible Society. We have scarcely entered when we find that we are followed by a Jewish beggar. Probably he was attracted by the sight of an Englishman, and hoped to receive a gift, like the man that was laid at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, as we read in Acts 3. At all events he seated himself on the floor and proceeded, without apologies, to smoke his pipe. A sketch in my notebook shows him with the marks of poverty and decrepitude, and in rags and wrinkles, as is the case with most of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem. Their Rabbis are furnished with tiny little coins—several of which, I believe, make the value of a farthing— for the purpose of distributing alms amongst them.
As we think of the actual poverty of the Jews, let us remember the One who “though He was rich, yet for ‘our’ sakes He became poor that ‘we’ through His poverty might be rich.” The next day we were reminded of this, when we visited Bethlehem. There we were shown a manger, such as that referred to in the Gospel history: “And she brought forth her first-born Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger.” As we looked at that cold stone manger in the dimly lighted and dusty underground stable, we saw indeed much to remind us of the condescension of that Blessed One. How “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
“How condescending and how kind
Was God’s Eternal Son:
Our misery reached His heavenly mind,
And pity brought Him down.
“This was compassion like a God,
That when the Saviour knew
The price of pardon was His blood,
His pity ne’er withdrew.”
My Palestine Recollections. 8. "A Time to Weep and a Time to Laugh."
WE read in Eccl. 3:4, there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh,” and in other Scriptures there is much said both about the “weeping” and the “laughing” in connection with Palestine and the Lord’s people Israel. Our present chapter brings the former very prominently into view.
We find the prophet Jeremiah saying, “Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of My people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow” (ch. 15:17). Such reflections were brought to mind by the abject appearance of the poor old Jew we before referred to. He was but a specimen of a very large proportion of the Jewish inhabitants of the City, and surely, we may add, illustrative of the condition of the nation of whom it is written their Messiah “came unto His own, and His own received Him not” (John 1:11). In Luke 19:41 we read that “When He was come near He beheld the City and wept over it.” Yes, it was for Jesus “a time to weep.”
“He wept alone and men pass’d on—the men whose sins he bore;
They saw the Man of Sorrows weep: they had seen Him weep before:
They asked not whom those tears were for, they asked not whence they flowed.
Those tears were for rebellious man: their source, the heart of God.”
It is a circumstance well known in Rabbinical history that prior to the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus the Jewish scribes spelled the name of Jerusalem thus: Yod Resh Vav Sin Lamed Yod Mem (seven Hebrew letters—the perfect number); but since that event the second yod has been omitted, and Jerusalem is spelt, and has been for over 1,800 years, one letter short of the perfect number. But not only so: the two yods (.n), called “a jot” in our Lord’s words in Matt. 5:18: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” The jot (or yod) being the smallest of the Hebrew letters, and the tittle one of those small particles which distinguish one letter from another. The double yod (vi), recognized by the Jewish scribes and Rabbis as the abbreviated form of Jehovah. Now in Jer. 25:29 and Dan. 9:18, Jerusalem is spoken of by Jehovah as “the City upon which His name is called” (see margin), and thus we learn that before she refused her Messiah and His own words were fulfilled upon her, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate,” the name of Jehovah was incorporated in that of Jerusalem. But the glory is departed, and that name is enshrined there no longer. It is, indeed, a time of weeping, and Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles. But has God cast away His people? No! for the days of rejoicing shall yet come. Jerusalem will the Lord yet make to be a praise in the earth, and He shall reign in Mount Zion and in JERUSALEM (spelled, no doubt, once more with the two sacred yods), and before His ancients gloriously. That beautiful Psalm of degrees (No. 126) speaks of the time to laugh thus: “Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing” (verse 2), and concludes with those precious words: “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing his sheaves with him.”
One circumstance greatly impressed me as illustrating the state of these Jews in Jerusalem. A young Arab had followed us into the Jews’ place of wailing, and while we were silently contemplating the distress of the sons of Abraham and their affectionate regard for their venerable stones, which (no doubt rightly) they consider to have been placed there in the days of Solomon, he asked me with the utmost effrontery if I would give him bakksheesh and he would break off a piece of one of the stones to bring away as a memento. Many other things we saw in our morning’s walk in Jerusalem, reminding us that the present is with her a time of weeping. But the latter part of the day we spent with our “well-beloved Gaius.” Mr. Azam, and other friends he had invited to meet us, served well to engage our thoughts with other and happier associations. The very fruits upon the table reminded us of the words of the Lord in Deut. 8:8: “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of oil olive, and honey,” while the unrestrained fellowship of those from different lands who owned “one Lord, one faith,” seemed to give a sweet foretaste of the time when all the Lord’s people shall be gathered home to dwell With Him for ever.
My Palestine Recollections. 9. Bethlehem, "the House of Bread."
COME with me, dear reader. The horses are at the gate, and the faithful Monsoul is conning them with a practiced eye, to see that their trappings are in good order, and that we do not forget to take the parcel of cold meat and bread which his kind mistress has given into his care, that we may have bread as well as water if we stop to drink at the brook by the way. We are on our way to Bethlehem, called in Micah 5:2, Bethlehem-Ephratah, which two names mean “House of Bread” and “Fruitful.”
As we hold on our way southward towards Bethlehem, and meet occasionally some villagers, their asses laden with corn, poultry, or other commodities, which they are taking to Jerusalem, these interpretations of the names Bethlehem-Ephratah are strikingly brought to remembrance. The history in the book of Ruth gives very pointed illustration of their meanings. The famine mentioned in chap. 1:1-2, when Elimelech and his family went to sojourn in the country of Moab: and verse 7, “how that the Lord had visited His people in giving them bread.” What a warning does the case of Orpah supply: she, when Naomi returned to the country of Judah, remained in the land of Moab; and what a beautiful example of the blessing of a right choice we have in that of Ruth. Let us listen once more to the moving language with which she addressed her mother-in-law, “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go: and where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” Blessed resolution, and with what rich blessings was it accompanied! The Moabite by birth is received into the families of Israel and becomes the mother of Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. As we draw near to Bethlehem, a building comes into view. It is a tomb, known by all in that country as the “tomb of Rachel.” There can be little doubt but it occupies very nearly, if not exactly, the spot where Rachel was buried, as we read in Gen. 35:19, 20. Here, having rested awhile, we must remount and go to Bethlehem. On our way we come to Solomon’s pools. The pools have long been empty, but the fountain from which they were filled is still flowing. The entrance is where our little party is shown with the horses and mule resting.
As the town comes into view, with its fruitful fields and gardens, and the neighboring pastures for sheep, how we think of David the shepherd boy, whom the Lord chose to be His servant, and took him from the sheep-folds: from following the ewes great with young, He brought him to feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance (Ps. 68:70, 71). In one of the lovely gardens we find the owner busily tilling the soil. We speak to him, and he invites us in to dine with him. He is a missionary, and has made some of the rooms of his house into shelter for the little orphans of Bethlehem. What a delight we find it to be to see the happy faces of these well-cared-for fatherless little ones, to inspect their sleeping rooms with their comfortable cots, in the town where Jesus Himself, for whose sake all these things are done, had no cradle but a manger. Let us, as we lister to these dear children, singing their sweet hymns; join in the praise of Him who though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we, through His poverty, might be rich. The parents of these little orphans may have been known as Mahometan, Jewish, Greek-Church, Copt, Maronite. One most interesting case was that of a bright young child of the wilderness, a true descendant a Ishmael, who, with a penetrating glance in his eagle eye, now outvied his companions in answering questions about Yesu el Messeiah—The Lord Jesus. We think of the scene in Jerusalem or the day of Pentecost, when all alike heard the wonderful works of God: Parthians, Medes Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia: also of that day to come when the Lord shall fulfil His promise, “I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am here ye may be also:” and, again when out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, they shall sing the new song of glory to the Lamb who redeemed them.
T. J.