Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-11-13


~ Winfield J. Dayis.l
For an now ready to be offered, and the time of
my departure is al hand.
have fought good fight, have finished my
course, bave kept the faith.
Heneeforth there is laid up for me crown of
rlghteousaess, which the Lord, the righteous judge,
shall give me at that day and not to me only but
unto all those, also, that love his appearing III
Timothy. i': 6, T.,
There was tumult in the city. A furious
mob, raging like torrent, swept through the
streets. A mob, not composed as mobs are
usually, of the rabble, but led by the rulers
of the people-priests, scribes, lawyers; the
leading citizena of the nation. Their faces
distorted by their passions, furious il
every hneament, frenzied IN ths wild ratings
Of their voices and hurrying along with im-
patient haste, they bore among them a man
of their own race, Of their own speech and
blood, whose face must form striking con-
trast with all the c0untenances about him.
While they are either flushed or pallid with
their passions, his cOuntenanee beams with a
strange light his features are in repose ;
and though they hold hin, and buffet him,
and s1nite him, ard bear him onward without
the eastern gates of the city into the Kedron
valley, to Its northern part-called the Valley
Of the Kings, the Valley of Jehosaphat-he
is unmoved and when they have reached
the spot where so many tragedies OF
the kind had taken place they
leave HIM clone, and yet they circle him
about, and these men, tie highest in tie ma
h F., kLa..,ra1,,o- a
ci2i murder, and yet d murder without legal
warrant. He had been adjudged guilty of
blasphemy. and yet they had no right to put
him TO death, for the assent If the Roman
magistrate, the Procuratur of Judea, has not
been ostaiuei. And so thsy encircle nina aud
prepare 30 execute the last penalty Of the law
their law that law so terrible And as he
kueels ufon the ground to receive these hsrce
and death bringing missiles his face - bright,
his hands elevated far above toe raging, tu-
nuitu9us crowd, his ey u lifted 70 tie hep
Gus and catching the splerdor uf ~
that flashes thence, more - .-l. 81
the suH-a ssrangs
all snkiR9les
A. tlare ster.. -lEa. Esf5 q
4iiGui Us assla 'ish5 -..a, deli
4 ID es4 saa f,a trace oI genius in his
r tr .y-molded head; you can
M cas- of power in the lineaments of
10 man, though he is SO slender and SO frai!
And ynu can fancy how he folds his arms
and hollis himself steadfastly to gaze on this
dread spectacle. [ can well understand how
his form should have quivered with excite
nent how he would have shrunk from such
a scene OF horror. And yet he feels it to be
his duty to stand there as though he had
been carved from adamant-to stand aud
see the last penalty of his law in
aicted upon this recreant. And the legal
witnesses of the transaction laid their gar
ments at his feet; he is their custodian. And
SO, with folded arms. with dilated nostrils,
with flashing eyes and quivering lips, he sees
tbs air darkened with the stones; gees the
body pierced and maRgled sees the blood as
it starts to flow and s1turates the ground :;
and hears as well the lass breathed prayer of
the martyr, lord Jesus, lay not this sin
to their charge"
This is our introduction to that youth
one OF the noteworthy men of human his
tory; one of the very greatest-if not the
greatest-man that has ever appeared in the
tide of time. But one other can challenge or
divide this prominence with him-the law
giver of his nation, Moses, from the long
centuries beyond. These two men stand, l
think, unchallenged and unapproached on the
Ioftieat pinnacle of human history. Born in
the city of Tarsus, the metropolis OF Cilicia,
one OF the most fertile provinces of what We
to-day call the Leyant-in the whole scope Of
the Roman Empire. As abundant and pro-
ductiVe o wheat field as your own Califor
mia. A mountain torrent starts from
the snow-clad SUBMITS of the Taurus
far to the north of the Cilician wheat fields,
flowing down the Sierra slopes and making
its way through the broad and level plain,
empties its food into the flashing blue waters
of the Mediterranean. Not far from its
mouth arose this fair and stately city. Like
all the towns of Macedonia, built four
understanding north, south, east and west
true to the points of the compass, and built
on either bank of this stream. At its quays
were the fleets from ell parts of the inter-
Mediterranean sea. 1t grew to he a city Of
boundless wealth; TO be the seat of letters
and arts, of luxury and fashion. It was
Paris in that olden time.
In the home of Hebrew parents the child
saw the light, and as he grew through the
wears of boyhood and walked forth by the
hand Of his father or his attending nurse, he
would see the magnificent architecture and
adornments of the beautiful city. He would
see the rlen of many climes-for it was q
cosmopolitan city, where froGa east and west,
and north and south, all met for trade, for
pleasure, for wealth and for indulgence. He
saw men well-nigh matchless for their
beauty; of such exquisite build and mold,
Win eucu uODl6 Hc-t5, Will ouSH
wondr0us eyes, with exquisitely chiseled
features, whose tongues seemed expressive at
ones of the music of their lips and OF their
brains. That matchless tongue of the last
twenty centuries descended like ours from a
tongue greater than itself, yet stands among
the scholars as the very repository of our
learning-as q kind of spear, a shield, a
buckler as q kind of flashing sword in the
scholars hand. The speech of oratofy and
of music, the speech of poetry and of wisdom,
he heard the matchless accents of the Hell
lenio tongue flowing in all its melodious
strains from the lips of those men whose un-
equaled forms have been preserved to us, in
part at least, in sculpture. And that Greek
tongue WAS his birthright.
Not only this, another speech he encoun-
tered, and different kind of mankind, not SO
exuuisitely nodded, not so Ilassically beauti-
full, more developed, broader of shoulder,
more powerful and 1.-THE of limb the men
whose aerried ranks whose flashing swords
and spears had subdued the world the man
whose navies clrcumnavigated the world then
known, and held all chimes in subjugation.
He heard the more bold but still,
sweet and magnetic strains of the Latin
tongue-the language of law, of jurisprudence,
of domination, and of authority. And that
tongue wss his birthright as well. BE was a
Romsn citizen-the immensely and franchise
of the empire was also his birthright.
But in bis own home he heard another
speech-to his childish ear and to his heart
al through the remainder of his life more
priced than either. than both, the others
majestic tongue and mastery; the tongue
which held treasures which in his eyes i'm
measurably surpassed all the treasures con-
tanned in both the others-for it was the
tongue of the Father of the Faithful it was
the tongue in which Moses spoke and wrote
it was tue tongue in which Miriam chanted
her triumphal soug by the sea bank when the
enemies of his race and hers were over
wheluled it was the tongue of the Minstrel
King it was the tongue of the gifted proph-
cts it was the tongue that even made Gods
promise to man all sure and steadfast. He
brew, Greek and Latin were the three Ian
guages in which the boy was trained.
After the fashion of the Jews of the dis
persion as they were called-such Hebrews
as had quilted their native land and were,
through trade and various occupations in the
other districts and regions of the earth
DESTROYS of saving their soDs of promise from
the contamination and pollution of heather
surroundings, this boy was sent, at the age OF
IL or 13-such was the custom of the devout
and orthodox Jews-to the chief city Of
the world in their eyes. And you can imag-
inc the boy landing at the seaport of Cesaria,
making his way across the plains, OF entering
the mountains, and SO gradually passing
through the old tribe of Ben his own
tribe, and coming to the limits of Judea
And as he comes forth from the mountains
his ewes behold Mount Sinai, beautiful FOL
s;tnation the ioy of the whole earth, the seal