The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1890-11-28
JACOBS WELL.
Continuation OF DR.. Talmage's
Discourses on Palestine.
Little Changes In the Holy Land Lessons
Drawn From Jacobs well-Other No
table Places-Giorious Triumphs
of the Cross.

DeNlbt 4almage1s SuUJecb was among
the Bedouins," and his text Number,
<. 81: For as much as thou knowes
how we are to encamp In the wilderness
He said:
Night after night we have slept In
tent in Palestine. There are large vii
lagos of Bedouins without house, and
for 1900 years the people of those places
have lived in black tents made out oil
dyed skins, and when the winds and
storms wore out and tore loose those
coverings, others OF the same kind
took their places Noah lived in tent
Jacob pitched his tent on the mountain.
Isaac pitched his tent In the valley.
Lot pitched his tent toward Sodom. In
tent the woman Jael nailed Sisera,
the General, to the ground, having first
given him sour milk called 'leben" as
a sopprifc to make him soundly sleep
that being the effect of such nutrition,
as modern travellers can testify. The
Syrian army in a tent The ancient
battle shout was: ITO your tents o
Israelr' Paul was tent maker. In
deed, Isaiah. magnificently poetic, in
dictates that all the human race live I'M
der blue tent when he says that God
stretched out the heavens as curtain
and spreadeth them out as a tent to
dwell in" and Hezekiah compares death
to the striking of tent saying: my
| age is removed from me as shepherd s
| tent"
In our tent in Palestine tonight l
hear something l never heard before
and hope never to hear again. It is the
voice of a hyena amid the rocks near
by. When you may have seen this
monster putting his mouth between
the iron bars Of menagerie, he is a
captive and he gives humiliated and
suppressed cry. But yonder in the
midnight in the throne of rocks he has
nothing to fear and he utters himself in
loud, resounding, terrific, almost
supernatural sound, splitting up the
darkness into deeper midnight.
/ am glad to say that for the most part
Palestine is free from beasts of prey.
The leopards which Jeremiah says can
not change their spots, have all disap-
peared and the lions that once were
common through all this land and used
by all the prophets for illustrations of
cruelty and wrath, have retreated be-
fore the discharges of gunpowder, of
which they have an indescribable fear.
But for the most part Palestine is what
it originally was With the one excep-
ton of wire thread reaching from Jop-
pa to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to
Nazareth and from Nazareth to Tiberi-
as and from Liberals to Damascus, that
one nerve of civilization, the tele-
graphic wirc (for we found ourselves
only few minutes of from Brooklyn
and New York while standing by Lake
Galilee) with that one exception, Pal
estine is just as it always was.
Nothing surprised me so much as the
persistence Of every thing A sheep or
horse falls dead and, though the sky
may one minute before be clear of all
wings, in five minutes after the skies
are black with eagles cawing, scream
ing, plunging, fgh ting for room, contend
ing for largest morsels Of the extinct
quadruped. All. now understand the
force of Christs illustration when He
said: "Wheresoever the carcass is there
will the eagles be gathered together"
The longevity Of those eagles is won
derful They live fifty or sixty and
sometimes hundred years. All, that
explains what David meant when he
says: Thy youth is renewed like the
eagles" / saw shepherd with the
folds of his coat far bent outward and l
wondered what was contained in that
amplitude of apparel, and said to the
dragoman: ''What has thatshepherd got
under his coat?" And the dragoman
said: 1T is very young lamb he is
carrying; it Is too young and too weak
and too cold to keep up with the flock"
At that moment saw the lamb put its
head out from the shepherds bosom and
l said: There 1t is now, Isaiah's de-
scription of the tenderness of .God-'He
shall gather the lambs with His arms
and carry them in His BOSOM" Pass
ing by village home, in the Holy Land
about noon, saw a great crowd in and
around private house, and 1 said to
the dragoman: David, what is going on
there?" He said: Somebody has re-
Gently died there and their neighbors
go in for several days after to sit down
and weep with the bereaved" There
it is, l said, the old scriptural custom:
"And many Of the Jews came to Martha
and Mary to comfort them concerning
their brother"
Early in the morning, passing by a |
cemetery in the Holy Land. I saw
among the graves about fifty women |
dressed in black, and they were crying:
20, my child" 20. my husband!" 10,
my fatherr' 90 my motherr Our
dragoman told US that every morning
very early for three months after a |
burial the women go to the sepulchre,
and after that every week very early |
for year. As saw this group just af- |
ter day break said: There it is again,
the same old custom referred to in |
Luke, the Evangelist where he SAYS,
certain women which were early at the |
sepulchre
But here We found ourselves at ia
cob's well, the most famous well in |
history, most distinguished for two
things, because it belonged to the old /
patriarch after whom it was named, and |
for the wonderful things which Christ
said seated on this well curb to the
Samaritan woman. We dismount from
our horses in drilling rain, and our
dragoman climbing up to the we'll over
the slippery stones stumbles and fright
ems US all BY fairly falling into it
/ measured the well at the top and
found 1t six feet from edge to edge
Some grass and weeds and thorny
growths overhang it In one place the
roof is broken through. Large stones
embank the wall on all sides. Our
dragoman took pebbles and dropped
them in, and from the time thew left