The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1890-11-19

by the lightnings but the electric telegraph
90 not Know but that the electric forces nov
being year by year more thoroughly har
messed may have been employed in ages ex
tinct, and that the lightningS all up and dowl
the sky have been running around like los
hounds to find their former master.
Embalment was more thorough art thre'
thousand years ago than to-day. Dentistry
that we suppose one of the important art
discovered in recent centuries, is proven K
be four thousand years old by the filled
teeth Of the mummles in the museums @,
Cairo, Egypt, and artificial teeth on gol6
plates found by Belzoni in the tombs of de
parted nations. We have been taught thai
Harvey discovered the circulation Of the
blood so late as the seventeenth century
Oh, no! Solomon announces it in Ecclesias
tes where first having shown that he un
deerstood the spinal cord, silver colored as il
is, and that it relaxes in old age-''the silver
cord be loosed." goes on to compare the
heart to pitcher at well, for the three
canals Of the heart do receive the blood like
pitcher, ''or the pitcher be broken at the
fountain" What is that but the circulation
of the blood, found out twenty-six hundred
years before Harvey was born? After many
centuries Of exploration and calculation as.
tronomy finds out that the world was round.
Why. Isaiah knew it was round thousands OF
years before when in the Bible he said: "The
Lord sitteth upon the circle Of the earth"
Scientists toiled on for centuries and found
out refraction or that the rays Of light when
touching the earth were not straight, but
bent OF curved. Why, Job knew that when
ages before in the Bible he wrote of the light:
1T is turned as clay to the SEAL"
In the old cathedrals of England modern
painters in the repair of windows are trying
to make something as good as the window
painting Of four hundred years ago, and
always failing by the unanimous verdict of
all who examine and compare. The color OF
modern painting fades in fifty years, while
the color of the old masters is as well pre-
served after five hundred years as after one
year. l saw last winter on the walls Of ex-
huned Pompeii paintings with color as fresh
as though made the day before. though they
were buried eighteen hundred years ago.
The making of Tyrisn purple is an impossi-
bility now. In our modern potteries we are
trying hard to make cups and pitchers and
bowels as exquisitely as those e1humed from
Herculaneum, and our artificers are at
tempting to make jewelry for ear
and neck and finger equal to that
brought up from the mausoleums of two
thousand years before Christ. We have in
our time glass in all shapes and all colors,
but Piiny, mora than eighteen hundred years
ago, described q malleable glass which, II
thrown upon the ground and dented, could
be pounded straight again by the hammer or
could be twisted around the wrists, and that
confcunds all the glass manufacturers Of
our own time. I tried in Damascus, Syria,
to buy Damascus blade, oneof those swords
that could be bent double or tied in knot
without breaking. I could not get one
Why? The Nineteenth century cannot make
a Damascus blade. If we 60 on enlarging
cur cities we may after while get city as
large as Babylon, which was five times the
size of London.
These aqueducts of Solomon that visit to-
day, finding them in good condition three
thousand years after construction, make ma
think that the world may have forgotten
more than it now knows. The great honor
of our age is not machinery, for the ancients
had some styles Of it more wonderful; nor
art, for the ancients had art more exquisite
ana durable: nor architecture, for Roman
Coliseum and Grecian Acropolis surpass all
modern architecture; nor cities, for some Of
the ancient cities were larger than ours in
the sweep of their pomp. But our attempts
must be in moral achievement and gospel
victory. In that we have already surpassed
them, and in that direction let the ages push
en-. Let US brag less of worldly achievement
and thank God for moral opportunity.
More good men and good women is what the
world wants. Toward moral elevation and
spiritual attainment let the chief struggle
be. The source Of all that will show you
before sundown Of this day on which we have
visited the pools of Solomon and the gardens
of the king.
We are on this December afternoon on the
way to the cradle Of Him who called Himself
greater than Solomon. We are coming upon
the chief cradle of all the world, not lined
with satin, but strewn with straw; not
sheltered by palace, but covered by barn;
not presided over by princess, but hoVered
over by a peasant girl; yet a cradle the
lullaby of which is the first Christmas carol
ever sung, and from which all the events OF
the past and all the events Of the future have
and must take date as being B. G. or A. D.
before Christ or after Christ. All eternity
past occupied in getting ready for this cradle,
and all eternity to come to be employed In
celebrating its consequences.
I said to the tourist companies planning
our oriental journey, "Put US in Bethle-
hem in December, the place and the month
of our Lords BIRTH" and we had our wish.
am the only man who has ever attempted
to tell how Bethlehem looked at the sea-
son Jesus was born. Tourists and writers
are there in February, or March, or April,
when the valleys are an embroidered sheet
of wild flowers, and anemoneS and ranun-
culus are flushed as though from attempting
to climb the sleeps, and larS and bull
finch are flooding the air with bird orcheS-
ira. But was there in December, winter
month. the barren beach between the two
oceans OF redolence. l was told l must
not 20 there at that season, told so before
I started, told so in Egypt; the books told
me so; all travellers that consulted about
it told me so. But was determined to
see Bethlehem the same month in which
Jesus arrived, and nothing could dissuade
me. Was not right in wanting to know
how the Holy Land looked when Jesus came
to it? He did not land amid flowers and
song. When the angels chanted on the
famous birthnight all the fields Of Palestine
were silent. The glowing skies We're an.
swered by gray rocks. As Bethlehem stood
against bleak wintry sky climbed up to
it, es through bleak wintry sky Jesus de-
scended upon it, His way down was from
warmth to chill, from bloom to barrenness,
from everlasting June to sterile December.
If were going to Palestine as botanist and
to study the flora Of the land would 60 in
March: but went as minister of Christ to
study Jesus and so went in December.
wanted to see how the worlds front door
looked when the heavenly Stranger entered
it.
The town of Bethlehem, to my surprise, is
in the shape Of horseshoe the houses ex-
tending clear onto the prongs of the horse
shoe, the whole scene more rough and rude
than can be imagined. Verify, Cnrist did
not choose soft, genial place in which to be
born. The gate through which our Lori ell
tered this world was a gate OF rock, hard,
cold gate, AMI the gate through which He de
parted was swing gate of sharpened spears
I'VE enter gloomy church built by Constan
tine over the place in which Jesus was born
Fifteen lamps burning day and night anc