The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1890-12-18

by rubbing them. But, as have never read
the Arabian Nights such stuff not being
allowed around our house in my boyhood,
ana nothlng lighter in the way of reading
than baxter's Saints, Everlasting Rest, and
DAubigny's History OF the Reformation.
Damascus appeared to me as sacred and
secular history have presented it, and so the
CITY was not disappointment, but with a
lew exceptions surprise.
But must say that this city OF Damascus
ns see 1T now is not as absorbing as the
Damascus of olden times. turn nv back
upon the bazaars, with rugs fascinating the
merchants from Bagdad, and the Indian
textile fabric of incompara BILE make and the
manufactured saddles and brides gay
enough for princes of the Orient to ride and
pull, and baths where ablution becomes an
inspiration, and the homes Of those bargain
makers Of to-day marbed and divaned and
1ountalned and upholstered and mosaiced
ana arabesqued and colonnaded until moth
ing can be added. and the splendid remains
OF the great mosque of John, originally
nullt with gates SO heavy that it required
nve men to turn them and columns of por-
phory and kneellng-placesf framed in diamond
ana ~ stained lass windows and 600
lamps OF pure. gold, u single prayer offered
IN this mosque said to be worth 80, 900
prayers offered in any other place. 1 turn
my back on all these and see Damascus
as 1T was when this narrow street
"AiiSA oHo DlDle calls SCrdlGlU was
great wide street. New York Broad
way or Partisan Champs Elysees, a great
thorongh1are crossing the city from gate to
gate, along which tramDed and rolled the
pompt OF all nations There goes Abraham,
the father of all the faithful. lie has in this
city been purchasing a celebrated slave
lhere goes Ben Hadad Of Bible times lead
ing ~ conquered monarchs. There goes
David king: warrior, and sacred poet.
There goes Tamerlane the conQueror. There
goes Haroun al Raschid, once the commander
OF an army Of 95,O 900 Persians and Arabs.
There comes a warrior on his way to the bar
racks, carrying that kind of sword which
the world has forgotten how to make, a
Damascus blade with the interlacings of
color changing at every new turn Of
the light, many colors coming and
going and interjoining, the blade so
keen it could cut in twain an object
without making the lower part of the object
tremble, with an elasticity that could not be
broken, though you brought the point of
the sword clear back to the hilt, and having
watered appearance which made the blade
seem as though just dipped in a clear foun-
tam triumph of cutlery which thousand
modern foundrymen and chemists have at
tempted IN vain to initiate. On the side of
TINS street. damasks, named after this city,
hgures OF animals, and fruits, and landscapes
mere being first wrought int sik-damasks
Ana specimens of damaskeeming by which
III this city steel and iron were first graved,
ana the groves filled with wire OF gold-dam-
askeeming. But stand back or be run over
TOT here are the gates of the city, laden cara
vans from Meppo in one direction, and from
Jerusalem in another direction, end caravans
o. all nations paying toll to this supremacy
Great is Damascus!
ouG "hat most stlrs my soul is neither
charo1. nor caravan, nor bazaar, nor palace,
out a blind man passing along the street,
o1,I yrcs, g. -
al appearance. On yes; we have seen him be-
lore. lie was one Of that cavalcade coming
from Jerusalem to Damascus to kill Chris
tlans, and we saw him and his horse tumble
up there on the road some distance out of
the city, and he got up blind. Yes. it was
PAU OF Iarsus, now going along this street
called Straight. He is led by bis friends.
Tor he cannot see his hand before his face,
unto the house of Judas; not Jndas the bad,
Dut Judas the good. In mother part of this
city one Ananias, not Ananias the liar but
Ananlasa the Christian, is told by the
Lord to go, to this house of Judas
the blind eyes of Saul that his sight might
return. "Oh, yes," said Ananias, 81 dare
not go; that Saul is a terrible fellow He
Kills Christians, and he will kill me. Go"
SAID the Lord, and Ananias went. There
slts IN blindness that tremendous perse-
eqtor He was great nature crushed.
he had started for the city of Damascus for
the one purpose of assassna ting Christ's
| followers, but since that fall from his horse
ne mas entirely changed. Ananias steps I'D
| 10 the slghtless man, puts his right thumb
on one eye and his lett thumb on the other
| eye, anu in an outburst OF sympathy and
| love, and faith says: Brother Saul! Brother
Saul! tue Lord, even Jesus that appeared
| unto thee IN the way as thou earnest has
sent me that thou mayst receive thy sight,
ana be filled with the Holy Ghost" In
stantly something like scales fell from that
blind mans eyes, and he arose from that
seat the mghtiest evangel of all the anes ,1 a
Sir William Hamilton for metaphysical an
alysis. John Milton for subIimitv of
| thought: a Whitcteld for popular eoouence.
a John Howard for wide spread philan-
throphy, but more than oil of them put to-
g-ther inspired, thunderbolted, mulipotent
apostolic. Did Judas, the kind host of :t th;s
oilnd man, or Ananias, the visitor, see
scales drop from the sightless ewes? fhink
not. But Paul knew they had fallen. and
tnat Is all that happens to any of us when
we are converted. The binding scales drop
rom ~ our eyes, and We see things differently.
"A christian woman, missionary among a.
most degraded tribe, whose religion was
never to wash or improve personal appear
ance; was trying to persuade one of those
heathen women not only of need of change of
heart, but change of habits, which would re-
sui IN change OF appearance, but the effort
va oA0 Ad'ooiOutITy udu placed her
own hallway looking glass, and, when the
barbaric woman passed through the hall
saw herself in the mirror for the first time
she exclaimed "can it be possible 1 look like
that?' and appalled, ather own appearances
she rem ounced her old religion, and asked to
DC instructed in the Christian religion And
so we feel that we are all right in our sinful
and unchanged condition, until the scales
1all from our eyes, and in the looking. glass
OF dod,s word we see ourselves as we really
are until Divine grace transforms US.
There are many people in this house to-
day as blind as Paul was before Ananias
touched his eyes. And there are MANY here
from whose eyes the scales have already foll-
en-. You see all subjects and all things diff.
'erently-God and Christ, and eternity and
your own immortal spirit. Sometimes tho
scales do not all fall at once. When was
boy at Mount Pleasant, one Sunday after.
noon reading Doddridge's "Rse and Pro.
gress of Religion in the Soul" that after
noon some Of the scales fell from nv ewes
and saw q little. After 1 had been in the
ministry about a year, one Sunday after
noon in the village parsonage reading the
Bible story of the Syro- Phenican's faith
other scales fell from my eyes and saw bet
ter. Two Sunday evenings ago while pre-
Parlng Tor the evening service in New York.
picked up a book that did not remem ber
to have seen before and after had read a