The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1890-12-04


tine and the events thereof. The text
was:
The half was not told me i Kings, X, :.
This is the first sermon in course of
Sabbath morning sermons on MY Re-
cent Journey Through the Holy Land
and Neigh boring Countries-WhatI Saw
and What Learned" Out of the six
ty-four million of our present American
population and the millions of our past,
only about five thousand have ever Wis
tied the Holy Land. OF all those who
cross to Europe, less than five per cent.
ever get as far as Rome, and less than
two per cent ever get to Athens, and
less than quarter of one per cent. ever
get to Palestine. OF the less than a
quarter of one per cent who do go to
the Holy Land, some see nothing but
noxious insects and the filth of the ORR
entail cities, and come back wishing
they had never gone. OF those who see
much of interest and come home, only
a small portion can tell what they have
seen, the tongue unable to report the
eye.
The rarity of a successful, intelligent
and happy journey through the Holy
Land is very marked. But the time APP
proaches when a journey to Palestine
will be common. Thousands will go
where now there are scores. Two loco
motives were recently sent up from
Jappa to Jerusalem, and railroads are
about to begin in Palestine, and the
day will come when the cry will be:
"All out for Jerusalemr' Twenty min
utes for breakfast at Tiberias!"
"Change cars for Tyrer' ''Grand Trunk
Junction for Ninevah!" 'All out for
Damascus. Meanwhile the wetlocks
of the Atlantic ocean and Adriatic and
Mediterranean seas are being shorn,
and not only is the voyage shortened,
but, after awhile, without crossing the
ocean you or your children will visit
the Holy Land. A company of
capitalists have gone up to Beh-
ring Straits, where the Ameri-
can and Asiatic continents come
within thirty-six miles of meeting.
These capitalists or others will build a
bridge across those straits, for midway
are three islands called THE Diome-
des," and the water is not deep and is
never disturbed with icebergs. Trains
of cars will run from America across
that bridge and on down through
Siberia, bringing under more immedi-
ate observation the Rus sian outrages
against exiles and consequently abol-
ishing them, and there are persons
here to-day who, without the qualm of
sea-sickness, will visit that wonderful
land where the Christ-like, Abrahamic,
Mosaic, Davidic, Solomonic and Herodic
histories overlap each other with such
power that by the time took my feet
out of the stirrups at the close of the
journey felt so wrung out with emo
ton that it seemed nothing else could
ever absorb my feelings again.
In order to make the moro accurate
and vivid book l have been writing,
life of Christ entitled From Manager
to Throne" / left home last October,
and on the last night of November we
were walking the decks of the Senegal,
a Mediterranean steamer. 1t was a
ship of immense proportions. There
were but few passengers, for it is gen.
orally rough at that time of the year,
and pleasurists are not apt to be voyag-
ing there and then. The stars were all
out that night Those armies of light
seemed to have had their shields newly
Furnished We walked the polished
deck. Not much was said, for in
all our hearts was the dominant
word tomorrow" Somehow the
Acropolis, which few days before had
thrilled us at Athens, now in our minds
lessened in the height of it's columns
and the glory of its temples. And the
Egyptian pyramids in our memory less
ened their wonders of obsolete
masonry, and the Coliseum of Rome
was not so vast ruin as it few weeks
before had seemed to be. And all that
we had seen and heard dwindled in i'm
portance, for tomorrow, tomorrow we
shall see the Holy Land. Captain,
what time will we come in sight of Pal
estine?" WELL" he said, ''if the wind
and sea remain as they are, about day
break" Never was I so impatient for
night to pass. | could not see. much
use for the night anyhow. l pulled
aside the curtain from the port-hole of
my state room, so that the first hint of
dawn would waken me. But it was a
useless precaution. Sleep was among
the impossibilities Who could be so
stupid as to slumber when any moment
there might start out within sight of
the ship the land where the most stu
pendous scenes of all time and all
eternity were enacted? Land of ruin
and redemption, land where was fought
the battle that made our Heaven posi-
BILE, land of Godfrey and Saladin, of
Joshua and Jesus.
Will the night ever be gone? Yes, it
is growing lighter, and along the hori-
zon there is something like a bank of
clouds, and as a Waterman PAGES the
deck, say to him: What is that out
yonder?" 'That is land, sir" said the
sailor. THE landr' cried, and soon
all our friends were aroused from sleen.
and the shore began more clearly to re-
veal itself With roar and rattle and
bang the anchor dropped in the road
stead a half mile from land, for
though Joppa is the only harbor
aF DnIasftro 10