News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-11-06


dred years before Harvey was born /?
After many centuries of exploration
and calculation astronomy finds out
that the world is 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 tC ed on for centu-
ries and found out refraction or that
the rays of light W en- touching the
earth were not stre;c~ht but bent or
curved. Why, Job ,.new that when
ages before in the BI"le he wrote of the
light, cit is turned as clay to the seal :"
BUT MORAL SUPERIORITY Is OURS.
In the old cathelrals of England,
modern painters in he repair of win
dows are trying to make something as
good as the window painting of forr
hundred years ago, and always failing
by the unanimous verdict Of al Who
rsyrrfETTig .rlrd con- - n 49,! on
modern painting fades in fifty years,
while the color of tho old masters is as
well preserved after five hundred years
as after one year. l saw last winter on
the walls of eXhumed Pompei paint
ings with color as fresh as though made
the day before, though they were bu-
ried eighteen hundred years ago The
making of Tyrian purple is an impossi-
bility now. In our modern pOtteries
we are trying hard to make cups and
pitchers and bowls as exquisite as those
| To-
artifcers are attempting to make jew
elry for ear and neck and finger equal
to that brought up from the mauso-
leums of two thousand years before
Christ
We have in our time glass in all
shapes and all colors, but Pliny, more
than eighteen hundred years ago, de-
gcribed a malleable glass which, if
thrown upon the ground and dented,
could be pounded straight again by the
hammer or could be twisted around the
wrists, and that confounds all the glass
manufactures of our time. | tried in
Damascus, Syria, to buy a Damascus
blade, ono of those swords that could
| be bent double or tied into n knot
without breaking. Icould not get one
| Why? The Nineteenth century cannot
make a Damascus blade. If we go on
enlarging our cities we may after a
while, get city as large as Babylon,
which was five times the size of London.
These aqueducts of Solomon that !
visit today finding them in good con-
| dition three thousand years after CON
struction make me 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 ex-
| quisite and durable; nor architecture,
| for Roman Coliseum and Grecian Ac-
ropolis 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 vic
! tory In that we have already sur
passed them, and in that direction let
the ages push on. 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 shutdown of this
day, on which we have visited the pools
of Solomon, and the gardens of the
king.
LOWLY ESTATE OF CHRIST.
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 q palace, but covered by barn
not presided over by a princess but
lowered over by peasant girl; yet a
cradle the canopy of which is angelic
wings and 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.
l said to the tourist companies plan
ming our oriental journey, Put us in
Bethlehem 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 season Jesus
was born. Tourists and writer's are
there in February or March or April,
when the valleys are an embroidered
sheet of wild flowers, and anemOnes
and ranunculus are flushed as though
from attempting to climb the sleeps,
and lark and bulffnch are flooding the
air with bird orchestra. But I was
! there in December, q winter month,
the barren beach between the two
oceans. of redolence. 1 was told I must
not go there at that season, told so be-
| fore started, tslal- so in gxnt. the
books told me so; all travellers that /
consulted about it told mo 80. But
was determined to SEQ Bethlehem the
same month in which Jesus arrived.
and nothing could dissuadc ne.
Was not right In wanting to know
how tho Holy Land looked when Jesus
came to it, He did nut land amid
flowers and song. When the angels
chanted on the famous birthnight, all
| the fields of Palestine were silent. The
| glowing skies were answered by gray
rocks. As Bethlehem stood against n
bleak wintry sky, | climbed up to it as
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 a
sterile December. If were going to
! Palestine as botanist, and to studv
the flora of the land, | would 90 in
March, but | went as a 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 sur
prise is in the shape of horseshoe the
houses extending clear onto the Drongs
of the horseshoe, the whole scene
more rough and rude than can be i'm
agined. Verify, Ch-;st did not choose
soft, genial place n which to be born.
The gate through which our Lord en-
tered this world was a gate of rock. n
hard, cold gate, and the gate through
which he departed vas swing gate of
snarpened spears. We enter a gloomy