Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-10-06

flames cannot divide, and fire. brands are
fastened to those couples of foxes, and
the afrighted creatures are let loose and
run every whittier among the harvests
and in the awful blaze down go the corn
shocks, and the vineyards, and the olives
and all through the valleys and over the
hills, and among the villages Is heard the
cry of "Fire!'' And in the burnt path
way walk hunger and want and desola-
ton.
All this for spite. And some the
ologians learn one thing, and some an
| other. But learn from it that great
man mey sometimes stoop TO q very
mean piece of business, and that II men
would use as much ingenuity in trying to
bless as they do in trying to destroy, the
world all the way down would have been
in better condition. Yet the fire of the
foxes kindled that night in Palestine has
not gone out, but has leaped the seas,
and the sly foxes, the human foxes, are
now still running every whittier, kin
ding political fires, fires of religious
controversy, fires of hate, world wide
fires, and whole harvests Of righteous
ness perish. 1t took the hard work of
multitudes on all these plains of Pales-
tine for months and months to rear the
vine and raise the corn, but it took only
| 800 worthless foxes one Gight to blaze all
| into ashes.
Brace up your nerves now, that you
may look while point them out. Yonder
| is Kirjathjearim, where the ark of God
| stayed until David took Ii TO Jerusalem.
Yonder John the Baptist was born. Yon-
der is Emmsus, where Christ walked
with the disciples at eventide. Here are
men ploughing, with only one handle to
the plough, showing the accuracy of
| Christ's allusion. When We plough in
America or England there are two hands
on two handles, but in Palestine only
one handle. And so Christ uses the
singular saying: "No man having put
his hand to the plough and looking back
is fit for the kingdom. - The OK is urged
on by a wooden stick
| POINTED WITH sHARP IRON,
and the OK knows enough not to kick,
for he would only hurt himself instead of
breaking the goad. And the Bible re-
| fers to that when it says to Saul: sit is
| hard for thee to kick against the goads. -
| Here is the valley of Aislon. famous
for joshua pursuit of the five kings and
| the lunar arrest. And in imagination l
see the moon in day time halt. Who
has not sometimes seen the moon dispute
the throne with the sun? But when the
king of day and the queen of night, who
never before Joshua's time, nor since
| then, stopped moment in their march,
halted at Joshua s command, it was a
| scene enough to make the universe
shiver: "Moon! stand thou still in the
valley of Ajalon.''
At another time we will see the sun
| stop above Gideon, but now we have
| only to do with the moon, and you must
remember that it was more of an orb
| than il is now. 1t is burnt out world
now a dead world now, al extinct world
| now, a corpse laid out in state IN the
heavens waiting for the judgment day to
bury it. But on the day of which l
speak the moon was probably q living
world, yet it halted at the wave of
Joshua's finger, ''stand thou stilll'
Do not bulge an inch until Joshua fin
ishes those FIVE kings, who are there
mbling over the rocks, sword of man
slashing them, hailstones out of the sky
pelting them.
And there is the cavern of Makkedah,
whore they fed for safety, and where
they were afterward locked in , and from
which they were taken out TO be slain,
and in which they were afterward buried;
and you do we'll to examine that cavern,
for within a few hours it acame' three
things which no other cave ever was:
FORTRESS, PRISON, sEPULCHRE.
Now we pass the place where once
lived one of the greatest robbers of the
century, Abou Gosh by name. From
this point you see he could look all over
the surrounding country, and long be-
fore the travellers came up to him, the
plan for taking their money or their life
or both was contaminated. He one day
found company of monks who would
not pay and he smothered them to death
in hot oven. In his last days he lived
here like an oriental prince, and had his
attendants and admirers to whom he told
the stories of brigaudage and assassina-
ton. So late as when our eminent and
beloved American, William G. Prime,
passed through, Abou Gosh, the sound
reilly Bedouin sat at his doorway smoking
his pipe. His descendants live in tins
village and probably are no more honest
than their distinguished ancestor, but
msrauding and murder is not as safe
business now as when all this route to
Jerusalem was subject TO outrRges pande-
moniac.
Here we pass the village of Latrun,
home of the penitent thief, the village, q
few struggling houses on steep hills rising
from the valley OF AJalOn. Up these
steep hills, in his earlier days the thief
had carried the spoils of arson and bur-
glary, and down them he had borne the
heavier burden of a guilty heart. But
higher than these hills he mounted, after
he had repented, from the transtixed pos
ture on the cross to the bosom of for
giving God.
Now we come to the brook Elah, from
which little David took the smooth
stones with which he Frustrated Goliath.
There is bridge spanning the ravine,
but at the season we crossed, there is not
drop of water in the brook. We went
down into the ravine and walked amid
the pebbles that had been washed
smooth-very smooth by the rush of the
waters
THROUGH ALL THE AGES.
There is where David armed himself.
He walked around aud picked up five of
these polished pebbles. He got them of
just the right size. He prepared himself
for FIVE volleys, so that if the giant es-
capes the first he will not escape the
whole five. The topography of the place
SO corresponds with the Bible story that l
could see the memorable fight go on. 1t
Is the only fight ever did watch. Pu-
gilism abhor but here were two cham
pions, the one God appointed, the other