Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1890-10-16

mighty sieges which have come sgainsi
Jerusalem In the ages past. Yonder /:
the pool Of Hezekiah and Sloan, but
again and again were those waters red.
dened with human gore. Yonder are
the towers, but again and again they
fell. Yonder are the high walls, bui
again and again they were leveled. To
rob the treasures from her temple and
palace and dethrone this queen city OF
the earth all nations plotted. David
taking the throne at Hebron decides that
he must have Jerusalem for his capital,
and coming up from the south at the
head OF two hundred and eighty-thou-
sand troops he captures it. Look, here
comes another siege of Jerusaleml.
Another siege Of Jerusalem, and Pom
pey, with the battering rams which a
hundred men would roll back, and then
at full run forward would bang against
the wall Of the city, and catapults hurl-
ing the rocks upon the people, left
twelve thousand dead, and the city In the
clutch Of the Roman war eagle. Look,
q more desperate siege of Jerusalemi
Titus with his tenth legion on Mount
OF Olives, and ballista arranged on the
powders against walls and towers, and
miners digging under the city making
galleries of beams underground, which,
set on fire, tumbled great masses of
houses and human beings into destruc-
tion and death. All is taken now but
the temple, and Titus, the conqueror,
wants to save that unharmed, but SOL
dier, contrary to orders, hurls a torch
into the temple and it is consumed.
Many strangers were in the city at the
time, and ninety-seyen thousand captives
were taken, and Josephus says one mill
ion one hundred thousand lay dead.
But looking from the housetop the
siege that most absorbs us is that of the
Crusaders. England and France and all
Christendom wanted to capture the Holy
Sepulcher and Jerusalem, then in pos
session of the MOhammedans under the
command of one of the loveilest, bravest
and mfghtiest men that ever lived, for
justice must be done him though he was
Mohammedan glorious Saladin!
Against him came the armies of Europe,
under Richard Ceur de Lion, King of
England; Philip Augustus, King of
France; Tancred, Qaymond, Godfrey and
other valiant men, marching on through
fevers and plaques and battle charges
and sutferings as intense as the world
ever saw. Saladin in Jerusalem, hear
ing of the sickness of King Richard, his
chief enemy, sends him his own physi-
clan, and from the walls of Jerusalem,
seeing King Richard afoot, sends him q
horse. With all the world looking on
the armies of Europe come within sight
of Jerusalem.
At the first glimpse of the city they
fall on their faces in reverence, and
then lift anthems Of praise. Feuds and
hatred among themselves were given up,
and Raymond and Tancred, the bitterest
rivals, embraced while tlse armies looked
oA. Then the battering rams rolled, and
the catapults swung, and the swords
thrust, and the carnage ragged. Godfrey
of Bouillon is the first to mount the wall,
and the Crusaders, q cross on every
shoulder or breast, having taken the
city, march bareheaded and barefooted
to what they suppose to be the Holy Ser
pulcher and kiss the tomb. Jerusalem
the possession of Christendom! But Sal
adm re-took the city, and for the last
session of cruel and polluted Moham-
mechanism!
Another crusade is needed to start for
Jerusalem, a crusade in this nineteenth
century greater than all those of the
past centuries put together. A crusade
in which you and will march. A cru
SADIE without weapons of death, but only
the sword of the Spirit.
Russian pilgrims lined all the roads
around the Jerusalem we visited last
winter. They had walked hundreds OF
miles, and their feet bled ON the way to
Jerusalem. Many of them had spent
their last farthing to get there, and
they had left some of those
who started with them dying or dead by
the roadside An aged woman, ex.
hausted with the long way, begged her
fellow pilgrims not to let her die until
she had seen the Holy City. AS she
came to the gate of the city she could
not take another step, but she was car,
ried in, and then said, 'sNow hold my
head up till ]. can look upon Jerusalem"
and her head'lifted, she took one look
and said, "Now | die content, / have
seen it," Some of us before we reach
the heavenly Jerusalem may be as tired
as that, but angels of mercy will help us
in, and one glimpse Of the temple of God
and the Lamb, and one good look at the
liking in his beauty" will more than
compensate for all the tolls and tears
and heartbreaks of the pilgrimage.
Hallelujah! Amen!