The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1890-11-12

Baalbec. and the art OF printing claim
ed for recent ages was practiced by the
Chinese fourteen hundred years ago,
and that our midnight lightning eX-
press rail train was foreSeen by the
prophet Nahum, when in the Bible he
wrote, "Tne chariots shall rage in the
streets, they shall jostle one against an
other in the broad ways, they shall
seem like torches. they shall run like
lightning" and our electric telegraph
was foreseen by Job, when in the Bible
he wrote. Cans. thou send lightnings
that they may so and say unto thee,
Here we are?.'" What IS that talking
10y the lightnings but the ectric tele-
graph? l do not know but that the
electric forces now being year by year
more thoroughly harneSsed may have
been employed in ages extinct, and that
the lightnings all up and down the
sky have been running around like
lost hounds to find their former master.
Embalment was more thorough
art three thousand years ago than to-
day. Dentistry, that we suppose one
of the important arts discovered in
recent centuries. is proven to be four
thousand years old by the filled teeth
Of the mummies in the museums at
Cairo, Egypt, and artificial teeth on
gold plates found by BelZoni in the
tombs of departed nations. We have
been taught that Harvey discovered the
circulation of the blood SO late as the
Seventeenth century. Oh, no! Solomon
announces it in Ecclesiastes, where first
having shown that he understood the
spinal cord, silver colored as it is, and
that it relaXes in old age-"the silver
cord be loosed,' goes on to compare the
heart to pitcher at a we'll, for the
three canals of the heart do receive the
blood like pitcher" or the pitcher be
broken at the fountain" What is that
but the circulation of the blood, found
out twenty-six hundred years before
Harvey was born? After many GEN.
turies 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
toiled on for centuries and found out
refraction or that the rays of light when
touching the earth were not straight,
but bent or curved. Why, Job knew
that when ages before in the Bible he
wrote of the light: "lt is turned as
clay to the SEAL"
BETHLEHEM OF JUDEA.
W. ORC an fhic nooop,hor
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 a palace, but covered by a barn; not
presided over by a princess, but hovered
over by a peasant girl; yet a cradle the
canopy OF which is angelic wings, and
the lullaby of which is the first Christ
mas 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 3. c. or A. D.-be-
fore Christ or after Christ. All eterni-
ty past occupied in getting ready for
this cradle, and all eternity to come to
be employed in celebrating its conse-
Quences.
l said to the tourist companies plan
ming our oriental journey, "Put us in
Bethlehem II December, the place and
the month Of our Lords BIRTH" and we
had our wish. l am the only man who
has ever attempted to tell how Bethle-
hem 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
ranuning to climb the steps, and lark
and buldnch are flooding the air with
bird orchestra But l was there in
December, a winter month. the barren
beach between the two oceans of redol-
ence. I was told l must not go there
at that season, told so before started,
told so in Egypt; the books told me so;
all travellers that consulted about it
told me 80. But was determined to
see Bethlehem the same month in which
Jesus arrived, and nothing could dis
suade me. Was | not right in wanting
to know how the Holy Land looked
when Jesus came to it? He did not
land amid flowers and song. When
the angels chanted on the famous
birth-night all the fields of Palestine
were silent. The glowing skies were
answered by gray rocks. AS Bethle-
hem stood against bleak wintry sky |
climbed up to it, as through bleak
wintry sky Jesus descended upon it.
His way down was from warmth to
chill, from bloom to barrenneSS, from
everlasting June to a sterile December.
II were going to Palestine as botan-
ist and to study the flora of the land l
would 60 in March: but l went as a
minister of Christ to study Jesus and
so l 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
p,ise, is in the shape of horseshoe,
the houses extending clear into the
prongs Of the horseshoe, the whole
scene more rough and rude than can be
imagined. Verify, Christ did not
choose a soft, genial place in which to
be born. The gate through which our
Lord entered this world was a gate Of
rock, hard. coldt gate, and the gate
through which he departed was a
swing gate of sharpened spears. We
enter a gloomy church built by Con-
stantine over the place in which Jesus
WAS born. Fifteen lamps burning day
and night and from century to century
light our way to the spot which all
authorities, Christian and Jew and
Mohammedau, agree upon as being the
place Of our SaYiour's birth, and cover
ed by marble slab, marked by silver
star sent from Vienna, and the word:
Here Jesus Christ was born OF the
Virgin Mary"
lie WAS BORN IN \ CATTLE PEN.
But standing there thought, though
this is the place of the nativity, how
different the surroundings Of the win
try night in which Jesus came! at
-. j. !: = IN 30 - la nan