Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1890-12-01

With such n father as Herod the
Great you are not surprised that this
Herod Antipas, whose palace stood on
the banks of this lake we now sail, was
a combination of wolf, reptile and by
ena. while the Christ who walked
wonder banks and sailed these waters
was so good that almost every rood of
this scenery is associated with some
wise word or some kindly deed, and all
literature and all art and all earth and
all heaven are put to the utmost effort
in trying to express how grand and
glorious and lovely he was and is and
is to be- The Christly and Herodic
characters as different as the two lakes
we visit and not far apart, Galilee and
the Dead sea; the one flower banked
and the other bituminous and blasted;
the one lowered over by the mercy of
Christ, the other blasted by the wrath
of God; the one full of finny tribes
sporting in the clear depths, the other
forever lifeless; the waters of the one
sweet and pleasant to the taste, the
other bitter and sharp and disgusting.
Awful Dead sea- Glorious Gennesa-
ret
NO DESIRE TO SHOOT ANY ONE.
We will not attempt to cross to the
eastern side of this lake, as | had
thought to do, for those regions are in
habited by thieving and murderous
race and one must go thoroughly
armed. and as | never shot anyone and
have no ambition to be shot, I said,
LET US stay by the western shore"
But we look over to the hills of Ga
dara, on the other side, down which
two thousand swine after being pos
sessed by tie devil ran into the lake,
and bringing down on Christ for per-
.r,ittines it thn wrath of all tho stock
raisers of that country, because of this
running of the pork business You see
that Satan is a spirit of bad taste Why
did he not say: Let me go into those
birds, whole fiocks of which fly over
Galilee. No; that would have been
too high. why not let me go into
the sheep which wander over these
hills" No; that would have been too
gentle. Rather let me go into these
swine. | want to be with the denizens
of the mire. | want to associate with
the inhabitants Of the filth Great is
mud | prefer bristles to wings.
would rather root than fly. I like
snout better than wing"
Infidelity SCOTS at the idea that those
swine should have run into the lake.
But it was quite natural that under
the heat and burning of that demoniac
possession they would start for the wa
ter to get cooled off, Would that all
the swine thus possessed had plunged
to the same drowning, for to this day
the descendants of some of those por-
cine creatures retain the demons, and
as the devils were cast out of man
into them, they now affiict the human
race with the devils of scrofula that |
comes from eating the unclean meat |
The healthiest people on earth are the |
Israelites. because they follow the bill |
of fare which God in the book of LIE |
viticus gave to the human race, and |
our splendid French doctor Pasteur
and OUR glorious German doctor Koch |
may go on with their good work of |
killing parasites in the human system; |
but until the world cOrrects its diet and |
goes back to the divine regulation at |
the beginning the human race will |
continue to be possessed of the devils |
of microbe and parasite. But 1 did |
not mean to cross over to the eastern |
side Of Lake GaHIee even in discussion. |
PULL AWAY, We OARSMEN!
Pull away, ye Arab oarsmen! And |
we come along the shore near by which |
stand great precipices of brown and |
rod an1 ,rrov LIMESTONE INV l
basalt, in the sides of which are vast
caverns, sometimes the hiding place of |
bandits, and sometimes the home of
honest shepherds, and sometimes the
dwelling place of pigeons and vultures
and eagles. During one of Herods |
wars his enemies hid in these mountain
c<sverns, and the sides were too steep |
for Herod's army to descend, and the
attempt to climb in the face of armed |
men would have called down exter-
mination. SO Herod had great cages
of wood, irOnbOund, made and filed |
them with soldiers and let them down
from the top of the precipices until
they gave signal chat they were level |
with the caverns, and then from these
cages they stepped out to the mouth of |
the caverns and having set enough
grass and wood on fire to fill the cav
erns with smoke and strangulatiOn, the |
hidden people would come forth to die; |
and if not coming forth voluntarily, |
Herod's men would pull them out with
long iron hooks and JOsephus says that
one father rather than submit to the
attacking army flung his wife and seven
children down the precipice and then
leaped after them to his own death.
Now, We Arab OarsInen, row on with
swifter stroke, for we want before noon
to land at Capernaum, the three years
home of Jesus. But before arrival there
we are to have a new experience. The |
lake that had been a smooth surface
begins to break up into roughness. The
air which all the morning made our sail
almost useless suddenly takes hold of
our boat with a grip astonishing, and
our poor craft begins to roll and pitch
and tumble, and in five minutes we
pass from Il calm to violence. The
contour of this lake among the hills Is
an invitation to hurricanes. [ used to
wonder why it was that on SO limited a
OOc1O
Christ's time did not put back to shore
when a hurricane was coming. l won
der no more On that lake an atmos-
pheric fury gives no warning, and the
change we saw in five minutes made me
feel that the boat in which Christ sailed
may have been skillfully managed when
the tempest struck it and the wild i'm
Fortunate cry went up, Lord save us
or we perish!" l had all along that
morning been reading from the New
Testament the story of occurrences on
and around that lake But our Bible
was closed now, and it was as much as
we could do to hold fast and wish for
the land.
If the winds and the waves had con
tinued to increase in violence the fol
lowing fifteen minutes in the same RAJ
ito as in the first five, and we had
been still at their mercy, our bones
would have been bleaching in the bot
tom of La Ike Genne Saret instead of our