Year: 1867




The Holy Land-Eirst day in Pal


estine.


BALDwINsvILLE, ,GALILEE, Sept. '67.


The real name of this place is Cesa-
rea Phillippi. but call it Baldwinsville
because it sounds better, and can recol
lect it easier. One of the drawbacks to
this country is its distressing names that
nobody can get the hang Of You NAV
tra-el here month, and when you get
through you cannot tell where you have
been to save your life, unless you are a
living, breathing geography. You may
make stagger of pronouncing these
names. but they will bring any Chris
tian to grief that tries to spell them. l
have an idea that if | can only simplify
the nomenclature of this country, it will
be the greatest service to Americans who
may travel here in the future. Galilee
is well enough, don't propose to change
that; but l can't accept Cesarea Phil
lippi-it uses up too much alphabet, and
there is very little music in it, anyhow
Baldwinsville is much better.


The ruins here are not very interest
ing. There are the massive walls of
great square building that was once the
citadel; there are many ponderous old
arches so smotbered with debris that they
barely project above the ground; there
are heavy-walled sewers, through which
the beautiful brook of which Jordan rs
born still runs; i'll the hillside are the
substructions of a costly marble temple
that Herod the Great built here-patches
of its handsome mosaic floors still re-
main there is quaint old stone bridge
that was here before Herod's time, may
be; scattered everywhere, in the paths
and in the woods, are Corinthian capi-
tails, broken porphyry pillars, and little
fragments of sculpture; and up yondrr
in the precipice where the fountain
gushes ont are wtll-worn Greek inscrip-
tions over inches in the rock where in
ancient times the Greeks, and after them
the Romans, worshiped the Sylvan God
Pan. But trees and bushes grow above
many of these ruins now the miserable
huts of a little gang of fifty arabs are
perched upon the broken masonry of
antiquity. The whole place has stu
pid, rural look about it, and one can
hardly bring himself to believe that
busy, substantially-built city once ex-
listed here, even two thousand years ago
The place was, nevertheless, the SCENE of
an event whose effects have added page
after page and volume after volume to
the worlds history; for in this place
Christ stood when he said to Peter:


"Fhou art Peter; and upon this rock
will | build my church, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it. And l
will give unto thee the keys of the King
kom of Heaven; and whatsoever thou
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in
heaven, and whatsoever lou shalt loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven"


The memorable words l have quoted
give to this ruined city about all the in
terest it possesses to people of the pre-
sent day.


1t Seems curious enough to us to be
standing OH ground that was once actual
ly pressed by the feet of the Savior.
The situation is suggestive of reality
and tangibility that seem at variance
with the vagueness, mystery and ghostli-
ness that one naturally attaches to the
character of God. / can not comprr-
hend Yet that l am sitting where a God
has stood, and looking upon the brook
and the mountains that God looked upon,
and am surrounded by dusky men and
women whose ancestors saw Him, and
even talked with Him, face to face, and
carelessly, just as they would have done
with any other stranger. l can not COM
prehend this; the gods of my under
standing have been always hidden in
clouds and very far away.


THE PEOPLE THE DISCIPLES KNEW.


This morning, during breakfast, the
usual assemblage of squalid humanity
sat patiently without the charmed circle
of the camp and waited for such crumbs
as pity might bestow upon their misery.
There We're old and young, brown skin
ned and yellow, Some of the men were
tall and stalwart--for one sees no
where such splendid looking men as here
in the East-but all the women and
children looked worn and sad, and dis
tressed with hunger. They reminded
me much of Indians did these people.
They had but little clothing, but such
as they had was fanciful in character
and fantastical in its arrangement. ANY
little absurd gegaw or gimcrack they had
disposed in such a way as to make it at
tract attention most readily. They sat
in silence, and, with tireltss patience,
watched our every motion with that vile,
accomplishing impoliteness which il so
truly Indian, and which makes a white
man so nervous and uncomfortable and
savage that he wants to exterminate the
whole tribe.


These people about us had other Pc
culiaritits, which l have noticed in the
noble red man, too; they carried passen-
gers in their hair, they were infested
with feas, and the dirt had caked on
them till it amounted to bark.


The little children were in a pitiable
condition-they all had sore eyes, and
We're otherwise afflicted in various ways.
They say that hardly native child in
all the East is free from sore ewes, and
that thousands of them go blind in one
eye or both every year. l think this
must be so, for l see plenty of blind
people every day, and l don't remember
seeing any children that hadn't sore
eyes. And, would you suppose that an
American mother could sit for an hour,
with her child in her arms, and let
thousand flies roost upon its eyes all
that time undisturbed? =? l see that eve
ry day. 1t makes my flesh creep. Yes
terday We met woman riding on a little
jackass, and she had little child in her
arms; honestly, thought the child had
goggles on as we approached, and l
wondered how its mother could afford SO