507. Second Day in Palestine

Second Day in Palestine

Gal_1:18 : ’93I went up to Jerusalem.’94

My second day in the Holy Land. We are in Joppa. It is six o’92clock in the morning, but we must start early, for by night we are to be in Jerusalem, and that city is forty-one miles away. We may take camel or horse or carriage. As today will be our last opportunity in Palestine for taking the wheel, we choose that. The horses, with harness tasseled and jingling, are hitched; and, with a dragoman in coat of many colors seated in front, we start on a road which unveils within twelve hours enough to think of for all time and all eternity. Farewell Mediterranean with such a blue as no one but the divine Chemist could mix, and such a fire of morning glow, as only the divine Illuminator could kindle! Hail! mountains of Ephraim and Juda whose ramparts of rock we shall mount in a few hours; for modern engineers can make a road anywhere, and without piling Ossa upon Pelion, those giants can scale the heavens.

We start out of the city amid barricades of cacti on each side. Not cacti in boxes two or three feet high, but cacti higher than the top of the carriages’97a plant that has more swords for defense, considering the amount of beauty it can exhibit, than anything created. We passed out amid about four hundred gardens, seven or eight acres to the garden, from which, at the right seasons, are plucked oranges, lemons, figs, olives, citron, and pomegranates, and which hold up their censers of perfume before the Lord in perpetual praise. We meet great processions of camels loaded with kegs of oil and with fruits, and some wealthy Mohammedan with four wives’97three too many. The camel is a proud, mysterious, solemn, ancient, ungainly, majestic, and ridiculous shape, stalking out of the past. The driver, with his whip, taps the camel on the foreleg, and he kneels to take you as a rider. But when he rises, hold fast or you will fall off backward as he puts his forefeet in standing posture, and then you will fall off in front as his back legs straighten out. But the inhabitants are used to his ways; although I find the riders often dismount and walk as though to rest themselves. Better stand out of the path of the camel; he stops for nothing and seems not to look down; and in the street I saw a child by the stroke of a camel’92s front foot, hurled seven or eight feet along the ground.

Here we meet people with faces and arms and hands tattooed, as in all lands sailors tattoo their arms with some favorite ship or admired face. It was to this habit of tattooing among the Orientals that God refers in a figure, when he says of his Church: ’93I have graven thee on the palms of my hands.’94

Many of these regions are naturally sandy, but by irrigation they are made fruitful; and, as in this irrigation, the brooks and rivers are turned this way, and that, to water the gardens or farms, so the Bible says, ’93The king’92s heart is in the hands of the Lord, and he turneth it as the rivers of water are turned whithersoever he will.’94

As we pass out and on we find about eight hundred acres belonging to the Universal Israelitish Alliance. Montefiore, the Israelitish centenarian and philanthropist, and Rothschild, the banker, and others of the large-hearted have paid the passage to Palestine for many Israelites, and they have also set apart lands for their culture; and it is only a beginning of the fulfilment of divine prophecy, when these people shall take possession of the Holy Land. The road from Joppa to Jerusalem, and all the roads leading from Nazareth and Galilee, we saw lined with processions of Jews, going to the sacred places, either on holy pilgrimage, or as settlers. All the fingers of Providence now-a-days are pointing toward that resumption of Palestine by the Israelites. I do not take it that the prospered Israelites of other lands are to go there. They would be foolish to leave their prosperities in our American cities, where they are among our best citizens, and cross two seas to begin life over again in a strange land. But the outrages heaped upon them in various parts of the world will quadruple and centuple the procession of Israelites to Palestine. Facilities for getting there will be multiplied, not only in the railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem, to which I referred last Sabbath as being built; but permission for a road from Damascus to the Bay of Acre has been obtained, and that will connect with Joppa, and make one great ocean-shore railroad. So the railroad from Jerusalem to Joppa, and from Joppa to Damascus, will soon bring all the Holy Land within a few hours of connection. Jewish colonization societies in England and Russia are gathering money for the transportation of the Israelites to Palestine, and for the purchase for them of lands and farming implements; and so many desire to go that it is decided by lot as to which families shall go first. They were God’92s chosen people at the first, and he has promised to bring them back to their home, and there is no power in one thousand or five thousand years to make God forget his promises. Those who are prospered in other lands will do well to stay where they are. But let the Israelites who are ostracized and attacked and persecuted turn their faces towards the rising sun of their deliverance. God will gather in that distant land those of that race who have been maltreated, and he will blast with the lightnings of his omnipotence those lands on either side of the Atlantic, which have been the instrument of annoyance and harm to that Jewish race to which belonged Abraham and David and Joshua and Baron Hirsch and Montefiore and Paul the Apostle and Mary the Virgin and Jesus Christ the Lord.

On the way across the plain of Sharon we meet many veiled women. It is not respectable for them to go unveiled, and it is a veil that is so hung as to make them hideous. A man may not even see the face of his wife until after betrothal, or engagement of marriage. Hence the awful mistakes and the unhappy homes to be found there. God has made the face an index of character, and honesty or dishonesty usually is demonstrated in the features. I do not see what God made a fair face for, if it were not to be looked at. But here come the crowds of disfigured women down the road on their way to Joppa, bundles of sticks for firewood on their heads. They started at three o’92clock in the morning to get the fuel. They stagger under the burdens. Whipped and beaten will some of them be if their bundle of sticks is too small. All that is required for divorcement is for a man to say to his wife: ’93Be off, I don’92t want you any more.’94 Woman a slave in all lands, except those in which the Gospel of Christ makes her a queen. And yet in Christian countries there are women posing as skeptics, and men with families deriding the only religion that makes sacred and honorable the names of wife, mother, daughter and sister.

What is that? Town of Ramleh, birthplace, residence and tomb of Samuel, the glorious prophet. Near-by, Tower of Forty Martyrs, called because that number of disciples perished there for Christ’92s sake; but if towers had been built for all those, who in the time of war as in time of peace have fallen on this road during the ages past, you might almost walk on turrets from Joppa to Jerusalem.

Now we pass guard-houses, which are castles of chopped straw and mud where at night and partly through the day armed men dwell and keep the bandits off travelers. In the caves of these mountains dwell men to whom massacre would be high play and a purse with a few pennies would be compensation enough for the struggle that the savage might have with the wayfarer. There is only one other defense that amounts to much in these lands and that is the law of hospitality. If you can get an Arab to eat with you, if only one mouthful, you are sure of his protection, and that has been so from age to age. The Lord’92s Supper was founded on that custom, a special friendship after partaking food together. To that custom Walter Scott refers in his immortal ’93Talisman,’94 where Saladin, with one stroke of the sword strikes the head from an enemy who stands in Saladin’92s tent with a cup in his hand and before he has time to put it to his lip, and does it so suddenly that the body of his enemy, beheaded, stands for a moment after the beheading, with the cup still in his right hand. After the cup had been sipped it would have been impossible, according to the laws of Oriental hospitality, to give the fatal blow.

The only lands where it is safe to travel unarmed are Christian lands. Human life is more highly valued and personal rights are better respected, and I am glad to believe that in our country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, there is not a place today where a man is not safer without a pistol than with one. But all through our journeys in Palestine we required firearms. While the only weapon I had on my person was a New Testament, we went through the region where I said to the dragoman: ’93David, are you armed?’94 and he said, ’93Yes;’94 and I said, ’93Are those fifteen or twenty muleteers and baggagemen and attendants armed?’94 and he said, ’93Yes,’94 and I felt safer.

On we roll through the Plain of Sharon. Here grew the rose after which Christ was named, Rose of Sharon, celebrated in all Christendom and throughout all ages. There has been controversy as to what flower it was. Some say it was a marsh-mallow that thrives here, and some claim this honor for the narcissus, and some for the blue iris, and some for the scarlet anemone, for you must know that this Plain of Sharon is a rolling ocean of color when the Spring breezes move across it. But leaving the botanists in controversy as to what it is, I would take the most aromatic and beautiful of them all and twist them into a garland for the ’93Name which is above every name.’94

Yonder, a little to the north, as we move on is the Plain of Ono. The Bible mentions it again and again. The village standing on this Plain of Ono is a mud village. Two great basins of rock catch the rains for the people. Of more importance in olden time than in modern time was this Plain of Ono. But as the dragoman announced it, and in the Bible I read of it, I was reminded of the vast multitude of people who now dwell in the Plain of Ono. They are, by their nervous constitution or by their lack of faith in God, always in the negative. Will you help to build a church? Oh, no! Will you start out in some new Christian enterprise? Oh, no! Do you think the world is getting any better? Oh, no! They lie down in the path of all good movements, sanitary, social, political and religious. They harness their horses with no traces to pull ahead, but only breeching straps to hold back. For all Christian work I would not give for a thousand of them a single clipped ten-cent piece. They are in the Plain of Oh, no! May the Lord multiply the numbers of those who, when anything good is undertaken, are found to live in the Plain of Oh, yes! Will you support this new charity? Oh, yes! Do you think that this victim of evil habit can be reformed? Oh, yes! Are you willing to do anything, whether obscure or resounding, for the welfare of the Church and the salvation of a ruined world? Oh, yes! But I am sorry to say that the most populous plain in all the earth today is the Plain of Ono.

Here now we come where stood the fields in which Samson fired the foxes. The foxes are no rarity in this land. I counted at one time twenty or thirty of them in one group and the cry all along the line was ’93Foxes! Look at the foxes!’94 and at night they sometimes bark until all attempts to sleep are an absurdity. Those I saw and heard in Palestine might have been descendants of the very foxes that Samson employed for an appalling incendiarism. The wealth of that land was in the harvests, and it was harvest-time and the straw was dry. Three hundred foxes are caught and tied in couples by some wire or incombustible cord which the flames cannot divide, and fire-brands are fastened to those couples of foxes, and the affrighted creatures are let loose and run everywhither 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 ’93Fire!’94 And in the burnt pathway walk Hunger and Want and Desolation.

All this for spite. And some theologians learn one thing, and some another. But I learn from it that a great man may sometimes stoop to a very mean piece of business, and that if 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 everywhither, kindling political fires, fires of religious controversy, fires of hate, world-wide fires, and whole harvests of righteousness perish. It took the hard work of multitudes on all these plains of Palestine for months and months to rear the vine and raise the corn, but it took only three hundred worthless foxes one night to blaze all into ashes.

Brace up your nerves now, that you may look while I point them out. Yonder is Kirjath-Jearim, where the ark of God stayed until David took it to Jerusalem. Yonder John the Baptist was born. Yonder is Emmaus, where Christ walked with the disciples at eventide. Here are men ploughing, only one handle to the plough, showing the accuracy of Christ’92s 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: ’93No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom.’94 The ox is urged on by a wooden stick pointed with sharp iron, and the ox knows enough not to kick, for he would only hurt himself instead of breaking the goad. And the Bible refers to that when it says to Saul: ’93It is hard for thee to kick against the goads.’94

Here is the Valley of Ajalon, famous for Joshua’92s pursuit of the five kings and the lunar arrest. And in imagination I see the moon in daytime 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’92s time nor since then stopped a moment in their march, halted at Joshua’92s command, it was a scene enough to make the universe shiver: ’93Moon! stand thou still in the Valley of Ajalon!’94 At another time we will see the sun stop above Gibeon, but now we have only to do with the moon, and you must remember that it was more of an orb then than it is now. It is a burnt-out world now, a dead world now, an 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 I speak, the moon was probably a living world, yet it halted at the wave of Joshua’92s finger, ’93Stand thou still!’94 Do not budge an inch until Joshua finishes those five kings, who are there tumbling over the rocks, sword of man slashing them hailstones out of the sky pelting them.

And there is the Cavern of Makkedah, where they fled 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 well to examine that cavern, for within a few hours it became three things which no other cave ever was’97fortress, 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 over all the surrounding country, and long before the travelers came up to him the plan for the taking of their money or their life, or both, was consummated. He one day found a company of monks who would not pay, and he smothered them to death in a 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 brigandage and assassination. So late as when our eminent and beloved American, William C. Prime, passed through, Abou Gosh, the scoundrelly Bedouin, sat at his doorway, smoking his pipe. His descendants live in this village, and probably are no more honest than their distinguished ancestor; but marauding and murder are not as safe a business now as when all this route to Jerusalem was subject to outrages pandemoniac.

Here we pass the village of Latrun, home of the penitent thief, the village, a few straggling 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 burglary, 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 transfixed posture on the cross to the bosom of a forgiving God.

Now we come to the brook Elah, from which little David took the smooth stones with which he prostrated Goliath. There is a bridge spanning the ravine, but at the season we crossed there was not a 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 waters through all the ages. There is where David armed himself. He walked around and 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 escapes the first, he will not escape the whole five. The topography of the place so corresponds with the Bible story that I could see the memorable fight go on. It is the only fight I ever did watch. Here were two champions, the one God-appointed, the other Satan-appointed; and deciding the destiny of a nation, the destiny of a world. It was a Marathon, an Arbela, a Blenheim, a Sedan, concentered into two right arms. Here are two ridges of mountains five hundred feet high, the Philistines on one ridge, the Israelites on the other ridge. The fight is in the valley between, at that season shaded, and sweet with terebinth and acacia. David the champion for the Israelites, Goliath the champion for the Philistines. David undersized and almost effeminate, only a mouthful for Goliath, who was nearly ten feet high.

They advance to meet each other, but the Bible says that David made the first step forward. Nearer and nearer they come, but I do not think David will wait until he comes within reach of Goliath’92s sword, for that would be fatal, and David has a weapon with which he can fight at long range. Closer and closer they come, but David advances the more rapidly. ’93Come to me,’94 said the giant, ’93and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field.’94 You see Goliath going to give David for a banquet to the vulture and jackal. He, the mountain of flesh, will fall over on that little hillock of humanity. I hear him laugh through the mouth-piece of his helmet. He will toast the little whiffet on the top of his long sword. He will call all the crows for a breakfast. ’93Come to me, you contemptible little fellow, and I will make quick work with you. The idea that a five-footer should dare to come out against a ten-footer! Let the two armies looking down from the ridges watch me!’94 David responded: ’93I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts.’94 Aha, that is the right kind of battle-shout. ’93In the name of the Lord of Hosts!’94 How that cry rings through the Wady-es-Sumpt! He who fights in that spirit wins the day. The insignificant Israelitish lad enlarges into omnipotent proportions. The moment to strike has come. David takes his sling with a stone in it and whirls it ’91round and ’91round his head, until he has put the weapon into sufficient momentum, and then, taking sure aim, hurls it. The giant throws up his hands and reels back and falls. The stone sank into his forehead. That was the only available point of attack. But how about the helmet on his head? Did the stone that David flung crush through the helmet? No; an old rabbi says he thinks that when Goliath scoffed at David, the giant so suddenly and contemptuously jerked up his head that the helmet fell off. That is like enough. David saw the bare forehead, a foot high, and aimed at the centre of it, and the skull cracked and broke in like an eggshell, and the ground shook as this great oak of a military chieftain struck it. Huzzah for David!

But we must hasten on, for the danger now is that night will be upon us before we reach Jerusalem. Oh! we must see it before sundown. We are climbing the hills which are terraced with olive groves, uplands rising above uplands, until we come to an immensity of barrenness, gray rocks above gray rocks, where neither tree nor leaf nor bush nor grass-blade can grow. The horses stumble and slip and pull till it seems the harness must break. Solemnity and awe take possession of us. Though during part of the day jocularity had reigned, now no one spoke a word except to say to the dragoman, ’93Tell us when you get the first glimpse of the city.’94 I never had such high expectations of seeing any place as of seeing Jerusalem. I think my feelings may have been slightly akin to that of the Christian just about to enter the heavenly Jerusalem. My ideas of the earthly Jerusalem were bewildering. Had I not seen pictures of it? Oh, yes; but they only increased the bewilderment. They were taken from a variety of standpoints. If twenty artists attempt to sketch Brooklyn or New York or London or Jerusalem, they will plant their cameras at different places, and take as many different pictures. But in a few minutes I shall see the sacred city. Over another shoulder of the hill we go, and nothing in sight but rocks and mountains, and awful gulches between them, which make the head swim if you look down.

On and up, on and up, until the lathered and smoking horses are reined in, and the dragoman rises in front, and points eastward, crying, ’93Jerusalem!’94 It was mightier than an electric shock. We all rose. There it lay, the prize of nations, the terminus of famous pilgrimages, the object of Roman and crusading wars, and for it Assyrians had fought, and the Egyptians had fought, and the world had fought; the place which the Queen of Sheba visited, and Richard, Coeur de Lion had conquered. Home of Solomon, home of Ezekiel, home of Jeremiah, home of Isaiah, home of Saladin. Mount Zion of David’92s heart-break, and Mount Moriah, where the sacrifices smoked; Mount of Olives, where Jesus preached, and Gethsemane, where he agonized, and Golgotha, where he died, and the Holy Sepulchre, where he was buried. Oh, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Greatest city on earth, and type of the city celestial!

After I have been ten thousand years in heaven, the memory of that first view from the rocks, on the afternoon of December 2d, will be as vivid as now. An Arab on a horse that was like a whirlwind, bitted and saddled and spurred, its mane and flanks jet as the night’97and there are no such horsemen as Arab horsemen’97had come far out to meet us, and invite us to his hotel inside the gates. But arrangements had been made for us to stay at a hotel outside the gates. In the dusk of evening we halted in front of the place and entered, but I said, ’93No, thank you for your courteous reception, but I must sleep tonight inside the gates of Jerusalem. I would rather have the poorest place inside the gates than the best place outside.’94

So we remounted our coach and moved on amid a clamor of voices, and between camels grunting with great beams and timbers on their backs, brought in for building purposes’97for it is amazing how much a camel can carry’97until we came to what is called the Joppa Gate of Jerusalem. It is about forty feet wide, twenty feet deep, and sixty feet high. There is a sharp turn just after you have entered, so planned as to make the entrance of armed enemies the more difficult. On the structure of these gates the safety of Jerusalem depended, and all the Bible writers used them for illustrations. Within a five-minute walk of the gate we entered, David wrote: ’93Enter into thy gates with thanksgiving,’94 ’93Lift up your heads, O ye gates!’94 ’93The Lord loveth the gates of Zion,’94 ’93Open to me the gates of righteousness.’94 And Isaiah wrote, ’93Go through, go through the gates.’94 And the captive of Patmos wrote, ’93The city had twelve gates.’94 Having passed the gate, we went on through the narrow streets, dimly lighted, and passed to our halting-place, and sat down by the window, from which we could see Mount Zion, and said, ’93Here we are at last, in the capital of the whole earth.’94 And thoughts of the past and the future rushed through my soul in quick succession, and I thought of that old hymn, sung by so many ascending spirits:

Jerusalem, my happy home,

Name ever dear to me!

When shall my labors have an end,

In joy and peace and thee?

When shall these eyes thy heav’92n-built walls

And pearly gates behold?

Thy bulwarks with salvation strong,

And streets of shining gold?

And so, with our hearts full of gratitude to God for journeying mercies all the way from Joppa to Jerusalem, and with bright anticipation of our entrance into the shining gate of the heavenly city when earthly journeys are over, my second day in Palestine is ended.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage