The procession of kings, conquerors, poets and immortal men and women passes before me as I stand here. Among the throng are Solomon, David and Christ. Yes, through these streets and amid these surroundings rode Solomon, that wonder of splendor and wretchedness. It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on that man. It wove its brightest flowers into his garland. It set its richest gems in his coronet. It pressed the rarest wine to his lip. It robed him in the purest purple and embroidery. It cheered him with the sweetest music in that land of harps. It greeted him with the gladdest laughter that ever leaped from mirth's lip. It sprinkled his cheek with spray from the brightest fountains. Royalty had no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, flowers no sweetness, song no melody, light no radiance, upholstery no gorgeousness, waters no gleam, birds in plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, architecture no grandeur, but was all his. Across the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with tufts of camphire from Engedi, fell the long shadows of trees brought from distant forests. Fish pools, fed by artificial channels that brought the streams from hills far away, were perpetually ruffled with fins, and golden scales shot from water-cave to water-cave with endless dive and swirl, attracting the gaze of foreign potentates; birds that had been brought from foreign aviaries glanced and fluttered among the foliage, and called to their mates far beyond the sea. From the royal stables there came up the neighing of twelve thousand horses, standing in blankets of Tyrian purple, chewing their bits over troughs of gold, waiting for the king's order to be brought out in front of the palace, when the official dignitaries would leap into the saddle for some grand parade, or, harnessed to some of the fourteen hundred chariots of the king, the fiery chargers with flaunting mane and throbbing nostril would make the earth jar with the tramp of hoofs and the thunder of wheels. While within and without the palace you could not think of a single luxury that could be added, or of a single splendor that could be kindled; down on the banks of the sea the dry-docks of Ezion-geber rang with the hammers of the shipwrights who were constructing larger vessels for a still wider commerce; for all lands and climes were to be robbed to make up Solomon's glory. No rest till his keels shall cut every sea, his axemen hew every forest, his archers strike every rare wing, his fishermen whip every stream, his merchants trade in every bazaar, his name be honored by every tribe; and royalty shall have no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, song no melody, light no radiance, waters no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, upholstery no gorgeousness, architecture no grandeur, but it was all his.
To say that Solomon was a millionaire gives but a very imperfect idea of the property he inherited from David his father. He had at his command gold and silver in amounts that stagger all arithmetic. About his exact wealth authors have differed, but all agree that it was far ahead of any other man's possessions, beyond all modern millionairdom. The Queen of Sheba made him a nice little present of seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and Hiram made him a present of the same amount. If he had lost the value of a whole realm out of his pocket, it would have hardly been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up. He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost everything. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth out of the wall, and about birds and beasts and fishes. No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on hunter's trappings, and went out with his arrows to bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then with his fishing apparatus he went down to the stream to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into the forest and found the rarest specimens of flowers; and then he came back to his study and wrote books about zoology, the science of animals; about ichthyology, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science of birds; about botany, the science of plants.
Arrived in Jerusalem, the first place we seek is Mount Calvary.
This noonday hour on Golgotha is the most solemn and overwhelming hour of my life. I tried to read two of the Bible accounts of the Crucifixion, but it was done with many pauses. I defy any one on this spot to read with firm voice and consecutive utterance the description given by Luke and John of the mightiest scene of all the ages which was enacted here. Our group lying down on the place where the three crosses stood, I read to them, and I think the prayer of the penitent malefactor became the prayer of each one of us. "Lord, remember me." It was about this hour that the sun was darkened and midnight fell on midnoon. There can be no doubt that this hill above the place heretofore called "Jeremiah's Grotto," is the hill on which Christ was put to death. The late General Gordon has made a mold of this hill, and the opinion being adopted by Dearly all who visit Jerusalem in these days is that the hill on which we now sit was the place of the Great Tragedy. The New Testament calls the locality of execution, Golgotha, or the "Place of a skull" I care not from what direction you look at this hill, you recognize the shape of a human skull - you have but to feel of your own cranium to realize the contour of Calvary. The caverns a little way beneath the top suggest eyeless sockets. The grotto underneath is also the shape of the inside of a skull. This hill is the only hill anywhere near Jerusalem that corresponds with the Bible description of being skull-shaped. We have inspired authority for saying that Christ was crucified outside the gate. This hill is just outside the Damascus Gate. Moreover, all traditions agree that this hill I speak of was the place where malefactors in olden time were put to death, and Christ was executed as a malefactor. The Bible lets us know that the Hill of Calvary was near a great thoroughfare, the people passing by "wagging their heads." This hill was then, as it is now, beside a great thoroughfare. The arguments in behalf of this particular hill as the place of the Lord's violent death are conclusive. In pamphlets and books those arguments are now appearing, and all intelligent people will yet agree upon this "Place of a skull" as the centre from which continents have been touched and from which all the world will yet be moved . So certain am I of this that today with my own hands I have rolled down from this hill a stone which I shall take to America as a memorial stone for my new church now building. That stone placed on top of a stone from Mount Sinai, for the obtaining of which camels are now crossing the Desert, will, after all the lips now living shall have become speechless, preach with two lips of stone the Law and the Gospel.
What a place of interest is Jerusalem, whichever way we look. It is the most sacred city of our planet. There is much squalor here now, but the present is, in my mind, overwhelmed with the past.
Glad that we came now instead of some years hence, when much of the religious romance will have been banished forever. A banker of Joppa, assisted by others, is about to begin to build a railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem. When this railroad is done, the steam whistle will be heard at Joppa, and the conductor's cry, "All aboard for Jerusalem!" Then branch roads will be built and the cry will be "Twenty minutes for dinner at Nazareth," "Change cars for Damascus," "All out for the Grand Trunk to Nineveh," and camel and mule and dragoman will go their way, and lightning wheel will be substituted for hoof and diligence!
Now it is Monday morning, and we are on the way to Jerusalem. Along the route I am amazed beyond expression at the boldness and jaggedness of the scenery of the Holy Land. I expected to see it rough, but not Alpinian and Sierra Nevadian in grandeur. The hills are amphitheatres, piled-up galleries of gray rock, with intervals of soil brown and maroon, until the eye and head and heart surrender, and the lips that for a long time were exclamatory become speechless.
Before sundown we will see Jerusalem. I never had such high expectations of seeing any place as of seeing the Holy City. I found myself singing "Jerusalem, my happy home," while dressing myself this morning. I think my feelings may be slightly akin to that of the Christian just about to enter the Heavenly Jerusalem. My ideas regarding the earthly Jerusalem are bewildering. Have I not seen pictures of it? Oh yes, but they have only increased the bewilderment. They were taken from a variety of standpoints. If twenty artists attempt to picture Brooklyn or New York, they will plant their cameras at different places and take as many different pictures. I must see the city with my own eyes. I must walk around about it, and "tell the towers thereof."
We this morning disembarked where Jonah embarked. How vividly now the story comes to mind! God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and, declining that call, he came here to Joppa. I have been consulting some weeks past with tourist companies as to how I could take Nineveh on this trip. They have not encouraged me to go. It is a most tedious route and a desert. Now I see an additional reason why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh. He not only revolted because of the disagreeable message he was called to deliver at Nineveh, but because it was a long way and rough and bandit-infested. So he came here to Joppa and took ship. But alas for the disastrous voyage. Why people should doubt the story of Jonah and the whale is more of a mystery than the Bible event itself. The same thing has occurred a thousand times. The Lord always has a whale waiting outside the harbor for a man who starts in the wrong direction. Recreant Jonah! I do not wonder that even the whale was sick of him.
Now the sun is sinking behind the hills, and my first day in Palestine is closing. Never will I forget Joppa, the city by the sea, city of architecturaled hill; city where Dorcas immortalized her needle and conquered death on her own pillow; and city where the two dreams of Peter and Cornelius met: and where Napoleon on the retreat had his sick soldiers poisoned because he could not take them down through Egypt; city at whose harbor floated the timber rafts, for two temples, the ox-teams drawing through these streets the cedars for Jerusalem.
To-day I have seen floating the American flag, the English flag, the Russian flag, the Turkish flag, and the Mohammedan dropping his forehead to the earth in devotion, and all nations on the streets of one of the strangest cities I ever beheld.
This morning for the first time I have seen a man "take up his bed and walk." He had slept out of doors, and now he rolls together a blanket and pillow and a mattress, with a cord binds them securely, and then shoulders the bundle which he easily carries away.
Glory to God in the highest, we have arrived at Joppa. Last night we made our exit from Egypt and have come through the sea dry-shod, and are now about to enter the "Promised Land," through the gates of Joppa. The sea is as smooth as a polished floor, although the harbor has the worst reputation for shipwrecks. The guide-books and all the tourists have prophesied a terrible debarkation at this place. The bottom of this harbor, they tell us, is strewn with human bones. Fifteen years ago a boat with twenty-seven pilgrims went down. But we personally know nothing against the harbor of Joppa. Hardly a ripple on the sea. Floods of sunshine. May all the rough stories about death prove in our cases as untrue, and our entrance into the promised land of heaven be as placid! May it be a radiant harbor! We are ashore and are met by people of many nationalities. While I am writing this, the air is full of fragrance, gardens all a-bloom though the first of December, and we are surrounded by acacia, tamarisk, oleander, palm, mulberry, century plant and orange groves, the oranges either ripe or ripening, the orange tree in March having both fruit and blossom, and all the year round in foliage, so that it fulfills the prophecy, "Their leaf also shall not wither."
On the back of hills Joppa is lifted toward the skies. It is as picturesque as it is quaint, and as much unlike any city we have ever seen as though it were in another world, Jupiter or Saturn or Mars. It comes out into the sea to meet one so that I felt like shouting to it in salutation from the deck of the steamer.
Now we are passing through Goshen, the land into which Pharaoh turned Jacob's cattle. It is still flowing with milk and honey. Where the grass ends the crops begin. Cattle browsing, camels laden on the way to the markets, palm trees and cactus, acacia and sycamore, line the way. Some of the dark-faced farmers gathering the old crops, others planting for new crops. "So the ploughman overtakes the reaper." But this verdant and foliaged farm scene is surrounded by desert, and into that we pass and arrive at Tel-el-Kebir, the great battlefield where the English, under Wolseley, and the Egyptians met, and from which field the only harvest ever reaped was an awful harvest of immortal men. Over these sands, not in this balmy atmosphere, but in consuming summer, the hosts of Englishmen marched and fought and fainted and died. On one side is a fenced and shaded cemetery, with marble headstones, in which many of the officers sleep the last sleep. But many of the troops, the thousands of private soldiers who had fathers and mothers and wives and sisters and children, are in trenches where they were tumbled, far away from home and without a prayer. The siroccos of this African desert will make playthings of the skeletons of the fallen cohorts.
Now we are on the Suez Canal. Between Egypt and Arabia we are sailing over this wonderful sheet of water which marries the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. We have just passed a great ocean steamer that has on it all the marks of wrestling with mighty waters. Wonderful De Lesseps, that he should have had this canal in his brain before he projected it in the presence of all nations. What independence of character, what courage, what persistence it all implies on his part. What a grand thing for a man to do that which all the world pronounces impossible. How many hands, how many spades, how many weary arms and shoulders and feet were required for a work like this i I am impressed all along this route with the fact that in eight days the Israelites would have reached Canaan if they had gone straight, though it took them forty years. But it was best that they be lost in the wilderness. They were a nation of slaves, and had they gone into Canaan thus undisciplined and unorganized, the nations of Canaan would have made only one meal of them. But they had forty years of schooling and became developed heroes and then were ready in the name of the God of Israel to defy and rout opposing hosts.
From Memphis back again to Cairo, exhausted by travel, wearied by reflection on the mutations of the ages. But this morning, I especially thank God for sleep. I feel rested and buoyant. Sleep puts a bound to weariness. It says: "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." It pours light into the eyes and geniality into the disposition and faith into the heart and makes a new world every morning. And now just think of it! We start out of Egypt for Canaan, the way the Israelites went thousands of years ago. But they went afoot, we with flying express train; they fugitive slaves, we American freemen; they amid the hardships that slew most of them, we amid the luxuries of modern travel for recuperation and sight-seeing. What a compliment to modern civilization and the principles of liberty which have begun to range the world! No; I can put it in a more righteous way: what obligation we are under to the blessed God and our glorious Christianity! Farewell, land of Pharaoh and Joseph and Jacob, and the regions through which the infant Christ passed both ways, from Palestine to Egypt, and from Egypt to Palestine!
We saw Pharaoh today. The very one that oppressed the Israelites. His body lies in the museum at Cairo. Visible are the very teeth that he gnashed against the Israelitish brickmakers, the sockets of the merciless eyes with which he looked upon the overburdened people of God, "the hair that floated in - the breeze off the Red Sea, the very lips with which he commanded them to make bricks without straw. Thousands of years after, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration, but his skinny bones cannot again clutch his shattered sceptre.
On a camel's back on the way to Memphis, Egypt, I am writing this. How many millions have crossed the desert on this style of beast! Proud, mysterious, solemn, ancient, ungainly, majestic and ridiculous shape, stalking out of the past. The driver with his whip taps the camel on the fore-leg and he kneels to take you. But when he rises, hold fast, or you will first fall off backward as he puts his fore-feet in standing position, and then you will fall off in front as his back legs take their place. Not a house or an inhabitant in all Memphis, though it was the mightiest city under the sun. I bring away a few stones from Pharaoh's palace, and recall, as well as I can, the once gorgeous capital of Egypt.
During the two or more years when this family of three made it their home, I suppose they occasionally walked forth and found many things looking about as I saw them to-day. As now, there stood the Sphinx with a cold smile, looking down upon the ages. It was old when the distinguished three arrived from Bethlehem in Egypt. It took three thousand years to make one wrinkle in its red cheek. It was then, as now, dreadful for its stolidity. Its eyes have never wept a tear. Its cold ears have not listened to the groans of the Egyptian nation, the sorrows of which have never ceased. Its heart is stone. It cared nothing for Joseph or Mary in the first century. It will care nothing for the man or woman who looks into its imperturbable countenance in the last century. Within the sight of the Bethlehem pilgrims there also stood the Pyramid of Cheops, from the- top of which you may seethe Rnins of Memphis, the living and had Cairos, the Nilometer, that skillful finger of stone which feels the rising and falling pulse of the great river; the place where Moses lay in the boat caulked with bitumen; the deserts of Africa, which have swallowed up in their thirsty sand explorers, caravans and armies. Yes, the immortal three from Bethlehem gazed at the outside of palaces, which within were the most gorgeous of the earth; palaces aflame with red sandstone, entered by gateways that were guarded with pillars; bewildering with hieroglyphics and wound with brazen serpents, and adorned with winged creatures, their eyes and beaks and pinions glittering with precious stones. There were marble columns blooming into white flower buds; there were stone pillars, at the top bursting into the shape of the lotus when in full bloom. Along the avenues, lined with sphinx and fane and obelisk, there were princes who came in gorgeously upholstered palanquin, carried by servants in scarlet, or else drawn by vehicles, the snow-white horses, golden-bitted and six abreast, dashing at full run. There were fountains from stone-wreathed vases, climbing ladders of light. You would hear a bolt shove, and a door of brass would open like a flash of the sun. The surrounding gardens were saturated with odors that mounted the terrace and dripped from the arbors and burned their incense in the Egyptian noon. On floors of mosaic, the glories of Pharaoh were spelled out in letters of porphyry and beryl and flame. There were ornaments twisted from the wood of the tamarisk, embossed with silver breaking into foam. There were beds fashioned out of a single precious stone. There were chairs spotted with the sleek hide of leopards. There were sofas footed with the claws of wild beasts and armed with the beaks of birds. As you stand on the level beach of the sea on a summer day and looking either way see miles of breakers white with ocean-foam dashing shoreward, so it seems as if the sea of the world's pomp and wealth in the Egyptian capital flung itself up in breakers of white marble, temple, mausoleum and obelisk. Yet, Egypt which had so much grandeur and glory for her rulers had only a room twenty feet long and seven and a half feet high for the infant Monarch of the skies.
On the Mediterranean steamer coming from Athens to Alexandria, I met the eminent scholar and theologian, Doctor Lansing, who for thirty-five years has been a resident of Cairo, and he told me that he had been all over the road that the three fugitives took from Bethlehem to Egypt. He says it is a desert way and that the forced journey of the infant Christ must have been a terrible journey. Going up from Egypt, Doctor Lansing met people from Bethlehem, their tongues swollen and hanging out from the inflammation of thirst, and although his party had but one goat skin of water left, and that was important for themselves, he was so moved with the spectacle of thirst in these poor pilgrims that, though it excited the indignation of his fellow travelers, he gave water to the strangers. Over this dreadful route Joseph and Mary started for this land of Egypt. No time to make much preparation. Herod was after them, and what were these peasants before an irate king? Joseph, the husband and father, one night sprang up from his mattress in great alarm, the beads of sweat on his forehead, and his whole frame quaking. He had dreamed of massacres of his wife and babe. They must be off that night, right away. Mary put up a few things hastily, and Joseph brought to the door the beast of burden, and helped his wife and child to mount. Why, those loaves of bread are not enough, those bottles of water will not last for such a long way. But there is no time to get anything more. Out and on. Good-bye to the dear home they expect never again to see. Their hearts break. It does not need that ours be a big house in order to make us sorry to leave it. Over the hills and down through the deep gorge they urge their way. By Hebron, by Gaza, through hot sand, under a blistering sun, the babe crying, the mother faint, the father exhausted. How slowly the days and weeks pass. Will the weary three ever reach the banks of the Nile? Will they ever see Cairo? Will the desert ever end? When at last they cross the line beyond which old Herod has no right to pursue, their joy is unbounded. Free at last. Let them dismount and rest. Now they resume their way with less anxiety. They will find a place somewhere for shelter and the earning of their bread. Here they are at Cairo, Egypt. They wind through the crooked streets which are about ten feet wide, and enter the humble house where I have been to-day. It is nine steps down from the level of the street. It is such a place as no reader of this book would like to dwell in. I measured the room and found it twenty feet long, and seven and a half feet high. There are three shelvings of rock, one of which I think was the cradle of our Lord. There is no window, and all the light must have come from lantern or candle. King of heaven to live in!
Now we enter Africa. Though a curse was of old pronounced upon those who went down into Egypt for help, it cannot be that the malediction was intended for those who go down into Egypt for help in writing a life of Christ. So I went. Some of our Lord's most important years were spent in Africa. What a morning was the 25th of November, 18S9, for new and thrilling experiences, for then I first saw Egypt. I landed at Alexandria amid a Babel of voices; the boatmen clamoring for our luggage; the Pasha, with his five wives, descending the ladder on the side of the steamer; custom-house officers on the alert; friends rushing aboard to greet friends; Europeans, Asiatics and Africans commingling. After a few hours' wandering about, and looking at Pompey's Pillar which has stood as the sentinel of twenty-six centuries, and through the gardens of the Khedive, and through streets filled with people of strange visage and costume, we sleep an hour to regain equilibrium before taking the train for Cairo.
Now the train is rolling on through regions watered by canals and ditches that make the Nile the mightiest of aquatic blessings, through a country that otherwise would not yield food for one hungry man in all the land. We find here by irrigation the luxuriance of an American farm just after a spring shower. These Egyptian lands without a drop of rain direct from the heavens, have been drinking until they can drink no more. Thank God for water, canals of it, rivers of it, lakes of it, oceans of it, all the cups of the earth, and all the bottles of the sky at times overflowing! We meet processions of men and beasts on the way home from the day's work. Camels, dromedaries, mules and cattle discharged of their burdens. But alas! for the homes to which the poor inhabitants are going. For the most part, hovels of mud. But there is something in the scene that thoroughly enlists us. It is a novelty of wretchedness, a scene of picturesque rags. For thousands of years this land has been under a very damnation of taxes. Nothing but Christian civilization will ever roll back the influences which are "spoiling the Egyptians." There are gardens and palaces, but they belong to the rulers. This is the land in which Joseph and Mary and Christ were fugitives.
Now we are on the Mediterranean Sea. This morning we sailed by Crete, the island spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles; where Paul "desired to winter," and near which they met the euroclydon, by which they "were driven up and down in Adria," until shipwrecked. "Ye should not have loosed from Crete, and have gained this harm and loss." The engineer of our boat told me that. cyclones now arc sometimes met in the same quarter. He says: "The winds have a terrible sweep along that coast of Crete." We are having a smooth sea, but there is a rocking and a narrowness of limits on shipboard which make me long for shore. There are Mohammedans on board. To-day at noon, regardless of spectators, they went through their devotions, first washing face' and hands and feet, then reciting their prayers, kneeling and putting their foreheads to the rug which they had first spread beneath them. Their behavior is a rebuke to Christians who, under such circumstances, would neglect or postpone their devotions. Whatever else the Mohammedan neglects, he does not neglect his genuflexions.
Others might write a Life of Christ without seeing the Holy Land, but I could not. So in October, 1889, I embarked for that sacred country, accompanied by my wife, daughter and my friends Mr. and Mrs. Louis Klopsch, determined to see with my own eyes, and press with my own feet many of the memorable places connected with the life of the patriarchs and the ministrations of our Lord.
We were told that as we proposed crossing the Atlantic at that season we should have a very rough passage and that as we were to cross the Mediterranean in winter we should suffer from appalling marine treatment, and that we would freeze in the Holy Land. Just the opposite has been our experience. We had crossed the Atlantic eight times before, but this was the smoothest of all our voyages - sunshine from New York to Liverpool, sunshine from Liverpool to Rome, sunshine from Rome to Athens, sunshine from Athens to Egypt.
In a small boat, pitching till it threatened to capsize us, we come ashore at Patras, Greece, and take rail-train for Corinth and Athens, the skies blue as the bluest, and the sea a deep green, save where it is white-crested. We enter now the realm of the classics. What an opportunity, if at the close of college course and before entering a profession every young man could take a journey to see the places vividly associated with the birth, the life and the writings of the ancient poets, essayists and orators. May some philanthropist with large means see the opportunity and embrace it for hundreds and thousands of young students!
But now we rush along on a rail-train in regions where Paul went afoot. What a contrast between the fatigues and slowness of ancient travel and the comforts and velocities of the modern journey; the difference between weary limbs and ptarmigan's pinion. But why tarry at all on my way to Palestine amid these Pauline scenes? I want gradually to come upon the Christly places. Beside that, Paul was only a sublime echo of Christ. Nothing but the divine occurrences of Palestine could make the Apostle's life possible. There would have been no epistle to the Corinthians if there had been no sermon on the Mount. Mars' Hill was blood relation to Calvary. The spear that pierced the sacred side had answering flash in the beheading sword on the road to Ostia. The foot that died on the hill hack of Jerusalem was followed by the bleeding foot of the Pauline pilgrimage through this Grecian peninsula.
The scenery through which we are now riding is for grandeur absolutely appalling. No sooner does the Mediterranean subside at the beach, than the knoll-- become hills, and the hills mountains, and the mountains a volcanic bombardment of the heavens. Surely the stage on which martyrdoms were enacted was grand enough for the mighty tragedies! We come to Corinth. What a solemn place it is to me! All the ancient city gone, but the Acro-Corinthus, tin.- fortress two thousand feet high, still standing. It not only looks down upon a vast realm of scenery but looks down upon the ages. Paul's eyes were lifted toward that proud eminence as he came from the mobocracy of Athens. The fortress is a great heap of black basalt. O thou doomed and dead and buried Corinth! Thy splendor was overpowered by thy dissoluteness. Yet all is quiet now. and, but for the clouds built like another Acro-Corinthus above the fortress, it is a rather peaceful scene, birds flying, sheep pasturing, peasant women sewing. It was the same landscape on which Paul looked on his gradual progress to martyrdom for Christ's sake.
One o'clock a. m., at Athens. - Cannot sleep; and I might as well be writing. Who could sleep amid such circumstances? Yesterday I saw the Acropolis, and preached on Mars' Hill, and after dark went out and wandered among the fifteen immense pillars which are the survivors of the one hundred and twenty that surrounded the temple of Jupiter Olympus. From the Acropolis I saw the same scene where the great sea-fight of Salamis occurred, saw the Pentelicon mines, the birthplace of temples; saw nearly to the battlefield of Marathon, saw the Parthenon, saw the two miles of circle which swept around a greater congregation of temples and architectural wonders and sculptured exquisiteness than were ever crowded into the same space. Saw twenty centuries of columns, columns standing, columns fallen, columns beginning to fall, the ages piled up in Pentelicon marble, everything old, terrifically old, overwhelmingly old. It looks like a wrecked eternity. Have read about the Acropolis all my life and have seen pictures of it, but find it a surprise unspeakable. Doxologies in stone. The eloquence and poetry and art of two millenniums frozen into marble. All honor to the memory of Ibituos and Killikrates, the architects who planned it, and Phidias who chiseled it, and Pericles, under whose patronage it was lifted.
But this secular classic of the Acropolis did not move me like the Gospel of Mars' Hill. What a bold man was Paul to stand there on those tumbled rocks and say what he did! I suppose he could be heard across to the Acropolis, which was covered with temples to heathen gods and goddesses. An Englishman standing there said he heard distinctly what I said while I was preaching on Mars' Hill.
As Paul's voice rang out over the valley, between Mars' Hill and the Acropolis, he swung his hand toward that pile of heathen divinities and announced his belief in only one divinity, saying: "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands." And then looking up at the glittering idols on the higher hill he continues: "We ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's device; and the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent." No wonder that meeting broke up in a riot, and that Paul had to clear out and go to Corinth,from which we came day before yesterday. It was not yesterday afternoon so much that the wind fluttered the leaves of my Bible as I was speaking about that address of Paul on Mars' Hill, as it was emotion that shook the book when that Apostolic scene rose before my imagination. I obtained a block of stone from Mars' Hill to be sent to Brooklyn for the pulpit table in our new church, now building. But has this Paul nothing to do with the blessed One whose life I am trying to write? Yes. Paul was Jesus Christ's man. Mars' Hill shall be to us only a stepping-stone to Golgotha.
We were presented by Mr. Tricoupi, Prime Minister of Greece and the chief statesman of that kingdom, to the Queen of Greece, who gave us a most cordial grasp of the hand and welcomed us to Greece. The Queen is a very beautiful and gracious woman, and we talked together as though we were old friends. We met also the ex-Empress of Germany, Fredericka. I was never so favorably impressed with any distinguished woman as with her. She had on not a single jewel, was in plain black, dignified, but not coldly so, with a countenance that indicated good sense and kindness, but it was a somewhat tearful face. This may have been partly due to the fact that she was leaving her newly-married daughter in Athens. But I think the sadness of the face was consequent upon the multitude of troubles through which she had passed, the long and terrible sickness and death of Frederick, and many other griefs, domestic and political. ( 1897)
Before beginning, it is always advisable to test ones art supplies, whatever those may be. I also removed a blank page from an older Bible to conduct my simple research with, because I didn't want to use up any of the pages from my new Bible for the process.
Make sure that the page you are practicing on is similar to the pages found inside your Note Takers Bible. Modern Bible papers are very thin and are very particular in their substance. If you can find a Bible to use for the purpose of practice, share it with companions so that you don't end up destroying more books than you have to. I keep a Bible that is falling apart for this purpose alone so that my students don't need to abuse any of their own volumes in order to do their experiments.
Above you can see that I chose to test the pen and pencil types that I have in my own personal collections. If you are illuminating or illustrating texts in your Bible with paints: watercolor, acrylic etc... You should conduct a similar test for those supplies to see what the after effects will be.
Above I have shown both the front and back pages on the left after using each pen or pencil type. This experiment helps me to see what the material will look like and how much "bleed through" the ink pens and pencils will leave on the flip side of the page. On the right, I have tested the sample with a Krylon acrylic coating to see if this chemical treatment would alter my materials. Remember, you should apply acrylic coating and/or fixative sealers to both the front and backside of pages after you have completed drawings. If you only treat the front of the page, the ink or pencil could still bleed on the backside if the page should get wet. I was somewhat surprised that the permanent ink was the only material to bleed, ironic.
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the
simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart : the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever : the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is Thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins ; let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great trans- gression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.
PSALM 19. 7-14.
The story of the English Bible has often been written, and well written; with sympathy and insight, that is, as well as with knowledge . In what follows here it is told from the standpoint of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version, which has now pursued its blessed and fruitful career for three hundred years. What went before it came, is dealt with only in so far as that is necessary to trace back to its sources this river of God which is full of water, and which has been bringing beauty and fertility wherever it has flowed. What has happened since it came, is dealt with only in so far as that is necessary in order to see how much has grown out of this wonderful version, which is the English Bible rather than an English version, as it has pursued its unique course to the glory of God and the good of men. For its natural strength is not abated; nor has its fascination grown less as the years have gone by. Inviting as the theme is, nothing has been said regarding the ancient versions and manuscripts which lie behind our English translation; and which, in an altogether adequate manner, fill up the gap between the Bible as we have it now and the original autographs which have long since disappeared. There is no translated classic which has such a wealth of manuscript authority behind it as the Bible ; and those who speak as if the existence of various readings, and the like, left us in any real doubt as to what the message of Scripture is in any detail, to say nothing of its message in its outstanding doctrines, must be strangely ignorant of the facts of the case, or weirdly biassed against the Evangel. Even apart from the manuscripts and versions which are so abundant and helpful, the early Christian Fathers made such liberal use of the Scriptures in their writings, that if everything else were lost which comes to us from other sources, the greater part of the Bible could be recovered from their works. In particular, the whole of the New Testament, except a few verses, is quoted by them in one passage or another .
The English-speaking peoples everywhere owe so much to the English Bible and especially to that version of it which for well-nigh three centuries was the only version read that it would be both unseemly and ungrateful were no adequate notice taken of the Tercentenary of its appearance in the land, as a great gift of God to the nation. All through these three hundred years it has been spreading light and life and liberty ; and there must be multitudes who are eager to acknowledge their vast indebtedness to it. It has comforted the sorrowing and cheered the downcast. It has guided the perplexed and strengthened those who were ready to perish. It has interpreted the deepest emotions of the believer and increased his gladness. It has led the sinful and erring back to God. And still there are inexhaustible depths of comfort and inspiration and growth, for those who explore the riches of its treasury.
In the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, the river from the Temple, which grew without tributaries, flowed eastward to the Desert and the Dead Sea; and by the same law of spiritual gravitation which prevails in the realm of the consecrated life, this other river of living water from the throne of God and of the Lamb has always flowed down to the wilderness, and has enriched the lives of the needy and poor. Its work, too, has been to make all the land as if it were beside an Engedi; to render the repulsive attractive and the sordid fair ; to turn the barren places into the garden of the Lord ; and to make the Dead Sea teem with life, even as the Great Sea. ' Everything shall live whither the river 'cometh.'
It is well, therefore, that those whom this river long since too deep except for those who can swim has so greatly blessed, should walk beside its banks that they may see how marvelously God has led His people, and what great things He has done for them. If our celebration of the Tercentenary is to be worthy of such an occasion, there must not only be emotion, but research ; and the fuller the knowledge is of what God has wrought, the more profound will the gratitude be. If we are to possess the whole land, and give thanks with intelligence, it is both natural and obvious that we should deal, first, with the sources of the river as they are to be found in previous English versions, whether partial or complete ; that we should then consider with greater detail how the river itself arose; and, finally, that we should look at it as it has flowed down through the ages ever since, in splendor and majesty. To that threefold division there may well be added, as supplement, some reference to the Revised Version of our own time, which will at least do epoch-making service in hearty co-operation with the Authorized Version, how- ever unlikely it seems that it will ever displace it in popular esteem or popular use.
More than any of our predecessors we can say that others have labored, and we have entered into their "labors" ; and we shall best show our gratitude to the Authorized Version, and our loyalty for all it has achieved, by entering into the whole of the vast inheritance it has brought us . No true friend of the Authorized Version ever claimed finality for it, any more than finality can be claimed for the Revised Version, or any other. That the Authorized Version may continue to be the English Bible to the end of time, and must always be an object of wonder and delight, can in no way interfere with the Christian duty and privilege of welcoming light whenever it breaks forth, or in whatever way it may come; since all light is of God, and belongs to those who are His heirs. It is the strong and confident who are truly tolerant and open-eyed, and hospitable to the ever-deepening revelation.
Many saints of God have contributed to the noble inheritance in which we now rejoice; many whose names have perished although their work endures, and the list is still unfinished. To the roll-call of fame on which such names appear as those of Caedmon and Bede; Alfred and Rolle; Wycliffe and Purvey; Tyndale and Coverdale; Cromwell and Cranmer; Rogers and Whittingham; Reynolds and Andrewes; Saville and Harding: there fall to be added in our own generation such names as those of Alford and Westcott; Hort and Scrivener; Davidson and Perowne; and other scholars who have had open eyes on all study and research, and hospitable hearts for all truth, and have kept Biblical learning in our land abreast of all the discoveries and progress of modern times. Those who deem it necessary to depreciate the Authorized Version in the interests of the Revised are shortsighted and circumscribed; while those who think that loyalty to the Authorized Version demands hostility to the Revised are failing in their loyalty to Him who is ever causing new light to break forth for those who have the eyes to see it and the hearts to appreciate it.
Perhaps the best form which the popular use of either of the versions can now assume, is that the two should be used side by side, at least for private study . This can now be literally done, either with the two in parallel columns as they can be had in convenient forms, or in interlinear editions such as are now also in use. To compare the two versions, to trace the changes which have been made in the later version, and to understand why they were made, is to know the Scriptures themselves after a new fashion; and manifestly the purpose of every translation is to enable those who read it to do this, and thus to bring 'them face to face with the real meaning of what God the Self-revealer has spoken to men in His Word. This mode of comparing Scripture with Scripture often provides the most helpful of all textual commentaries, and brings the reader nearest to the truth.
Those alone have the true reverence for Scripture, or true faith in its message, who seek always and everywhere to hear what God has said, and to be obedient to the heavenly vision. "Its seed is in itself," as the Word itself has it in another connection ; and those who really trust in it to do its own Divine, saving, keeping work, will never yield to that worship of the external which reaches its climax in those who worship the letter, and make a fetish of the Book itself, apart from what it says. Nor will they ever think of it as if it acted mechanically, as a sort of charm. Marvelous as its fruits have been, alike in individual lives and among the nations, it never works by magic, but always on moral and spiritual lines . "The Spirit ' breathes upon the Word, and brings the truth to sight." Little as God needs our learning, He has even less need of our ignorance; and those alone are truly loyal, either to the old version or the new, who use every, means in their power to get at the very heart of the revelation of God in Christ, as it is contained for just in His Holy Word.
It is in the Word itself, therefore, and not in any mistaken views of it, no matter how strenuously these may be advocated, or how conscientiously they may be believed, that our trust is to be placed ; and that version of the Scriptures which most fully sets forth God's actual manifestation of Himself and His purpose of grace among men, in terms which the ordinary man can understand, is the version which will bear most fruit, and which therefore ought to be most heartily welcomed and most widely circulated. Whatever is to be the future relation between the Authorized Version and the Revised Version, and whether as seems most probable they are to flourish side by side, history has abundantly vindicated the claim of the former to be a true and adequate representation of the Word of God as set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It is a representation, indeed, which has far more of the characteristics of an original work than of a translation from another language. What has been claimed with justice for Luther's German Bible may be equally claimed for the Authorized Version among ourselves that it is rather a re -writing than a mere translation ; a transfusing of the original into a new language rather than a mere version of the letter ; so deep is the insight, so true the sympathy, so perfect the command of clear popular language. Its ascendency can only be ascribed to its intrinsic excellence. It is the English Bible. Its authority arises from its Divine right to rule; and to deny this is to be guilty of lese majeste.
Even those who emphasize most the inadequacy of the text on which the Authorized Version is based, and the greatness of the progress in comparative philology and the study of the original languages which has been made since the days of King James, hasten to acknowledge, and that in no grudging fashion, that nothing could have more truly or more impressively set forth not only the meaning but the spirit of Scripture, than it did. Nor are those awanting among students and scholars who go further, and say that such was the spiritual sympathy of the translators of three centuries ago, and such their scholarly insight into the fullness of the Word, that they have wonderfully anticipated in their renderings the truer text to which they had no access. "The Revised New Testament is substantially the same as that of Wycliffe and Tyndale, though they lacked the MSS. we have today," says one who is deeply impressed with the superiority of the later text and of its new rendering. The Revisers themselves say, and say it with enthusiasm, that the more they worked with the Authorized Version, the greater did their admiration of it become . "We have had to study this great version carefully and minutely, line by line," they say in their Preface; "and the longer we have been engaged upon it, the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm."
A competent scholar and critic has gone even further than to suggest a happy anticipation of the true text and the true rendering on the part of the translators in 1611. He maintains that "the Greek of the New Testament may never be understood as classical Greek is understood;" and that the Revisers have in reality distorted passages formerly correctly rendered "by translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance had recognized that the context demanded." Be this as it may, nothing that is said about versions or translations or texts ought ever to be allowed to make us feel that we are removed even by one step from the very mind of God as He has revealed it to us in His Holy Word.
The Bible not only occupies a unique place in the literature and life of the human race, and has some inherent power of its own which no other book has ; it bears evidence of having been given in order that it might be rendered into other tongues. It loses less than any other book by being translated ; and manifold testimony has been borne to the fact that the Authorized Version in particular resembles a book in its original language rather than a translation . "The tongue of the Hebrew, the idioms of Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity to the purposes of translation." Although it is Oriental in its origin, the Bible is at home in the West as truly as in the East. Other sacred books, like trees, have their zones of vegetation beyond which they cannot grow ; but where ever man can live, the Bible can flourish as native to the soil. And nowhere has this been made more manifest than during these bygone three centuries in our own land. Muir.
