Allah or Jehovah in this matter ought not to be accepted until after it has been questioned. But the light of true and humane religion is spreading a little. We rejoiced to see the reception-room of the hospital filled with all sorts and conditions of men, women and children waiting for the good physicians who save and restore sight in the name of Jesus.
To the right, a little below us, lay the ugly railway station; before us, rising gently southward, extended the elevated Plain of Rephaïm where David smote the host of the Philistines after he had heard "the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees." The red soil was cultivated in little farms and gardens. The almond-trees were in leaf; the hawthorn in blossom; the fig-trees were putting forth their tender green.
A Street in Bethlehem.
A slowly ascending road brought us to the hill of Mâr Elyâs, and the so-called Well of the Magi. Here the legend says the Wise Men halted after they had left Jerusalem, and the star reappeared to guide them on to Bethlehem. Certain it is that they must have taken this road; and certain it is that both Bethlehem and Jerusalem, hidden from each other
by the rising ground, are clearly visible to one who stands in the saddle of this hill.
There were fine views down the valleys to the east, with blue glimpses of the Dead Sea at the end of them. The supposed tomb of Rachel, a dingy little building with a white dome, interested us less than the broad lake of olive-orchards around the distant village of Beit Jâlâ, and the green fields, pastures and gardens encircling the double hill of Bethlehem, the ancient "House of Bread." There was an aspect of fertility and friendliness about the place that seemed in harmony with its name and its poetic memories.
In a walled kitchen-garden at the entrance of the town was David's Well. We felt no assurance, of course, as we looked down into it, that this was the veritable place. But at all events it served to bring back to us one of the prettiest bits of romance in the Old Testament. When the bold son of Jesse had become a chieftain of outlaws and was besieged by the Philistines in the stronghold of Adullam, his heart grew thirsty for a draught from his father's well, whose sweetness he had known as a boy. And when his three mighty men went up secretly at the
risk of their lives, and broke through the host of their enemies, and brought their captain a vessel of this water, "he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto Jehovah."
There was a division of opinion in our party in regard to this act. "It was sheer foolishness," said the Patriarch, "to waste anything that had cost so much to get. What must the three mighty men have thought when they saw that for which they had risked their lives poured out upon the ground?" "Ah, no," said the Lady. "It was the highest gratitude, because it was touched with poetry. It was the best compliment that David could have given to his friends. Some gifts are too precious to be received in any other way than this." And in my heart I knew that she was right.