aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

CHAPTER XXIV.
CITY OF PROPHETS AKD APOSTLES. — JESUS AND JERU-
SALEM.
" The panting pilgrim's heart is filled
"With holiest themes divine,
When first he sees the lilies gild
The fields of Palestine."
Jerusalem, literally the city of peace, built and destroyed,
buried and resurrected, was plundered by the Egyptian conqueror
Shashak ; besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar,
king of Babylon ; robbed by Syrian kings from the north
subjected, with all Judea, to Roman rule 63 B.C. ; destroyed
by Titus ; devastated by crusaders ; and savagely sacked by
the Saracens in the seventh century. Standing on Mount
Olives, perhaps near where John leaned upon Jesus' bosom,
and reflecting upon the above historical events, while an
Arab lad was gathering some olive-branches as evergreen
symbols of the angel-song " Peace on earth," my thought
flashed backward o'er
the waste of nearly twenty centuries,
to the occasion that called forth Jesus' plaintively tearful
appeal to his kinsmen. As a psychometrist knowing the
murderous persecutions of the past, and as a seer foreseeing
the future of the city of the prophets, he wept, saying, —
" O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest
them which are sent unto thee ! how often would I have gathered thy
children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
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