Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1877 — A Visit to Bethany. [ARTICLE]

A Visit to Bethany.

We went over the hill to. Bethany; we had climbed up by the path, on which David flew from Absalom, and we were to return by the road to the Triumphal Entry. Ali along the ridge we enjoyed a magnificent panorama;, a blue piece of the Dead Sea, the Jordan plaia extending far up towards Harmon, with the green ribbon of the river winding through it, and the long, even range of the Moab Hills; blue in tbe distanoe. Tbe prospect was almost Swiss in. its character, but it is a masaof bare hills, with scarcely a. tree except in the immediate foregioundt. Bethany is a squalid hamlet clinging to the roaky hillside, with only one redeeming feature about it—the prospect. A few wretched one-story huts of stone, and-a miserable handful of Moslems, occupy this favorite home and resting, place of our Lord. Close at.hand, by. the roadside cut in the rock, and reached by a steep descent of twenty-six steps, is the damp and doubtful tomb of Lazarus, down into which anyone may go. for half a franc paid, to the Moslem.guardian. The house of Mary and Martha is exhibited among tile big rock» and fragments of walls; upon older foundations loose wails- are laid, rudely and'reeeDtly, patched up with cut stones in fragments,, and pieces of Roman, columns The house of Simon the leper, overlooking the whole, is a mere heap of ruins. Ii does not matter however, that all these dwellings are-mod-ern ; this is Bethany, and when we get away from its present wretchednasa-we remember only that we have seen the very place that Christ loved. We returnedjalong the highway- of the Entry slowly, pausing to identify the points of that memorable progress, up to tlie crest where Jerusalem broke upon the sight of tlie Lord,, and. whence the procession, coming round the cuinte of the. hill, would have the full view of the city. He who rides that way torday has-a grand prospeet. One finds- Jerusalem most poetic-when seen from Olivet, aud Olivet most lovely when seen from the distance of the city walls.— Charlesl)-alley Warner, in AtlAmiic.