Bible Witnesses from Bible Lands Author:Robert Morris Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. MOUNTING THE HILLS OF DAN AND BENJAMIN.—THE FOURTH DAY. Entrance or The lln.i.s, Thursday, March 18, 8 A. M. We left Lydda at seven, first g... more »iving an hour to the old church of St. George, which we inspected with very great interest. What noble arches.' What a grip those Crusaders took upon the Holy Land during the eighty years (1099 to 1187) that they held it. They stamped upon it their style of architecture and their indefatigable building energy in a stony alphabet that the land can never cast off. The only portion of the church of St. George that has been preserved is the eastern part. Mr. Fountain says this is the case with all ruined Christian churches here. Either the Christians, when conquered, bought over their altars from spoliation, or the conquerors voluntarily spared them through veneration and fear; or they are more solidly built than other parts. Whatever may he the cause, the eastern portions are often entire when the rest of the building has completely disappeared. By joint consent, I marked the initials " H. C. T." upon the corner of a stone, and dedicated this noble ruin to Rev. Henry Clay Trum- bull, Missionary Secretary of the American Sunday-School Union for New England. Mr. Trumbull is the author of the work " Children in the Temple," from which we read, last Sunday, several chapters. He has given us great delight in his elucidations of Scripture. Elliot wonders where all the stone has gone to that was once used in the construction of this enormous church. But this is no problem to me. The destruction of old buildings and using their remains for building materials, have been going on in Asia for three thousand years. A stone once squared is useful, and the people turn every such scrap to account. A stone of a Persian palace, for inst...« less