POTTER AT WORK-BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS TO. 283 this he constantly widened by pressing the edges of the revolving cone between his hands. As it enlarged and became thinner, he gave it whatever shape he pleased with the utmost ease and expedition. This, I suppose, is the exact point of those Biblical comparisons between the human and the Divine Potter: O house of Israel, can not I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, saith the Lord.1 And the same idea is found in many other passages. When Jeremiah was watching the potter, the vessel was marred in his hand, and so he made it again another vessel as seemed good to the potter to make it.2 I had to wait a long time for that, but it happened at last. From some defect in the clay, or because he had taken too little, the potter suddenly changed his mind, crushed his growing jar instantly into a shapeless mass of mud, and beginning anew, fashioned it into a totally different vessel. This idea Paul has expounded, and employed in the ninth chapter of the Romans, to soften some of those things which Peter says are hard to be understood: Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Has not the potter power over the same lump to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor?3 Certainly he has, and I saw him do it, but I did not see thereby much farther into the great mystery which the apostle was illustrating. That, I fear, will ever remain among the "hard things" which the unlearned and unstable will wrest unto their own destruction.1 It is evident, from numerous expressions in the Bible, that the potter's vessel was the synonym of utter fragility; and to say that the wicked should be broken to pieces as a potter's vessel was to threaten the most ruinous destruction. In this day of glass and other fragile fabrics, and of strong stone pottery, we should hardly have adopted this language. Perhaps not; but for this country it is still as appropri ate and forcible as ever. Arab jars are so thin and frail that they are literally "dashed to shivers" by the slightest Jer. xviii. 6. 2 Jer. xviii. 4. 42 Pet. iii. 16. stroke. Water-jars are often broken by merely putting them down upon the floor, and nothing is more common than for the servant to return from the fountain empty-handed, having had all his jars smashed to atoms by some irregular behavior of his donkey. To what does Isaiah refer in the 14th verse of the 30th chapter, where he says, He shall break it as the breaking of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces. He shall not spare; so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water withal out of the pit? Your inquiry refers, I suppose, to the sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take water out of the pit. This last you must have seen many times during our rambles. It is very common to find at the spring or the "pit" pieces of broken jars, to be used as ladles, either to drink from or to fill with; and bits of fractured jars are preserved for this purpose. But the destruction mentioned by Isaiah was to be so complete that there would not be a piece left large enough for that. The other allusion in this passage you may not have noticed, but I have a hundred times and more. Take your stand near any of the public ovens in Sidon (or here in Jaffa, I presume) in the evening, and you will see the children of the poor coming with "sherds" of pottery in their hands, into which the baker pours a small quantity of hot embers and a few coals with which to warm up their evening meal. Isaiah's vessels, however, were to be broken into such small bits that there would not be a sherd of sufficient size to carry away a few embers from the hearth. These comparisons are exceedingly expressive where the actions referred to are of constant occurrence, as they are in all our cities to this present day. The only building about Jaffa that has the slightest claims to even Saracenic beauty is the fountain near the gate. This is really striking; and its surrounding courts furnish admirable specimens of Arab countenances and costumes for the pencil of the artist and the study of the phrenologist. I rarely pass out of the city without turning aside there to GATE OF JAFFA-PLAIN OF SHARON. 287 taste its cool water, and amuse myself with the ever-shifting scene. Did you not also notice the "void space" about Jaffa's only gate, and the crowds of people that always gather there in the afternoon? I have seen both the governor and the kady, with their suites, sitting there, decreeing and executing judgment precisely as such things are spoken of in the Bible. As the city is surrounded by a wall and ditch, and has but this one gate, all must go in and out through it, and hence the great crowd that chokes up the passage, and hence, too, it happens that there is scarcely an allusion in the Bible to matters transacted "in the gate" but what you may see enacted every day about this one of Jaffa. April 13th. I am quite satisfied with Jaffa, and it is a relief to get beyond this sea of green trees into open plain. How many hours' ride have we before us to-day? That depends upon the rate of travel. It is about three hours to the main source of the 'Aujeh at Er Ras, nearly the same distance back to Lydd, and three quarters of an hour farther to Ramleh, where we are to find our tent. This is truly a magnificent plain, much larger than those of Tyre, Acre, or even Esdraelon. In its whole extent it certainly is the largest on the west side of the Jordan, for it includes the entire territory of the Philistines. Far from being a flat, dead level, it is, like Esdraelon, agreeably varied by long swells, growing into sandy ridges, and even rocky tells and hills, which afford sightly positions for villages. Of these there are more than in other plains, more populous also, and surrounded often by olive and fruit orchards, which impart an air of cheerfulness not seen elsewhere in Palestine. Yonder, on the plain to the southeast of us, is a beautiful mirage. This optical illusion is often so perfect that even the experienced traveler finds it difficult to believe that he is not approaching an actual lake of transparent water. Dr. Wilson tells us that the name for mirage in Sanscrit means "the thirst of the antelope," and nothing could be more poetical. I once gave chase to a flock of gazelles on the plain of Tireh, southeast |