JERUSALEM AS IT IS.

Evening Star, Issue 11454, 23 January 1901, Page 7

JERUSALEM AS IT IS.

Jerusalem, the sacred city of the'three great monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judafsm, and Mahomedanism—offers such an abundance of interesting material in its recently marked growth that the historical parallel between the city as it was at the beginning and as it is at ths endof the century—lately printed in the 'Bote aus Zion,' an excellent mission journal, edited in the ||City of Jerusalem itself—makes profitable jprea.ding. We glean from thi3 source, the «?following particulars:—"One hundred years ||ago there was not a single dwelling-house ftoutside the city walls of Jerusalem. A few Bggardeners' hovels found there were unsafe, ||and as late as 1858 Pastor Schneller, the of the famous Syrian orphans' home |gin Jerusalem, was attacked and robbed in efhis.own house, well within the city. On ac|fcount of these depredations, watch towers ||had been erected along the whole route to ||Jaffa, some of which are standing yet. The H whole district surrounding the citywas pracwtically a desert. In the town, itself many Spouses were empty, or were used only as for filth. There were "even ||many plots in the city that were ploughed ||for tho cultivation of grain. The Christians Pat that time had no right to acquire proBperty. They were allowed to enter the ||,Church of the Holy Sepulchere only on the ||payment of an entrance fee. Pilgrims were ||few and far between. The religious societies ||in the city were systematically plundered, pin the years 1812 and 1813 the Franciscans & t were compelled to pay 13,000,000 piastres &(£104,000). Even in its official utterances j,|the Government designated the Christians ■skas ' dogs.' A Mahomedan convert to Chris||tianity was punished with death, and even ||A change for the better was inaugurated 'iri ||1852, w hen Ibrahim Pasha took Palestine Spway from the Turks and annexed .it to •pEgypt. Religious intolerance ceased, and missionaries were given freedom of fraction, and the Jews were allowed to build Ma second synagogue."