THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 54

THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS.

AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY. By A. L. Maywood. (See Illustrated Rages for Photographs.) Out of the New World has sprung an armv which has captured the Holy City. Little imagination is required to picture the feelings of the men. for whom Fate reserved this opportunity. They are Crusaders, whose name will go down in history, and the glory of it will surpass the glory of those eailier Crusaders, for these are conquerors indeed who have overcome self, and who seek only to give freedom to a world which Germany would have enslaved. Through the ages the land of Palestine has witnessed many changing scenes — battle and murder and sudden death; miracles of healing, times of great prosperity, the passing of world conquerors, the dawn of Christendom, the hopes and fears which followed that great era, the appointed doom of her great cities, the enslavement of her people, and the dark days which preceded this terrible war, when the Mohammedan rule and German defiled the Holy City. To-day the shrieks of locomotives can be heard in Jerusalem, and on Mount ?ion there is a wireless station and a .great ammunition store. The men of this Dominion in the Southern Seas, marching with their brothers from England and the confines of the Empire, have entered the ancient gates and tread the paths where once the Man of Sorrows passed. There are many who see in all these recent happenings the fulfilment of ancient prophecies. They await the second coming of our Lord, and believe that soon the Jews will return to Palestine, and that the marvels of this past decade are as nothing to the wonders which are soon to come. . In this Dominion those lads who possess a knowledge of Scriptural history must surely now be envied by the thousands who are learning from their padres, officers, and mates what can be told them within sound of the guns. The least thoughtful among them cannot fail to be thrilled. Few cannot but realise that they are figures in a moving picture, the open in&r scenes of which are laid long years before the birth of Christ, and when Samson was a mighty man on . earth. Lads from this Dominion | march where Samson trod, and foHow the paths made for ever sacred by the presence ofVour Lord. Who can believe that these men will return just as they went! Who can protest, that they needed no preparation, and that a knowledge of the history of Palestine would not have been an excellent preparation for this great adventure which has come their way to-day? We who wait ift silent fear for news day after day are hushed to silence as we meditate upon the greatness of the quest on which these men of ours were bent. We pictured them in the desert, by the camp fire, and drawing ever nearer to that Holy City, from the tow of which fluttered the flags of those two nations, which decent men in happier future 1 days will speak of as decadent exemplars of the §reat religions which they respectively isgrace. A Buried Wonder. In the course of their advance into Palestine, the Anzac troops have brought to light a long buried wonder, in the shape of a mosaic floor, Avhich has been lifted very carefully, and which some day perhaps will be set up in a great city of the New World. The- descendants of these Crusaders from the lands of the Southern Cross; looking upon the mosaic and the bones of the saint were buried beneath it, will near again the story of the deeds accomplished by their grandsires "in the brave days of old." When the troops were advancing upon Gaza, Captain Jordan, Assistant Provost Marshal of the- Anzac Mounted Division, climbed a hill which commanded the. Wadi Shuzze, and accidentally discovered the ' edge of a' mosaic pavement, which had been slightly uncovered by the Turks when they mounted their machine-guns upon that very hill perhaps a few months earlier. After many days of hard work . the beautiful floor was unearthed "and carefully lifted. The inscription upon it shows that a church once otood upon the site, and that it was built in the year '561 a.d. Beneath the mosaic floor the Australian soldiers discovered the bones of one who is believed to have been George, the pitron saint of England. Very reverently were these bones handled, and placed with care within a casket, which will ever be ireasured by the nations who are engaged in this most holy of crusades. ' The mosaic is executed in marbles of rruiuv colours, which must have been g-«.tb<M - ed from many lands. The church

:\r.i*l have stood on the road from Jerusalem to Egypt. Down it, correspondents remind us. the Ethiopian eunuch came when he met Philip, and was baptised. The great roads of commerce passed near here—Eastern and Western Con-

querors trod them. Since the dawn of history these . hills and sands have witnessed the agonies of men, for Polestine has ever been to Africa and Asia just that little dividing place which makes poor Belgium to-day the most tragie spot on earth. "I am the true Vine; ye are the branches," is the theme on which the mosaic is composed. There is a central chalice, and round it are many representations of animal life, each creature presumablv representing a tribe or nation, and each doing homage to the central figure. The photograph published in our illustrations is one of them. There is also a nhotograph showine Pao*re Maitland Woods holding a piece of mosaic pavement which he has successfully removed. Beside him stands Lieut.-colonel Powles. D. 5.0.. one of New Zealand's most distinguished officers. The conical hill in a third photograph is the site of the ancient church. The crossfag is that of Shcllal, in the Wadi Shuzze.

To those who believe they see in current events the fulfilment of ancient prophecy, it may well appear a Nfavourable augury that out of the dust and desolation caused by the devastating rule of the Turk, "whose blood-stained sandal" has trodden this region during four centuries, governing it under his degraded form of the Mohammedan religion, the modern Crusader should light upon so perfect a gem of art. piously created by early Christians at a date prior to the dawn of the Mohammedan faith. Gaza and District.— The discovery of this beautiful work of art curiously synchronises with the repudiation of the Turk by the real head of the Mohammedan religion —th» Shereef of Mecca, who has denounced the heretics for their violation of the Sacred Emblems. Gaza, the ancient city, which was taken by the troops after the mosaic had been lifted, was a very important strategical position once. It was the first stopping place on the road from Egypt into Syria, and men "going down into Egypt, or up into Damascus," must needs pass by "the old White City near the sea." Pharaohs and Assyrians,' Greeks and Romans, Macedonians and Mohammedans, all have passed by, and at the hands of many men of many nations the Gazathites have suffered. With the coming of the early Crusaders no peace came to Gaza, and round its gates, and in its streets, many bloody battles were fought.-- North of the city is the Castle of Blanchji- Garde, memorial of the Crusaders' stay in Palestine, the place where Richard of the Lion Heart held his court, and where he fought with Saladin. During her long and troubled history Palestine has suffered cruelly, for conquering kings in ancient times were as inhuman as is the Hun today. And-now, after all these centuries, yet another conquerer knocked —and not in vain—at the gates of Jerusalem, a conqueror who has come to bring peace to the sorely-tried people within her gates. Thus, in the whirligig of time, the sacred •site of this ancient church, viewed in ages past by men of races so diverse and remote to-day, in the last phase of its strange eventful history, after its long sleep beneath the sands, is open to the sunlight, and is under the wandering gaze 'of boys from the newest civilisation on earth. PREVIOUS MOSAIC PAVEMENTS DISCOVERED. A parallel to the present pavement was discovered in 1894, near the Damascus Gate, at Jerusalem.. Another parallel is, the well-known mosaic brought by Renan from Kabr Hiram, and now in the Louvre, at Paris. Mosaic pavements of this kind {says the Illustrated London News), mostly with animal crnament, were made in great numbers in all the countries of the South and East Mediterranean littoral; the people of Syria-Palestine were fond of them, and the town of Madeba, north-east of the Dead Sea, has proved especially rich in remains. A taste for this form of luxury probably spread south into Sinai, where, in such places as Abda and Esbeita, more mosaics should ultimately be found. A Caution About St. George.— The inscription on the latest discovery, unfortunately imperfect, is in Greek, and states- that the church was built by "our most holy (bishop?) and the God-fearing George" at great cost in the year 622. An adjective giving either the native place of "George" or his official title is badly damaged; of the conjectured word episkopos (bishop) practically nothing remains; it is suggested on the analogy of other inscriptions. The year 62? is in all probability a year of the local era of Gaza, and equivalent to a.d. 561-2. This date accords with the general style of the work, for which the seventh century would be too late. The temptation to identify the "God-fearing George" (says the writer in our London contemporary) with the patron saint of England should ba steadily resisted. His place in the inscription is secondary; he is mentioned not as a great person, but as an ordinary man; he is probably one who, by purse or by profession, contributed to the erection of the local church.