head (Acts xviii. 18), there a labourer lies asleep in the shade. Many people pass in and out; the faint coming in to drink, the weary to rest in the cool shade, the thrifty to buy or sell; but there is no hostess to bid you "Goodday," no cook to prepare the meal. Each man has to cook his dinner, to bring his bed with him, to litter his horse or camel, to dress his food, to draw his water, to light his fire, and to boil his mess of pottage.

The archway, in which he lays up his goods and spreads out his carpet, being bare, he must bring with him his bottle of wine, his jar and his dish, together with his bag of rice, his tinder-box, his taper, his coffee-cup, his brazier, and his cooking range.

"When he finds the khan crowded with pilgrims and travellers (as during religious festivals and at gatherings of the tribe), he may have to spread his rug on the straw, happy in his simple habits and in the weariness of travel, to share the quarters of his camel or his ass" (Hepworth Dixon's Holy Land, p. 149).

Now that is a very exact picture of an inn, as you would see it, if you went to Palestine to-day; and it is not much different from what it was when our Saviour was born in just such a one as that.

QUESTIONS.

What is an inn? What are inns called in Palestine? What does "khan" mean? Where did they get a night's lodging in Abraham's time? Where in a city? Where if there was no town or chief's tent? Where was it always placed? Why? What made them build stronger khans? What were they like? Who stopped at such an inn? How were they improved? Describe one. Where may one be seen now? What were there outside? What may be seen round the fountain? Where did they get food? Who cooked it?

THE INN AT BETHLEHEM.

I WILL try to tell you the history of that inn where the child Jesus was born. You know it was at Bethlehem where David lived. Now, let us see what we know about Bethlehem. First of all, Rachel died there, just after

Benjamin was born, as she was going down with Jacob to Beer-sheba, where his father lived; and there she was buried, and her tomb is to be seen to this day, just at the bottom of the hill below Bethlehem.

Next, we know from the Book of Ruth that Boaz lived there, and was the chief man of the place, and had fields and employed a good many men in reaping, and he was rich, and let the poor people glean, and was very good to them; for he told his men not to gather up the corn close, but to let some drop on purpose, so that Ruth, who was very poor, might pick it up and carry it home for her mother to make bread of.

Bethlehem stands on the top of a hill, about four miles from Jerusalem; but the house of Boaz was not on the top of the hill, and it was not inside the city, but it was on the slope, below the city. I will tell you how I know that.

Just open your Bibles at the third chapter of the Book of Ruth, and in the sixth verse you will find it says, that Ruth "went down unto the floor,"-i.e., the thresh

ing-floor at the farmhouse of Boaz, where he ate and drank, and lay down to sleep. The next morning "she went into the city;" and Boaz also "went up to the gate" (Ruth iv. 1).

Now, Boaz was the great-grandfather of David, who was born at Bethlehem at this very house, for the family always lived there, and the farm of Boaz became the property of Jesse, when David kept his father's sheep on the side of that hill.

But when David was made king, he and all his family went to Jerusalem, and they lived no more at Bethlehem; and after he had been obliged to flee away, because of Absalom, he gave his farm there to Chimham, the son of Barzillai the Gileadite, who was so good to him in sending him food, and beds, and tents, when he fled across the Jordan during Absalom's rebellion (2 Sam. xvii. 28, 29).

Chimham was a great man there, and David was very kind to him, and let him always dine at his own table whenever he chose to go to Jerusalem; and he became rich, and built a large house where the old one stood, and the farmhouse of the simple Boaz and Jesse was nothing to the palace of the king's favourite. So the old house was made into out-houses and stables, and the new one was like a nobleman's castle; but it was not inside the city, but "by Bethlehem" (Jer. xli. 17).

As Chimham was the chief man of the city, he would entertain the travellers who passed that way, and by degrees his house would come to be the "khan of Bethlehem," which was far too small a place to have more than one.

Four hundred and fifty years after David gave it to Chimham, when Jerusalem was taken, her walls thrown down, and the people carried away to Babylon, a company of men, women, and children, and eunuchs, and all the captains of the forces and mighty men of war, were gathered together as a remnant of the Israelites, with Jeremiah the prophet, and Baruch the scribe, and they "dwelt in the habitation of Chimham, which is by Bethlehem" (Jer. xli. 16, 17).

So this must have been a large house, and strong, like a castle, and it must by this time have become a khan for travellers to stay in; for all these staid there till

they went on into Egypt, and it seems likely it had lost its owners, who would be carried captive, if not killed, by the armies of Babylon. In the piety of Eastern life a khan is considered a sacred building. Even when war desolated the country, and towns and villages were laid in ruins, these were all treated with respect as holy property; so the king of Babylon spared the "habitation of Chimham," as the Greeks spared the khan of Joseph's well. "What a hospital is in a modern war a khan was in ancient war," * a building hallowed by its noble use. Thus it stood during the seventy years' captivity, and through all the wars after the return of the people to Jerusalem, when Bethlehem was inhabited once more; but none of David's family were there when the decree of Augustus made Joseph and Mary come up from Nazareth to have their names put on the register of Bethlehem, because each must go to his own city, and both of them were of the house and lineage of David (Luke ii.)

It was a small city, and all the families of David flocked up there; so that when these two poor people reached the khan of Chimham all the arched rooms were full, and Joseph and his young wife were obliged to spread their mats in one of the caverns of the old buildings, where they stalled their ass, in whose manger the little infant Jesus was laid when he was born. So the "Son of David" was born in the house of his father David, the very old house of Boaz, where David himself was born.

This khan was still there when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans under Titus, A.D. 71, and for many years it stood, till the travellers became few, and the man who took care of it could not earn a living, so it began to fall into decay. But before the end of that century (ie., less than a hundred years) after Christ was born there, Christians began to go to it, to see the spot where He was born, and to pray in that stable.

The great, thick walls stood, and the hollow caves in the rock of the older house of David were just as they used to be, and served as a shelter for the chance wayfarer for two more centuries. In one of Hepworth Dixon's Holy Land.

*

them St. Jerome lived like a hermit, for above thirty years, translating the Bible into Latin, fasting and praying in that stable, and keeping up a record of the spot, until a Christian emperor and his mother, coming to Jerusalem, went on to Bethlehem to see the place where the Virgin brought forth her first-born son.

They found it almost as it was when that event happened they put an inscription in the floor of the cave, "Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary," and they built the Church of the Nativity, which is now to be seen on the slope just below the old "gate of the city," on the old foundations of the khan of Chimham, the birthplace of the first and second David.—Rev. Canon Ridgway.

QUESTIONS.

Where did David live? What is the first we know about Bethlehem? Who was the great-grandfather of David? Where did Boaz live? How do we know it was outside the city? To whom did David give that house? What did he do to it? How did it become an inn? When is it mentioned last in the Old Testament? How do we know it was very large? Why was it saved by the Babylonian army? Who was born there? In what part of it? How long did it stand after that? What is built on it now?

TRAVELLING IN THE EAST.—PART I.

HAVING made up our minds to leave Bagdad, we had notice, only a day and a half before it started, of a caravan with which we might travel. During this short period we were distracted by continually conflicting reports as to the time of departure. In fact, the clockwork regularity of travelling movements in England is quite unknown in Western Asia; nor, on account of the badness of the roads and numerous circumstances of interruption, would an approximation to such regularity be easily practicable, even were the men more exact in their appointments and arrangements than they are.

By a caravan, we understand in England a kind of waggon in which wild beasts are conveyed from fair to fair for exhibition. But in the East, a caravan is a large body of camels, horses, or mules, bearing merchandise from one place to another.