The Patriots of Palestine Author:Charlotte Mary Yonge 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 III PROFANATION Blood as water have they shed, Blood of the brave loyal dead. —Ps. Ixxix., Oxford Psalter. The household at Modin soon settl... more »ed into regular habits, so far as the excited state of men's minds permitted. The priest Mattathias, assisted by his sons, and by Eliakim as a Levite, carefully attended to the services of the synagogue, a rough building undistinguished from the rest, save by its pointing toward Jerusalem, and within there was a chest on which, at the time of service, the parchment rolls of the Law were displayed. There were three services in the week, on the second, fifth, and seventh days, but only that on the Sabbath was required of all, though those who could give the time attended on the other days. There was first an exhortation by one of the elders, then a lesson from the Law and another from the prophets read in Hebrew, and explained in the vernacular Syriac, and therewere then psalms and fifteen prayers in regular order for the protection of the refugees, the deliverance of the Holy City, and, above all, for the coming of the Anointed One to restore the kingdom and heal all woes. Anxious reports came up from Lydda, when traders occasionally arrived at Modin, and told that it was known at Joppa that the fierce and unreasonable Antiochus of Syria, having been foiled in his attack upon Egypt, was returning in great wrath to his own domains in Syria. His father had plundered the temples of Persia, and it was feared that he had the same intentions toward Jerusalem. The eldest son of Mattathias, Johanan, called Caddis, in the mixed dialect of the country, meaning " holy," was at Jerusalem, fulfilling his course of psalms and daily offering at the Temple; and his brothers kept anxious watch on the hills to see him returning. One...« less