The Monastery at the Brook Cherith
The Monastery at the Brook Cherith In traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho the road narrows almost to a bridal path. “So rough and straight is it,” says Marion Harlan, “that I insisted upon alighting and walking round a sharp spur where the track is a narrow ledge overhanging a precipice.” The silence is said to be oppressive to the spirit and to the ear. Upon the heights above are seen winding paths, slight threads, apparently, leading to the black mouths of caves. Here the hermits dwelt in their cells ages ago. On the north bank of this wild gorge—this Judean glen—we see a Greek monastery. There are the little paths by which the monks ascended and descended to this, their mountain home. These monks spend their time in prayer and in the cultivation of little patches of flowers in the bottom of the valley. In the picture we look toward the north and can form a very accurate idea of the depth and darkness of the Glen Kerith—Wady Kelt—“one of the most sublime ravines in Pal...