e top, so as to form a roof or covering. This roof was
not shingled, but was formed by laying branches of trees upon the sticks
which had been laid across from one pole to the other. (Neh. viii: 14,
15.)

You now see why to-day I have chosen this branch of a tree to show you
in connection with this sermon. I have chosen this to impress upon your
mind the character of the arbors used at the Feast of Tabernacles; the
tops or roofs of which were formed or made of olive, and willow and
pine, myrtle and palm branches. These booths or arbors were to remind
the Children of Israel of the journey of their forefathers through the
desert, when for forty long years they did not live within the walls or
under the roof of any house, but dwelt only in booths.

I am sure that you and I would like to have looked in upon Jerusalem at
the time when one of these Harvest Home festivals was being celebrated.
We would like to have seen the booths on the tops of the houses and
along the side of the hills, outside of the walls of the city, and
sloping down through the valleys and crowding far out into the country
upon the Mount of Olives and beyond. We would like to have seen the
bright faces of the happy throngs of people as they moved in procession
through the streets, waving their palm branches; and to have listened to
the music of the trumpeters of the Temple, as they sounded their
trumpets twice every hour throughout the entire day. I am sure we would
have been delighted to look down upon the festive crowd at night, when,
instead of waving palm branches as they did during the day, they carried
bright flaming torches, amid the clashing of cymbals and the blast of
trumpets.

[Illustration: "He Bore it Aloft as He Ascended the Stairs."]

This Feast lasted for eight days. The first day and the last were
especially sacred. And now I want to call your attention to this second
object which I have; namely, this water, and I want to tell you how it
was related to and used at this Feast of Tabernacles. On the morning of
each day, while the smoke of the morning sacrifice was ascending in
beautiful wreaths in the still air, a priest bearing a large golden
bowl, and followed by a long procession of boys and girls waving palm
branches, descended the side of the hill to the pool of Siloam, which
was in a quiet recess at the foot of Mount Moriah, on the summit of
which the Temple was built. When the priest had filled the golden bowl
with water from th