City of refuge

“ But why talk of refuge? Who needs it, if the refuge spoken of be a city or a castle, into which men fly for safety? It is all sunlight here. No sound of war in our streets. We do not hear the rush of armed men against the doors of our dwellings. We do not come with weapons to church. Our lives are not at the mercy of an assassin. Why, then, talk of refuge? ”

“ It is only when at the last we are found by Him, in Him, that we are there for ever, with all dangers of departure from Him at an end. In that City of Refuge, and there only, 'the gates shall not be shut at all,' not solely because no enemies shall attempt to come in, but also because no citizens shall desire to go out. ”

“ Fly to the City of thy Refuge, fly!
"Then ye shall appoint you cities, to be cities of refuge for you; that the slayer may flee thither which killeth any person at unawares.—And they shall be unto you cities of refuge from the avenger."—Numbers, chap. 35.
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Note 3, page 9, line 8.
And dark the chambers of its imag'ry.
"Every man in the chambers of his imagery." ”

“ The Night Refuge is a cellar with a kitchen, a few holes in the wall for sleeping purposes. Its counterpart exists in every great city. Thieves, prostitutes, men and women, the very dregs of life, pass their battered days and nights in these foul caves. ”

“ THE CITY COLONY. By the City Colony is meant the establishment, in the very centre of the ocean of misery of which we have been speaking, of a number of Institutions to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbours will gather up the poor destitute creatures, supply their immediate pressing necessities, furnish temporary employment, inspire them with hope for the future, and commence at once a course of regeneration by moral and religious influences. ”

“ The thirty thousand inhabitants, women and children and old men, set forth to seek an uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, which is threatened almost as directly as their own and which to-morrow, it may be, must in its turn set forth, but whither none can say, for the country is so small that its boundaries are quickly reached, its shelter soon exhausted. ”

“ At length, distrusting safety in the city itself, the villages in its vicinity soon became filled with fugitives, till, in the end, no place of refuge was left but the open fields, where thousands remained for several nights, without shelter, watching the progress of the flames, which were consuming the metropolis. ”

“ There is yet one place of shelter,
Where the foeman cannot come,
Where the summons never sounded
Of the trumpet or the drum.
There again we'll meet our children,
Who, on Flodden's trampled sod,
For their king and for their country
Rendered up their souls to God.
There shall we find rest and refuge,
With our dear departed brave;
And the ashes of the city
Be our universal grave!" ”

“ How commodious, how useful a refuge is that which the Hospitallers’ house of hospitality in Jerusalem affords to all poor pilgrims who face the various dangers by land and sea, with the pious and devout wish to visit the Sacred City and our Lord’s sepulchre, as is well known to the whole universe! There, indeed, are the indigent assisted, and every sort of humane attention is shown to the weak fatigued by their numerous labours and dangers. ”

“ Many of the wealthiest of her citizens had taken refuge in the lower part of the city, leaving their magnificent palaces and residences situated in the newer part to the flood of invading soldiers, who went with unerring directness to the parts containing the greatest comfort and luxury. ”

“ Where there were angles or by-roads, posts with “Refuge” on them were set up; and as there were no bridges across Jordan, three of the cities were placed, as I have already mentioned, on one side of the river, and three on the other; so that all might easily get at them, and none might have any excuse forPg 71 not fleeing. The nearest city could always be reached by the manslayer in half a day. ”

“ What one is so accounted a safe public and conspicuous refuge, to all the children universally of the church, that he may be to his countrymen a defensible and strong city, situated on the top of a high mountain? ”

“ Behold, you far-off lights,—
⁠From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
⁠For Love the refugee,
⁠No stronghold can there be,—
No shelter more, while these go shelterless. ”

“ Over 100,000 sought refuge in the station-houses, glad to obtain the bare floor to rest their weary limbs; but how many pace our streets nightly, poverty-stricken and despairing, but too proud to seek a shelter in these abodes of crime! ”

“ The people, stricken with fear, run to hide themselves. The shepherds hastily gather together their flocks and urge them towards the villages. Those who are working in the fields hasten to the nearest shelter, or run wildly towards the villages. The traveller seeks the first refuge he can find, for, if he is found abroad, there is peril. The storm, like a haughty and terrible conqueror at the head of his black warriors, strikes and shatters whatever it meets with. Isolated trees are often torn up by the roots, crazy huts are borne away, and old enclosures beaten to the ground. ”

“ A refuge safe; nor into those might creep;
For when they drew anear, with thunderous sound
The cavern mouths closed up as heaved the ground.
In cities rich and great the house-tops swarmed
With frantic men, by fear to brutes transformed. ”

“ The whole African coast will be strewn with cities, and then should some fearful convulsion render it necessary to the public safety TO BANISH THE MULTITUDE AT ONCE, a house of refuge will have been provided for them in the land of their fathers. ”

“ Beaches and camps and cottage towns, trailer-camps and mountain hotels and lakeside resorts, all hummed and boomed with refugees from the cities, while the cities themselves were like cities of death. ”

“ Or if you are driven to seek refuge while wandering through the interior of the town, the great broad streets, all mathematically straight, will offer you the shelter of their noble avenues, where tamarind, mahogany, sand-box, or other leafy trees, planted with Batavian regularity, cast down a long black streak of shade on the glaring whiteness of the highway ”

“ Men, women and children could be seen leaving their homes in every direction; some seeking refuge among residents, and in quarters further away; others climbing up the hillsides, and hurrying off in various directions, evidently impelled by a sudden fear, which was plainly visible in their countenances or in their movements. ”

“ When these refugees regained the place of their former farm or town, the houses were burned, plundered or without windows and roofs, the well filled with soil, forest grew on the fields, birds had their nest in the neglected abandoned church. Children asked in vain for their parents and parents after their children. No one knew their unknown fate; only rarely was anyone found to be lost forever. And yet, these poor refugees tore joy when they regained the land of the dear hometown. ”

“ There they live at Ease, distress and impoverish us, and the adjacent Wilderness is their Refuge. By retiring into it, they are soon out of our Reach; and long Experience has taught us how ineffectual the Measures we have taken for our Safety and Defence have proved. ”

“ Genuine mountain passes have only emergency inhabitants—the monks and dogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or cantonière, or the garrison of a fort guarding these important thoroughfares. ”

“ This is very evident in the case of those camps which are found in positions where the natural advantages are very small—positions which might be chosen by people in search of an abode, but would hardly be chosen merely as a refuge. ”

“ The hospitable wayside inns, the quaint villages, the picturesque peasant cottages which the tourist in this region knew and loved are but blackened ruins now. And the people are gone too—refugees, no doubt, in the camps which the Government has erected for them near the larger towns. One no longer hears the tinkle of cow-bells on the mountain slopes, peasants no longer wave a friendly greeting from their doors: it is a stricken and deserted land. ”

“ As the years went by that wing was added to, piece by piece, as funds were provided by the Government and by public subscriptions, and now the Province possesses a Refuge for its aged, infirm, and disabled homeless ones, and also for a large number of orphan children, of which it may well be proud. ”

“ Now the brownish-gray steppes coming out from the fleecy fog of daybreak were palpitating with new life. Thousands and thousands of men were encamped around the city, occupying new villages made of canvas, rectangular streets of tents, cities of wooden cabins, and constructions as big as churches whose canvas walls were trembling under the violent squalls of wind. ”

“ Homeless refugees, running through the streets like wild creatures driven before a prairie fire, came pouring past, and some stopped to build their lean-to shacks of pieces of board and sacking against the sheltering wall of the house. ”

“ STORM REFUGEES PRECIPITATE A PANIC IN A CONVENT.
The Ursuline convent and academy, in charge of the Sisters of St. Angelo, proved a haven of refuge for nearly 1,000 homeless and storm-driven unfortunates. No one was refused admittance to the sheltering institution. Negroes and whites were taken in without question and the asylum was thrown open to all who sought its protecting wings.
In the midst of the storm the hundreds or more negroes grew wild and shouted and sang in true camp-meeting style until the nerves of the other refugees were shattered and a panic seemed imminent. ”

“ The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village. This hovel, however, joined a cottage of a neat and pleasant appearance; but, after my late dearly bought experience, I dared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so low, that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. ”

“ The inhabitants of that district have in no wise improved during the past century, the very latest account of them we have is given by Captain Mouchez. In a paper which he read before the Académie des Sciences, at Paris, on January 8, 1877, he says that the littoral is extremely dangerous, shelter and ports of refuge do not exist, and when he landed, even for a few hours, to take observations, he found himself surrounded by natives, who exercise the profession of robbery and brigandage on a large scale. ”

“ These refugees tell of the great caravan composed of homeless persons in its wild flight to the hills for safety, and in that great procession women, harnessed to vehicles, trudging along and tugging at the shafts, hauling all that was left of their earthly belongings, and a little food that foresight told them would be necessary to stay the pangs of hunger in the hours of misery that must follow. ”

“ Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in which these thousands of beings who belong, as much as you, to the race for whom Christ died, herd together. Have you pitied the poor creatures who sleep under railway arches, in carts or casks, or under any shelter which they can find in the open air? You will see that they are to be envied in comparison with those whose lot it is to seek refuge here. Eight feet square—that is about the average size of very many of these rooms. ”

“ We are standing, you know, in the cheerful kitchen of that Refuge for the Homeless in the renovated old slaughter-house in Newport Market, and I want you to come with me to see the boys' school, which occupies a very considerable portion of that weatherproof but ramshackle building.
Only those who are acquainted with the poverty and the crime of this great metropolis can estimate the deep and urgent need that still exists for refuges in which homeless, destitute, and neglected children can be received for shelter, food, and clothing. ”

“ Here today, elsewhere tomorrow, little heed was given to the particular shelter in which he took refuge. With the possession of fire, a fixed home became desirable. Even so, caves still remain the homes of men for a long period of time. ”

“ When one of those holy houses succeeded in remaining standing, the wandering village folk made it their place of refuge, and it was impossible to prevent the refectories and dormitories from being invaded by women. ”

“ The houses of refuge are for men who from age or infirmity are unable to work, or who have been driven to begging or vagrancy by the want of work or misfortune. The chief house of refuge is at Hoogstraeten, where the helpless and sick are received ”

“ The buildings embracing the Refuge Department are plain but substantial, and well adapted to the purposes for which they are designed. Every possible provision is made for health and comfort. One of the buildings shelters the male sex, another the women and children. ”

“ Louis XI. made all Paris a refuge in 1467.
His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred; but he must beware of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary, and he fell back into the flood. The wheel, the gibbet, the strappado, kept good guard around the place of refuge, and lay in watch incessantly for their prey, like sharks around a vessel. Hence, condemned men were to be seen whose hair had grown white in a cloister, on the steps of a palace, in the enclosure of an abbey, beneath the porch of a church; in this manner the asylum was a prison as much as any other. ”