Identifier: samuelgobatbisho00goba (find matches)
Title: Samuel Gobat, Bishop of Jerusalem, his life and work : a biographical sketch
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Gobat, Samuel, 1799-1879 Roehrich, L., Mme
Subjects: Gobat, Samuel, 1799-1879 Missions Missions Missionaries
Publisher: London : J. Nisbet
Contributing Library: Princeton Theological Seminary Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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tongues all that was simple andnatural in expresssion, not mere sounding forms of wordsand phrases. He once happened to give me the key tothe secret of his linguistic acquirements. In the last yearof my stay at Jerusalem, he invited my wife and myselfto spend an evening in each week with his family, inorder that we might pursue the study of Italian under hisdirection. After having learned the elements, we readthe psalms in the Italian Bible, and he once profited bythis opportunity to explain that the Bible was the bestbook from which to learn any language. He had studiedthe language which he had been obliged in later life toacquire chiefly from the Bible, and thereby perceivedwhat a treasury and diversity of thoughts and expressionsfor all the more important matters and contingencies oflife are contained in the Word of God. This reminiscence brings me to his home and his familylife. As a regular Sunday-evening guest, I had abundantand memorable opportunities of learning to know him in
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RECOLLECTIONS OF BISHOP GOB AT. 367 the intimate associations of the family circle. At thatperiod there were only two of his children, daughters, athome, so that the substantial-looking house in the squarenear Davids Tower was sufficiently large, though notsuperfluously so, for his needs. In many books of travelthis mansion is erroneously designated as the EpiscopalPalace, for it was by no means a palace, and, moreover,it did not belong to the Bishopric. While the Englishand the German pastors had each a dwelling attached totheir cure, the Eishop (after 1862) had to rent a house,the property of a rich Armenian. Frederick William lY.had certainly promised to have a proper house built forthe Bishop at Jerusalem, but by reason of the Kingssickness and death the intention eventually fell intooblivion, and Gobat was not the man to recall it toremembrance, although he would naturally have liked tohave had a settled place of abode. Here, then, in thenarrow circle of the domestic hearth, he a

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