Times are changed on Jericho's plain.

I thought so, as we turned up the slope of rock rubbish which
leads to the foot of the cave cliffs. The mountain here is a
sheer face of rock; and the caves, natural or artificial,
pierce the rock in tiers, higher and lower. The precipice is
spotted with them. The lowest ones are used now by the Arabs
to pen their sheep and quarter their donkeys; Mr. Dinwiddie
and I looked into a good many of them; in one or two we found
a store of corn or straw laid up. Many of the highest caves
could not be got at; the paths and stairs in the rock which
used to lead to them are washed and worn away; but the second
tier are not so utterly cut off from human feet. By a way
chiselled in the rock, with good nerves, one can reach them.
My nerves were good enough, and I followed Mr. Dinwiddie along
the face of the precipice till we reached some sets of caves
communicating with each other. These were partly natural,
partly enlarged by labour. Places were cut for beds and for
cupboards; there was provision of a fine water tank, to which,
Mr. Dinwiddie told me, there were stone channels leading from
a source some hundreds of feet distant; cistern and tubes both
carefully plastered. A few Abyssinian Christians come here
every spring to keep Lent, Mr. Dinwiddie said. How much more
pains they take than we do, I thought.

"Yes," said Mr. Dinwiddie, when I said my thought aloud, -
" 'Skin for skin; all that a man hath will he give for his
life.' But when the conscience knows that heaven is not to be
bought that way, then there is no other motive left that will
use up all a man's energies but the love of Christ