Sar´dis, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia, situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, in a fine plain watered by the river Pactolus, is in N. lat. 38° 30′; E. long. 27° 57′. Sardis was a great and ancient city, and from its wealth and importance was the object of much cupidity and of many sieges. When taken by Cyrus, under Croesus, its last king, who has become proverbial for his riches, Sardis was one of the most splendid and opulent cities of the East. After their victory over Antiochus it passed to the Romans, under whom it rapidly declined in rank and importance. In the time of Tiberius it was destroyed by an earthquake, but was rebuilt by order of the emperor. The inhabitants of Sardis bore an ill repute among the ancients for their voluptuous habits of life. The place that Sardis holds in the Apocalypse, as one of the 'Seven Churches of Asia,' is the source of the peculiar interest with which the Christian reader regards it. From what is said it appears that it had already declined much in real religion, although it still maintained the name and external aspect of a Christian church, 'having a name to live, while it was dead' ().
Successive earthquakes, and the ravages of the Saracens and Turks, have reduced this once flourishing city to a heap of ruins, presenting many remains of its former splendor. The habitations of the living are confined to a few miserable cottages, forming a village called Sart.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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