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Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land; Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit, a non-fiction book by Henry Van Dyke |
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Chapter 10. Galilee And The Lake |
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_ CHAPTER X. GALILEE AND THE LAKE I THE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON Going from Samaria into Galilee is like passing from the Old Testament into the New. There is indeed little difference in the outward landscape: the same bare lines of rolling mountains, green and gray near by, blue or purple far away; the same fertile valleys and emerald plains embosomed among the hills; the same orchards of olive-trees, not quite so large, nor so many, but always softening and shading the outlook with their touches of silvery verdure. It is the spirit of the landscape that changes; the inward view; the atmosphere of memories and associations through which we travel. We have been riding with fierce warriors and proud kings and fiery prophets of Israel, passing the sites of royal splendour and fields of ancient havoc, retracing the warpaths of the Twelve Tribes. But when we enter Galilee the keynote of our thoughts is modulated into peace. Issachar and Zebulon and Asher and Naphtali have left no trace or message for us on the plains and hills where they once lived and fought. We journey with Jesus of Nazareth, the friend of publicans and sinners, the shepherd of the lost sheep, the human embodiment of the Divine Love. This transition in our journey is marked outwardly by the crossing of the great Plain of Esdraelon, which we enter by the gateway of Jenin. There are a few palm-trees lending a little grace to the disconsolate village, and the Turkish captain of the military post, a grizzled veteran of Plevna, invites us into the guard-room to drink coffee with him, while we wait for a dilatory telegraph operator to send a message. Then we push out upon the green sea to a brown island: the village of Zer'in, the ancient Jezreel. The wretched hamlet of adobe huts, with mud beehives plastered against the walls, stands on the lowest bench of the foothills of Mount Gilboa, opposite the equally wretched hamlet of Sulem in a corresponding position at the base of a mountain called Little Hermon. The widespread, opulent view is haunted with old stories of battle, murder and sudden death. Down to the east we see the line of brighter green creeping out from the flanks of Mount Gilboa, marking the spring where Gideon sifted his band of warriors for the night-attack on the camp of Midian. (Judges vii: 4-23.) Under the brow of the hill are the ancient wine-presses, cut in the rock, which belonged to the vineyard of Naboth, whom Jezebel assassinated. (I Kings xxi: 1-16.) From some window of her favourite palace on this eminence, that hard, old, painted queen looked down the broad valley of Jezreel, and saw Jehu in his chariot driving furiously from Gilead to bring vengeance upon her. On those dark ridges to the south the brave Jonathan was slain by the Philistines and the desperate Saul fell upon his own sword. (I Samuel xxxi: 1-6.) Through that open valley, which slopes so gently down to the Jordan at Bethshan, the hordes of Midian and the hosts of Damascus marched against Israel. By the pass of Jenin, Holofernes led his army in triumph until he met Judith of Bethulia and lost his head. Yonder in the corner to the northward, at the base of Mount Tabor, Deborah and Barak gathered the tribes against the Canaanites under Sisera. (Judges iv: 4-22.) Away to the westward, in the notch of Megiddo, Pharaoh-Necho's archers pierced King Josiah, and there was great mourning for him in Hadad-rimmon. (II Chronicles xxxv: 24-25; Zechariah xii: 11.) Farther still, where the mountain spurs of Galilee approach the long ridge of Carmel, Elijah put the priests of Baal to death by the Brook Kishon. (I Kings xviii: 20-40.) All over that great prairie, which makes a broad break between the highlands of Galilee and the highlands of Samaria and Judea, and opens an easy pathway rising no more than three hundred feet between the Jordan and the Mediterranean--all over that fertile, blooming area and around the edges of it are sown the legends
The fields are full of rustling wheat, and bearded barley, and blue-green stalks of beans, and feathery _kirsenneh_, camel-provender. The peasants in their gay-coloured clothing are ploughing the rich, red-brown soil for the late crop of _doura_. The newly built railway from Haifa to Damascus lies like a yellow string across the prairie from west to east; and from north to south a single file of two hundred camels, with merchandise for Egypt, undulate along the ancient road of the caravans, turning their ungainly heads to look at the puffing engine which creeps toward them from the distance. Larks singing in the air, storks parading beside the watercourses, falcons poising overhead, poppies and pink gladioluses and blue corn-cockles blooming through the grain,--a little village on a swell of rising ground, built for their farm hands by the rich Greeks who have bought the land and brought it under cultivation,--an air so pure and soft that it is like a caress,--all seems to speak a language of peace and promise, as if one of the old prophets were telling of the day when Jehovah shall have compassion on His people Israel and restore them. "They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as the grain, and blossom as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the wine of Lebanon." It is, indeed, not impossible that wise methods of colonization, better agriculture and gardening, the development of fruit-orchards and vineyards, and above all, more rational government and equitable taxation may one day give back to Palestine something of her old prosperity and population. If the Jews really want it no doubt they can have it. Their rich men have the money and the influence; and there are enough of their poorer folk scattered through Europe to make any land blossom like the rose, if they have the will and the patience for the slow toil of the husbandman and the vine-dresser and the shepherd and the herdsman. But the proud kingdom of David and Solomon will never be restored; not even the tributary kingdom of Herod. For the land will never again stand at the crossroads, the four-corners of the civilized world. The Suez Canal to the south, and the railways through the Lebanon and Asia Minor to the north, have settled that. They have left Palestine in a corner, off the main-travelled roads. The best that she can hope for is a restoration to quiet fruitfulness, to placid and humble industry, to olive-crowned and vine-girdled felicity, never again to power. And if that lowly re-coronation comes to her, it will not be on the stony heights around Jerusalem: it will be in the Plain of Sharon, in the outgoings of Mount Ephraim, in the green pastures of Gilead, in the lovely region of "Galilee of the Gentiles." It will not be by the sword of Gideon nor by the sceptre of Solomon, but by the sign of peace on earth and good-will among men. With thoughts like these we make our way across the verdurous inland sea of Esdraelon, out of the Old Testament into the New. Landmarks of the country of the Gospel begin to appear: the wooded dome of Mount Tabor, the little village of Nain where Jesus restored the widow's only son. (Luke vii: 11-16.) But these lie far to our right. The beacon which guides us is a glimpse of white walls and red roofs, high on a shoulder of the Galilean hills: the outlying houses of Nazareth, where the boy Jesus dwelt with His parents after their return from the flight into Egypt, and was obedient to them, and grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.
THEIR OWN CITY NAZARETH Our camp in Nazareth is on a terrace among the olive-trees, on the eastern side of a small valley, facing the Mohammedan quarter of the town. This is distinctly the most attractive little city that we have seen in Palestine. The houses are spread out over a wider area than is usual in the East, covering three sides of a gentle depression high on the side of the Jebel es-Sikh, and creeping up the hill-slopes as if to seek a larger view and a purer air. Some of them have gardens, fair white walls, red-tiled roofs, balconies of stone or wrought iron. Even in the more closely built portion of the town the streets seem cleaner, the bazaars lighter and less malodorous, the interior courtyards into which we glance in passing more neat and homelike. Many of the doorways and living-rooms of the humbler houses are freshly whitewashed with a light-blue tint which gives them an immaculate air of cleanliness. The Nazarene women are generally good looking, and free and dignified in their bearing. The children, fairer in complexion than is common in Syria, are almost all charming with the beauty of youth, and among them are some very lovely faces of boys and girls. I do not mean to say that Nazareth appears to us an earthly paradise; only that it shines by contrast with places like Hebron and Jericho and Nablus, even with Bethlehem, and that we find here far less of human squalor and misery to sadden us with thoughts of
I am honestly of the opinion that Christian mission-schools and hospitals have done a great deal for Nazareth. We go this morning to visit the schools of the English Church Missionary Society, where Miss Newton is conducting an admirable and most successful work for the girls of Nazareth. She is away on a visit to some of her outlying stations; but the dark-eyed, happy-looking Syrian teacher shows us all the classes. There are five of them, and every room is full and bright and orderly. On the Christian side, the older girls sing a hymn for us, in their high voices and quaint English accent, about Jesus stilling the storm on Galilee, and the intermediate girls and the tiny co-educated boys and girls in the kindergarten go through various pretty performances. Then the teacher leads us across the street to the two Moslem classes, and we cannot tell the difference between them and the Christian children, except that now the singing of "Jesus loves me" and the recitation of "The Lord is my Shepherd" are in Arabic. There is one blind girl who recites most perfectly and eagerly. Another girl of about ten years carries her baby-brother in her arms. Two little laggards, (they were among the group at our camp early in the morning), arrive late, weeping out their excuses to the teacher. She hears them with a kind, humorous look on her face, gives them a soft rebuke and a task, and sends them to their seats, their tears suddenly transformed to smiles. From the schools we go to the hospital of the British Medical Mission, a little higher up the hill. We find young Doctor Scrimgeour, who has lately come out from Edinburgh University, and his white-uniformed, cheerful, busy nurses, tasked to the limit of their strength by the pressure of their work, but cordial and simple in their welcome. As I walk with the doctor on his rounds I see every ward full, and all kinds of calamity and suffering waiting for the relief and help of his kind, skilful knife. Here are hernia, and tuberculous glands, and cataract, and stone, and bone tuberculosis, and a score of other miseries; and there, on the table, with pale, dark face and mysterious eyes, lies a man whose knee has been shattered by a ball from a Martini rifle in an affray with robbers. "Was he one of the robbers," I ask, "or one of the robbed?" "I really don't know," says the doctor, "but in a few minutes I am going to do my best for him." Is not this Christ's work that is still doing in Christ's town, this teaching of the children, this helping of the sick and wounded, for His sake, and in His name? Yet there are silly folk who say they do not believe in missions. There are a few so-called sacred places and shrines in Nazareth--the supposed scene of the Annunciation; the traditional Workshop of Joseph; the alleged _Mensa Christi_, a flat stone which He is said to have used as a table when He ate with His disciples; and so on. But all these uncertain relics and memorials, as usual, are inclosed in chapels, belit with lamps, and encircled with ceremonial. The very spring at which the Virgin Mary must have often filled her pitcher, (for it is the only flowing fountain in the town), now rises beneath the Greek Church of Saint Gabriel, and is conducted past the altar in a channel of stone where the pilgrims bathe their eyes and faces. To us, who are seeking our Holy Land out-of-doors, these shut-in shrines and altared memorials are less significant than what we find in the open, among the streets and on the surrounding hillsides. The Virgin's Fountain, issuing from the church, flows into a big, stone basin under a round arch. Here, as often as we pass, we see the maidens and the mothers of Nazareth, with great earthern vessels poised upon their shapely heads, coming with merry talk and laughter, to draw water. Even so the mother of Jesus must have come to this fountain many a time, perhaps with her wondrous boy running beside her, clasping her hand or a fold of her bright-coloured garment. Perhaps, when the child was little she carried Him on her shoulder, as the women carry their children to-day. Passing through a street, we look into the interior of a carpenter-shop, with its simple tools, its little pile of new lumber, its floor littered with chips and shavings, and its air full of the pleasant smell of freshly cut wood. There are a few articles of furniture which the carpenter has made: a couple of chairs, a table, a stool: and he himself, with his leg stretched out and his piece of wood held firmly by his naked toes, is working busily at a tiny bed which needs only a pair of rockers to become a cradle. Outside the door of the shop a boy of ten or twelve is cutting some boards and slats, and putting them neatly together. We ask him what he is making. "A box," he answers, "a box for some doves"--and then bends his head over his absorbing task. Even so Jesus must have worked at the shop of Joseph, the carpenter, and learned His handicraft. Let us walk up, at eventide, to the top of the hill behind the town. Here is one of the loveliest views in all Palestine. The sun is setting and the clear-obscure of twilight already rests over the streets and houses, the minarets and spires, the slender cypresses and round olive-trees and grotesque hedges of cactus. But on the heights the warm radiance from the west pours its full flood, lighting up all the flowerets of delicate pink flax and golden chrysanthemum and blue campanula with which the grass is broidered. Far and wide that roseate illumination spreads itself; changing the snowy mantle of distant Hermon, the great Sheikh of Mountains, from ermine to flamingo feathers; making the high hills of Naphtali and the excellency of Carmel glow as if with soft, transfiguring, inward fire; touching the little town of Saffuriyeh below us, where they say that the Virgin Mary was born, and the city of Safed, thirty miles away on the lofty shoulder of Jebel Jermak; suffusing the haze that fills the Valley of the Jordan, and the long bulwarks of the Other-Side, with hues of mauve and purple; and bathing the wide expanse of the western sea with indescribable splendours, over which the flaming sun poises for a moment beneath the edge of a low-hung cloud. On this hilltop, I doubt not, the boy Jesus often filled His hands with flowers. Here He could watch the creeping caravans of Arabian merchants, and the glittering legions of Roman soldiers, and the slow files of Jewish pilgrims, coming up from the Valley of Jezreel and stretching out across the Plain of Esdraelon. Hither, at the evening hour, He came as a youth to find the blessing of wide and tranquil thought. Here, when the burden of manhood pressed upon Him, He rested after the day's work, free from that sadness which often touches us in the vision of earth's transient beauty, because He saw far beyond the horizon into the spirit-world, where there is no night, nor weariness, nor sin, nor death. For nearly thirty years He must have lived within sight of this hilltop. And then, one day, He came back from a journey to the Jordan and Jerusalem, and entered into the little synagogue at the foot of this hill, and began to preach to His townsfolk His glad tidings of spiritual liberty and brotherhood and eternal life. But they were filled with scorn and wrath. His words rebuked them, stung them, inflamed them with hatred. They laid violent hands on Him, and led Him out to the brow of the hill,--perhaps it was yonder on that steep, rocky peak to the south of the town, looking back toward the country of the Old Testament,--to cast Him down headlong. Yet I think there must have been a few friends and lovers of His in that disdainful and ignorant crowd; for He passed through the midst of them unharmed, and went His way to the home of Peter and Andrew and John and Philip, beside the Sea of Galilee, never to come back to Nazareth.
A WEDDING IN CANA OF GALILEE We thought to save a little time on our journey, and perhaps to spare ourselves a little jolting on the hard high-road, by sending the saddle-horses ahead with the caravan, and taking a carriage for the sixteen-mile drive to Tiberias. When we came to the old sarcophagus which serves as a drinking trough at the spring outside the village of Cana, a strange thing befell us. We had halted for a moment to refresh the horses. Suddenly there was a sound of furious galloping on the road behind us. A score of cavaliers in Bedouin dress, with guns and swords, came after us in hot haste. The leaders dashed across the open space beside the spring, wheeled their foaming horses and dashed back again. "Is this our affair with robbers, at last?" we asked George. He laughed a little. "No," said he, "this is the beginning of a wedding in Kafr Kenna. The bridegroom and his friends come over from some other village where they live, to show off a bit of _fantasia_ to the bride and her friends. They carry her back with them after the marriage. We wait a while and see how they ride." The horses were gayly caparisoned with ribbons and tassels and embroidered saddle-cloths. The riders were handsome, swarthy fellows with haughty faces. Their eyes glanced sideways at us to see whether we were admiring them, as they shouted their challenges to one another and raced wildly up and down the rock-strewn course, with their robes flying and their horses' sides bloody with spurring. One of the men was a huge coal-black Nubian who brandished a naked sword as he rode. Others whirled their long muskets in the air and yelled furiously. The riding was cruel, reckless, superb; loose reins and loose stirrups on the headlong gallop; then the sharp curb brought the horse up suddenly, the rein on his neck turned him as if on a pivot, and the pressure of the heel sent him flying back over the course. Presently there was a sound of singing and clapping hands behind the high cactus-hedges to our left, and from a little lane the bridal procession walked up to take the high-road to the village. There were a dozen men in front, firing guns and shouting, then came the women, with light veils of gauze over their faces, singing shrilly, and in the midst of them, in gay attire, but half-concealed with long, dark mantles, the bride and "the virgins, her companions, in raiment of needlework." As they saw the photographic camera pointed at them they laughed, and crowded closer together, and drew the ends of their dark mantles over their heads. So they passed up the road, their shrill song broken a little by their laughter; and the company of horsemen, the bridegroom and his friends, wheeled into line, two by two, and trotted after them into the village. This was all that we saw of the wedding at Kafr Kenna--just a vivid, mysterious flash of human figures, drawn together by the primal impulse and longing of our common nature, garbed and ordered by the social customs which make different lands and ages seem strange to each other, and moving across the narrow stage of Time into the dimness of that Arab village, where Jesus and His mother and His disciples were guests at a wedding long ago.
TIBERIAS It is one of the ironies of fate that the lake which saw the greater part of the ministry of Jesus, should take its modern name from a city built by Herod Antipas, and called after one of the most infamous of the Roman Emperors,--"the Sea of Tiberias." Our road to this city of decadence leads gradually downward, through a broad, sinking moorland, covered with weeds and wild flowers--rich, monotonous, desolate. The broidery of pink flax and yellow chrysanthemums and white marguerites still follows us; but now the wider stretches of thistles and burdocks and daturas and cockleburs and water-plantains seem to be more important. The landscape saddens around us, under the deepening haze of the desert-wind, the sombre Sherkiyeh. There are no golden sunbeams, no cool cloud-shadows, only a gray and melancholy illumination growing ever fainter and more nebulous as the day declines, and the outlines of the hills fade away from the dim, silent, forsaken plain through which we move. We are crossing the battlefield where the soldiers of Napoleon, under the brave Junot, fought desperately against the overwhelming forces of the Turks. Yonder, away to the left, in the mysterious haze, the double "Horns of Hattin" rise like a shadowy exhalation. That is said to be the mountain where Jesus gathered the multitude around Him and spoke His new beatitudes on the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the pure in heart. It is certainly the place where the hosts of the Crusaders met the army of Saladin, in the fierce heat of a July day, seven hundred years ago, and while the burning grass and weeds and brush flamed around them, were cut to pieces and trampled and utterly consumed. There the new Kingdom of Jerusalem,--the last that was won with the sword,--went down in ruin around the relics of "the true cross," which its soldiers carried as their talisman; and Guy de Lusignan, their King, was captured. The noble prisoners were invited by Saladin to his tent, and he offered them sherbets, cooled with snow from Hermon, to slake their feverish thirst. When they were refreshed, the conqueror ordered them to be led out and put to the sword,--just yonder at the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes. From terrace to terrace of the falling moor we roll along the winding road through the brumous twilight, until we come within sight of the black, ruined walls, the gloomy towers, the huddled houses of the worn-out city of Tiberias. She is like an ancient beggar sitting on a rocky cape beside the lake and bathing her feet in the invisible water. The gathering dusk lends a sullen and forlorn aspect to the place. Behind us rise the shattered volcanic crags and cliffs of basalt; before us glimmer pallid and ghostly touches of light from the hidden waves; a few lamps twinkle here and there in the dormant town. This was the city which Herod Antipas built for the capital of his Province of Galilee. He laid its foundations in an ancient graveyard, and stretched its walls three miles along the lake, adorning it with a palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the high-road. It was the strongest fortress and probably the richest town of Galilee in Christ's day, but so far as we know He never entered it. After the fall of Jerusalem, strangely enough, the Jews made it their favourite city, the seat of their Sanhedrim and the centre of rabbinical learning. Here the famous Rabbis Jehuda and Akiba and the philosopher Maimonides taught. Here the Mishna and the Gemara were written. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants are Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe, and spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for the Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel. You may see their flat fur caps, dingy gabardines, long beards and melancholy faces on every street in the drowsy little city, dreaming (among fleas and fevers) of I know not what impossible glories to come. You may see, also, on the hill near the Serai, the splendid Mission Hospital of the United Free Church of Scotland, where for twenty-three years Doctor Torrance has been ministering to the body and soul of Tiberias in the name of Jesus. Do you find the building too large and fine, the lovely garden too beautiful with flowers, the homes of the doctors, and teachers, and helpers of the sick and wounded, too clean and healthful and orderly? Do you say "To what purpose is this waste?" Then I know not how to measure your ignorance. For you have failed to see that this is the embassy of the only King who still cares for the true welfare of this forsaken, bedraggled, broken-down Tiberias. On the evening of our arrival, however, all these things are hidden from us in the dusk. We drive past the ruined gate of the city, a mile along the southern road toward the famous Hot Baths. Here, on a little terrace above the lake, between the road and the black basalt cliffs, our camp is pitched, and through the darkness
The old comparison of the shape of the lake to a lute, or a harp, is not clear to us from the point at which we stand: for the northwestward sweep of the bay of Gennesaret, which reaches a breadth of nearly eight miles from the eastern shore, is hidden from us by a promontory, where the dark walls and white houses of Tiberias slope to the water. But we can see the full length of the lake, from the depression of the Jordan Valley at the southern end, to the shores of Bethsaida and Capernaum at the foot of the northern hills, beyond which the dazzling whiteness of Hermon is visible. Opposite rise the eastern heights of the Jaulan, with almost level top and steep flanks, furrowed by rocky ravines, descending precipitously to a strip of smooth, green shore. Behind us the mountains are more broken and varied in form, lifted into sharper peaks and sloped into broader valleys. The whole aspect of the scene is like a view in the English Lake country, say on Windermere or Ullswater; only there are no forests or thickets to shade and soften it. Every edge of the hills is like a silhouette against the sky; every curve of the shore clear and distinct. Of the nine rich cities which once surrounded the lake, none is left except this ragged old Tiberias. Of the hundreds of fishing boats and passenger vessels which once crossed its waters, all have vanished except half a dozen little pleasure skiffs kept for the use of tourists. Of the armies and caravans which once travelled these shores, all have passed by into the eternal far-away, except the motley string of visitors to the Hot Springs, who were coming up to bathe in the medicinal waters in the days of Joshua when the place was called Hammath, and in the time of the Greeks when it was named Emmaus, and who are still trotting along the road in front of our camp toward the big, white dome and dirty bath-houses of Hummam. They come from all parts of Syria, from Damascus and the sea-coast, from Judea and the Hauran; Greeks and Arabs and Turks and Maronites and Jews; on foot, on donkey-back, and in litters. Now, it is a cavalcade of Druses from the Lebanon, men, women and children, riding on tired horses. Now, it is a procession of Hebrews walking with a silken canopy over the sacred books of their law. In the morning we visit Tiberias, buy some bread and fish in the market, and go through the Mission Hospital, where one of the gentle nurses binds up a foolish little wound on my wrist. In the afternoon we sail on the southern part of the lake. The boatmen laugh at my fruitless fishing with artificial flies, and catch a few small fish for us with their nets in the shallow, muddy places along the shore. The wind is strange and variable, now sweeping down in violent gusts that bend the long arm of the lateen sail, now dying away to a dead calm through which we row lazily home. I remember a small purple kingfisher poising in the air over a shoal, his head bent downward, his wings vibrating swiftly. He drops like a shot and comes up out of the water with a fish held crosswise in his bill. With measured wing-strokes he flits to the top of a rock to eat his supper, and a robber-gull flaps after him to take it away. But the industrious kingfisher is too quick to be robbed. He bolts his fish with a single gulp. We eat ours in more leisurely fashion, by the light of the candles in our peaceful tent.
MEMORIES OF THE LAKE A hundred little points of illumination flash into memory as I look back over the hours that we spent beside the Sea of Galilee. How should I write of them all without being tedious? How, indeed, should I hope to make them visible or significant in the bare words of description? Never have I passed richer, fuller hours; but most of their wealth was in very little things: the personal look of a flower growing by the wayside; the intimate message of a bird's song falling through the sunny air; the expression of confidence and appeal on the face of a wounded man in the hospital, when the good physician stood beside his cot; the shadows of the mountains lengthening across the valleys at sunset; the laughter of a little child playing with a broken water pitcher; the bronzed profiles and bold, free ways of our sunburned rowers; the sad eyes of an old Hebrew lifted from the book that he was reading; the ruffling breezes and sudden squalls that changed the surface of the lake; the single palm-tree that waved over the mud hovels of Magdala; the millions of tiny shells that strewed the beach of Capernaum and Bethsaida; the fertile sweep of the Plain of Gennesaret rising from the lake; and the dark precipices of the "Robbers' Gorge" running back into the western mountains. The written record of these hours is worth little; but in experience and in memory they have a mystical meaning and beauty, because they belong to the country where Jesus walked with His fishermen-disciples, and took the little children in His arms, and healed the sick, and opened blind eyes to behold ineffable things. Every touch that brings that country nearer to us in our humanity and makes it more real, more simple, more vivid, is precious. For the one irreparable loss that could befall us in religion,--a loss that is often threatened by our abstract and theoretical ways of thinking and speaking about Him,--would be to lose Jesus out of the lowly and familiar ways of our mortal life. He entered these lowly ways as the Son of Man in order to make us sure that we are the children of God. Therefore I am glad of every hour spent by the Lake of Galilee. * * * * * I remember, when we came across in our boat to Tell Hum, where the ancient city of Capernaum stood, the sun was shining with a fervent heat and the air of the lake, six hundred and eighty feet below the level of the sea, was soft and languid. The gray-bearded German monk who came to meet us at the landing and admitted us to the inclosure of his little monastery where he was conducting the excavation of the ruins, wore a cork helmet and spectacles. He had been heated, even above the ninety degrees Fahrenheit which the thermometer marked, by the rudeness of a couple of tourists who had just tried to steal a photograph of his work. He had foiled them by opening their camera and blotting the film with sunlight, and had then sent them away with fervent words. But as he walked with us among his roses and Pride of India trees, his spirit cooled within him, and he showed himself a learned and accomplished man. He told us how he had been working there for two or three years, keeping records and drawings and photographs of everything that was found; going back to the Franciscan convent at Jerusalem for his short vacation in the heat of mid-summer; putting his notes in order, reading and studying, making ready to write his book on Capernaum. He showed us the portable miniature railway which he had made; and the little iron cars to carry away the great piles of rubbish and earth; and the rich columns, carved lintels, marble steps and shell-niches of the splendid building which his workmen had uncovered. The outline was clear and perfect. We could see how the edifice of fine, white limestone had been erected upon an older foundation of basalt, and how an earthquake had twisted it and shaken down its pillars. It was undoubtedly a synagogue, perhaps the very same which the rich Roman centurion built for the Jews in Capernaum (Luke vii: 5), and where Jesus healed the man who had an unclean spirit. (Luke iv: 31-37.) Of all the splendours of that proud city of the lake, once spreading along a mile of the shore, nothing remained but these tumbled ruins in a lonely, fragrant garden, where the patient father was digging with his Arab workmen and getting ready to write his book. "_Weh dir, Capernaum_" I quoted. The _padre_ nodded his head gravely. "_Ja, ja,_" said he, "_es ist buchstaeblich erfuellt!_" * * * * * I remember the cool bath in the lake, at a point between Bethsaida and Capernaum, where a tangle of briony and honeysuckle made a shelter around a shell-strewn beach, and the rosy oleanders bloomed beside an inflowing stream. I swam out a little way and floated, looking up into the deep sky, while the waves plashed gently and caressingly around my face. * * * * * I remember the old Arab fisherman, who was camped with his family in a black tent on a meadow where several lively brooks came in (one of them large enough to turn a mill). I persuaded him by gestures to wade out into the shallow part of the lake and cast his bell-net for fish. He gathered the net in his hand, and whirled it around his head. The leaden weights around the bottom spread out in a wide circle and splashed into the water. He drew the net toward him by the cord, the ring of sinkers sweeping the bottom, and lifted it slowly, carefully--but no fish! Then I rigged up my pocket fly-rod with a gossamer leader and two tiny trout-flies, a Royal Coach-man and a Queen of the Water, and began to cast along the crystal pools and rapids of the larger stream. How merrily the fish rose there, and in the ripples where the brooks ran out into the lake. There were half a dozen different kinds of fish, but I did not know the name of any of them. There was one that looked like a black bass, and others like white perch and sunfish; and one kind was very much like a grayling. But they were not really of the _salmo_ family, I knew, for none of them had the soft fin in front of the tail. How surprised the old fisherman was when he saw the fish jumping at those tiny hooks with feathers; and how round the eyes of his children were as they looked on; and how pleased they were with the _bakhshish_ which they received, including a couple of baithooks for the eldest boy! * * * * * I remember the place where we ate our lunch in a small grove of eucalyptus-trees, with sweet-smelling yellow acacias blossoming around us. It was near the site which some identify with the ancient Bethsaida, but others say that it was farther to the east, and others again say that Capernaum was really located here. The whole problem of these lake cities, where they stood, how they supported such large populations (not less than fifteen thousand people in each), is difficult and may never be solved. But it did not trouble us deeply. We were content to be beside the same waters, among the same hills, that Jesus knew and loved. It was here, along this shore, that He found Simon and his brother Andrew casting their net, and James and his brother John mending theirs, and called them to come with Him. These fishermen, with their frank and free hearts unspoiled by the sophistries of the Pharisees, with their minds unhampered by social and political ambitions, followers of a vocation which kept them out of doors and reminded them daily of their dependence on the bounty of God,--these children of nature, and others like them, were the men whom He chose for His disciples, the listeners who had ears to hear His marvellous gospel. It was here, on these pale, green waves, that He sat in a little boat, near the shore, and spoke to the multitude who had gathered to hear Him. He spoke of the deep and tranquil confidence that man may learn from nature, from the birds and the flowers. He spoke of the infinite peace of the heart that knows the true meaning of love, which is giving and blessing, and the true secret of courage, which is loyalty to the truth. He spoke of the God whom we can trust as a child trusts its father, and of the Heaven which waits for all who do good to their fellowmen. He spoke of the wisdom whose fruit is not pride but humility, of the honour whose crown is not authority but service, of the purity which is not outward but inward, and of the joy which lasts forever. He spoke of forgiveness for the guilty, of compassion for the weak, of hope for the desperate. He told these poor and lowly folk that their souls were unspeakably precious, and that He had come to save them and make them inheritors of an eternal kingdom. He told them that He had brought this message from God, their Father and His Father. He spoke with the simplicity of one who knows, with the assurance of one who has seen, with the certainty and clearness of one for whom doubt does not exist. He offered Himself, in His stainless purity, in His supreme love, as the proof and evidence of His gospel, the bread of Heaven, the water of life, the Saviour of sinners, the light of the world. "Come unto Me," He said, "and I will give you rest." This was the heavenly music that came into the world by the Lake of Galilee. And its voice has spread through the centuries, comforting the sorrowful, restoring the penitent, cheering the despondent, and telling all who will believe it, that our human life is worth living, because it gives each one of us the opportunity to share in the Love which is sovereign and immortal. The Lord is my teacher: He leadeth me in the lowly path of learning, The world is a great book that he hath written, Then am I glad when I perceive his meaning, Yea, though my lesson be hard it is not hopeless, Surely thou wilt enlighten me daily by joy and by sorrow: |
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