IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER VIII.
On
to Bethlehem.
Scene on the way — Convent of Elias — First
sight of Bethlehem [Micah v. 2)— Beautiful tradition — Rachel's tomb
[Gen. xxxv. 16-20] — Light on the Bible [Jer. xxxi. 15 ; Matt. ii. 17, 18]
— A picture [Luke x. 22] — Scenes of Ruth's history [Ruth i., ii.]
— Modern salutations — David the shepherd — Unconscious
education [i Sam. xvi. 20] — Entrance into Bethlehem — Appearance of
its streets — Church of the Nativity — Cautious reception — Cave
of the Nativity — Probabilities — Early records — Public khans
— Song of the shepherds [Luke it. 8-14] — Worship of the Magi [Matt.
ii. 9-11) — "Massacre of the Innocents" — Jerome's oratory — The
Lady Paula — Chanting of . the Greek monks — A market in which vie
are the only purchaser — Salomons gardens [Eccles. ii. 4-6] — Queen
of Sheba — Mistake corrected — Mr. Meshullam — Gardens of
Urtas.
WE had lingered over the scenes of the Agony, the
Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension ; and we had yet to visit the
place which was associated with the glorious mystery of the Incarnation of
Christ. That was a day to be ever afterwards noted in our memory with a white
mark, which brought us to the birth-place of Him who was to be the Light and
Hope of the world.
As Bethlehem was two hours, or six miles, distant
from Jerusalem, this was an excursion only to be accomplished on horseback.
Passing out by the Jaffa-gate, and winding by a rough zigzag path down the
gorge of Hinnom, we were soon out into the open upland country, and moving
almost directly southward. There were no roads, in our English sense of the
word ; but there were twenty narrow paths to choose between. The bare
limestone-rock usually protruded itself, and formed a very uneven pavement ;
but at intervals there were little patches of soil covered with wild-flowers,
in which the ranunculus and the scarlet anemone abounded, such as must often
have delighted the eye of Hasselquist, the amiable martyr-botanist of
Palestine. And there were blossoming gardens not far off on either side, in
which you could hear the song of the native bullfinch, with its scarlet crest
around its bill. Multitudes of red-legged partridges also crossed our path at
times; - and these sights and sounds, with the refreshing air and the bright
sunlight, made our ride, even apart from its chief object, most
enjoyable.
A little, more than mid-way from Jerusalem, we passed the
Greek convent of Elias. It is a large and imposing structure, surrounded by
high walls which also inclose attractive gardens, and it professes to mark the
spot where Elijah found shelter under a juniper-tree on his flight to the
desert. But the sacred narrative, which places the scene where the wearied and
dejected prophet lay down to rest, and perhaps to die, a long day's journey
further southward, is directly in the face of this tradition. We believe there
is less of fiction in what is usually reported of the hospitality of the
convent.
A little beyond this sacred house, and at a sharp turn in the
road, we lost sight of Jerusalem, and at the same moment Bethlehem broke on our
view. That, then, had been the great meeting-place between earth and heaven -
the spot where divinity and humanity became one in the person of our incarnate
Lord ! We reined in our horse, and stood still for a time to look on it. It
stretches along the crest of a mountain of considerable height, - the Church or
Convent of the Nativity, with its connected buildings, covering the loftiest
part of the eminence, and looking, at the distance from which we then saw it, a
great deal more like a fortress than a church. Vineyards and olive-gardens
elaborately terraced, and, as they appeared to us through our glass, carefully
cultivated, stretched down the sides of the mountain from the village to the
valley far beneath. As it filled our minds with its grandly sacred memories, we
could not help addressing it aloud in those words of Micah: "But thou,
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out
of thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
We thought that if that
little town, because of an event which once took place in it, could thus be
invested with an interest which for nineteen centuries had drawn to it
innumerable pilgrims from every part of the earth, and gathered around it the
thoughts of the human family, might there not be worlds in like manner among
the countless stars - "little among the thousands" of the sky - wliich held a
somewhat similar place, because they had been the chosen scene of great divine
manifestations, and which angels, in their flights through the universe, often
paused to look upon. We met with various traditions respecting places on this
road, the greater number of which were puerile and absurd enough. But one
seemed to us to possess a kind of mystic beauty which a poet like Quarles, or
even George Herbert, would have readily turned into a spiritual allegory. They
show you a fountain at which the wise men from the East lay down greatly
dispirited, because their guiding star had not been seen by them for many days.
But as they stooped down to the fountain to quench their thirst, they saw the
friendly light reflected in its waters; and welcoming again the divine token,
followed on in the path which it illuminated, and were soon after bending and
worshipping before the "Desire of all nations" who had come.
But what is
that white cupola-roofed building which we see at some little distance to our
right ? It is the tomb of Rachel the wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph and
Benjamin. We are now on the very scene of which we read so far back in the Book
of Genesis, that "when there was a little way to come to Ephrath, Rachel gave
birth to a son." "And it came to pass as her soul was in departing (for she
died) -that she called his name Benoni; but his father called him Benjamin. And
Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem. And
Jacob set a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto
this day." The covering over the grave has often been destroyed and rebuilt
since that time; the present erection is in the well-known Saracenic style of
architecture but all travellers are agreed that here for once we have
certainty, and that this building really marks the spot where that mother of
patriarchs was buried. To Jewish women, especially, it is, to this day, one of
the most sacred places in Palestine. They believe Rachel to be the type of
maternity in its suffering and love, and to have the power of invoking
blessings on their children on the earth. And therefore, at every new moon they
gather around her grave, and by songs and lamentations put honour on the memory
of their illustrious ancestress.
There is one familiar passage in
Jeremiah which warrants this typical application of Rachel's name. It is quoted
by the evangelist Matthew, and used by him to describe Herod's massacre of the
infants in Bethlehem and all its borders, in order to compass the destruction
of Him who was reported to have been recently born King of the Jews - " In Rama
was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel
weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not."
But we suspect the extreme fitness and poetic beauty of this quotation, as
applied by Matthew, is in general only half seen. Rama is usually imagined to
refer to the Rama of Samuel, a great way distant. But there is a place with
ruins and rubbish on it, which lies between Rachel's tomb and Bethlehem, which
is called Rama at this day, and which many suppose to have been a kind of
suburban village or dependency of the little mountain capital. Let it be
remembered that Herod's massacre is expressly said to have extended to the
"coasts," or borders, around Bethlehem, and that this Rama must therefore have
been within the bloody landmark; and then we have the wonderfully sublime and
touching picture of Rachel, the representative of Hebrew mothers, aroused from
her tomb by those inhuman deeds and infant shrieks, and weeping with
inconsolable grief over the tyrant's stroke that has made her
childless.
As we approached nearer to Bethlehem, we met a considerable
stream of people going up to Jerusalem. Probably, the fact that it was the
Easter week was drawing many to the city, and to the scenes which were being
enacted in the Church oi the Holy Sepulchre. Our notice was particularly
attracted by one little company. A husband and wife, cleanly and comfortably
dressed, were travelling with one beautiful child. The child was placed in a
small cot or cradle on the back of a good natured donkey, which evidently did
not feel its load to be burdensome, and which was neatly adorned by a saddle
covered with red morocco leather, and thickly padded in order to make the seat
of the infant more comfortable. One of the parents walked on either side of the
animal, watching his every motion, lest their little one should receive any
harm. We liked the picture of young parental love, and of that smiling creature
knitting in one the two hearts by another bond. Was it unnatural or irreverent
that, in the circumstances, we should have called to mind Joseph and Mary going
up with their wonderful child by the same road so long ago, to " present him
before the Lord"?
We were now so near Bethlehem that we could look
straight down into the broad valley that lies between the gardens of the town
and a range of lofty hills which bounds it northward, the far-off purple-tinted
mountains of Moab forming its apparent limit to the east. Down in the valley,
there seemed to spread before us the whole scene of the inimitable story of the
Book of Ruth - that exquisite miniature representation of divine providence -
that sacred drama with its beginning, its middle, and its end. The land near us
- part of which had quite recently been under the plough, while other parts
were green with the braird of wheat or barley - was unenclosed, as in those
olden times so many thousand years since. It scarcely required an effort of
fancy to fill up the scene again with its living figures, - to picture the
honest, manly Boaz down on those paternal fields; the jocund reapers plying
their busy sickles; poor maidens gleaning behind them; while Ruth, the
beautiful stranger from Moab, mingles silently with them, and gathers handfuls
in her ample veil, to be taken home to Naomi and beaten out at nightfall. We
could even imagine ourselves to hear the kindly salutations that passed at
intervals between the genial yeoman and his dependent: "The Lord be with thee"
and "The Lord bless thee," exactly corresponding with the "Allah m'akum" of
ordinary greetings in the same region now. We were too early in the season to
witness a Bethlehem harvest, though the barley crop was expected to ripen in a
few weeks, according to the order indicated in the Book of Ruth. But we were
assured that every minute custom painted on that olden canvas remains
unchanged, even to the occasional rudeness of the modern fellahin to the
unprotected gleaners; for those Bethlehemites are a turbulent race, and when
riots occur in Jerusalem at the annual festivals, they are usually the foremost
and most fearless in the fray.
And as we turned and looked on those
neighbouring hills, with their steep sides and craggy summits, and saw the
browsing goats and sheep, how easy it was to imagine the youthful son of Jesse
watching his father's flocks up yonder, and at night gazing up with his poet's
eye upon the beautiful moon and the silent stars! It was quite the scenery
which suited for the natural education of the future poet-king of Israel. We do
not indeed believe that nature can produce a poet. It is certain that even
unfavourable outward circumstances are unable to repress the "faculty divine"
where it exists in much strength. The late James Montgomery wrote some of his
best compositions when looking out from a dingy apartment on a dull brick wall
in Sheffield. But nature can do much in developing a poet, in exercising his
imagination, and in storing his mind with visions of beauty and grandeur; and
it is to the point to notice that the poet whom we have named, always wrote
best after an excursion among the finest scenery in Warwick or Derbyshire. We
cannot doubt that God silently educated David among those scenes on which we
were then looking, for his great work as the chief poet and psalmist of the
Church for all time; for men of his temperament receive some of their best and
most lasting lessons outside the walls of schools and universities. From those
hills he could see at the same moment the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; he
could look down upon the scenes of soft beauty and abundance around Bethlehem,
and out upon the wild grandeur of the distant mountains; while he could witness
the rapid changes of the seasons and the terrible war of the elements, and hear
the voice of God in the roll and crash of the thunder, with allusions to which
his psalms abound.
And there was an education by external nature beyond
this. The life of a shepherd in those scenes was one of constant hardship and
peril. The lion and the bear which lurked among those rocks, or down near the
course of those mountain torrents, were a formidable vermin to deal with, and
had often to be encountered single-handed; not to speak of occasional raids of
Ishmaelites up from the desert, or of Philistines from the west stealing along
those long gorges of which Bethlehem was the centre, and hungering for plunder,
if not thirsting for blood. Experiences like these familiarized the young
shepherd with daring adventure, and drew out in him fertility of resource;
while his frequent search after a lost lamb or kid would make him acquainted
with all the surrounding regions, would prepare him for the time, not many
years distant, when, as the prophetic king of Israel, he would be hunted for
his life by the jealous and ignoble Saul over all that part of Southern Judea,
and he would find the advantage of his knowledge of every inaccessible spot,
and natural hiding-place, and narrow mountain-pass where a few brave and true
men would be able to resist a thousand.
It is a fact worth noting that
the presents which Jesse sent by David to Saul, when he was called away from
his adventurous shepherd-life to become a minstrel before the king and dispel
his moods of melancholy, are the most common products of the district at this
hour, such as we should expect to be sent to a sheikh or chief in that
neighbourhood now. " Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine,
and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul."
We were now
entering Bethlehem. Its name signifies "the house of bread;" and it is rather
curious that the first sound we heard, as we passed through its gate, was the
cheerful one of the grinding of a mill. The little town is said to contain
about four thousand inhabitants, the greater number of whom are Christians of
the Greek Church. It is indeed the most Christian town in Palestine, and
contains so few of the followers of Mahomet, that it has not even a Moslem
quarter. We were struck by its general look of respectability, the comparative
superiority of its houses in respect of structure and comfort, and the many
picturesque and lively groups of people whom we saw in its principal street as
we rode along on our way to the convent. Was it some such group as one of these
that recognized the sad and widowed Naomi, as she reappeared suddenly at some
corner, after her long absence of ten years? Long before our visit to the Holy
Land, Lieutenant Van de Velde had informed us of the contrast in cleanliness
and comfort observable throughout all Palestine between a Christian and a
Mohammedan village; and every week of our journeyings confirmed his
representation. Even a very imperfect form of Christianity lifts a people far
above the Moslem standard. When we compared the Christian Bethlehem with the
Moslem mud-village of New Jericho, which we saw a few days afterwards, we felt
that we were looking upon a state of existence as widely apart as that between
a Norwegian cottage and a Hottentot's kraal.
But here we were, at last,
at the door of the Church of the Nativity, beneath whose roof, it is affirmed,
"Mary brought forth her first-born Son." Ten clamorous Bethlehemites offered to
take charge of our quiet ultra-phlegmatic Arab horse. We had some doubts, as we
selected one strong fellow for the custody of our charger, with our good saddle
and bridle from Scotland, whether we should ever see them again - each of the
ten seeming ready to contend for the poor animal as his own lawful prize. But
there was nothing for it but to run the hazard.
An iron gate is opened
cautiously, by which only one person can enter at a time; and the roof is so
low at the entrance that you almost need to bend double in order to gain
admission. In all this, it was easy to discern precautions against sudden
surprises from Bedouins and others who might have covetous thoughts about the
treasures within. To diminish the danger of angry collisions between the
different Churches, the sacred house is divided among the Greek, Latin, and
Armenian Christians, to each of whom separate parts of the structure are
assigned as places of worship and dwellings for the monks. In the portion which
has been allotted to the Greek communion, you are shown a marble star on the
floor, corresponding, as the monks tell you, to the point in the heavens where
the supernatural luminary shone, and directly over the scene of the nativity in
the subterranean church beneath. With your curiosity quickened, you descend
fifteen steps, and are conducted through a long passage into what was.
originally a cave or grotto cut put of a limestone-rock on the ridge of the
mountain against which this part of the convent abuts; and this, you are
assured, is the scene of our Redeemer's birth. It is an apartment of moderate
size and height, everywhere lined and floored with marble. It is illuminated by
thirty-two golden lamps, which are kept burning day and night, all of them the
gift of Christian princes. The precise spot of the nativity is indicated by a
glory in the floor composed of marble and jasper, and encircled by a wreath of
silver, around which these words are inscribed, "Hie de Virgine Maria, Jesus
Christus natus est" (Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary). An altar
infixed in the rock spreads over it. The original manger is reported to have
been carried to Rome; but at the distance of seven paces another manger is
shown, carved out of marble, and corresponding in shape and size to the
original. In front of this is the so-called altar of the Magi, on which incense
is kept continually burning.
Is this then the actual spot where the
Saviour of the world was born, and divinity condescended to become enshrined in
our humanity? To judge dispassionately on this question, it is necessary that
we first dismiss from our minds the thought of all those misplaced ornaments
and monkish inventions with which the place is deformed, and every sign of
simplicity and humiliation so completely obliterated, and that we endeavour to
reproduce the lowly picture so graphically traced for us by the pen of Luke.
But when we have done this, and looked at the evidence which speaks in favour
of this spot, we feel that it cannot be dismissed lightly. We must distinguish
between late inventions and those early authentic documents out of which
history obtains some of her most precious and reliable materials. Now, it is a
fact that Justin Martyr, writing somewhat more than a century after the event,
and from his native town of Sichem, only forty miles distant, - familiar, we
may presume, with the country and with its fresh local traditions, - is most
distinct and unhesitating in his statement that the scene of our Lord's birth
was in a rock cavity in this old city of David. The fact was repeated through
the following centuries by Origen, Eusebius, Jerome, and others of the early
Christian fathers; and many ages before the days of Jerome, this spot was
marked off and inclosed within a sacred building as the shrine of the Nativity.
What facts are there to set over against these and to displace them? More
especially when it is remembered that in that region, then as now, natural or
artificial caverns hewn out of the white limestone-rock were frequently taken
advantage of in the formation of human habitations ?
As we read the
inspired narrative of our Lord's birth in the light of Eastern scenes and
customs, it seems to amount to this. There was a public khan or caravanserai in
Bethlehem in those days for the accommodation of strangers. We never saw such a
khan in modern Palestine; but we afterwards found shelter in one among the
Lebanon mountains. We remember there was a court in the centre, where our mules
and horses rested and fed. Around this court there were little apartments or
cells where travellers could eat and sleep. But sometimes also, as Dr. Kitto
mentions, behind those apartments, and on a lower level, there were stalls or
recesses where cattle could be sheltered. It was probably to such a place in
Bethlehem that Joseph and Mary came, late in the evening, and wearied with
their long journey from Nazareth. They found every room in the house already
occupied. What were they to do at that late hour, for it was the only
caravanserai in the little town? There was a natural cave or arcade formed out
of the rock, in which the horses and mules of strangers sometimes received
their provender. This was divided into a number of recesses; and in one of
these, curtained off from the rest, the young virgin-mother found quiet in the
hour of her extremity; and her sorrow was soon turned into great joy by the
birth of Him "in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed." What a
scene for the birth of the Prince of Life for him who was "in the form of God"
to "take upon him the form of a servant!"
"Wrapt in his swaddling bands,
And in his manger laid,
The hope and glory of all lands
Is come to
the world's aid.
No peaceful home upon his cradle smiled;
Guests rudely
went and came where slept the royal child."
Meanwhile one of those
strange contrasts were occurring which marked the whole of Christ's earthly
life, and which were not absent from the last and darkest scene of all. In a
plain about a mile to the east of Bethlehem, where humble shepherds were
watching their flocks at midnight, a herald-angel announced to them the first
tidings that the world's great Deliverer had come; and innumerable
minstrel-angels spreading in radiant ranks far up into the sky, sang his natal
hymn in those glad strains whose responses were given back from heaven, and
whose echoes still reverberate through the earth in all Christian hearts: "
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men." Those
shepherd-watchers were probably simple, holy men, who had been trained in those
Bethlehem solitudes to devotion, and who had long waited, with straining mental
eye and earnest soul, for the "Consolation of Israel." There was profound
wisdom in the fact that they should have been honoured to receive the earliest
tidings - shepherds from the lips of angels - rather than the proud and
wrangling leaders of the Jewish sects, who would have abused the trust. And
while they have left their flocks and gone to Bethlehem to welcome to earth the
Lord of heaven, and to worship at his feet, there are others from a far-off
land now journeying across the mountains of Judah, who shall soon be here with
their fragrant and golden gifts - the representatives of science, "the first
fruits" of the Gentile world. It has been shrewdly said that it is the same
order still: simplicity first; and science next, coming with its crowns to lay
them down before Him on whose head there shall be many crowns.
"Those
who have bowed untaught to Nature's sway,
And they who follow truth along
her star-paved way."
We were guided to other places of interest under the
roof of this immense pile. From the supposed tomb of the infants slaughtered by
the command of Herod, we turned away with an incredulity which almost tempted
us to question what was true. But there is no reason to doubt that the cell
shown as the oratory of Jerome was really the apartment where that learned
father produced his Latin translation of the Scriptures known as "the Vulgate,"
and where he also wrote his Commentary. It is interesting to remember that he
mentions, when writing on the prophecy of Amos, that he could see from the
window of his apartment that Tekoa - six miles distant - which had been the
herdsman-prophet's birth-place, and where he had seen his visions and dreamed
his dreams. Nor is there any cause to question that that recess contains the
tomb of the noble Roman matron, the Lady Paula, the friend of Jerome, who
sought refuge from the riot and luxury of Rome in the inn in which her Lord was
born; more especially "as she ever loved privacy and a sequestered life, being
of the pelicans' nature, which use not to fly in flocks;" who built and endowed
three monasteries at Bethlehem - in her "immoderate bounty" more than
impoverishing her own children, and giving occasion to Fuller's shrewd remark:
"Sure none need be more bountiful in giving than the sun is in shining, which,
though freely bestowing his beams on the world, keeps notwithstanding the body
of light to himself ; yea, it is necessary that liberality should as well have
banks as a stream."
But what cheerful music is that which we hear from
some part of this great house - rapid, distinct in every note, and yet softened
by distance? It is the chanting of the monks of the Greek Church. Their worship
is more gladsome than that of any other of the Churches represented beneath
this roof; just as we noticed that, in their temples in other lands, they
usually preferred bright colours upon their walls, and streams of light flowing
in upon them. The hymns of the Greek Church in celebration of the Nativity are
very ancient and numerous - much more so, it is remarkable, than those on the
Crucifixion; and we could almost have believed those lines which Miss Bremer
has presented in an English garb to have formed the refrain of that to which we
were now listening:
"Thy birth, O Christ Jesus our God,
Has caused new
light to arise on the world;
And they come, the star-worshippers,
By a
star guided, to thee."
What a sudden revulsion of thought and feeling we
experienced when we emerged through the iron gate into the open air! Our
extemporized groom had been faithful, and was waiting patiently for his
piastres. But specimens of all the manufactures of Bethlehem were instantly
pressed upon us by a whole noisy troop of Bethlehemites: carved olive-wood from
the neighbouring gardens; mother-of-pearl with beautiful tracery from the Red
Sea, beads and rosaries made of olive-berries, cups and vases formed of stones
from the Dead Sea or the Jordan, or of red-spotted marble from quarries near
Jerusalem. It was like a fair in which we were the only hapless
purchaser.
How much we wished that we could have extended our ride
three miles southward, and have visited the famous pools and gardens of
Solomon. From the days of Maundrell to our own, travellers have been almost
unanimous in identifying these as the places of which that most magnificent of
Jewish monarchs writes: "I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted
me vineyards; I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of
all kinds of fruits; I made me pools of water to water therewith the wood that
bringeth forth trees;" and in which, as Leighton says, "he set Nature on the
rack to confess its uttermost strength for the delighting and satisfying of
man." His three pools or gigantic cisterns, so disposed that the waters of the
uppermost may descend into the second, and those of the second into the third,
are among the few human works in which actual inspection usually exceeds
expectation. One traveller, seeking to give an impression of their extent and
magnitude, declares that the surface occupied by them is such that he could not
find any point at which all the three could be comprised within one angle of
vision; and another informs us that one of them when full would float the
largest man-of-war that ever ploughed the ocean. From Solomon's own words, we
should conclude that those colossal structures were partly designed for
supplying his neighbouring royal gardens with the means of irrigation,
saturating his trees with that constant moisture which in such a climate is
necessary to fruitfulness. But, beyond this, they were intended for the chief
water-supply of his capital; and the aqueduct which he also constructed for
connecting the pools with Jerusalem can still be traced in some places,
following the many sinuosities of the intervening mountains - certain noble
fragments especially appearing as you ascend from the Valley of Hinnom near to
the Jaffa-gate. Were these a part of the glory of King Solomon, which, when the
Queen of Sheba beheld, "there remained no more spirit in her" Many travellers
have been greatly mistaken in confining the gardens of Solomon within one
narrow valley in the neighbourhood of the pools, and have thus created
difficulties for themselves. The saying has been repeated a hundred times in
varying phrase, from Maundrell downwards, that " if Solomon made his gardens in
the rocky ground which is now assigned to them, he demonstrated greater power
and wealth in finishing his design, than wisdom in choosing the place for it."
But scientific observation has done much in the department of horticulture
since that grand old traveller's days, and has discovered that "the loose,
gray, calcareous gravel from those rocky surfaces possesses a fertility
exceeding all other kinds of soil for the production of fine fruits." And many
things favour the belief that the area included in Solomon's culture had more
of the dimensions of a deer-forest than of a common orchard; that the whole of
that region, comprehending many hills and valleys, was one vast blossoming and
fragrant garden ; and that, standing on some commanding eminence such as the
flat roof of Solomon's own summer-palace, you might have seen one valley filled
with the fig-tree, another shaded with the clustering vine, and a third
darkened by the olive, or bright with the scarlet blossoms of the pomegranate -
the whole supplying the outward imagery of that spiritual love-dialogue between
the Church and her divine Husband, the gorgeous "Song of Songs."
In
confirmation of this, Mr. Meshullam mentions that the heights and hollows in
the whole of this neighbourhood still bear names that reveal their ancient
cultivation and fertility - such as "peach-hill," "nut-vale," and "fig-vale."
In all likelihood, the gardens of that enterprising agriculturist of Urtas
cover a portion of the old royal orchards; and one friend has noticed with
delight to what an extent the living picture which Mr. Meshullam has reproduced
in that scene - in its singing-birds, and sparkling streams, its apricots, and
peaches, and figs, and vines - corresponds with the descriptions of Solomon in
his Canticles. The labours of this singularly gifted Christian Jew in his farm
at Urtas have placed beyond doubt two things - that the old abundance is yet
sleeping in the soil of Palestine; and that it needs no miracle, but skilled
industry with its enchanter's wand, and with God's blessing, to bring back the
beauty and the teeming wealth of the earliest ages of the Hebrew monarchy.
While the respect and confidence with which he has inspired the surrounding
Bedouin tribes, causing them not only to leave his property unmolested, but to
treat him as a friend and often to choose him as an umpire, has shown that even
they are capable of being conciliated and tamed by good treatment, by
persevering firmness, justice, and kindness. Ishmael and Isaac once wept and
embraced each other over their father's grave : shall not their descendants one
day embrace over Israel's resurrection?
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Chapter Eleven
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