IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER XIV.
(Elijah Country).
The city of Samaria,
[i Kings xvi. 23, 24]—Mr. Layard—Natural strength [Isa. xxviii.
i]—Jezebel the temptress—Crimson sins [i Kings xxi. 25,
26]—Suspended judgments—Sinning more and more [Amos iii.
9]—Samaria under Herod—Ruins —No description so graphic as that
of prophecy [Micah 1. 6]—The exile—Tirzah— Dothan [Gen. xxxvii.;
2 Kings vi.]—Engannim—Turkish cavalry—Gilboa—Little
Herman—Tabor—The plain of Esdraelon Description—European
merchants— Battle-ground of nations—Jezreel—Naboth's
vineyard—Jehu—Jezebel given to the dogs—The bloody Pool [i Kings
xxi., xxii; 2 Kings ix.]—Ride across the plain—The Galilean
hills—Saul's last battle—Nain in the
distance—Shunem—Courtesy of the villagers—Garden of the
Shunemitish woman [2 Kings iv. i2] —First sight of
Nazareth—Reflections—Population—Clumsy traditions—Solitary
-walks of Jesus— "Mary's fountain'' —Mount of Precipitation [Luke iv.
28-30]—Mr. Varterts hospital—Excursion to Carmel -
Storks—Gazelles—Involuntary bath in the Kishon—The
telegraph—Biblical descriptions verified [Isa. xxxv. 2; Amos ix.
3]—Scene of Elijah's sacrifice—Slaughter of the Baal priests [i Kings
xviii.]—-Mediterranean visible—Elijah running beside Ahab's
chariot—-Explanation—The muezzin-cry.
WE were now passing into the Elijah country. So much was
the thought present to our mind, that on this and some following days we often
imagined that we saw the tall, majestic form of the prophet of fire coming
suddenly forth from some wady, or valley, and confronting us like an embodied
conscience. Scarcely a ruin we were to visit was without some stirring memory
of himself, or of his only less great successor Elisha. On leaving Sychar our
way led through a region abounding in water, which produced its usual effects
of foliage and fertility, of corn fields and orchards. At one point, we came
upon a mill course, pouring its sparkling stream upon an ancient wheel; at
another place, we passed by shepherds gathered round a wayside fountain to give
drink to their panting flocks. In less than three hours we were toiling up the
beautiful eminence which nad long ago been crowned by the city of Samaria, the
chosen capital of the kingdom of the ten tribes.
The mountain rises
somewhat steeply, about four hundred feet from its base. It is surrounded by a
broad and fertile valley, which is circled by a "ring of mountains" that rise
considerably higher than the central hill. The account of the origin of the old
metropolis is given in the Old Testament Scriptures with characteristic
distinctness and brevity: "In the thirty first year of Asa king of Judah, began
Omri to reign over Israel; and he bought the hill of Shemer, and built a city
on the hill, which he called Samaria, after the name of Shemer, the owner of
the hill." It is a notable fact that on one of the stones which Mr. Layard dug
out of the ruins of Nineveh, Samaria is mentioned, under the name of its
founder, as Beth Khumri, or the House of Omri - a reference far from unnatural
on those Assyrian monuments, when it is remembered that it was the Assyrian
Shalmaneser who finally succeeded in taking Samaria and in carrying away its
people into captivity. The natural strength and exceeding beauty of the place
do credit to the wisdom of Omri in selecting such a spot for the permanent
capital of the northern kingdom. It could only be approached by narrow passes,
in which numbers were of less account than courage; and a city placed on the
summit of a steep mountain and strongly walled would be almost impregnable by
the ancient methods of assault. It is impossible not to be attracted by the
singular beauty of its position. The many-coloured foliage of the intervening
valley; the varied contour of the encircling mountains, gemmed in many a place
by little white villages, or by a solitary prophet's tomb; the occasional
openings in the mountain circle, giving you glimpses of the valley of Sharon,
or even of the blue Mediterranean spreading out its placid bosom glorious with
sunlight - form a picture rarely equalled in Palestine. And if we imagine a
spectator to have stood on one of the neighbouring mountains, or to have looked
up on Samaria from the valley beneath, the picture would so far have been
changed, but the beauty undiminished. The prophet Isaiah, with his fine poet's
eye for nature, reflects the popular impression of his own times when he speaks
of Samaria as "the crown of pride, and the glorious beauty which is on the head
of the fat valley."
This city appears to have reached the culminating
point of its earlier magnificence under the reign of Ahab, though being, from
the first, one of "the thrones of wickedness," it was a hollow and short-lived
greatness; for, as Isaiah had also foretold, "its glorious beauty was as a
fading flower, and as the hasty fruit before summer." At the instigation of
Jezebel, his Zidonian princess, Ahab erected a temple to Baal, and richly
endowed a numerous retinue of idol-priests; and this was followed by the
rearing of an ivory palace for himself and his imperious queen. It is doubtful
whether this baleful influence upon Ahab and the fortunes of his kingdom, has
usually been measured at its full extent. That she was a woman of
"unconquerable will and immortal hate" like Lady Macbeth, that she was
voluptuous and vain of her charms like Cleopatra, and that in the use of her
powers she turned her weak and wicked husband into the veriest slave of her
ambition, is seen by every one. But we doubt whether it is generally seen that
her malign dominion marked a fatal stage of transition on the part of Ahab's
people from their impure worship of the true God to the worship of false gods,
from superstition to idolatry, from rebellion to apostasy. It is only in this
view that we read aright those words in which the inspired pen places a double
brand over Ahab's name. "There was none like unto Ahab which did sell himself
to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.
And he did very abominably in following idols, according to all things as did
the Amorites."
Even after this, indeed, when there were gleams of
penitence and partial reformation, there seemed a merciful reluctance to give
the people over to the will of their enemies - "How shall I give thee up,
Ephraim?" - as when, after the three years of siege by Benhadad, the Syrian
king, they were reduced to the last terrible extremity of famine, and by a
miraculous interposition, according to Elisha's almost incredible words, they
passed from gaunt hunger to overflowing plenty in a day.
We obtained a
new impression of that most dramatic picture which the inspired writer has
given us of the famine in Samaria, when we looked round on the contiguous
mountains and imagined them covered by Benhadad's soldiers, who could look down
from those heights into the city and see the famine-stricken people pining on
the walls, or walking like skeletons on the streets. And we had but yesterday
seen, outside the gates of Sychar, such lepers as might have gone out from the
gates of Samaria, so long ago, into the forsaken camp, and, after satiating
their hunger, have carried back the news of abundance and life, which, in a
moment, turned despair into jubilee. But the reformations were partial, and the
degeneracy persistent and deep. Next to its apostasy to false gods, it is
evident, from many a scathing reference in the prophets, that Samaria's
besetting crime was drunkenness; and this was associated with those other
crimes of oppression, bloodshed, and robbery, which are the marks of a people
that are ripening for the sickle of Divine judgment, and whose cup of iniquity
is nearly full. There is scarcely a bolder passage in all the ancient prophets
than that in the Book of Amos, in which the very heathen are summoned from the
distant Philistine Ashdod, and even from Egypt, and are told to take their post
of observation on the neighbouring mountains, and to bear witness to the daring
wickedness practised by those who had once claimed to be the people of God. "
Publish in the palaces at Ashdod, and in the palaces in the land of Egypt, and
say, Assemble yourselves upon the mountains of Samaria, and behold the great
tumults in the midst thereof, and the oppressions in the midst thereof. For
they know not to do right, saith the Lord, who store up violence and pillage in
their palaces.The threatened retribution came at last. Samaria was besieged,
her temples and palaces levelled with the dust, and her people, with ropes
around their necks and bound together in gangs like slaves, borne away into a
remote captivity from which they never returned.
Eight hundred years
afterwards, Samaria was rebuilt, and recovered a temporary splendour under
Herod, commonly called the Great. That cruel and crafty Idumean had an artist's
eye, and was a man of magnificent schemes; and seeing what a noble site the
place offered, built on it a palatial city rich in architecture, whose chief
ornament was a temple in honour of his patron Augustus. In this favourite city
he lived in wicked splendour, delighting in song, and festival, and riot, and
in the dance of the wanton woman. But its meretricious glory almost vanished
with himself. There is no Samaria now. Hanging on the eastern brow of the hill,
every part of which was once covered with the city, there is a miserable Arab
mud-village of about sixty houses, the only redeeming feature in which is a
church built by the Crusaders over the reputed grave of John the Baptist. But
nowhere else could we trace either house or inhabitant. We imagined that we
could see down in the valley the marks of what might once have been Herod's
royal garden, laid out in plots and with channels for irrigation. On one part
of the hill itself we followed with interest a long line of columns, a few of
which were still standing, some broken, many prostrate on the earth, and others
half buried in the soil or hidden in the rank grass; and these are not
improbably the remains of a magnificent colonnade which lined on either side
the principal street of Herod's city, that led up to the temple of the Caesar
such as we saw a few weeks afterwards in one of the oldest streets of Damascus.
But this was all that remained of what had once been Samaria.
Those
words had been written by the prophet Micah not only before the days of Herod,
but while Israel was still a kingdom and Samaria its capital: "Therefore will I
make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a. vineyard: and I
will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the
foundations thereof." We confess to our having been startled when we read those
ancient prophetic words, and saw with what minuteness they had photographed the
living picture that lay before us. The features were complete in their
correspondence in every part. The upper portion of the mountain is rudely
terraced by stones which had evidently been taken from the walls and
foundations of the ancient city, and the intervening spaces are occupied by
narrow corn fields, or strips of garden from which the vine is not absent. The
earth has been carefully ploughed or dug up in every place; and those stones
which have not been used for terraces are either gathered together in heaps, or
tumbled down into the valley far beneath, where we could see them "in
multitudes confusedly hurled," like boulders left after the sweep and fury of
an inundation.
We had lingered so long among, these historic ruins that
it was past noon before we were again on horseback, and it now became evident
that our route for the day must be greatly shortened. As we proceeded along the
narrow valley which led northward from Samaria, we more than ever appreciated
its admirably chosen position for resisting the approach of invading armies,
and our imagination called up other companies that so many thousand years
before must have crowded those very glens. The myriads of Israelitish captives
that were carried away in the last deportation by Shalmaneser, when Samaria was
made a ruin, must have been driven along these very defiles, weeping and
lamenting, wrung by a sorrow worse than the bitterness of death. "Weep ye not
for the dead, neither bemoan him : but weep sore for him that goeth away: for
he shall return no more, nor see his native country." To-day we were especially
tantalized by passing near to places rich in scriptural associations, whose
very names had a fascination in them, but which we were constrained to leave
unvisited. About six miles to the eastward of our path was Tirzah, the rural
residence of the earlier kings of Israel, proverbial for its beauty, and the
emblem of the Church even in the days of Solomon - "Thou art beautiful, O my
love, as Tirzah." Beautiful even now as it rises from the midst of cornfields
and fragrant gardens, and looks down as from a queenly throne upon scenes of
verdure that descend to the Jordan's wave. That large mound of ruins, again, to
the westward, surrounded by a little circlet of hills, with a lively fountain
near it pouring out its waters and making the grassy plot around it so
beautifully green, is Dothan, one of the favourite pasture-grounds of Jacob's
sons - the spot where Joseph was first cast by his brethren into the pit, and
afterwards taken up and sold to the travelling merchants from Gilead. How every
feature harmonizes to this day with the old immortal story! Old Jacob and his
sons must have had a good eye for choice grazing fields, as that lingering
verdure around the old "Tell" sufficiently proves. There are many natural pits,
too, and empty cisterns, around the spot, in.which envious sons might still
dispose of a brother against whom jealousy had made them more cruel than the
grave; nor is it less noticeable that the caravan road from Gilead down to
Egypt winds past those ruins still.
Many a century afterwards, Dothan
became the residence of the prophet Elisha. In the quaint words of an old
historian, he became "the pick-lock of the cabinet council" of the king of
Syria, and being able to reveal his most hidden designs to the Israelitish
king, made it easy for him to anticipate and baffle all his movements. An army
was sent by night to surround Dothan and seize the person of the patriot-seer,
so that when the prophet's servant looked out in the morning, he saw, to his
dismay, the whole city encompassed by Syrian chariots and horsemen. "Fear not,"
said the prophet to his terrified attendant, "for they that be with us are
greater than they that be with them." Immediately, in answer to Elisha's
prayer, his servant's eyes were opened to look into the spirit-world, and he
beheld every eminence around Dothan covered with a fiery guard of angels, with
chariots of fire and horses of fire, the Heaven-sent protectors of the solitary
man of God. What a sacredness lingers over spots that have been trodden by such
visitants! A little before sunset, our tents were pitched near to the entrance
of the vast plain of Esdraelon, not far from Jenin, the Engannim of Joshua's
times, a town e.ven now of considerable size for modern Palestine, whose
minarets and domes we could see rising above the forest of olives and other
trees, that helped to justify its old name as the "fountain of
gardens."
It was some hours after the lights were extinguished, and we
had lain down on our little iron bed, before sleep came. The dogs in the
neighbouring town barked and howled incessantly, and troops of jackals answered
in hideous responses further off, some of their cries too vividly reminding us
of those of little children in distress. When they became silent, our fancy
grew active in the darkness, and we imagined that we heard some of those foul
creatures sniffing beneath the canvas of our tent, and burrowing away to effect
an entrance. But simple weariness at length brought rest, and we rose in the
morning quite refreshed.
It was delightfully exhilarating in the early
morning, when the air was yet fresh and cool, to canter along for miles on the
comparatively smooth and level ground of the now rapidly expanding valley. We
were surprised to meet a company of Turkish cavalry, some hundreds in number,
travelling southward in military order. They were a sort of mounted police,
with vaguely-defined powers, ready to inflict prompt punishment upon offenders
without troubling themselves with the formalities of legal proceedings, and
especially intended to be a terror to Bedouin evil-doers. Gradually one
mountain after another rose up before us. Nearest us was Gilboa, the scene of
Saul's last conflict with the Philistine hosts, and of his own and Jonathan's
tragic death, where "the shield of the mighty was vilely cast away, the shield
of him that had been anointed with oil." The literature of antiquity boasts no
elegy so magnanimous and tender as that of David over the fallen king and the
nobly chivalrous Jonathan, whose "love to him had been wonderful, passing the
love of women." Gilboa was brown and parched, as if the curse of David still
rested on it. "Let there be no dew, neither let there be rain, upon you."
Little Hermon, rising about three miles beyond, was green to its summit, as if
it were a pasture-ground for flocks. Further to the north-east there came into
view, at length, the beautifully cone-shaped Tabor, not the true scene of the
Transfiguration - the haunt to this day of wolves and panthers, and thickly
wooded to its summit; while in front of us, across the plain, there rose a
range of Galilean hills, far up in the bosom of which, somewhere, we knew was
Nazareth.
As we rode slowly onward we were able to take in, almost at a
glance, the whole of the magnificent plain of Esdraelon. From the shores of the
Mediterranean, where it is guarded on one side by the noble promontory of
Carmel, and on the other by the less lofty headland of Akka, it extends over a
space of more than twenty miles to the banks of the Jordan, being separated
into minor valleys by the mountains we have named as it approaches towards the
river. Its average width is between ten and twelve miles, the richly-wooded
range of Carmel, and the less bold mountains of Samaria, bounding it on th6
south, while on the north it is hemmed in by the green hills of Galilee. It
possesses an extraordinary natural fertility, and is so level that every inch
of it is as capable of culture as the plains of Lombardy. Men competent to
judge have declared that, if this single plain were brought under the hand of
skilled agriculture, it would yield grain enough to support the entire
population within the limits of the Holy Land. But at present not more than
one-sixth of it is under even the rudest form of cultivation, and the greater
part of what looks so beautifully verdant when seen from a distance, is either
the rank luxuriance of thistles and other weeds, or swampy ground, in which the
stork delights; though "that ancient river, the Kishon," winds through it, and
affords the means of natural drainage all the way to the sea. We searched with
our glass in all directions, and while here and there we could see a solitary
mound of ruins rising in the midst of that sea of verdure, we could not
discover a single village or human habitation, except towards the east, at the
base of Tabor, or on the slopes of Little Hermon. We afterwards learned at
Nazareth that a company of European merchants at Beyrout had purchased the
entire plain from the Turkish Government for £i8,ooo, with the intention
of developing its immense resources in the employment of native industry. This
is important even as a recognition of the right of private property in this
miserably-governed country, and, if carried out with energy and prudence, it
will be one of the best means of education for the people, and will turn this
spacious territory once more into a "garden of the Lord." But the native hands
will need to be guided by European heads, and the fields will need to be
strongly fenced and vigorously protected against the bands of lawless Bedouin
from across the Jordan, to whom plunder and pillage are as the air they
breathe.
But while this noble plain appears to have been formed by a
bounteous Heaven to be the granary of the kingdom, how often has it been the
chosen battle-field of contending tribes and nations. Perhaps there is no other
place on earth that has so often echoed the terrible shouts of war. From the
days of Barak and Deborah, three thousand years ago, when the war-chariots of
Sisera swept the plain, down to those of Kleber and Napoleon, in the end of the
last century, when the Turks were mown down in thousands by the artillery of
France, in what was proudly termed "the battle of Tabor," how many armies have
met on those peaceful fields in deadly struggle, and the foaming Kishon swept
away their slain to the sea - Philistine archers, Syrian horsemen, Midianites
with their deadly javelins, Bedouins with their quivering lances, Saracens with
their crescent-ensigns, Crusaders with their red-cross banners. The
accomplished Dr. Clarke scarcely exceeded the fact when he said that " warriors
out of every nation which is under heaven have pitched their tents in the plain
of Esdraelon, and have beheld the various banners of their nations wet with the
dews of Tabor and Hermon." It is a circumstance not without interest, that this
plain is spoken of in the Apocalypse of John as the scene of the last great
decisive contest between the powers of good and evil; for the battle of
Armageddon is just the battle of " Megiddo," which is the ancient name of the
plain of Esdraelon. Is the name merely symbolical, or is this very plain
destined to become the actual field of one of those battles which influence the
history of the world, and which is to turn the balance on the side of freedom,
humanity, the rights of conscience, and Christian truth?
But here we are
at Jezreel, which stands on a spur of Gilboa that projects far into the plain.
A lofty square tower and some twenty ruined houses are all that now remain of
what was once the favourite regal residence of Ahab and his Phenician queen ;
for Eastern despots in those times, as in our own, took pride in building and
multiplying palaces. Of what wild riot and Heaven-defying lasciviousness was
this place - looking out upon one of the grandest pictures of beauty and plenty
in the world - for a time the scene! What bloody plots were conceived here, in
the active brain of the woman Jezebel, against the prophets and the saints of
God ! It is one of those places which teem only with associations of violence
and wickedness. Down on that level ground, stretching eastward, there may have
been the pleasure-garden of Ahab; and adjoining it, Naboth's little patch of
ground, a patrimony which had come down through six centuries from his fathers,
and which the sturdy citizen refused to yield up at any price to the exacting
despot, pettish as a spoiled child. On yonder spot, in Naboth's ground, Elijah
may have confronted him when he had come down to gloat over his new possession,
the price of innocent blood, and had made him quail beneath the prediction of
that dread Nemesis in which the punishment would be made to bear the image of
the sin, as face answereth to face in a glass. From such a watch-tower as this
which overlooks the plain, the watchman may have descried, coming up by the way
from the Jordan, amid the clouds of dust raised by his furious driving, Jehu,
the avenger of God. And from a window in some tower like this, the painted
Jezebel may have been flung, at Jehu's command, by her crouching eunuchs, and
her mangled body dragged to the mound where the offal of the city was heaped
together, to be torn and devoured by such mongrel dogs as we saw at that moment
prowling among the ruins. There is even a large pool at no great distance from
the watch-tower, where Ahab's bloodstained chariot may have been washed, and
the dogs, according to Elijah's prophecy, no word of which fell to the ground,
have drank Ahab's blood.
We now began in good earnest to cross the plain
for those grassy Galilean hills, which we knew somewhere imprisoned Nazareth.
It was a ride in which we found the advantage of trusting a good deal to the
sagacity of our horses, for the ground was in many places swampy and deceiving,
and they knew far better where to obtain solid footing than we did. When we had
got across and were a considerable way up the mountain, we halted, and began to
search with our glasses for Nain, for we knew by our map that it must be
somewhere not far off. Our eye rested on it at length, about three miles
distant, hanging on the western side of the Little Hermon, not very far from
its base. Our glass brought it very near, and with the little hamlet so
distinctly before us, we could imagine the touching scene which has shed so
imperishable an interest around the place: the funeral-procession coming forth
from the gate of Nain - the bier, with its shrouded but uncoffined body,
silently borne by a few men - weeping women behind doing their best to comfort
the widowed mother of that only son - a smaller company, with Jesus at their
head, meeting the congregation of mourners - the solemn, hopeful pause - the
word spoken by Jesus, which instantly leaps forth into effect - the young man
rising up from his bier, and given back to his grateful mother, who can
scarcely believe for joy. We searched also for Endor, but it lay too far round
to the north of Little Hermon to be visible from our halting-place. We turned
away, musing on Saul, whose midnight visit to that remote mountain village gave
occasion to one of the most strangely dramatic scenes in Old Testament history.
There are few men whose character is less worthy of imitation, and yet whose
history is more instructive. Not incapable of virtuous impulses and generous
affections, yet nursing the passion of jealousy until it poisoned and
embittered his whole being; great in physical courage, but without moral
strength; with a keen consciousness of moral debasement and divine abandonment,
becoming moody, melancholy, vindictive, and yielding to ungovernable bursts of
passion that carry him to the verge of madness; betaking himself to
superstition when he has cast off the last influences of religion; and skulking
away across the mountain on the eve of his last battle, to the cave of a
sorceress, to obtain counsel, in his extremity, through the tricks of
necromancy. Yet, even at his worst and lowest, having something of kingly
dignity clinging to him, like the crown upon his head and the bracelet on his
arm, which were found the next day on his lifeless body on the battle-ground of
Mount Gilboa.
We were consoled, however, for our not seeing Endor, by
our soon after entering the beautifully-situated village of Shunem. As we
passed along, the villagers looked down upon us with kindly curiosity from the
top of their mud-walls, and we were soon seated in a rich garden of lemon and
orange trees, and comfortably shaded from the noonday sun, at our mid-day meal.
They were hospitable villagers, contrasting favourably with the scowling men of
Sychar. In a few minutes, half the population of Shunem were gathered round us;
but their behaviour was excellent. We looked up to the loaded branch of a
lemon-tree immediately above our head, when a friendly Shunemite, guessing our
wish, cut down the branch with one stroke of his sword and made it fall at our
feet, supplying a lemon or two to each of our party. A revolver belonging to
one of our number was handed round and explained to his fellow-villagers by one
of the natives, who had evidently been in the Sultan's army and knew something
of the use of firearms. And this had been the possession and the dwelling-place
so long ago of that noble Shunemitish woman who had " dwelt among her own
people." Was this the old garden of herself and her husband, attached to that
old family mansion in which Elisha, as he passed from time to time along this
mountain-path, as we were now doing, had a little chamber prepared for him, -
with a bed and a table, a stool and a candlestick, - in which he might enjoy
undisturbed opportunity for meditation and prayer? In that corn-field hard by,
whose crop was now advancing to ripeness, the Shunemite's little son may have
gone out among the reapers and received that sun-stroke by which he died.
Through openings among the trees, we had Carmel full in view about ten miles
across the plain, where Elisha had his hermitage, and it was easy to imagine
the anguished mother seated on her mule crossing the plain to the prophet's
mountain home to seek relief from her terrible sorrow. We know with what
sympathizing alacrity the man of God obeyed her summons. She who had so often
received the prophet in the name of a prophet, obtained more than a prophet's
reward. This village on the mountain-side had once been the scene of a
resurrection.
Up and further up we climbed those grassy slopes, and rode
with growing expectation over those rocky ridges, in search of Nazareth. At
length, on our ascending the shoulder of a hill, we saw it at no great
distance. There, at the head of a flowery glen, hanging on its western side,
was the little mountain-town far removed from the busy world, wonderfully
retired and silent. The first sight of Nazareth was a sacred moment in our life
never to be forgotten. That was the home of our Lord's childhood, youth, and
earlier manhood. What a power has gone out from that quiet hamlet, mightiest
for good that the world has ever known or can know.
"O mystery of
mysteries! In that green basin in the hills of Galilee, amid simple
circumstances, perhaps in the exercise of a simple calling, dwelt the
everlasting Son of God ; the varied features of that nature which he himself
had made so fair, the permitted media of the impressions of outward things, -
his oratory the solitary mountains, his purpose the salvation of our race, his
will the will of God." We rode through the whole length of the town along its
narrow tortuous streets, and pitched our tents a little way to the north of it,
in a shady grove of olives, with a Christian cemetery on the one side, and "
Mary's Well" pouring out three full streams of water, not far from us, on the
other.
As there were some hours yet before sunset, we no soonet got rid
of our horses than we were back again in Nazareth. The population is estimated
at 4000. Of these, only a few hundreds are Mohammedans: the rest are
principally Christians of the Latin and Greek Churches, with about 400
Maronites and 100 Protestants. There are no Jews. The usual good influence even
of corrupt forms of Christianity is seen in the superior character of the
houses - which are all built of stone - in the bustle and variety of the
bazaars and shops, in the dress of the women, and in the general look of
independence and industry among the people. There is, of course, a large
convent belonging to each of the two great Eastern communions, with a Maronite
chapel, and a small unpretentious mosque. We were shown the place where the
synagogue had stood in which our Lord preached on that memorable occasion
recorded in Luke's Gospel, the workshop in which he laboured as a carpenter
with his reputed father, the table at which he was accustomed to eat with his
twelve disciples, and other spots that have associated with them equally clumsy
and unlikely traditions. But we soon became weary of this, and preferred to
look on the unchanged face of nature on which He had looked, and to wander
among the flowers which had been pressed by his blessed feet. There was the
wild thyme, and the stately holyhock, and many a rock plant and meadow flower
unknown in the flora of the Western world.
Is there irreverence in
conjecturing what may have been the solitary walks of Jesus around Nazareth,
and what may have been the posts of observation from which he looked forth upon
remoter scenes ? We think not, though it is very possible to carry this kind of
speculation to an irreverent extent. There is one eminence behind Nazareth to
which Dr. Robinson first called attention, which rises far above all the
neighbouring hills, and commands one of the most extensive views in Palestine.
Is it reasonable to doubt that Jesus must often have stood and gazed from that
rocky summit? To the west the blue line of the Mediterranean is distinctly
visible. Turning the eye slowly eastward, the plain of Esdraelon seems to
spread its green carpet at our feet; behind it are the wooded ridges of Carmel,
the rocky mountains of Ephraim, and the far-off blue Judean hills Further east,
Gilboa lifts his dusky brow; and far beyond the Jordan stream, where the rays
of the western sun are falling, are the hills of Gilead and the grand Hauran
mountains. In the midst of yon circle of grassy hills sleeps the Sea of
Galilee; that town which sparkles like a crown far up upon the brow of a hill
is Safed; and, behind all, the snowy Hermon looks down from his throne of
clouds, as if he were the giant guardian of " thy beautiful land, O
Emmanuel."
But there are two places in Nazareth itself which we may,
surely, with a fair measure of certainty, connect with the presence of Jesus.
That fountain near to our tent which is pouring out its three abundant streams
into a spacious tank beneath, is the one great public well of Nazareth. Early
on the following morning we saw multitudes of women coming to it, with their
pitchers carried gracefully on their heads or shoulders, to draw water. There
were mothers among them who brought their beautiful little children along with
them, to play on the green-sward in front of the well, while they rested their
full vessels on its margin and talked with one another. Nothing could be more
decorous than the conduct of those picturesque groups of maidens and mothers.
Must not Mary, the wife of the lowly carpenter, have often come hither to draw
water from Nazareth's only fountain; and must she not have often come to it
leading by the hand her wondrous child ?
The other spot is a rocky
precipice, between fifty and sixty feet perpendicular, immediately behind the
Maronite church, which is, in all likelihood, the real " Mount of
Precipitation," over whose brow the infuriated citizens endeavoured to force
Jesus, after he had spoken his faithful sermon in the synagogue. Did he effect
his deliverance by a miracle or was it one of those instances in which his look
disarmed his enemies, and he passed away through the midst of them unharmed? In
front of this Maronite church, and looking up on the "Mount of Precipitation,"
there is one of the most interesting places in Nazareth. It is the little
dispensary and hospital of Mr. Varten, a medical missionary, who was sent out
and is mainly supported by the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society. This
admirable labourer dispenses medicines and gives medical advice and surgical
treatment during certain hours each day; while more severe and difficult cases
are treated in the hospital. It is a neat, fastidiously clean, and well-aired
house, with admirable contrivances for protecting the patients from noise, and
from the glaring rays of the sun. One could easily read contentment and
gratitude on the countenances of the patients, who had learned to value humane
and intelligent treatment. Mr. Varten visits on horseback the villages around
Nazareth, within a radius of 15 or 20 miles; and besides the directly
beneficent effects of his healing art, he has done much to strengthen the hands
of Mr. Zeller and those other Christian missionaries who have Nazareth as their
centre, and to associate Protestant Christianity in the minds of the people
with superior skill and benevolent power. That little hospital, with millions
of other institutions for the temporal good of men that are scattered over the
earth, would never have existed but for Him who was called "a Nazarene," and
who condescended eighteen hundred years ago to make this Nazareth his
home.
Early on the following morning we set off, with Mr. Varten as our
companion, on an excursion to Mount Carmel. It was necessary that we should
once more cross the plain of Esdraelon, which was the work of more than three
hours, and not without its adventures. We needed even more than the careful
pilotage of yesterday, lest we should sink with our horses into oozy bogs, from
which it might have taken hours to extricate us. Now we came upon storks
feeding in fenny places; and at other times we startled large flocks of
beautiful gazelles, which fled before us with a nimble and bounding speed that
defied all pursuit We found it no easy matter to cross the Kishon, which flows
along near the northern base of Carmel to the sea. There was a considerable
quantity of water in its channel; and its banks were so precipitous on either
side, that the problem seemed equally difficult as to how we were to get down
into its water, or how to get out of it again. But we floundered through
somehow, only one of our party being cast into the muddy stream, from which he
emerged not improved either in appearance or in temper. As we approached the
mountain, it struck us as a strange anachronism to see two telegraphic wires
stretching along its side, and placing Beyrout, as we afterwards learned, in
communication with Jerusalem. Beginning in a noble promontory that rises 1500
feet from the Mediterranean - into which it may almost be said to project
itself - Carmel stretches into the centre of the land in a south-easterly
direction, until it links itself on to the less lofty hills of Samaria. Our aim
was to come upon it at that point which leads up to the scene of the great
contest between the prophet Elijah and the priests of Baal. We had ample
opportunity, as we toiled up the mountain, to verify the Biblical descriptions
of it as the emblem of fertility and beauty, - " The excellency of Carmel and
Sharon shall be given unto thee." At the point where we ascended, it was
thickly wooded to its summit, - so much so that our servants, who were
following us at no great distance with provisions, lost their way, and were so
effectually hidden from us by the trees that we could only let them know where
to find us by firing a succession of muskets. And the variety, alike in the
flowers and the trees, was wonderful. It was a perfect paradise for botanists.
One enthusiastic German naturalist has said that " a botanist might spend a
year on Carmel, and every day be adding a new specimen to his collections." We
were able, before we left the mountain, to add our testimony to the multitude
of natural caverns with which it abounds, and to which it is supposed the
prophet Amos alludes when, speaking of the vain attempts of the wicked to
escape the knowledge or the punishment of God, he says: " Though they hide
themselves in the top of Carmel, Jehovah will search and take them out
thence."
To our mind, Lieutenant Van de Velde has entirely succeeded in
identifying "the burnt place" as the scene of Elijah's sublime sacrifice in
which the question was reduced to experiment, "Who is the God" The scene
presents every condition which is required by the minutely graphic narrative in
the eighteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings. First, there is a vast
natural amphitheatre, which we may imagine to have been covered with myriads of
eager spectators summoned to the spot by the authority of Ahab. Then a platform
rises a few feet high towards the centre, on which we may suppose Elijah to
have reared his altar, and around which he drew the trenches which were
afterwards to be filled with water. About two hundred and fifty feet lower
down, there is a large and deep fountain arched over by an overhanging rock,
and further screened from the sun's rays by the thick foliage of an ancient
oak. From this the water could easily be brought in barrels of convenient size,
and poured into the trenches and upon the altar and the dripping sacrifice. The
climax of the scene arrives when, after the frantic Baal priests have for hours
invoked their god in vain, the calm and solitary Elijah, stepping forward and
confronting them, prays for the divine signal of acceptance, and the moment
afterwards, the awe-stricken thousands, with expectation strained to the
utmost, behold the flame descending from the blue heaven and consuming at once
the sacrifice and the altar. The Kishon flows at the foot of the mountain, and
there, on a green mound, whose margin is washed by the stream, and whose
traditional name is "the hill of the priests" those ministers of idolatry who
had misled the people, are slaughtered, their blood in a few hours to crimson
the Kishon, when, after the coming rain, it rolls again in full current to the
sea. After this awful tragedy on the river's brink, Elijah ascends again to the
scene of his great triumph, and Ahab with him, probably to join in the
accustomed feast after the sacrifice. And now the prophet who had brought down
fire from heaven by his prayer, pleads for rain to revive the long weary and
parched land; and his servant is sent up to a loftier eminence from which the
Mediterranean - the quarter from which the rains of Palestine come - can be
seen, with directions to report the earliest sign of the coming blessing. We
found, on ascending to a higher point that rose a little to the west of the
place of sacrifice, that the Mediterranean came into view in five minutes, so
that it would not be long until the seventh report told of " the little cloud
no bigger than a man's hand" that was rising from the sea. Elijah knows the
sign well and as Ahab's chariot stands waiting down at the base of Carmel, the
prophet's servant now bears to him the urgent request to make haste along the
plain to Jezreel, whose site we could dimly descry from "the burnt place." But
why does the prophet descend the mountain also, and run all the way beside the
king's bounding chariot until it enters the palace gate? The action which many,
not understanding, have wondered at as lowering the prophet's dignity, was a
most touching revelation of his zeal for the Lord God of hosts. He, no doubt,
expected that, after such a direct testimony from Heaven, there would be an
immediate renunciation on the part of Ahab and all his court of the worship of
idols, and a restored allegiance to the true God. The terrible disappointment
of the morrow, when a price was set on his head, drove him into despondency,
his life seemed a failure, " he only was left," and he fled into the distant
wilderness and wished to die.
When we rode through Nazareth to our tents
among the olives, four hours after our leaving Carmel, the sun was disappearing
behind the highest ridge of the mountain, and the muezzin-cry from the top of
the little mosque was calling the few Mohammedans in Nazareth to prayer.
Go To Chapter Fifteen
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