The Old World and Its Ways

We landed at Joppa when the weather was fair, but were detained a half day that they might "de-ratify the ship," as the Turkish authorities describe rat-killing upon the ship – a custom inaugurated after the rat had been convicted of carrying bubonic plague. Joppa is on the edge of the Plain of Sharon and, as an abundance of water can be secured at a reasonable depth, the city is a garden. Orange trees thrive there and the fruit is excellent. Two places of interest are shown, the home of Tabitha and the house of Simon the tanner, the latter immortalized by the vision which taught Peter the universality of Christ's mission.

The railroad to Jerusalem crosses the valley of Sharon which, at this season of the year, is exceedingly attractive. The crops are growing, the fellaheen are at work in the fields and everywhere the wild flowers bloom. The rose of Sharon had many rivals, if the plain looked in olden times as it does now. The principal station on the plain is Ramleh, through which conquering armies marched for ages. From time immemorial Palestine has been a prize of war. When it was not itself the object of conquest, its occupation was necessary to the acquiring or holding of other territory. The Persians, the Egyptians, the Parthians, the Scythians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Turks have all overrun this country – not to speak of the numerous wars of the Israelites and the expeditions of the Crusaders. From Alexander the Great and Cæsar to Napoleon, no world-conquering general overlooked Palestine – and yet, out of Palestine came the Prince of Peace.

South of Sharon lies the plain of Philistia, a narrow strip of land between the hills of Judea and the sea, a small region, and yet it supported a people who warred for centuries with the Children of Israel. It was at Gaza, one of the chief cities on this plain, that Samson pulled down the pillars of the building and died with those who made sport of him.

Leaving the low country, the railroad begins the ascent of the Judean hills through the Wady es Suar, and as one is carried up the tortuous course of the narrow valley he begins to understand why Jerusalem was considered a citadel. The hills rise to a height of about twenty-five hundred feet and are so inaccessible that a small number dwelling on top could easily defend themselves against a much larger force. The narrow limits of Judea impress one, hemmed in as it is on the west by Philistia, on the south by the desert and on the east by the deep chasm of the Dead Sea. Its history was developed in a territory scarcely larger than a Nebraska county.

As we approached the summit the vineyards appeared and the olive groves became more numerous. Jerusalem is beautifully located. No wonder its rebuilding and re-peopling is the dream of the devout Jews, many of whom come from distant corners of the earth to spend their last days within its precincts. The present walls of the city are only a few hundred years old, but the Tower of David is believed to be a part of the wall erected by the great Hebrew king.

Once within the city, one is surrounded on every hand by places that stir the tenderest of memories. Even the uncertainty as to the identification of many of the sites made sacred by the life, the sufferings and the death of Christ – even the rivalry between the various sects cannot prevent a feeling of reverence. Here He whose name is borne by increasing millions was condemned without cause, crowned with thorns and at last crucified, sealing with His blood the testimony of His life.

Early in the fourth century Helena, the mother of Constantine, set out to identify the spots most intimately associated with the Savior's life. She selected the place where, as she believed, Christ was crucified and buried, and her son erected the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to mark the locality. For fifteen centuries her designation was accepted as the correct one, and the Roman Catholics, the Greek Catholics and the Armenians, who divide the space in the church between them, have kept joint, though not always harmonious, watch over the various altars and chapels. A few years ago the correctness of the location of Calvary was disputed and a hill over the Grotto of Jeremiah was fixed upon by the dissenters as the place of the crucifixion, and a tomb near by as the sepulchre. Since that time the traveler has been shown both places and furnished with the arguments in support of the claims of each. It is contended that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, though within the present walls, stands upon land which was outside of the original walls, while the new location is outside of the walls as they are at present. Possibly future excavations may settle the question by determining the exact location of the wall in the time of Christ; but what matter? The two places are not far apart, and the whole vicinity has been hallowed by His presence.

Pilate's judgment hall, the Via Dolorosa and Ecce Homo arch are marked by the erection of a Catholic convent and school for girls where one finds a cleanliness in striking contrast to the streets outside. The pools of Gihon, of Siloam, of Bethesda and Hezekiah are all given a local habitation; the place where Judas hanged himself is pointed out, as well as the cave in which Jeremiah wrote his lamentations; the chamber where the Last Supper was observed is also fixed upon, and the tombs of Rachel, Absalom and of David. I do not know how much credence should be given to the testimony adduced in behalf of these different sites, but we are sure of the identity of a few places. Mount Zion, upon which David built his palace, is known; Mount Akra can be located and about Mount Moriah there can be no mistake. The great bare rock that crowns the last named eminence is a landmark that has not been and cannot be easily removed. It is now covered by a mosque but was once the sacrificial stone of the Hebrews. Solomon's temple was built on Mount Moriah, and some of its foundation stones and subterranean chambers can still be seen. In a street that leads by these foundation walls is the Jews' wailing place where for many centuries devout Hebrews, gathered from every country, have met on each Friday afternoon to bemoan the fate of Jerusalem and to petition for the restoration of the kingdom. One sees no more pathetic sight in a trip around the world than this assemblage of men and women, some gray-haired, some in middle life and many mere children, chanting their laments and caressing the stones which the hand of Solomon laid when he was building the temple which marked the summit of Jewish political power.

Bethlehem is also identified and whether or not the Church of the Nativity, erected by the mother of Constantine, covers the spot where Christ was born, one can look upon the hills around about the city and recall that it was here that the message, "Peace on earth, good will to men," came to the shepherds who kept their flocks by night.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, by the Brook Kedron, one can tread the soil pressed by the Master's feet in the hours of his loneliness and agony. The Garden is now walled in and carefully kept, and its old, gnarled and knotted olive trees shade the pansies which grow there in profusion. Bethpage still stands and also Bethany, where Mary and Martha and Lazarus lived, and, most conspicuous of all, the Mount of Olives, the place of the Ascension. From its summit the best view of Jerusalem is obtained; from that point also the eye can sweep the hills of both Judea and Samaria and to the east look upon the waters of the Dead Sea, thirty-eight hundred feet below.

Nowhere else can one walk amid scenes so familiar to the civilized world as are those of Judea. Surrounded by paganism and idolatry, a little band began here the establishment of a monotheistic religion and notwithstanding backslidings, shortcomings and wanderings from the faith, the spiritual side of life was never entirely forgotten; great prophets thundered their warnings from these hills; great singers poured forth their hymns of penitence, praise and thanksgiving; here a wonderful literature was developed and a history written which was stranger than fiction; and here, in the fulness of time, came One who was commissioned to substitute the law of Love for the law that required "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

In the city of Jerusalem there are now some sixty thousand souls, and a composite population it is. While about two-thirds of the people are Jews and the remainder divided almost equally between the Mohammedans and Christians, one can count representatives of a score or more of nations in an hour's walk. The streets of Jerusalem are narrow and crooked, and one is going up hill or down hill all the time. The houses, the stores, the walls, the gates and the customs of the people seem more Oriental than European. There are no street cars, no modern bookstores and no newspapers, excepting one printed in Hebrew.

The carriage road from Jerusalem to Jericho winds around the Mount of Olives and down the eastern side of the Judean hills, past the Apostles' fountain and through the wilderness of Judea. This wilderness is not the waste that we expected to find, but merely a broken and mountainous country, too stony to be cultivated and fit only for grazing. At this season of the year the grass is green and the ground bright with flowers.

A little more than half way down the slope is a rest station called, in honor of the parable, the Good Samaritan Inn. But for the mounted guards who now patrol this road the traveler would even to-day be in danger of falling among thieves.

A little farther on, the road leads near the edge of a wild, deep and rugged canyon at the bottom of which plunges the Brook Cherith. A Greek monastery has been built at the place where Elijah found refuge during the drought.

Jericho is a small village and a half mile from the site of the ancient city of that name. It depends for its support upon the tourists who visit the Jordan valley rather than upon the cultivated area.

The Dead Sea, forty miles long and eight miles in width, covers the deepest portion of this most remarkable of the depressions in the earth's surface. The rent extends from the base of Mount Hermon to the eastern arm of the Red Sea, known as the Gulf of Akabah. For more than one hundred miles this rent or ravine is below the level of the sea, the surface of the Dead Sea being thirteen hundred feet lower than the Mediterranean. As the Dead Sea is in some places thirteen hundred feet deep, the greatest depth of the chasm is, therefore, more than twenty-six hundred feet. The water of the Sea is bitter and contains twenty-six per cent of salt, or about five times as much as the ocean. As we took a bath in the Dead Sea, we can testify that one cannot sink in its waters.

The Jordan is neither as large nor as clear as one would expect from its prominence in Bible history. The banks are slippery, the waters are muddy and the current is swift. It has much the appearance of a creek swollen with rain. We tried its waters also, but did not venture far from the shore. Between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea the Jordan falls about six hundred feet, or ten feet to the mile. At present but little use is made of this fertile valley, but, in the opinion of some who have investigated the matter, it could, with proper irrigation and under a just government, be made as fruitful as the valley of the Nile. As might be expected, the heat in this deep basin is intense in the summer, but the hills are near enough on each side to provide homes for those who would cultivate the fields.

Looking across the Jordan one sees the Mountains of Moab. While the country "beyond the Jordan" plays an unimportant part in Bible history as compared with Judea, Samaria and Galilee, still it has its Nebo, where the great Jewish lawgiver sleeps in an unmarked grave; it has its Macherus, where John the Baptist was beheaded, and its Gilead. Elijah, the Tishbite, came from beyond the Jordan, and beyond the Jordan Elisha received his teacher's mantle; Ruth came from the Land of Moab, and Job endured his trials in the Land of Uz.

Space does not permit a reference to all the places of interest or an elaborate consideration of any of them. It is impossible to describe in a few words what it requires several days to see. One thought often comes to the mind as the different scenes are visited, viz., that a visit to the Holy Land makes it easier to understand many Bible passages and gives added significance to others. We have seen the barren fig tree and the fruitful vine; we have seen the lame and the blind, and have met the leper at the gate; we have seen the tiny lamp, such as the wise and foolish virgins carried – lamps that need often to be refilled; and we have seen the "whited sepulchres," "full of dead men's bones." We have been impressed with the life-giving power of a fountain in a barren land and can more fully realize the force of the promise that the man who delighteth "in the law of the Lord" "shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water."

But no part of the Old Testament has been brought more vividly to our minds than the twenty-third Psalm. Life is much the same here to-day as it was two, three, four thousand years ago, and we have seen innumerable flocks and have watched the sheep following the shepherd with confidence as he, staff in hand, led them into new pastures or from hillside to stream. No animal is more helpless than the sheep and no guardian more tender than the shepherd. The sheep know their master's voice, and we have several times seen a shepherd carrying a lamb in his arms. The hills about Jerusalem, the springs, the shepherds and their flocks, will rise before us whenever we read again:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."

CHAPTER XXXI.

GALILEE

The boat schedules – and they can not be ignored on the Palestine coast – compelled us to reserve Galilee for the conclusion of our tour, and it was an inappropriate ending, for while Jerusalem was the scene of the crucifixion and ascension, the greater part of Christ's life was spent in Galilee, and it was there that "most of His mighty works were done." Nor is its history confined to the New Testament, for it has its Carmel associated with the life of Elijah, and Mount Tabor where Deborah's victory was won. Haifa, the seaport of Galilee, is built along the front of Carmel on the edge of a bay which the mountain helps to form, for Carmel, instead of being a peak, is really a long ridge but a few hundred feet in height, jutting out into the sea at this point and extending several miles to the southeast. A Roman Catholic monastery is erected over a cave overlooking the Mediterranean, where Elijah is said to have lived.

To the north of Carmel lies the plain of Esdraelon through which the Kishon river flows. The road to Nazareth follows the south side of this valley to a point some seven miles from the shore where the hills of Galilee approach so near to Carmel as to leave but a narrow pass for the river. Here the road crosses over to the north side of the valley, and for the remainder of the distance winds upward over the hills, giving a commanding view of Esdraelon. The upper part of the plain is as beautiful a country as can be imagined – well watered, fertile and thoroughly cultivated. The land is not held in severalty, as in America, but by communities. The cultivators live in villages, built at intervals around the edge of the valley, and the land is apportioned each year by the village chief, no one receiving the same tract two years in succession. As we looked down upon the valley we could distinguish the different allotments as they lay in long strips of equal width. Wheat is the chief product of the valley, although there are a few olive orchards, and the mulberry tree is being planted. Oxen are the animals usually employed in cultivation, but we occasionally saw a horse and an ox yoked together or a camel and an ox, and once a camel and a donkey.

Jezreel is on this plain, at the foot of Mount Gilboa, where the middle plain connects with the plain leading down to the Jordan between Gilboa and Little Hermon. This is historic ground, for it was here at a great spring which flows out from under Gilboa that Gideon selected his gallant band.

The village of Nazareth, nestling among the hills of Galilee, must always be a place of supreme interest to the Christian. Its location was probably determined by the presence here of an unfailing spring, now known as Mary's fountain. Dr. George Adam Smith, in his "Historical Geography of the Holy Land," points out the relation between the springs and the routes of travel and emphasizes the prominence of Nazareth in the Bible times. Christ's boyhood and young manhood were spent near a great highway, for the old Roman road from Damascus to Egypt ran through the town. Caravans passed to and fro laden with the riches of the Euphrates and the Nile; princes passed that way on their royal journeys, and in time of war it was on the route of armies. From a high hill just outside the town Christ could look to the west and see the surf line on the shore of the Mediterranean, to the east He could survey the walls of the chasm in which lay the sea of Galilee, while to the northeast rose Hermon, the pride of the mountains. Several of His parables fit quite naturally into the scenes upon which He looked, and those parables were the more effective because they were taken from the everyday life of the people. The stony ground, the rocky roadways and the narrow strips of fertile soil were woven into the Parable of the Sower, and some acquaintance of His youth, following the merchantmen into Egypt or Mesopotamia, may have been the original of the Prodigal Son.

Rev. Selah Merrill, our consul at Jerusalem, has refuted the statement so frequently made that the Nazarenes were held in contempt. He shows that there is no just foundation for the aspersions cast on this section of Galilee. Mr. Merrill's book, "Galilee in the Time of Christ," is, I may add, a very useful preparation for a trip through this part of Palestine.

Chapels have been erected to mark the home of Joseph and Mary, the carpenter shop and the rock where Christ met His disciples after the resurrection, but one never feels certain about the identification of places selected so long after the death of Christ and having no permanent physical marks.

A few miles to the east of Nazareth is a village called Cana which claims to be the "Cana of Galilee" where the first miracle was performed, and a church has been erected over a well from which, it is argued, the water was taken that was turned into wine, but two other villages with similar names contest the honor with this Cana.

The Sea of Galilee has a double claim to distinction. To its natural beauty, which is unsurpassed, is added the glory of having furnished the fishermen who were to become "fishers of men." Nearly seven hundred feet below the level of the ocean and walled by high hills, it has a character all its own, and its shores were the familiar haunts of Him who by precept and example taught the nobleness of service. The sea is some twelve miles in length by six or eight in breadth. The Jordan pours into it the waters of Hermon and Lake Merom and carries away its overflow to the Dead Sea. The Plain of Gennesaret includes nearly all the level land adjacent to it, save the Jordan valleys above and below, and is so prominent a feature of the landscape that its name is sometimes applied to the sea. The village of Magdala, home of one of the Marys, is situated on the edge of this plain, but is now only a collection of mud huts, each one bearing a booth of boughs upon its flat roof. The house top is an important part of the house in the Orient and furnishes a sleeping place for the occupants during the warm summer nights. The village of Magdala, with the land belonging to it, has recently been sold to a syndicate which proposes to very much improve its cultivation.

A little farther south on the west side of the sea, is the city of Tiberias, the only city still remaining of the ten or more that, two thousand years ago, stretched along the shores. The city's name gives evidence of its Roman origin, and it was once so important a place that its name was a rival for Galilee in the designation of the sea. Tiberias was one of the sacred cities of the Jews and to-day the descendants of the Hebrew race constitute three-fourths of its population. A Jewish society, of which Baron Rothschild is the patron, has several schools here, and a number of the residents devote themselves entirely to the study of the law. Near Tiberias are the hot springs spoken of by Josephus, and their healing waters still have a great reputation. The bath houses are not kept as they would be in Europe or America, but the mineral properties of the water make it very invigorating.

A Jewish synagogue has been erected near the hot springs and the annual feast in honor of Rabbi Meyer was celebrated there during our stay in Tiberias. As it was the only feast of the kind we had ever attended, we found it exceedingly interesting. The devout Jews were gathered in large numbers, some coming several days' journey; many of the men wore a long curl in front of each ear, a custom which we first noticed in Jerusalem. The feast is an occasion of rejoicing and there are dancing, music and merriment. A part of the ceremony is the burning of garments contributed by those in attendance, and the right to light the fire is made a matter of auction. We went into the room where the bidding was in progress and were informed that more than ten dollars had already been offered for the honor. The feast has many of the characteristics of a fair, the vendors of candles, cakes, drinks and merchandise plying their trade and different delegations marching with banners.

There is at Tiberias a splendidly equipped hospital established by the United Free Church of Scotland, and conducted by a skilful surgeon, Dr. Torrance, and a corps of assistants; more than one hundred and fifty persons were treated the day we visited the hospital. Surely this institution is a fitting memorial, and what more appropriate place for a hospital than these shores where the lame were made whole, the deaf were healed and the blind received their sight!

The site of Chorazin, the city which Christ denounced for unbelief in connection with Capernaum and Bethsaida, is still a matter of dispute, but Capernaum, where Christ dwelt during the greater part of His ministry, has probably been identified. It is situated on the northeast corner of Gennesaret, close by the shore of the sea. There is no town there now and no house save a Catholic monastery, but recent excavations have unearthed the foundations of a building believed to have been the Jewish synagogue in which Christ spoke. On one of the stones of this synagogue is a representation of David's seal and a pot of manna; if this is in reality the synagogue in which Christ referred to the bread of life, it may be true, as someone has suggested, that He found His text, "Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness," in this carving upon the stone.

There has been a great deal of discussion over the site of Bethsaida, and some have argued that there were two towns of the same name, one at the north end of the lake east of the mouth of the Jordan, and the other on the west side not far from Capernaum. But both towns have so completely disappeared that they can not be located with any certainty.

Safed, another of the sacred cities of the Jews, lies some distance west of the sea of Galilee but within sight of it, perched on a high hill. It is so conspicuous a landmark and so often seen by the Great Teacher that it may have suggested to His mind the illustration, "A city that is set on a hill can not be hid."

The sea of Galilee, beautiful as it is with its clear water and its picturesque environment, is treacherous. Its surface is swept by sudden gusts of wind and tempests often lash it until its waves beat high upon the shore. A resident of Tiberias told us that he had seen it when it might be mistaken for an ocean, so violently was it agitated, and he bore testimony also to the unexpected squalls that visit it. We spent two days on the sea, and in crossing it found the wind so variable that probably half a dozen times the sail became useless and it was necessary to resort to the oars. There was no great tempest while we were there, and the waves did not "beat into the ship" but the wind was at times contrary. The uncertainty of the weather has been attributed to the numerous ravines or canyons which run down from the mountains round about the sea, and as these are the same now that they were two thousand years ago, travel upon the lake is attended with the same risk that it was then.