flowers. Here He could watch the creeping caravans of Arabian merchants,
and the glittering legions of Roman soldiers, and the slow files of
Jewish pilgrims, coming up from the Valley of Jezreel and stretching out
across the Plain of Esdraelon. Hither, at the evening hour, He came as a
youth to find the blessing of wide and tranquil thought. Here, when the
burden of manhood pressed upon Him, He rested after the day's work, free
from that sadness which often touches us in the vision of earth's
transient beauty, because He saw far beyond the horizon into the
spirit-world, where there is no night, nor weariness, nor sin, nor
death.
For nearly thirty years He must have lived within sight of this hilltop.
And then, one day, He came back from a journey to the Jordan and
Jerusalem, and entered into the little synagogue at the foot of this
hill, and began to preach to His townsfolk His glad tidings of spiritual
liberty and brotherhood and eternal life.
But they were filled with scorn and wrath. His words rebuked them, stung
them, inflamed them with hatred. They laid violent hands on Him, and
led Him out to the brow of the hill,--perhaps it was yonder on that
steep, rocky peak to the south of the town, looking back toward the
country of the Old Testament,--to cast Him down headlong.
Yet I think there must have been a few friends and lovers of His in that
disdainful and ignorant crowd; for He passed through the midst of them
unharmed, and went His way to the home of Peter and Andrew and John and
Philip, beside the Sea of Galilee, never to come back to Nazareth.
III
A WEDDING IN CANA OF GALILEE
We thought to save a little time on our journey, and perhaps to spare
ourselves a little jolting on the hard high-road, by sending the
saddle-horses ahead with the caravan, and taking a carriage for the
sixteen-mile drive to Tiberias. When we came to the old sarcophagus
which serves as a drinking trough at the spring outside the village of
Cana, a strange thing befell us.
We had halted for a moment to refresh the horses. Suddenly there was a
sound of furious galloping on the road behind us. A score of cavaliers
in Bedouin dress, with guns and swords, came after us in hot haste. The
leaders dashed across the open space beside the spring, wheeled their
foaming horses and dashed back again.
"Is this our affair with robbers, at last?" we asked George.
He laughed a little. "No," said he, "this is the beginning of a wedding
in Kafr Kenna. The bridegroom and his friends come over from some other
village where they live, to show off a bit of _fantasia_ to the bride
and her friends. They carry her back with them after the marriage. We
wait a while and see how they ride."
The horses were gayly caparisoned with ribbons and tassels and
embroidered saddle-cloths. The riders were handsome, swarthy fellows
with haughty faces. Their eyes glanced sideways at us to see whether we
were admiring them, as they shouted their challenges to one another and
raced wildly up and down the rock-strewn course, with their robes flying
and their horses' sides bloody with spurring. One of the men was a huge
coal-black Nubian who brandished a naked sword as he rode. Others
whirled their long muskets in the air and yelled furiously. The riding
was cruel, reckless, superb; loose reins and loose stirrups on the
headlong gallop; then the sharp curb brought the horse up suddenly, the
rein on his neck turned him as if on a pivot, and the pressure of the
heel sent him flying back over the course.
Presently there was a sound of singing and clapping hands behind the
high cactus-hedges to our left, and from a little lane the bridal
procession walked up to take the high-road to the village. There were a
dozen men in front, firing guns and shouting, then came the women, with
light veils of gauze over their faces, singing shrilly, and in the midst
of them, in gay attire, but half-concealed with long, dark mantles, the
bride and "the virgins, her companions, in raiment of needlework."
As they saw the photographic camera pointed at them they laughed, and
crowded closer together, and drew the ends of their dark mantles over
their heads. So they passed up the road, their shrill song broken a
little by their laughter; and the company of horsemen, the bridegroom
and his friends, wheeled into line, two by two, and trotted after them
into the village.
This was all that we saw of the wedding at Kafr Kenna--just a vivid,
mysterious flash of human figures, drawn together by the primal impulse
and longing of our common nature, garbed and ordered by the social
customs which make different lands and ages seem strange to each other,
and moving across the narrow stage of Time into the dimness of that Arab
village, where Jesus and His mother and His disciples were guests at a
wedding long ago.
IV
TIBERIAS
It is one of the ironies of fate that the lake which saw the greater
part of the ministry of Jesus, should take its modern name from a city
built by Herod Antipas, and called after one of the most infamous of the
Roman Emperors,--"the Sea of Tiberias."
Our road to this city of decadence leads gradually downward, through a
broad, sinking moorland, covered with weeds and wild flowers--rich,
monotonous, desolate. The broidery of pink flax and yellow
chrysanthemums and white marguerites still follows us; but now the wider
stretches of thistles and burdocks and daturas and cockleburs and
water-plantains seem to be more important. The landscape saddens around
us, under the deepening haze of the desert-wind, the sombre Sherkiyeh.
There are no golden sunbeams, no cool cloud-shadows, only a gray and
melancholy illumination growing ever fainter and more nebulous as the
day declines, and the outlines of the hills fade away from the dim,
silent, forsaken plain through which we move.
We are crossing the battlefield where the soldiers of Napoleon, under
the brave Junot, fought desperately against the overwhelming forces of
the Turks. Yonder, away to the left, in the mysterious haze, the double
"Horns of Hattin" rise like a shadowy exhalation.
That is said to be the mountain where Jesus gathered the multitude
around Him and spoke His new beatitudes on the meek, the merciful, the
peacemakers, the pure in heart. It is certainly the place where the
hosts of the Crusaders met the army of Saladin, in the fierce heat of a
July day, seven hundred years ago, and while the burning grass and weeds
and brush flamed around them, were cut to pieces and trampled and
utterly consumed. There the new Kingdom of Jerusalem,--the last that was
won with the sword,--went down in ruin around the relics of "the true
cross," which its soldiers carried as their talisman; and Guy de
Lusignan, their King, was captured. The noble prisoners were invited by
Saladin to his tent, and he offered them sherbets, cooled with snow from
Hermon, to slake their feverish thirst. When they were refreshed, the
conqueror ordered them to be led out and put to the sword,--just yonder
at the foot of the Mount of Beatitudes.
From terrace to terrace of the falling moor we roll along the winding
road through the brumous twilight, until we come within sight of the
black, ruined walls, the gloomy towers, the huddled houses of the
worn-out city of Tiberias. She is like an ancient beggar sitting on a
rocky cape beside the lake and bathing her feet in the invisible water.
The gathering dusk lends a sullen and forlorn aspect to the place.
Behind us rise the shattered volcanic crags and cliffs of basalt; before
us glimmer pallid and ghostly touches of light from the hidden waves; a
few lamps twinkle here and there in the dormant town.
This was the city which Herod Antipas built for the capital of his
Province of Galilee. He laid its foundations in an ancient graveyard,
and stretched its walls three miles along the lake, adorning it with a
palace, a forum, a race-course, and a large synagogue. But to strict
Jews the place was unclean, because it was defiled with Roman idols, and
because its builders had polluted themselves by digging up the bones of
the dead. Herod could get few Jews to live in his city, and it became a
catch-all for the off-scourings of the land, people of all creeds and
none, aliens, mongrels, soldiers of fortune, and citizens of the
high-road. It was the strongest fortress and probably the richest town
of Galilee in Christ's day, but so far as we know He never entered it.
After the fall of Jerusalem, strangely enough, the Jews made it their
favourite city, the seat of their Sanhedrim and the centre of
rabbinical learning. Here the famous Rabbis Jehuda and Akiba and the
philosopher Maimonides taught. Here the Mishna and the Gemara were
written. And here, to-day, two-thirds of the five thousand inhabitants
are Jews, many of them living on the charity of their kindred in Europe,
and spending their time in the study of the Talmud while they wait for
the Messiah who shall restore the kingdom to Israel. You may see their
flat fur caps, dingy gabardines, long beards and melancholy faces on
every street in the drowsy little city, dreaming (among fleas and
fevers) of I know not what impossible glories to come.
You may see, also, on the hill near the Serai, the splendid Mission
Hospital of the United Free Church of Scotland, where for twenty-three
years Doctor Torrance has been ministering to the body and soul of
Tiberias in the name of Jesus. Do you find the building too large and
fine, the lovely garden too beautiful with flowers, the homes of the
doctors, and teachers, and helpers of the sick and wounded, too clean
and healthful and orderly? Do you say "To what purpose is this waste?"
Then I know not how to measure your ignorance. For you have failed to
see that this is the embassy of the only King who still cares for the
true welfare of this forsaken, bedraggled, broken-down Tiberias.
On the evening of our arrival, however, all these things are hidden from
us in the dusk. We drive past the ruined gate of the city, a mile along
the southern road toward the famous Hot Baths. Here, on a little terrace
above the lake, between the road and the black basalt cliffs, our camp
is pitched, and through the darkness
'We hear the water lapping on the crag,
And the long ripple washing in the reeds.'
In the freshness of the early morning the sunrise pours across the lake
into our tents. There is a light, cool breeze blowing from the north,
rippling the clear, green water, (of a hue like the stone called _aqua
marina_), with a thousand flaws and wrinkles, which catch the flashing
light and reflect the deep blue sky, and change beneath the shadow of
floating clouds to innumerable colours of lapis lazuli, and violet, and
purple, and peacock blue.
The old comparison of the shape of the lake to a lute, or a harp, is not
clear to us from the point at which we stand: for the northwestward
sweep of the bay of Gennesaret, which reaches a breadth of nearly eight
miles from the eastern shore, is hidden from us by a promontory, where
the dark walls and white houses of Tiberias slope to the water. But we
can see the full length of the lake, from the depression of the Jordan
Valley at the southern end, to the shores of Bethsaida and Capernaum at
the foot of the northern hills, beyond which the dazzling whiteness of
Hermon is visible.
Opposite rise the eastern heights of the Jaulan, with almost level top
and steep flanks, furrowed by rocky ravines, descending precipitously to
a strip of smooth, green shore. Behind us the mountains are more broken
and varied in form, lifted into sharper peaks and sloped into broader
valleys. The whole aspect of the scene is like a view in the English
Lake country, say on Windermere or Ullswater; only there are no forests
or thickets to shade and soften it. Every edge of the hills is like a
silhouette against the sky; every curve of the shore clear and distinct.
Of the nine rich cities which once surrounded the lake, none is left
except this ragged old Tiberias. Of the hundreds of fishing boats and
passenger vessels which once crossed its waters, all have vanished
except half a dozen little pleasure skiffs kept for the use of tourists.
Of the armies and caravans which once travelled these shores, all have
passed by into the eternal far-away, except the motley string of
visitors to the Hot Springs, who were coming up to bathe in the
medicinal waters in the days of Joshua when the place was called
Hammath, and in the time of the Greeks when it was named Emmaus, and who
are still trotting along the road in front of our camp toward the big,
white dome and dirty bath-houses of Hummam. They come from all parts of
Syria, from Damascus and the sea-coast, from Judea and the Hauran;
Greeks and Arabs and Turks and Maronites and Jews; on foot, on
donkey-back, and in litters. Now, it is a cavalcade of Druses from the
Lebanon, men, women and children, riding on tired horses. Now, it is a
procession of Hebrews walking with a silken canopy over the sacred books
of their law.
In the morning we visit Tiberias, buy some bread and fish in the market,
and go through the Mission Hospital, where one of the gentle nurses
binds up a foolish little wound on my wrist.
In the afternoon we sail on the southern part of the lake. The boatmen
laugh at my fruitless fishing with artificial flies, and catch a few
small fish for us with their nets in the shallow, muddy places along the
shore. The wind is strange and variable, now sweeping down in violent
gusts that bend the long arm of the lateen sail, now dying away to a
dead calm through which we row lazily home.
I remember a small purple kingfisher poising in the air over a shoal,
his head bent downward, his wings vibrating swiftly. He drops like a
shot and comes up out of the water with a fish held crosswise in his
bill. With measured wing-strokes he flits to the top of a rock to eat
his supper, and a robber-gull flaps after him to take it away. But the
industrious kingfisher is too quick to be robbed. He bolts his fish with
a single gulp. We eat ours in more leisurely fashion, by the light of
the candles in our peaceful tent.
V
MEMORIES OF THE LAKE
A hundred little points of illumination flash into memory as I look back
over the hours that we spent beside the Sea of Galilee. How should I
write of them all without being tedious? How, indeed, should I hope to
make them visible or significant in the bare words of description?
Never have I passed richer, fuller hours; but most of their wealth was
in very little things: the personal look of a flower growing by the
wayside; the intimate message of a bird's song falling through the sunny
air; the expression of confidence and appeal on the face of a wounded
man in the hospital, when the good physician stood beside his cot; the
shadows of the mountains lengthening across the valleys at sunset; the
laughter of a little child playing with a broken water pitcher; the
bronzed profiles and bold, free ways of our sunburned rowers; the sad
eyes of an old Hebrew lifted from the book that he was reading; the
ruffling breezes and sudden squalls that changed the surface of the
lake; the single palm-tree that waved over the mud hovels of Magdala;
the millions of tiny shells that strewed the beach of Capernaum and
Bethsaida; the fertile sweep of the Plain of Gennesaret rising from the
lake; and the dark precipices of the "Robbers' Gorge" running back into
the western mountains.
The written record of these hours is worth little; but in experience and
in memory they have a mystical meaning and beauty, because they belong
to the country where Jesus walked with His fishermen-disciples, and took
the little children in His arms, and healed the sick, and opened blind
eyes to behold ineffable things.
Every touch that brings that country nearer to us in our humanity and
makes it more real, more simple, more vivid, is precious. For the one
irreparable loss that could befall us in religion,--a loss that is often
threatened by our abstract and theoretical ways of thinking and speaking
about Him,--would be to lose Jesus out of the lowly and familiar ways of
our mortal life. He entered these lowly ways as the Son of Man in order
to make us sure that we are the children of God.
Therefore I am glad of every hour spent by the Lake of Galilee.
* * * * *
I remember, when we came across in our boat to Tell Hum, where the
ancient city of Capernaum stood, the sun was shining with a fervent heat
and the air of the lake, six hundred and eighty feet below the level of
the sea, was soft and languid. The gray-bearded German monk who came to
meet us at the landing and admitted us to the inclosure of his little
monastery where he was conducting the excavation of the ruins, wore a
cork helmet and spectacles. He had been heated, even above the ninety
degrees Fahrenheit which the thermometer marked, by the rudeness of a
couple of tourists who had just tried to steal a photograph of his work.
He had foiled them by opening their camera and blotting the film with
sunlight, and had then sent them away with fervent words. But as he
walked with us among his roses and Pride of India trees, his spirit
cooled within him, and he showed himself a learned and accomplished man.
He told us how he had been working there for two or three years,
keeping records and drawings and photographs of everything that was
found; going back to the Franciscan convent at Jerusalem for his short
vacation in the heat of mid-summer; putting his notes in order, reading
and studying, making ready to write his book on Capernaum. He showed us
the portable miniature railway which he had made; and the little iron
cars to carry away the great piles of rubbish and earth; and the rich
columns, carved lintels, marble steps and shell-niches of the splendid
building which his workmen had uncovered. The outline was clear and
perfect. We could see how the edifice of fine, white limestone had been
erected upon an older foundation of basalt, and how an earthquake had
twisted it and shaken down its pillars. It was undoubtedly a synagogue,
perhaps the very same which the rich Roman centurion built for the Jews
in Capernaum (Luke vii: 5), and where Jesus healed the man who had an
unclean spirit. (Luke iv: 31-37.) Of all the splendours of that proud
city of the lake, once spreading along a mile of the shore, nothing
remained but these tumbled ruins in a lonely, fragrant garden, where the
patient father was digging with his Arab workmen and getting ready to
write his book.
"_Weh dir, Capernaum_" I quoted. The _padre_ nodded his head gravely.
"_Ja, ja,_" said he, "_es ist buchstaeblich erfuellt!_"
* * * * *
I remember the cool bath in the lake, at a point between Bethsaida and
Capernaum, where a tangle of briony and honeysuckle made a shelter
around a shell-strewn beach, and the rosy oleanders bloomed beside an
inflowing stream. I swam out a little way and floated, looking up into
the deep sky, while the waves plashed gently and caressingly around my
face.
* * * * *
I remember the old Arab fisherman, who was camped with his family in a
black tent on a meadow where several lively brooks came in (one of them
large enough to turn a mill). I persuaded him by gestures to wade out
into the shallow part of the lake and cast his bell-net for fish. He
gathered the net in his hand, and whirled it around his head. The leaden
weights around the bottom spread out in a wide circle and splashed into
the water. He drew the net toward him by the cord, the ring of sinkers
sweeping the bottom, and lifted it slowly, carefully--but no fish!
Then I rigged up my pocket fly-rod with a gossamer leader and two tiny
trout-flies, a Royal Coach-man and a Queen of the Water, and began to
cast along the crystal pools and rapids of the larger stream. How
merrily the fish rose there, and in the ripples where the brooks ran out
into the lake. There were half a dozen different kinds of fish, but I
did not know the name of any of them. There was one that looked like a
black bass, and others like white perch and sunfish; and one kind was
very much like a grayling. But they were not really of the _salmo_
family, I knew, for none of them had the soft fin in front of the tail.
How surprised the old fisherman was when he saw the fish jumping at
those tiny hooks with feathers; and how round the eyes of his children
were as they looked on; and how pleased they were with the _bakhshish_
which they received, including a couple of baithooks for the eldest boy!
* * * * *
I remember the place where we ate our lunch in a small grove of
eucalyptus-trees, with sweet-smelling yellow acacias blossoming around
us. It was near the site which some identify with the ancient Bethsaida,
but others say that it was farther to the east, and others again say
that Capernaum was really located here. The whole problem of these lake
cities, where they stood, how they supported such large populations (not
less than fifteen thousand people in each), is difficult and may never
be solved. But it did not trouble us deeply. We were content to be
beside the same waters, among the same hills, that Jesus knew and loved.
It was here, along this shore, that He found Simon and his brother
Andrew casting their net, and James and his brother John mending theirs,
and called them to come with Him. These fishermen, with their frank and
free hearts unspoiled by the sophistries of the Pharisees, with their
minds unhampered by social and political ambitions, followers of a
vocation which kept them out of doors and reminded them daily of their
dependence on the bounty of God,--these children of nature, and others
like them, were the men whom He chose for His disciples, the listeners
who had ears to hear His marvellous gospel.
It was here, on these pale, green waves, that He sat in a little boat,
near the shore, and spoke to the multitude who had gathered to hear Him.
He spoke of the deep and tranquil confidence that man may learn from
nature, from the birds and the flowers.
He spoke of the infinite peace of the heart that knows the true meaning
of love, which is giving and blessing, and the true secret of courage,
which is loyalty to the truth.
He spoke of the God whom we can trust as a child trusts its father, and
of the Heaven which waits for all who do good to their fellowmen.
He spoke of the wisdom whose fruit is not pride but humility, of the
honour whose crown is not authority but service, of the purity which is
not outward but inward, and of the joy which lasts forever.
He spoke of forgiveness for the guilty, of compassion for the weak, of
hope for the desperate.
He told these poor and lowly folk that their souls were unspeakably
precious, and that He had come to save them and make them inheritors of
an eternal kingdom. He told them that He had brought this message from
God, their Father and His Father.
He spoke with the simplicity of one who knows, with the assurance of one
who has seen, with the certainty and clearness of one for whom doubt
does not exist.
He offered Himself, in His stainless purity, in His supreme love, as the
proof and evidence of His gospel, the bread of Heaven, the water of
life, the Saviour of sinners, the light of the world. "Come unto Me," He
said, "and I will give you rest."
This was the heavenly music that came into the world by the Lake of
Galilee. And its voice has spread through the centuries, comforting the
sorrowful, restoring the penitent, cheering the despondent, and telling
all who will believe it, that our human life is worth living, because it
gives each one of us the opportunity to share in the Love which is
sovereign and immortal.
_A PSALM OF THE GOOD TEACHER_
_The Lord is my teacher:
I shall not lose the way to wisdom._
_He leadeth me in the lowly path of learning,
He prepareth a lesson for me every day;
He findeth the clear fountains of instruction,
Little by little he showeth me the beauty of the truth._
_The world is a great book that he hath written,
He turneth the leaves for me slowly;
They are all inscribed with images and letters,
His face poureth light on the pictures and the words._
_Then am I glad when I perceive his meaning,
He taketh me by the hand to the hill-top of vision;
In the valley also he walketh beside me,
And in the dark places he whispereth to my heart._