the spectral element in Syrian thought. It was but natural that the
sound of underground rivers and their explanation by the theory of a
world founded on bottomless floods (the “waters underneath the earth”),
should have given to the whole land an air of possession by ghostly
powers. It may have been that same phenomenon which drew down the
imagination of Syria to the subterranean regions, or it may also have
been to some extent the hereditary greed of buried treasure, which every
nation whose buildings have been often overturned is likely to acquire.
Whatever be its explanation, the fact is certain that the underground
element is one which counts for much in the spirit of Syria. Alike in
Christian and in pre-Christian times there seems to have been a most
unwholesome dread of fresh air blowing about holy things. Sacred caves
and pits were among the most characteristic properties of ancient
Semitic religion.[52] As for Christian tradition, it seems positively to
dread the open air. The Nativity in Bethlehem and the Agony in
Gethsemane have each their cave assigned to them, and many another site
has a cave either discovered or actually constructed for its
commemoration. Nature and history have combined to encourage the
underground tendency. Palestine is remarkable for the number and size of
its natural caverns, and it is not slow to add its imaginative touch to
the length of them, connecting distant towns with supposed subterranean
passages. These caves have been used as dwelling-places from very
ancient times. The strange cities of Edom and of Bashan are well known
to all as wonders. And not in these places only, but in many other parts
of the land, men have dwelt beneath the ground. In times of invasion,
for the solitude of hermit life, and in the terrors of persecution,
caves have offered natural places of refuge and of hiding, which have in
many cases been greatly enlarged by excavation. Besides those caverns
whose interest lies in the memory of ancient inhabitants, there are some
of an interest whose terror is not yet departed. These are the
cave-dwellings of lunatics, who in former times often chose the dead for
company and inhabited tombs. Now, in some places they are chained in
black recesses of mountain caverns, where their life must be horrible
indeed. There are also one or two caves in Syria which end in sudden
perpendicular shafts of great depth, where adulteresses are said to meet
their fate. Such modern instances may have reinforced the natural
fascination of the occult which subterranean places offer. But there is
something congenial to it in the spirit of Syria quite apart from these.
If the natural features of Syria thus tempt men towards the ghastly side
of things, her history suggests plenty of material for superstition to
work upon. If the legend were true that no dew nor rain would moisten
the spot where a man had been murdered, Syria would be no longer an
oasis, but the driest of deserts. In a spiritual sense the legend is
truer than it seems. When, in his _Laughing Mill_, Julian Hawthorne
works out the idea of a mystic sympathy in Nature with crimes that have
been done by man, he is reminding us of something which every one of
sensitive spirit has more or less clearly felt. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
subtler tales the same idea is worked out in a fashion still more
convincing. There are times and places when it is difficult to resist
the conviction that the material world, in its dumb, unconscious way, is
yet burdened with the weight of man’s evil deeds. In Syria one can
almost hear “the groaning and travailing of the whole creation.” It
seems to be a land waiting the hour of its release, and meanwhile
shrouded in deeper mystery than any other land. Something has happened
here, you feel, which never happened elsewhere; something is going to
happen here again, when the time shall come.
Nothing could better attest this fact than the extraordinary wealth of
legend in Syria. Fragments of Bible story, changed and often distorted
by those who have retold them, are met with every day. Sometimes a story
has passed from Jews to Christians and from Christians to Mohammedans,
increasing steadily in marvellousness and decreasing in verisimilitude
as it passed. Samson, Goliath, and the prophet Jonah are notable cases
in point. A Mohammedan weli marks the spot where the latter was thrown
ashore; but the inventors of this legend have been inconsiderate. The
weli stands at the bend of a shallow sandy beach, where the whale must
either have itself come ashore to deposit the prophet, or have projected
him a distance of at least a hundred yards. A very curious instance of a
similar kind is that of the fall of Jericho as narrated in Joshua vi.
Conder gives two legends, both of which are obviously elaborated forms
of that account. One of these is a Samaritan story of iron walls, and
the other a Mohammedan one of a city of brass whose walls fell after
Aly, the son-in-law of Mohammed, had ridden seven times round them.[53]
Still more curious is a legend related by the same author, which looks
like a Mohammedan version of the Wandering Jew. It tells how, at Abila,
Cain was allowed to lay down the corpse of his brother Abel after
carrying it for a hundred years. The whole story of the Herods has
infested the region of their crimes with the ghosts of their victims. In
Samaria the murdered Mariamne still seems to dwell in her honey, and
Herod and his servants to call her by name and force the pretence that
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF HINNOM WITH THE HILL OF OFFENCE
The upper portion of the picture to the left is the Hill of Offence,
with the village of Siloam on its lower slopes.]
she is yet alive. The land is sick with ancient crimes whose blood
“crieth from the ground.”
The religions of the land seem to be in league with the powers of
darkness for the propagation of magic lore. It is an extraordinary fact
that Syria has sent forth to the ends of the earth a religion that is
the Eternal Word of God to mankind, and yet herself has reverted to the
religious conceptions of ancient Semitic paganism. One of the most
fundamental of these conceptions was that of a religion whose essential
element is not belief but ritual.[54] While in the West the free play of
reason has tested and interpreted Israel’s faith, and discovered in it
the unique revelation of the living God to man, the worshippers in the
Holy Land itself seem to treat that same faith wholly as a department of
magic lore. Certain rites have to be performed, no matter how
unintelligently, and that is all. All creeds alike share the blame of
this. Druse and Samaritan, Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan vie with one
another to-day in the poor ambition of making the religion of Jehovah
contemptible in the eyes of thinking men who investigate it as it is
practised on its native soil.
Much of the magic of the East is decadent or decayed religion. On rare
occasions a marriage superstition may be met with, such as the
foretelling of marriage destinies by tying green twigs with one
hand,[55] which appears to be the creation of pure romance. But the
great majority of those superstitions which hold the Eastern mind in
bondage are evidently relics of pagan thought incorporated now in
Jewish, Christian, or Moslem creeds, and absorbing all the interest of
those who believe in them. If a Mohammedan saint’s bones flew through
the air from Damascus to Mount Ebal, the Christians can match the
miracle and more, for was not the very house of the Virgin carried off
by angels from Nazareth to Loreto lest the Moslems should desecrate it?
Magic dominates the mind of the East and explains everything there to
this day. Every inscribed stone runs the chance either of being honoured
by a place in the wall of a dwelling or of being heated with fire and
split with water, according to the sort of magic it is supposed to
represent. It is difficult to realise that the men you converse with are
actually living in the world of Tasso’s _Gerusalemme Liberata_, where a
dealer in black art, by his incantation,
unbinds the demons of the deep to do
Deeds without name, or chains them in his cell,
And makes e’en Pluto pale upon the throne of hell.
Yet such is undoubtedly the case. Even the saddle-bags you buy at
Jerusalem--those gorgeous labyrinths of shells and tassels--have a blue
bead concealed somewhere in them to return the stare of any evil eye
that may look upon your horse. To avert the same danger you will see
little boys dressed in girls’ clothes, and specially pretty children
kept dirty and untidy. Lest the dreaded eye should blight the fortunes
of a newborn babe the Jewish Rabbis sometimes hang up the 121st Psalm
on the wall over mother and child. Magic is as useful a substitute for
science as it is for religion. It explains any phenomenon and clears up
any mystery without the trouble of investigation. All great buildings
must have been built by enchantment, so what is the use of speculating
as to their architecture? Western civilisation is, no doubt, a
remarkable affair, but it never occurs to an unsophisticated Syrian that
it is a matter for energetic emulation. The Frank has only been lucky
enough to learn the proper spell. It is easy to see how Syria, with such
views as these, is doomed at once to moral and intellectual stagnation.
The vivid mind of the East is fertile in poetic imagination. Restless
and quick itself, it cannot conceive the Universe otherwise than as
living around it. Everything is alive and aware. All inanimate things
are personified; or, to speak more accurately, they are inhabited by
spiritual beings. Natural phenomena express the purposes of minds hidden
behind them. Every dangerous or adverse experience is regarded as the
work of malice. Human life is beset with ambushed spiritual enemies. The
advantage which their invisibility gives to these over the human
combatants would be enough to put fighting out of the question, were it
not that so many of the spirits are of feeble intelligence and may be
hoodwinked; while all of them have other spirits for their enemies who
may be enlisted on man’s side against them. These spirits are of many
kinds, but they may be classed in two groups, according to their
connection with natural phenomena or with death.
Chief of the former group are the angels, good and bad; and the jinn, or
genii, whom Islam took over from the ancient paganism of Arabia. The
angels are God’s attendants, and have some functions entirely
independent of natural phenomena. Thus the two stones which mark a
Moslem’s grave show the stations of the angels who are to examine him;
and the tuft of hair on his shaven head is (like the Jewish sidelocks)
to enable the Angel Gabriel to bear the man to heaven. Yet the angels
are in many instances personified parts of nature, guardians of the
land, spirits of wind or fire or water, who are obviously the
descendants and the heirs of the ancient local gods.[56] Thus the wicked
angels are supposed to have descended on Mount Hermon, and to have sworn
their oaths there--a belief which adds considerably to the importance of
the great mountain in Syrian estimation. The jinn are the demons of the
desert, lordly and terrible to all who have not the charm which masters
them, obedient as little children to those who have it. They are the
inhabitants of those whirling sandstorms which sweep across the waste.
Some superstitions of this kind may be connected with the former dangers
from wild beasts, which used to haunt the jungles of lower Jordan and
swarm up to the inland territories after an invasion had depopulated
them. Even now there may be seen in Palestine an occasional wolf or
leopard, to say nothing of the jackals which every traveller is sure to
see. Some of the fauna of Palestine are in themselves so strange as to
suggest unearthly affinities. The jerboa, for instance, the jumping
mouse of the desert, merits Browning’s description of him, when in
_Saul_ he says, “there are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and
half mouse.” The lizards, too, seem anything but ordinary respectable
law-abiding animals as they twinkle to and fro among the ruins of old
buildings. It is said that Mohammed refused to eat lizards, considering
that they were the metamorphosed spirits of Israelites.
The spirits that haunt sepulchres are either ghosts of the dead or
ghouls that prey upon their flesh. It is this class of apparition which
appears to have the strongest fascination for the Syrian mind; and its
graveyard lore is the natural sequel to the morbid interest in death
which formed the subject of our preceding chapter. Conder, whose book
gives much interesting information on this whole subject, found it
difficult to keep any Arabs about him at Fusâil, a few miles north of
Jericho, because of their fear of a ghoul in the ruins, who might chance
to desire a change of food were he to see them there. The dead appear to
have undergone a change for the worse in dying. The utmost caution and
politeness are required to prevent their ghosts from doing harm to the
visitors at their tombs, even in the case of men who, while in the body,
were hospitable and friendly persons. Some localities are regarded as
peculiarly dangerous, among which is the reputed site of the stoning of
Stephen and (according to Gordon) of Calvary, near Jerusalem. An Arab
writer of the Middle Ages advises the traveller not to pass that haunted
spot at night.[57]
If, under ordinary conditions, life in Syria is overshadowed and
haunted, the dread becomes far greater when disease has come. The
explanation of disease is the same easy one as that which has deadened
science and distorted religion--magic again. Even when the true cause of
illness has been guessed, it has to be explained in ghostly language.
When plague has broken out in a locality the Jewish Rabbis make the
neighbours of the stricken house empty all jars and vessels, saying that
“the angel of death wipes his sword in liquids.” The malaria of swamps
is set down to the same cause, and it is probable that many of that
mixed multitude who are to be seen sitting chin deep in the hot
sulphur-springs of Gadara or Tiberias regard their cure as due to some
local spirit who happens to be benevolently inclined. In the
neighbourhood of the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, every accident or
ailment is regarded as the work of the dead man. Indeed the main idea of
Syrian medical science is that all or most sickness is possession by
demons, and a common cure is to bore or burn holes in the patient’s
flesh, by which the evil spirit may escape. The treatment of lunacy is
perhaps the saddest case in point. Until Mr. Waldmeyer built his asylum
at Beyrout, there was but one mode of treatment. At certain monasteries
there are caves in which the insane are chained below huge stones, with
hardly space for movement, and are kept there for days in hunger and
filth, in order to drive out the devil. The test for devil-possession is
somewhat crude. The patient is shewn a cross. If he turns from it and
refuses to look he is possessed; if he shews no aversion to it he is
only unwell and is allowed to go. In the Beyrout asylum we were told
that no case of lunacy had been discovered which in any way differed
from the European types of the same disease. The record of cures there,
under the same treatment as that which is practised in the West, is a
most encouraging and hopeful one.
It is true that the bright spirit of the East with its rapid changes and
its unquenchable sparkle of gaiety, has mitigated the horror and
oppressiveness of the spectral there. There are times when one would
almost fancy that the whole of their superstition was a pretence which
was never meant to be taken seriously. In Damascus, and probably
elsewhere, you may buy little rag-dolls supposed to resemble camels.
They are made of bones, covered with patches of many-coloured cloth, and
tricked out with tinsel and strings of beads. We bought two of these
from a young girl in “the street called Straight” for half a franc, and
bore them through the city with a crowd of idlers following us. We
learned afterwards that these were cunning devices to cheat the ghosts.
When you are very sick or in danger you vow a camel to your saint or
friendly spirit--this is how you pay your vow. Poking fun at Hades in
this fashion might seem a dangerous game, and one hardly to be
recommended while any lingering belief in the reality of ghosts
remained. Yet such is Syrian character. This sort of thing persists
along with a deep horror of the other world. The words of Job are not in
the least out of date in Palestine to-day: “Fear came upon me, and
trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before
my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not
discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes: there was
silence, and I heard a voice.”[58] The horror is all the deeper because
it appears to be seldom brought to clear statement. The spectral world
is undefined, and it has, therefore, all the added power of the unknown,
whose play upon the imagination is so much more strong and subtle than
that of any clear conception, however ghastly.
In this chapter no attempt has been made to distinguish between the
superstitions of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans in Palestine. As a
matter of fact, there is little to choose between them, and they have
much in common. It is true that every nation has some outlook or other
upon the world of spirits. But each has its own way of regarding the
apparitions; and the kind of spectre which a land believes in is no bad
indication of the tone of the land’s thought and character. About the
fairy-lore of Teutonic nations there is a child-like simplicity and
purity which make
[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF HINNOM, WITH THE HILL OF OFFENCE.
The upper portion of the picture to the left is the Hill of Offence,
with the village of Siloam on its lower slopes.]
that lore wholly refreshing and precious. The nymphs and Pan, whose
ancient monuments we have seen in ancient Palestine, were graceful. But
the spectral element in modern Palestine appears to be almost wholly
morbid and unclean,--the further decadence of a land that has made its
covenant with death. The life a Syrian peasant leads to-day is haunted
by ghostly terrors; it is a life led by leave of the dead, or by a
systematic cunning which plays off one malign spirit against another, or
succeeds in winning a point or two against the grave for the player. It
is a view of life than which surely none can be at once more impudent
and more melancholy.
CHAPTER IV
THE LAND OF THE CROSS
It is a sad view of the spirit of Syria which the last chapters have
offered, yet it is but too true. We must linger yet a little longer
listening to “the sob of the land” before we turn to that which is at
once the explanation and the hope of relief for its long sorrow. Apart
altogether from the ghostly elements in this land of ruins, the mere
melancholy is persistent and depressing as one moves from place to
place. The gloom is so ominous, as to be at times suggestive of a
supernatural curse that broods upon everything with its depressing
weight. The khans outside of villages are in ruins; so are the bridges
over streams, and the castles on the hills. Amid such scenery it is
natural to remember the defeats rather than the glories of the past, and
the national history seems to be one long record of misfortune. In the
modern conditions of life in Palestine the long story of tears and blood
seems to be continued in the haggard desolation of its present.
Two things especially must send this impression home even to the most
casual observer, viz. the heartlessness of toil and the prevalence of
disease. In every country much must always depend on the spirit in which
men labour. Where the walls of its cities rise to music, as the old glad
legends told of Troy and Thebes, there is hope and promise; but here
there is no song to help men’s toil. It is hard and joyless, with little
promise and less hope. With the death of these self-respect also dies;
and work, without incentives to anything which might tempt ambition,
remains merely as a hard necessity and a curse.
Next to its heartless toil the uncured sickness of the land contributes
to the deep sadness of its spirit. Disease seems to stare you everywhere
in the face. Superstition and fatalism combined have blocked all
progress in medical science. The people are naturally healthy; and their
strong constitutions, kept firm by plain living, yield to medical
treatment in a marvellous way. But when any serious accident has
happened, or any dangerous disease infected them, they are utterly
helpless, and things take their course. The medicinal springs form an
exception to this rule, and seem to be the one real healing agency in
the country. Their bluish waters bubble with sulphuretted hydrogen, and
smell abominably, but they cure sicknesses of some kinds. For other
diseases there is no native cure. Those which are most in evidence are
ulcers and inflammatory diseases of the eyes. The natives appear to be
immune so far as malaria is concerned; but a peculiar kind of decline is
not uncommon, in which the emaciation is so great as to reduce the
patient to the appearance of a skeleton, with great lustrous eyes. It
need hardly be said that the characteristic disease of Syria is leprosy.
The first object which attracts the eye after you arrive at the railway
station of Jerusalem is an immense leper hospital. In a case which
created some sensation lately in the south of England, it turned out
that a fraudulent Syrian had been raising money for a non-existent
hospital at Tirzah, which was to accommodate eleven thousand lepers. Of
course the figure was a monstrous one, but the fact that it was invented
shews how terrible a scourge this is. It is a curious circumstance that
the inhabitants of towns do not contract leprosy. It appears in
villages, and the sufferers are at once driven out, to wander to the
larger towns, outside of which they settle in communities or beg by the
wayside. The view of the north-east end of Jerusalem from the Mount of
Olives shews a roadside which is always dotted with these pitiable folk.
For many travellers this is the road of their first journey from the
city, leading over Olivet to Bethany, and they are not likely to forget
that ride. Lepers, in all stages of hideous decay, line the roadside;
real or sham paralytics sprawl and shake in the middle of the path, so
that the horses have actually to pick their way among the bodies of
them. The epileptics appear to be frauds. Their faces are covered, but
they see what is going on well enough to stop shaking when the horses
have passed. The leprosy is all too real. Arms covered with putrid
sores, hands from which the fingers have one after another fallen off,
and husky voices begging from throats already half eaten out--these
cannot be imitated.
As to the causes of Syrian disease, and leprosy in particular, there
seems to be much obscurity. Perhaps the word that comes nearest to an
explanation is uncleanness, and the promise of “a fountain opened for
sin and for uncleanness” may have a physical as well as a spiritual
significance. The land is incredibly contaminated with filth, as the
following quotation shews: “Sir Charles Warren tells us that the soil in
which he made some of his excavations was so saturated with disease
germs that his workmen were often attacked with fever, especially if
they had any sore or scratch on their hands.”[59] It would be hard to
find words more significant than these.
For this state of matters, and for its continuance from generation to
generation, many reasons may be given. The usual explanation of the
whole is the government, with its soldiers and its taxation. The wild
notes of Turkish bugle-calls answering each other across Jerusalem sound
harsh, and as it were blasphemous, and further travel deepens the
resentment rather than removes it. When, behind all the present evils,
one remembers the past, with its massacres and all its other iniquities,
one’s heart grows hot. One Syrian, after narrating a specially
aggravated case of oppression, asked us if we knew “the story of the
prophets Ananias and Sapphira.” We said we had heard it; and he added,
“Ah, in _those_ days God punished at once; now, _God waits_!” Dr.
Thomson somewhere quotes a proverb to the effect that, “Wherever the
hoof of a Turkish horse rests it leaves barrenness behind it”; and all
that is seen in Syria tends to prove that saying but too true. Every
possible experiment in misgovernment seems to have been made here.
Frequent change of governors, underpayment of officials, conscription of
the most ruinous sort, bribery, cruelty, fanaticism, laziness,
sensuality, and stupidity--all are to be seen open and without pretence
at concealment.
Yet in the interest of truth it ought to be remembered that there is
another side to the story. The incident of the horse at Banias[60] made
one understand how a Turk might answer his critics, with some show of
reason, that this was the only sort of government these people could
understand. Of course it might be again replied that it was oppression
that had brought this about. Yet it is perfectly clear that Syrian
character is very far from that of martyred innocence. From whatever
causes it has come about, the fact is certain that in many respects the
moral sense of Palestine is as depraved as that of her oppressors. Her
worst enemy is her own wickedness.
Thus many elements enter into the desolation of the Holy Land, and make
it a place of decaying body and of shiftless spirit, but of all these
elements the ethical is supreme. The very look of the country suggests
this. It is not merely stony; as has been cleverly said, it seems to
have been _stoned_--stoned to death for its sins. The loose boulders of
Judea, and the scattered ruins of old vineyard terraces and village
walls, present all the appearance of flung missiles. This view of the
case is acknowledged freely by the inhabitants themselves, in whose
thoughts judgment has a prominent place. The buried cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah are favourite subjects of reflection with disciples of all the
creeds. A somewhat similar story is told of the Lake of Phiala, a
volcanic mountain lake south of Hermon. Tradition tells of a village
submerged below its waters “to punish the inhabitants for their
inhospitable treatment of travellers,” and there are many other stories
of judgment in the country. Yet the judgment always falls upon some one
else than the narrator of the story, who would not insult your
intelligence by supposing that you thought _him_ in need of judgment.
Even in the familiar quotations from the litany chanted by the Jews at
their Wailing-Place, the confession of sin is conspicuous by its
absence. There is sore mourning over the departed glories of the land,
but the only sins confessed are those of priests and kings long dead. To
all creeds alike the essential element in religion seems to be ritual
performance, and the ideal life is accordingly not one of ethical
character but of formal correctness. And yet in the midst of all this
self-righteous complacency, any one can see that every part of the land
is being judged and is bearing the punishment of sin. Jericho, squatting
sordidly amid the ruins of its ancient Hellenism, looked down upon by
the severe and barren mountain where Jesus hungered, is a monument of
the reality of ethical distinctions as hard and practical facts. They
may be ignored, but they must be reckoned with in the end.
Of the ethical significance of the fate of Palestine there cannot be a
moment’s doubt. It is here that the love and care of God have been met
and foiled by the sin and carelessness of man. In regard to its whole
moral and social life, there is one overmastering conviction which grows
upon the traveller from day to day. That conviction is, that it is a
land which requires and demands righteousness. Nature and man are in
close touch, and each depends upon the other. It is not a desert, where
no amount of labour can produce result; nor is it a luxuriant tropical
country whose fruits fall ripe and untoiled for into man’s hand. It
demands labour, but it answers to it. The least effort of man to be a
man and do his human work meets with immediate and generous response.
Neglected plains and valleys, once rich, are now a wilderness; the most
unpromising hillsides, where terracing and irrigation
[Illustration: THE ROCK-CUT TOMBS OF THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT.
These tombs are opn the eastern side of the alley facing the East Wall
of the Temple Area.]
have kept the human side of the compact, are fertile. The labour would
indeed require to be hard and unremitting. Many of the streams are so
deep sunk in their channels that extraordinary enterprise would be
needed to raise their waters for irrigation or to conduct them from
higher levels in long conduits. Yet every remaining arch of an old
aqueduct, and every watermill whose wheel thuds round in its heavy way,
shew that such enterprise is possible. Each of those grooved and
checkered valleys where men with their naked feet open and close the
little gates of clay, and water the fat crops of onion and tomato, shews
how sure is the reward of enterprise. Similarly the terracing reminds us
that soil is as precious as water. Both must be laboured for and fought
for. It is the desert that naturally claims the land and sets the normal
point of view for its inhabitants. Syria is an oasis by the grace of God
and the toil of man.
This alone would suffice to make Palestine an ideal training-ground for
a nation to learn righteousness. The whole theory of Providence which
dominates the earlier Old Testament, and lingers on in popular belief
through the New, is apparent on every mile of these valleys. That theory
was that even in the present life the sin of man will be immediately
punished by adversity, and his righteousness rewarded by prosperity. It
was a theory which had to be abandoned, and the whole marvellous story
of Job shews us the process of the nation’s discarding it. To us it
seems wonderful that it should have been able to survive at all in face
of the inexplicable and at times apparently irrational facts of all
human experience. But the fact that in Syria nature’s rewards and
punishments are so certain and so immediate goes far to explain both its
origin and its persistence.
Such thoughts as these regarding Syria inevitably lead towards one goal.
There is but one symbol in the world which expresses all that depth of
pain which we have found in the history of this sorely-tried land, and
at the same time forces on even the most thoughtless its moral
significance. That symbol is the Cross of Christ. It is still to be seen
very frequently in Syria, generally in its Greek form ([Illustration:
cross]). In this form it is more impressive than in the other. The
oblique lower bar represents a board nailed across the shaft for the
feet of the sufferer to rest on. The realistic effect of this is
surprising, for it brings home to one’s imagination in a quite new way
the terrible fact that men have actually been crucified.
The later history and legend of the cross in Palestine is one of
singular and tragic interest. First of all there is the preposterous
story of St. Helena’s dream--the miraculous discovery of the three
crosses, and the miracle of healing which enabled her to distinguish the
cross of Christ from those of the robbers. Since then the sacred wood
has been tossed about from hand to hand, hunted for, bargained for
sinned for, died for. Its presence in their army comforted the Crusaders
in their misery; the sight of it in the hands of the Saracens filled
them with despair. The restoration of it was among the chief demands
conceded by Saladin when he surrendered Acre to Richard; and when he
failed to deliver it, hostages to the number of 2700 were slaughtered in
sight of the Saracen camp. All through the Crusades it was the badge of
self-devotion to the holy wars, and a strange tale is told of an
occasion on which Louis IX., presenting robes to his courtiers according
to an ancient custom, had crosses secretly embroidered on them, so that
the wearers found themselves committed unawares to the Crusade.
For 1500 years that symbol pointed to the site which the buildings of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre cover. Godfrey was buried there, and
many a devout soul regarded it as the holiest of holy places. In the
middle of the nineteenth century the question of its authenticity was
raised; and General Gordon, who spent part of the last year before he
went to Khartoum, in Jerusalem, championed the identification of the
hill of Jeremiah’s Grotto, just outside the Damascus Gate, with Calvary.
His point of view was a strange one. It was suggested by the words
“place of a skull,” from which he developed the idea of the Holy City as
the body of the bride of Christ, this hill being the head, Zion the
pleura, and so on. The theory, so far as it regards Calvary, has
appealed to many competent judges who were very far from adopting the
mystical and emblematic views of Gordon. The hill is an old quarry,
within which Jeremiah is supposed by tradition to have written his
Lamentations. It is quite a little hill, whose short and scanty grass
was burnt up with drought when we saw it, leaving a surface of loose
sandy soil. A man crucified here would have the Mount of Olives in his
eyes behind some roof-lines of the city. By a curious coincidence a
rock-hewn tomb, with a groove running in front of the face of it for a
great stone which would close its entrance, has been discovered close
by. It is a grave with only one loculus in it, and it is temptingly like
one’s idea of the Garden Tomb of Joseph; but it is said to be
undoubtedly of later date than the death of Jesus. From one point in the
road, somewhat nearer the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the hollows and caves
of the hill, which here breaks along its length into a small precipice,
bear a striking resemblance to a chapfallen skull. Not that the features
can be examined in anything like accurate detail. But in the evening,
while the sun sets over Jerusalem and the shadows slowly deepen, the
resemblance is sufficient to strike one who had not heard that this was
the place so named. Many arguments have been urged for this new site.
Its proximity to an ancient Jewish cemetery is in favour of the
probability that Joseph’s tomb was there. It was close to the public
highway, as Calvary undoubtedly was. It is also significant that the
gate now known as the Damascus Gate was formerly called St. Stephen’s
Gate; and tradition affirmed that through it St. Stephen was led forth
to his martyrdom. It is probable that the martyrdom took place on the
public execution-ground, where, in the natural course of events, Jesus
and the robbers would also have been crucified. Finally, and most
important, recent explorations have discovered, in various parts of the
city, huge Jewish stones which are believed by advocates of this theory
to be those of the wall which stood there in the time of Christ. By
completing the line of these stones a wall is reconstructed which
encloses the traditional Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while it leaves
Gordon’s site still outside. To get the Holy Sepulchre outside this
wall, as we know the place of the crucifixion was, it would be necessary
to imagine a sharp angular recess in the wall pointing inwards, with
Calvary filling the space within the arms of the angle. It matters
little where the spot was. Yet it would be interesting if the north side
of the city should ultimately claim Him from the west--Nazareth, as it
were, from Rome. The garden and the new grave belong to an English
committee of trustees endowed in 1901. It would indeed be a striking
thing if, after all the idolatry of sites which the vision of St. Helena
started, the real hill and garden where the world’s great tragedy was
enacted should prove to have gone past Roman and Greek worshippers both,
and to have been committed to the hands of Protestants.[61]
No one who has stood upon that hill of Golgotha and thought of the
wondrous past can have failed to perceive a mystical and dark connection
between the crime which has rendered Jerusalem so famous, and all that
deathly and spectral fate which has befallen the spirit of Syria. As we
stand amid the deepening shadows of sunset on the spot where Christ was
crucified, a change seems to come, as the blood-red sky crimsons the
minarets and domes. It is no longer Christ that hangs upon the Cross,
but Palestine. No other land would have crucified Him. Had He come to
Greece He might have been neglected or ridiculed, but certainly not
crucified. For that it needed a religion as bitterly earnest, and at the
same time as morally decayed, as Judaism was then. And that same moral
and spiritual condition which set up the Cross for Jesus, has finished
its course by crucifying the nation that murdered Him. Most literally
this happened in the days when Titus used up all the trees near
Jerusalem to make crosses for Jews. But in Sir John Mandeville’s time
the legend had expanded to this, that at the Crucifixion all the trees
in the world withered and died. Certainly a blight came upon the land of
Palestine. It has sometimes been asserted that the nation which
crucified Jesus Christ can never again rise to national prosperity or
greatness. The forces at work in history are far too subtle and complex
to allow any one to say with assurance what the future may or may not
have in store for a race. But this at least is evident, that meanwhile
the Cross has marked this region for its own; the land is everywhere on
its Cross, and the obvious cause of this is the want of righteousness,
both in oppressors and oppressed. It is a land that cries aloud for
righteousness in its agony.
CHAPTER V
RESURRECTION
In regard to the future of Palestine the outlook of different writers
varies perhaps as much as upon any similar question that could be named.
Every one is familiar with the Utopian dreams which optimistic
constructors of programmes cherish regarding it. On the other hand,
grave and thoughtful writers have sometimes felt the misery of its
present state so heavily as to abandon all hope for the future, and to
acknowledge the most discouraging views as to the possibilities before
the land. Apart from sentiment, or from some favourite method of
interpreting prophecy, the reasons for such pessimism are mainly two.
One is the change of climate, which appears from many indications to be
an unquestionable fact. The other is the destruction of terraces, and
the consequent washing away of soil from the higher regions of the
country. These are serious considerations, which cannot be ignored. If
this view be the correct one, the only permanent continuance of Syria
will be as a symbol of judgment, a kind of Lot’s-wife pillar among the
peoples, a sermon in stone upon the ethical principles which govern the
fortunes of nations. The land will remain as a proverb, but will never
again be a home.
Yet neither these nor any other such forebodings seem to the ordinary
observer quite to be justified. If the climate has changed, may not that
be due to causes that can be remedied? By proper drainage of swamps and
planting of trees, it would seem perfectly possible to modify climatic
conditions to an extent at least sufficient to allow the hope of
prosperous agriculture and pleasant habitation. As to the terraces, if
they have been constructed once they may be reconstructed with hope of
result. There are tracts even in the desert itself where traces of
former cultivation may still be seen. If the uncivilised or
semi-barbarous tribes of the ancient time built up the land until
handfuls of corn waved on the tops of mountains, surely it is not too
much to expect that men armed with all the skill and appliance of modern
engineering may yet repeat the process. The instance of Malta has been
already cited; and, apart from that it is a very dusty world, and soil
accumulates as if by magic where man provides for it a place to rest on.
It seems rash in one little qualified for the task to pronounce judgment
of any sort on the future of Palestine, yet the conviction that all is
not over with the land grows stronger, rather than weaker, with
reflection. Renan speaks of “the little kingdom of Israel, which was in
the highest degree creative, but did not know how to crown its edifice.”
Put in another
[Illustration: THE NORTH-EAST END OF JERUSALEM AND MIZPAH, FROM THE
MOUNT OF OLIVES.
The mountain above the city to the north, with mosque and minaret on its
summit, is the point from which the Crusaders had their first view of
Jerusalem.]
form, this means that the Holy Land is a land of prophecies unfulfilled
or half-fulfilled. But each such prophecy was an inspiration, by which
the highest men saw possibilities for the nation, whose conditions the
lower men failed to realise or to fulfil. Yet the possibilities were
there, as to a great extent they still are there, and, as Coningsby puts
it, “the East is a career.” As to what those possibilities and that
career may actually be, the past history of the land may guide our
speculation. Here, as elsewhere, the lines of hope for the future are
pointed out by the failures of the past. The failure has been due to bad
morality and disloyalty to religious faith; the hope of success lies in
ethical and religious regeneration.
When we sought for an explanation of the misery of Palestine we were
thrown back on the ethical aspect of the case. Had the land been
faithful to her high calling her story would have been very different.
Never was a country honoured with so lofty a trust as hers; never did a
country so often betray her trust. This was the despair of her ancient
lawgiver, and the burden of her later prophets. When Christ came to her,
she knew no better thing to do with Him than to break His heart and to
crucify Him on Calvary. Within the century Jerusalem was crucified in
turn; and soon a Christian Syria took the place of the perished Judaism.
That in its turn decayed. Its creed became artificial, its spirit
effeminate, and its morality corrupt. The spirit of Christianity had
sunk so low in Palestine before the Mussulman occupation as to manifest
its zeal by using every effort to defile that part of the Temple area
which they regarded as the Jewish Holy of Holies. The young faith of
Islam, fresh and vigorous, and not as yet embittered, made an easy
conquest of the effete religion, which has lived since then on
sufferance, lamenting its sufferings, but never realising its desert of
them. To this day the Christian travelling in Syria is oppressed by the
sense of its desertion. Christ has forsaken the desolate shores of the
Sea of Galilee. He walks no more in the streets of Jerusalem. It is the
old story--“They besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts,
and He entered into a ship, and passed over and came unto His own city.”
Yet somehow it is impossible to believe that He has gone from the land
of His earthly home for ever. An incident which occurred to us in
Damascus dwells in our memory with prophetic significance. We had
visited the Great Mosque, which rose upon the ruins of an ancient
Christian church. The original walls were not entirely demolished, and
among the parts built into the new structure was a beautiful gate on
whose lintel may still be deciphered the Greek inscription, “Thy
kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth
throughout all generations.” To see this inscription we climbed a ladder
in the Jewellers’ Bazaar. At the height of some fifteen feet we stepped
upon a ledge of rather precarious masonry, and after a short scramble
along this came to the lintel, half concealed by a rubble wall running
diagonally across it. A stranger was with us, a devout Christian from a
town far south of Damascus. In the whole city nothing moved him so
deeply as this stone, and he exclaimed, “It was the Christians’
fault--they were so rough, so rude, so ignorant--it was done by the wish
of God--_but He will have it again_.” And He _will_ have it again,
sooner or later! When Omar heard that Mohammed was dead he would not
believe it, but proclaimed in the Mosque of Medina, “The Prophet has
only swooned away!” But Mohammed had died, and it is his dead hand that
has held the land these thirteen centuries. Christ, being raised from
the dead, dieth no more; and the future of the land lies with Christ. To
the Western world He has fulfilled His tremendous claim, “I am the
resurrection and the life,” not only in the hope of immortality, but in
the spring and impulse which His faith has given to national ideals. It
is impossible not to hope for a fulfilment of the promise to the land
where it was first spoken. Looking down from Tabor upon the hill of
Dûhy, one has sight of Endor to the east, while Shunem lies just round
the western slope, and between them is the village of Nain. It is as if
that hill were a sanctuary from Death, where the grave could not hold
its own. Palestine holds in trust for the world those empty graves, and
one grave above all others from which He Himself came forth. Surely she,
too, will rise, by His grace, in a faith and character purer than those
which she has lost.
It would be impossible, within our present limits, to say anything of
the political or national outlook of Syria, or of the many schemes and
agencies which are dealing with such problems. The impression made by
Christian missions, however, must have a word of record before we close
these notes of travel. We have already described at considerable length
the sadness of Palestine. As you journey from place to place the
impression deepens. Sores, exposed and fly-blown, intrude themselves
into the memory of many a wayside and city street. The dirt and stench
of the houses make the sunshine terrible. After weeks of travel the
feeling of a sick land has deepened upon you until it has become an
oppression weighing daily upon your heart. Suddenly you emerge in a
mission-station, and an indescribable feeling of relief possesses you.
There is at last a sound of joy and health. These are the spots of
brightness in a very grey landscape, little centres of life in a land
where so much is morbid. The visiting of sacred places would be the most
selfish of religious sentimentalities if it were done without a painful
sense of helplessness against the misery that surrounds them. The only
thing that turns pity into hope in Palestine is the mission-work that is
being done there. No one can see that work without being filled with an
altogether new enthusiasm for missions. Across the sea, one believes in
them as a part of Christian duty and custom. On the spot, one thanks God
for them as almost unearthly revelations of “sweetness and cleanness,
abundance, power to bless, and Christian love in that loveless land.”
The names of Christian missionaries are imperial names in Syria. It is,
indeed, an empire of hearts, and
[Illustration: THE PLAIN OF JERICHO, LOOKING TOWARDS THE MOUNTAINS OF
MOAB.
The road in the foreground, stretching across the plain, is that from
Jerusalem to Jericho.]
its coming is not with observation. But of its reality and power there
can be no question even now, and its sway is extending year by year. To
those whose Syrian travels have given them the vivid imagination, vivid
almost as memory, of the real fact of Christ in the past, this fact of
Christ in the present is as welcome as it is evident. They feel, and the
East too is feeling, that the Great Healer still goes about the land
doing good. The future, whatever its political course may be, is
religiously full of hope. It may take time--God only knows how long it
will take. The ancient miracles of Christ did not reveal the Healer to
the world in a day. Yet quietly and out of sight, the East is learning
that Christ is indeed the Healer of mankind. It does not as yet confess
this, even to itself. But the hearts of many sufferers know it, and
every Christian knows that certainly “He will have it again.”
Index
Abana, 52, 59, 60
Achor, 47
Acre, 169
Agriculture, 71
Amphitheatres, 107
Angels, 220
Antipatris, 54
Aqueducts, 104
Arabia, Arab, 22, 29, 93 f., 149, 181, 198, 199
Aramaic, 69
Asceticism, 122
Athlit, 169
Baalbek, 108
Banias, 55, 168
Barbarossa, 161
Bashan, 44
Beautiful Gate, 83, 192
Bethel, 8, 102
Bether, 98
Bethlehem, 25, 46, 72, 74, 189, 214, 253
Bethshan, 41, 42, 72, 169
Beyrout, 66
Bible illustrations, 92, 93, 94
Booths, 178
Bridges, 57, 104
Burdens, 181
Cæsarea, 102, 163, 172
Calvary, site of, 78, 83, 114, 196, 222, 235, 236, 276
Capernaum, 64, 101, 105
Carpets, 16
Castles, 168
Caves, 214
Character, Syrian, 15, 33, 62, 232 f.
Children, 111, 187, 218, 231
Christianity, early, 115 f.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 79, 131, 150, 151, 156, 193, 235
Church of the Nativity, 133 f.
Churches, 129, 146, 160, 165, 171
Cities, 22, 65 f.
Clothes, 17, 181
Coast, 43
Colour, 7 f.
Commerce, 75, 78, 157, 159
Constantine, 115, 116
Cross, the, 147, 234 f.
Crusaders, 74, 157 f., 192
Damascus, 12, 13, 21, 35, 53, 60, 66, 75,
85, 137, 143, 146, 174, 185, 191, 193, 223, 241
Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, 53, 83
Dan, 54
Dead Sea, 11, 25, 37, 41, 51, 57, 60, 207
Death, 76, 190 f.
Dervishes, 140
Desert, 12, 14, 15, 20 f.
Detail, observation of, 32
Dew, 51
Disease, 222, 223, 227 f., 244 f.
Dog River, 54, 86
Earthquake, 212
East of Jordan, 22
El Aksa, 147 f.
Elijah, 61
Elisha’s Fountain, 143
Esdraelon, 9, 22, 26, 41, 42, 49, 59
Evil eye, 218
Fanaticism, 188
Fatalism, 201, 202
Fauna, 12, 220, 221
Feasts, 188, 201
Fellahin, 22, 69
Flora, 12, 67, 161, 207, 209, 210, 211
Future, 239 f.
Gadara, 60, 98, 108, 194
Galilee, 9, 45
Games, 185
Gardens, 177
Gaza, 64
Genii, 220
Geography, 32, 161
Gethsemane, 214
Ghosts, 190
Gideon, 64
Gilgals, 47 f.
Glass, 16
Gorges, 47
Great Deep, 53, 213
Greece, 100, 113, 197
Harod, Well of, 64
Hattin, 169
Hauran, 85
Hebron, 9, 46, 64, 74, 75, 90, 196
Hermits, 123
Hermon, 9, 11, 41, 44, 51, 54, 55, 220
Herods, 56, 101, 110, 171
Hezekiah’s aqueduct, 53, 88
Holy Fire, 133, 193
Holy Grail, 162
Hospitality, 35
Houses, 16, 67, 75
Huleh, Lake, 58, 60
Humour, 183
Immortality, 197, 198
Inscriptions, 87
Irrigation, 9, 233
Israelites, 88 f.
Jacob’s dream, 5
Jacob’s Well, 13, 48, 63, 119, 129
Jaffa, 72
Jehoshaphat, Valley of, 79
Jericho, 26, 49, 105, 227, 232
Jeroboam, 78
Jerusalem, 45 f., 53, 65 f., 76 f., 149, 228
Jesus Christ, 4, 5, 10, 31, 46, 49, 69, 84, 113, 114,
150, 173, 177, 204, 242, 243, 245
Jews, 30, 88 f., 195, 201
Jezreel, 41
Job, 96, 224, 233
John the Baptist, 146, 147
Jordan, 13, 23, 28, 40, 41, 42, 44, 49, 51, 55 f., 65, 121, 178
Joy, 188
Judea, 8, 9, 24, 34, 45 f., 47
Khan Minyeh, 64, 105
Kidron, 25, 46, 63
Knights, 151, 164, 170
Landmarks, 175
Lebanon, 44 f., 51
Legends, 62, 69, 103, 134 f., 150, 153
Leontes, 44, 58
Leprosy, 228
Lunacy, 222
Maccabees, 100
Magic, 3, 29, 154, 205, 217 f.
Mar Saba, 25, 27, 123, 125 f.
Martyrs, 116, 123
Medicinal springs, 201, 222, 227
Melancholy, 31
Michmash, 47
Miracle, 3, 4
Mirage, 212
Missions, 95
Mohammedanism, 2, 74, 137 f., 142, 242
Monastic establishments, 122
Morasses, 211
Mosaics, 102, 168
Mosques, 146
Mosque of Omar, 53, 79, 80, 131, 144, 149 f., 159
Mount of Olives, 154
Mountains, 40 f., 49
Muezzin, 143
Music, 31 f.
Mystery, 206
Nablus, 64, 74, 92
Nain, 68
Names of places, 39, 160
Nazareth, 48, 62, 69, 72, 114, 189, 218
Oppression, 229
Past, the, 2
Paul, St., 172
Persecutions, 116
Phœnicia, 10
Pilgrimages, 117 f.
Pools, 211
Prayer, 142
Providence, 233
Quarantana, 5, 46, 49
Rachel, 195
Railway, 86, 182
Relics, 2, 119, 152, 160
Religion of Israel, 39, 65, 97 f., 173 f., 187
Revelation, 97 f.
Richard Cœur de Lion, 163, 167
Rivers, 51 f.
Roads, 77, 99 f., 174
Rib Roy canoe, 57, 91
Romans, 56, 77, 83, 98 f., 107, 108, 113
Russians, 119 f.
Safed, 90
St. Christopher, 135
St. George, 134, 168, 193
Samaria, 9, 45, 47, 48, 102, 110, 146
Samaritans, 92
Sanur, 48
Scents, 179
Sea, 21, 24, 78, 212, 213
Sea of Galilee, 11, 15, 37, 58, 59, 208, 209, 210
Shirky, 26
Siloam, 53, 76, 81, 88
Sites, identification of, 165
Smallness of the land, 37
Solomon, 78, 153
Spectral, the, 205 f.
Springs, 54
Stones, Jewish, 82
Straight Street, 103
Sun, 14, 16, 28
Synagogues, 79
Tabor, 45, 48, 128, 165
Tattoo, 18, 75
Tell Hum, 128
Tents, 22 f.
Terraces, 50, 240
Terror, 206
Tiberias, 90, 91, 201, 209
Titus, 84
Tobacco, 93
Toil, 227
Tombs, 81, 140, 174, 186, 191
Towns, 65 f., 71
Travel, 2, 161
Trees, 67, 210, 211
Truth, 206
Tyre, 10, 72, 75, 160
Underground waters, 52, 213
Unfinishedness, 174
Villages, 11, 15, 65 f.
War, 49, 50
Welis, 141
Wells, 62
Zionists, 90
THE END
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Eothen_, ch. xxiii.
[2] The natives have at last borrowed the sloping red-tiled roofs from
the Franks who introduced them. Cf. a letter written by Professor G.
A. Smith to the _Spectator_, October 1891.
[3] _Tent Work_, p. 54.
[4] Cf. _The Semites_, Robertson Smith, chaps. iii. and v.
[5] For these and other instances cf. _Historical Geography_, p. 52,
and Appendix I.
[6] Cf. _The Least of all Lands_, Principal Miller, ch. 1.
[7] Cf. p. 15.
[8] _The Rob Roy on the Jordan_, p. 129.
[9] Cf. _The Semites_, Robertson Smith, p. 97.
[10] _Rob Roy_, p. 102.
[11] _Tent Work_, p. 120.
[12] The _Rob Roy_ has contributed gallantly to its exploration. To
her captain’s book this chapter is under many obligations.
[13] _Tent Work_, chaps. xx., xxi.
[14] They are cut with a cross-chiselled margin, and rough outstanding
rustic work in the centre. Their size and weight are enormous. One
writer, whose sense of humour is hardly equal to his knowledge of
Scripture, in describing them is carried away into the statement that
“the Jewish architects, taught by their Phœnician neighbours, bestowed
special care upon the corners of their great buildings. They show a
finish, a solidity, and choice of material superior to other parts....
And how beautifully expressive is the language of the Psalmist, ‘our
daughters are corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a
palace’--one of the corner-stones of this angle weighs over a hundred
tons”!
[15] For an account of these and others cf. Palestine Exploration
Fund, Quarterly Statement, October 1901.
[16] See, however, Professor G. A. Smith’s _Jerusalem_, vol. i. pp.
189, 190.
[17] _Haifa_, Laurence Oliphant, pp. 317, 318.
[18] “Love among the Ruins,” Robert Browning.
[19] _The Dawn of Art_, Martin Conway, pp. 58-76.
[20] St. Symeon was a shepherd from the borderland between Cilicia and
Syria.
[21] Cf. Schaff’s _Church History, Nicene and Post-Nicene Period_,
chap. iv.
[22] St. Jerome, Ep. xiv.
[23] Cf. pp. 27, 30.
[24] _Arabia, the Cradle of Islam_, Zwemer, p. 179.
[25] _Mediæval Christianity_, Schaff, p. 150.
[26] Written in 1904.
[27] _The Crusades_, Cox, p. 72.
[28] _The Crusades_, Cox, p. 215. Of these children only 5000
crossed the Mediterranean. They were sold, when they landed, in the
slave-markets of Alexandria and Algiers.
[29] Map has the credit of introducing the Grail story into Arthurian
romance; Borron of adding the early part which traced it to Joseph of
Arimathea.
[30] Cf. _Chivalry and Crusades_, Stebbing, vol. ii. chaps. iv. and v.
[31] _Haifa_, Laurence Oliphant, p. 189.
[32] _The Semites_, Robertson Smith, p. 29.
[33] _Ibid._ pp. 244, 257.
[34] Deut. xxviii. 47, 48.
[35] Deut. xxviii. 47, 48.
[36] _Robert Browning_, William Sharp, p. 203.
[37] Gen. xxxv. 16, 19.
[38] _Haifa_, pp. 270-272; _Tent Work_, p. 85.
[39] Cf. _The Dawn of Art_, Martin Conway, p. 95, etc.; _Some Aspects
of the Greek Genius_, Professor Butcher, p. 30.
[40] Cf. _Rationalism in Europe_, Leckie, ii. 197.
[41] Cf. the sprightly figure of Glaucon in Plato’s _Republic_, B,
x, § 9: “Do you know,” says Socrates, “that our soul is immortal and
never dies?” “By Jove, I do not,” replies Glaucon. “Are you prepared
to prove that it is?”
[42] _Arabia, the Cradle of Islam_, Zwemer, xiii.
[43] The rags which are hung on trees or fences near certain tombs
suggest the medicinal value of holy places, which attracts men to them
from selfish interests.
[44] _Talisman_, xxviii.
[45] _East of the Jordan_, Dr. Merrill, p. 496.
[46] _Tent Work_, p. 314.
[47] _Marius the Epicurean_, Walter Pater, i. 44.
[48] _Rob Roy on the Jordan_, p. 260.
[49] _Eothen_, ch. viii.
[50] Cf. _Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes_, Schürer, ii. 819, 820.
[51] Cf. _The Semites_, W. Robertson Smith, iii. v.
[52] Cf. _The Semites_, W. Robertson Smith, pp. 197, etc.
[53] _Tent Work_, pp. 68, 204.
[54] Cf. _The Semites_, Robertson Smith, pp. 16, 17.
[55] _East of the Jordan_, Merrill, p. 193.
[56] The early Christian belief that the gods of paganism were demons
has died hard, if indeed it be quite dead. The “weird horsemen” who
in windy nights are to be heard galloping down lonely valleys lead us
back to that interesting custom by which a horse was actually provided
in some of the temples of the Syrian Herakles, to that the god might
ride forth at night.
[57] _Haifa_, Laurence Oliphant, p. 300.
[58] Job iv. 14-16.
[59] _The Cradle of Christianity_, D. M. Ross, p. 60.
[60] See p. 36.
[61] Professor G. A. Smith, in his chapter on “The Walls of
Jerusalem,” has given the results of an exhaustive study of the
most recent research on this subject, and his conclusion is that
“on our present data it is hopeless to decide between the rival and
contradictory arguments.”--_Jerusalem_, vol. i. p. 249.