CHAPTER

NAZARETH

XIII

AND GALILEE

SWEET waters, whose serene and limpid wave
Upheld the pulpit from which words were said
To outlast time; on whose banks feasts were spread
Which to the soul an unknown vigor gave-

You did obey, when storms began to rave,

The "Peace be still," and each foam-crested head
Became like solid oak beneath that tread
Which bore embodied love and power to save.

The mountains mirror their fair heights in thee;
Upon their slopes His blessed footsteps trod

Whom multitudes went to the wilds to see,
And to be fed with bread come down from heaven.
From thee went out the Spirit's mighty leaven,

For here was manifest the Son of God.

-FROM "A BRIEF PILGRIMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND,''

BY CAROLINE HAZARD.

ROPPING anchor at Haifa in the Bay of Acre,

the first impressions of Palestine are gained by looking at Haifa and Mount Carmel, in front of which the city lies. Here, in the time of the Crusaders, the fortress was well known, and here it was that the Knights of St. John made their last stand before going to Rome and later to Malta.

Not much time was taken with inspecting the town of 12,000 people, as Nazareth was the destination for the carriage ride the first half-day. A prosperous German colony was observed between the city proper and

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163

the mountain, but it was neither of the colony nor the town about which we were thinking as we crossed the Kishon and started eastward. We were going through the town, under the brow of Carmel, identified so closely with the history of Elijah and Ahab and Jezebel and the prophets of Baal. We were going over the Plain of Esdraelon, where Barak and Gideon and Saul and Josiah and the Maccabees and the Crusaders and Napoleon and other men of prominence had won victories or suffered defeats. Here we saw the flowers which have made Palestine famous the world over, the scarlet anemones, cyclamen, larkspurs, buttercups and daisies, all intermingling with the green grass. Many times the carriages stopped to let a lover of flowers pick a bouquet of the beautiful "lilies of the field," immortalized by the Galilean Peasant whose boyhood home we were approaching. His immortal words concerning the birds and flowers of His native province were on the lips of all the travelers as they looked over the plain above which they were rising, as the road wound up from the sea toward the city where He increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.

After a ride of twenty-three miles and a climb of 1,100 feet, shortly after noon Nazareth was reached. After luncheon the tourists started out to see the places marked by the Church as those associated with the early life of Jesus. The Cave of the Annunciation, the Kitchen of Mary, the Carpenter Shop of Joseph, the stone said to have been used as a table by Jesus and

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His apostles, and the Synagogue in which the great Teacher announced the program of Christianity as narrated in Luke's Gospel-all of this and more was shown by the guides and was more or less satisfactory to various members of the party.

Nazareth is five or six miles west of Mount Tabor, two miles up a valley north of the great plain of Jezreel. Owing to its poor water-supply, it is thought by students that it has never been a large village, and but for the matchless life of Jesus, who lived in this village, it would never be visited by the hosts of travelers who include it as one of the chief places in the tours. As Palestine was small among the nations of the East and yet was of great importance commercially as well as politically, so Nazareth, although in a retired spot of Palestine, was in the center of Roman worldliness and paganism. Three and a half miles to the north lay Sepphoris, a place of considerable importance at the beginning of the Christian era. On the coast, near Haifa, was Ptolemais, now Acre, a large Roman city, while Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, was another center of Roman worldliness. It is easy to understand the designation of Nazareth in the midst of "Galilee of the heathen nations, "when one remembers its Roman surroundings.

But there are two places visited by all of the party which seemed to satisfy every one. These were the Fountain of the Virgin and the outlook from the hill, perhaps five hundred feet above the town. There is no

record of there having been any other well in the village, and it seems entirely probable that the boy Jesus and His mother may have gone to that fountain day after day with water-jars, as other children and their Syrian mothers go to-day, the little boys taking hold of their mothers' skirts and trudging along as if that was the chief object in life. Girls and children and women gather around this fountain and discuss, presumably, questions relating to their families, and possibly religion, though one not versed in the Syrian language would better not dogmatize. It was a happy sight, however, the passing of the two streams of women and children, on the one line with empty water-pots, and on the other pots filled to the brim with never a drop spilling, carried gracefully on the heads of the women. Many of the women were extremely pleasing in appearance, and the memory of one of the Nazareth women, carrying not water, but a heavy box on her head, will long be held in grateful remembrance by one of the members of the party.

If

Most of the tourists walked up the hill, and a hard pull it was for some of them, but the writer and the lady who calls him "John" rode on horseback. there be a steeper place in Palestine than the seemingly perpendicular ascent from the fountain to the ruins overlooking Nazareth, it has not been seen; the couple in question will walk the next time that they climb the hill. The horses were sure-footed, but the riders were not overconfident, as the animals stepped upon great