THE LIFE OF CHRIST.

CHAPTER I.

THE HOLY LAND.

OPON the western borders of the Mediterranean Sea there lies a country whose moral importance is in striking contrast with its territorial insignificance. This country, in area not so large as Massachusetts,* which in shape it somewhat resembles, has been the scene of a drama incomparably more influential upon the destinies of mankind than any other in history. The stage is scarcely less remarkable than are the scenes which have been enacted on it. The most extraordinary man of all time had his birth, and passed his life in the most extraordinary of all lands. A few words, therefore, concerning the geographical features of Palestine, and the character and history of its people, form in some sense a prelude to the life of him who has given it its most commonlyaccepted title of the Holy Land.

Situated at the junction of three great continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Palestine partakes of the characteristic features of the three, and possesses in a diminutive form all their peculiarities. Here, in Southern Judea, is the desert of Africa making its incursion from the peninsula below. Here, bordering the Mediterranean, are plains that rival in fertility those of our own great Western prairies. Here, in the ele* Palestine is in length 180 miles, in average breadth 65.-Kitto's Bib. Cyc., art. Palestine.

B

vated mountain region of Central Palestine, is repeated the hill country which constitutes the characteristic feature of Southern Scotland. Here, in Northern Galilee, are mountains whose rugged steeps remind of the White Mountains and the Alps. Here, embosomed in their midst, are lakes unsurpassed for their quiet beauty. Here, in the Jordan, is a mountain stream whose tumultuous torrent finds no equal in any river of its size and length in the world. Here Mount Hermon lifts its head, wrapped in perpetual snow, three thousand feet above our own Mount Washington. Here the waters of the Dead Sea lie in a basin scooped out of the solid rock, nearly, if not quite as far below the level of the ocean as are the deepest mines of Cornwall. And here, almost in sight of its holy city, beat the waves of the Great Sea upon one hundred and fifty miles of rocky coast; so that in this one province, smaller than Massachusetts or Vermont, are mingled the ocean, the mountain, the valley, the river, the lake, the desert, and the plain.

Its varieties of climate and production equal those of its physical features, and are in part produced by them. The temperate and the tropic zones overlap each other in Palestine. With a general climate corresponding to that of Northern Florida, it contains mountains whose heads are never free from snow, and valleys that rarely, if ever, witness it, except from afar. Tropical fruits and Northern cereals grow almost side by side. The fig-tree and the grape-vine produce their fruits in perfection on the sunny hill-sides of Judea. The cedars clothe the rocky sides of Lebanon. The apple, the pear, the plum, the quince, grow near neighbors with the date, the pomegranate, the banana, and the almond. The oak, the maple, and the evergreens of our Northern States make here acquaintance with the sycamore, the fig, the olive, residents of Asiatic climes. In a single day you may travel from the climate and productions of the Gulf States to such as characterize New England. In short, in this land, from which issue influences for the redemption of all people, are

united in a singular conjunction the characteristic features and productions of all countries.

This land, though contiguous to three continents, and lying in close proximity to the great nationalities of the pastthe Assyrian upon the east, the Egyptian on the southwest, and the Greek and Roman on the north and west-was nevertheless, by its singular conformation, shut out from them by barriers which, until after the Christian era, were nearly impassable. The valley of the Jordan on the west, the Mediterranean on the east, the desert on the south, and the mountain range of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon on the north, formed a better protection than the famous wall of the Celestial Empire. Its peculiar location thus fitted it to be the centre, as historically it has been, of the world's civilization, while its peculiar character adapted it to be a home of a peculiar people, kept by the nature of their country, no less than by that of their institutions, separate from the rest of mankind.

By its physical features Palestine is divided into three long and narrow sections, parallel to each other, and nearly parallel to the coast-the valley of the Jordan, with the Dead Sea; the hill country of Central Palestine; and the rich and fertile lowlands which border the Mediterranean.

The Jordan, rising among the mountains of Galilee, flowing in a long and rocky gorge, rapidly descending southward, and issuing in the Dead Sea, one hundred and fifty miles from its source and three thousand feet* below the surface of its upper waters, forms' a valley which, in its geographical and geological features, is without a parallel in the world. Buried between mountain ranges, effectually shielded from the Mediterranean breezes, this valley possesses a climate whose intolerable heats are without alleviation, a vegetation which, luxuriant in spring, is burnt and withered in summer by a cloudless sun, and a people who are to this day prone to those vices of the tropical climates which brought destruction upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. *Smith's Bib. Dict., vol. ii., 674 a.

West of this valley the land rises by an ascent, in the south even precipitous, to an elevated range of hills from fifteen to eighteen hundred feet in height. In Judea this hill-country, heated by breezes from the southern desert, possesses a climate and productions of an almost tropical character. Rounded hills of moderate height, now barren, but once covered with terraced vineyards; now desolate, but once crowned with villages, are the characteristic features of the scenery. For a few weeks of spring water-torrents fill the ravines, and flowers of the most brilliant hue, daisies, anemones, wild tulips, poppies, clothe the land with dress of scarlet. But the fierce rays of an intolerable sun and the scorching sirocco of the desert soon blight and wither them. "The wind passeth over it and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more." Proceeding northward, the scenery becomes more varied, the mountains more marked, the plains more considerable, the soil better.. Wells and springs increase in number, the heat of the desert is escaped or counteracted by breezes from the northern ranges of snow-clad mountains, the shrubs of Southern Judea are supplanted by trees of larger growth and by more enduring vegetation, until at length, in Galilee, we reach a region whose springs and mountain streams, never dry, supply Lakes Merom and Tiberias, the reservoirs of Palestine; whose romantic mountains reach their consummation in the snow-capped peaks of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon, and whose verdure-clad hills and vales strongly contrast with the relatively barren hills of Jewry.

Upon the west this plateau descends by a slope, far more gradual than on the east, to the plains of Sharon, Acre, and Esdraelon. These lowlands constitute the most fertile part of Palestine. Their average width is fifteen or sixteen miles. The climate is mild, the soil rich. Orange-trees are laden with fruits and flowers in January, and, when neither oppression nor foreign invasion desolate the land, these plains are covered with the richest and most luxuriant vegetation. It was for the possession of these plains that the ancient Canaan