NAZARETH.

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CHAPTER IX.

Nazareth-Its population, traditions, and environs-Panoramic view from the hill above it-Visit to Mount Tabor-Cross the country from Tabor to Tiberias-In danger of losing our way-The Sea of Galilee—A voyage on its waters-A "great storm of wind upon the lake”A night with the Arabs in "a desert place"-The plain of Gennesaret, Magdala, Capernaum, &c., &c.-The town of Safed-The plain of the Hûleh and Lake Merom-Dan-A Sabbath at Banias, beneath Mount Hermon, and beside the sources of the Jordan-Remains of Cesarea-Philippi-Scene of the Transfiguration, &c.-Cross the shoulder of Hermon-Descend the river Jenâny-Encamp at Kefr-HowarThe plain and city of Damascus.

NAZARETH is, on the whole, well built; and its people are in apparently comfortable circumstances-well dressed, and more civil than the inhabitants of most Syrian towns. The fact that they are chiefly Christians, no doubt explains this better condition of their manners and affairs. They number from three to four thousand; of whom, not quite so many as seven hundred are Moslems. The Christians are of the Greek, Greek Catholic, Latin, and Maronite Churches-the first named being much the most numerous. Allusion has been already made to the well outside the town, as being, according to the tradition of the Greek Church, the scene of the annunciation. There seems not much inherent probability in the supposition that so solemn and momentous an interview should have taken place at a public well. Scripture is wholly silent as to the particular place. It is known that no Christians resided in Nazareth till the time of Constantine, and that it did not become a place of Christian pilgrimage till the sixth century-facts which make it all but impossible that any reliable tradition connected with the scenes

of our Saviour's history in this place could have been handed down to after times. The Greek Church have built a small chapel over the well, and of course claim the scene of the annunciation as their own. The Latins, on the other hand, are not less confident that the annunciation took place in a grotto, which they are quite ready to show you, beneath the entrance into the church of the Latin convent. It is encased in marble, and hung with silver lamps; and the monks will point you out the very column, supporting the roof of the grotto, from behind which the angel came forth when he appeared to the Virgin. From this grotto you ascend by a flight of steps into another cave, which was the Virgin's kitchen, and of which the fire-place and chimney still remain. As for the Virgin's house itself, every one knows, that to escape from the polluting touch of the Saracen infidels, it long ago took flight bodily from Nazareth, and crossed the seas; first to Dalmatia, and then to Italy, in which it finally settled at Loretto! These are the things to disgust one with so-called holy places. They illustrate nothing but human credulity and dishonesty. We had neither time nor inclination to waste upon them at Nazareth. Enough to know that here stood the town in which our Lord lived for nearly thirty years. Fain, indeed, would we know something of the details of those memorable years. Gladly would we obtain a glimpse of the interior of that humble but honoured household, where the mysterious child whom Joseph and Mary brought hither from Egypt, "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man." We love to think of Him following his mother to that well in the outskirts of the town, which was no doubt, then, as it is still to the Nazarenes, the chief place for drawing water for household use. We love, too, to think of Him as gathering, with the innocent delight peculiar to childhood, those many flowers in which the fields and hill-sides around Nazareth so remarkably abound, and from which, in after years, he drew that simple and touching imagery, which so often gave equal point and beauty to His divine discourse. But more than all do we love

HE SHALL BE CALLED A NAZARENE.

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to think how, as childhood gave place to youth, and youth to manhood's maturer age, the heavenly wisdom, and goodness, and holiness that filled His soul, must have shone forth in His daily life. How the children of this Nazareth, with whom in His earlier years He associated, must have been won by His gentleness. How the young with whom He mingled in His own youthful years, must have been at once softened and solemnized by his unselfish, loving, generous, and yet grave and thoughtful spirit. How the rude men with whom, at a still later period, He came into daily contact while prosecuting the labours of His humble earthly calling, or while performing the common but kindly offices of neighbourhood, must have been awed, in spite of themselves, in His presence, by the moral elevation of His character, and by the piety and benignity that beamed in His every look, and breathed in His every word. And how, once more, His very mother herself, and her husband Joseph, must often have looked on in silent wonder and reverence while contemplating in one who was "subject unto them;" a childhood in which no folly or petulance ever had a place; a youth unstained by even one solitary indiscretion; a manhood whose every aim, and desire, and thought, were holy, and just, and good-in one word, a life in which, through all its successive stages, they beheld God's will done on earth as it is done in heaven!

It has seemed good, however, to the Only Wise not to indulge this curiosity, however natural or even becoming it may appear. He was to be called a Nazarene; and the lowly and despised obscurity which that name implied was not to be broken in upon by suffering the light even of sacred history to fall on this period of His life. It is impossible, however, that the thought of these thirty years should not lend an indescribable interest to the scenes amid which they were spent. It needs not to say, therefore, with what eagerness we hastened forth from the Casa Nuova to visit them. After a general survey of the town itself, we struck into one of the rocky ravines behind

it, and clambering up its steep and slippery sides, we made our way to the summit of the hill above. This hill rises to the height of fully 400 feet above the town, and affords one of the grandest, most extensive, and interesting views in all Judea. There is a little wely, or tomb, on the very apex of the hill, standing on the dome-roof of which, we could survey, in one glorious landscape, the whole country, from the hills about Jerusalem on the south, to the snowy Hermon at the head of the Jordan valley, on the north; from the Haurân, far away beyond Jordan, on the east, to the Mediterranean on the west, whose blue waters faded away on the distant horizon, twenty or thirty miles out at sea.

The country immediately to the north of the hill on which we stood is exceedingly beautiful. It is the interior of Galilee. Almost at our feet lay a noble, spacious, and far extending valley, surrounded by hills of the richest green, their sides finely wooded, their summits blending into other ranges of endlessly varied outline beyond them. The valley itself was full of fine pastures, and corn-fields, while every here and there its surface was broken by picturesque knolls, crowned with clumps of trees, and by little spurs from the hills shooting out upon the level ground, and forming a multitude of most enchanting bay-like recesses around them. Across this broad valley, or rather plain, towards the north-west, stands Sefûrieh, the ancient Sepphoris; and three or four miles to the north of it, Kana-el-Jelil, which is now regarded as the true Cana of Galilee. Till recently, that scene of our Saviour's first miracle had been identified with Kefr Kenna, a village about two miles to the north-east of Nazareth, not far off the common route to Tiberias. This country reaching to the sea-coast westwards, and including, on the south, the great plain of Esdraelon, or Jezreel, was the territory assigned to the tribes of Zebulun and Issachar, of whom it was said— 'They shall call the people unto the mountain; there they shall offer sacrifices of righteousness: for they shall suck of the abundance of the seas, and of treasures hid in the sand." In the

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THE NAZARETH MISSIONARIES.

359 great battle with the hosts of Sisera, it was the reproach of Asher, Zebulun's neighbour to the north-west, that he "continued on the sea-shore, and abode in his breaches," or creeks, while Zebulun himself, and Naphtali, that dwelt beyond him on the north, were jeoparding "their lives unto the death in the high places of the field."

After descending from this noble point of view, we examined several of the many cliffs, along the brow of which a portion of Nazareth is built, trying to form an opinion as to which of them might be the true "Mount of Precipitation," from which the Nazarenes impiously sought to cast the Saviour down. There are several that answer quite sufficiently to the Scripture narrative, but the only definite conclusion at which we arrived was this, that the traditional cliff could not have been the scene of that attempted crime. It is above the city-not beneath it, as the Scripture narrative requires. It was not till night had fallen, and we could see no more, that we returned to the Casa Nuova, where we were joined at dinner by Mr. Zeller and Mr. Hubert, of the Church of England Missionary Society, and from whom we received, in the course of the evening, that information about Akil and his Arabs, and about the robbery of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur, to which reference has been already made. The mission, of which those gentlemen and another associate have the charge, combines, with its main object of making known the gospel,an attempt to promote among the people of Nazareth a better knowledge of some of the arts of civilized life, and, in particular, of mechanics and agriculture. Our limited stay at Nazareth left us no time to examine their operations either in the one department or in the other. They were evidently men well qualified for the important work in which they were engaged; but like most of the other missionaries we met with in Judea, they were contending with very formidable difficulties, and with manifold discouragements. One of our party, whose years disabled him from prosecuting any further a journey so fatiguing, resolved to leave us here, and to go down to the sea coast at Haifa,