THE Bible is the book for all nations and for all time. It is the mirror of all minds and the searcher of all hearts. It attracts the child with the charm of simplicity, and it fascinates the philosopher with the depths of mystery. It is the most human of all books when it speaks for earth and man. It is the most divine of all books when it speaks for heaven and God. It brings the human and divine into perfect harmony by making man the child of God and earth the vestibule of heaven.
The Bible gives the best history of the dark ages of the past, and the best hope that brighter ages will come in the future. It describes all conditions of life, and it gives utterance to all emotions of the soul. It compasses the utmost range of thought and feeling and desire, and it sounds the utmost depths of motive and character and passion. It has a text for every theme, a lesson for every learner, and a word for the want of every hour. It has a song of triumph for the victor and a wail of defeat for the vanquished. It is bright with the hope and gladness of youth. It celebrates the strength and glory of manhood. It bewails the sorrows and infirmities of age. It exults in the deeds of kings and conquerors. It sympathizes with the poor and the lowly, it lifts up the fallen, it delivers the oppressed, it breathes the blessing of peace upon the quiet homes of domestic life.
The composition of the Bible was extended through a long course of years, it was carried on under a great variety of circumstances; it bears the impress of every diversity of individual character. All seasons of the year, all fruits of forest and field, all aspects of earth and sky, all occupations of men and all forms of animal life are wrought into the drapery of the divine word to make the revelation true to God and attractive to man. It makes everything speak for God and everything work for man. So the Bible is fitted to be the one book for all time and all nations, for all classes of men and all states of society, for all capacities of mind and all necessities of the soul.
The Bible has a spiritual life and a material form, a heavenly birth and an earthly growth, a divine inspiration and a human composition. Everything connected with its origin is interesting, and it is made clearer by everything which throws light upon the lands where it was written. The glory and the desolation, the science and the superstition, the monuments and the mystery of the ancient East, are all witnesses for the Book which outlives all revolutions, stands firm amid all changes and grows strong with the increase of years.
Palestine is the holy land for all the world; and it will be visited by devout pilgrims from the ends of the earth for all time because it is the land of which the Bible has most to say, and it was the home of the sainted men whose name and deeds adorn the sacred page. Palestine and the Bible are as the stamped clay to the seal and the printed page to the type; one answers to the other as face to face in water. The Book illustrates the land, and the land illustrates the Book. Reading the Book, we long to see the land. Visiting the land, we come back with fresh interest to the Book.
The pathway that hangs on the hillsides and winds through the valleys; the wells where the flocks wait for water when they come from the fields, and the fountains whose murmurs are mingled with the voices of village maidens morning and evening; the torrents that tear up the earth and undermine the mud-built house after a sudden shower; the sower scattering seed upon the ground, and the fowls of the air following his steps to devour it up; the drought that makes the sky a dome of brass and gives powder and dust for rain; the shepherd traversing the waste places of the wilderness in search of some wanderer from the fold, or standing in the midst of his flock and separating the sheep from the goats as they go out to pasturage; the plowman carrying an ox-goad like a spear, and so intent upon guiding his rude share that he cannot turn to look back; the watchman sitting in his booth of brushwood to scare away the birds from the field, and the vintagers singing and shouting as they tread out the grapes—all these scenes and occupations pass before the eye of the traveler in the Holy Land as pictures to illustrate the sacred page, and to carry him back to the time when the Book was written.
The more accurately we become acquainted with the people and the productions, the climate and the seasons, the flowers and the fruit, the beasts and the birds, the natural features and the ancient ruins of the Holy Land, the more we find to confirm the truth of the Holy Book and to give life and reality to the sacred story. When we traverse the country through its utmost extent, we seem to be carried back to the times of old, and we live with the men and in the midst of the scenes that we learned to name with religious reverence in childhood. We have prophets for our teachers, and patriarchs for our companions. We speak with angels under the oaks in Mamre, and we sit with the Son of God by the well side at Sychar. We drink from fountains where Moses and Elijah and the mother of Jesus quenched their thirst, and we repose in the shadow of a great rock where the tribes wandered in the weary land. We behold the lilies in the valley and the rose on the plain of Sharon, and a divine voice whispers in the wind of the morning that never were mightiest kings arrayed like one of these. We go out at night to gaze at the heavens when the stars are forth in their glory, and the shepherd of Bethlehem breaks into song to tell us who marshals the fiery host on the fields of light. We climb the rocky pass of Beth-horon; and when we reach the rounded height of Gibeon, a storm comes up out of the sea, and wild, swirling clouds sweep low between the hills like the banners of marching hosts, and the earth shakes with thunder as if a thousand chariots were rushing to battle. And then, instead of rain, comes the rattling hall, and in the voices of the tempest we hear the shout of the tribes of Israel as they drive the Canaanites down the pass, and the hailstones smite more than the spears of the pursuing host.
Persons of devout and imaginative minds are apt to see all that they are looking for when traveling in the Holy Land; and when they come home, distance lends a sacred enchantment to the memories of the past, and then they see more in the retrospect than they ever saw in the reality of personal observation. Thus, after a few weeks of travel among the scenes of sacred story, they are apt to say that the Bible has become to them a new book, full of meaning and beauty that they never saw in it before. The same truths are indeed there, the same lessons of wisdom, ever old be-cause they come from God, and ever new because they speak to the living of every age. But the drapery of the divine Book takes color and form and beauty, the characters become real persons, and the actual places pass before the mind's eye the moment they are named to those who have trodden the holy fields with a reverent step, and looked up to the Eastern heavens at night with a devout mind; to them there is such a halo of sanctity resting upon the whole country that they cannot discuss and doubt and question and criticize as they would in other lands.
Hence, it has come to pass that we have many books of pleasant and pious reading about Palestine, but very few that give the results of patient research and careful observation. Most travelers have passed through the Bible lands as pilgrims and worshipers rather than as students and investigators. They have made the pilgrimage to gratify the reverence and the sacred longing of many years, and they have not paused to test the hallowed illusions of early days by the rules of rigid investigation. Their month of travel in the Holy Land has been a thirty days' devotion which they would not willingly mar by sharp discussions about ancient sites and modern traditions. They have gone out to Bethany, and descended into the grotto at Bethlehem, and climbed the hill over Nazareth, and walked the beach of Tiberias, to meditate rather than to criticize and to inquire.
When their books are written with the glow of enthusiasm and the fervor of devotion, we read them with much of the sacred pleasure which the writers enjoyed in their journeys. I had read many such volumes long before I visited the scenes which they describe; and I now read them with still greater interest since the pathways of the desert and the hillsides of the Holy Land have been graven upon my memory with the clearness of the first impressions of childhood.
Still, we cannot always give ourselves to the lead of fancy or the impulses of devotion; and especially in so grave a matter as the study of divine revelation we must have rigid fact, severe criticism, patient investigation. If careful inquiry compels us to give up many of the "holy places" of tradition, it will make the few that are well ascertained more sacred and more suggestive than a thousand that existed only in faith or fiction. The Bible needs no help from pious fraud or ignorant devotion. Its divine origin and infinite worth are best seen when set in the strongest light. The Author of the Holy Book is the Maker of the Holy Land. His work in both must be consistent with itself. The more we know about the land, the better we shall understand the Book; and the more highly we prize the Book, the more interested we shall be in every effort to search the laud.
While all this is true, we must confess, with mingled surprise and shame, that the first movement toward a thorough scientific survey of Palestine is of very recent date. A vast amount of money and labor has been expended in exploring the ruins of Egypt and Babylon and Nineveh, Carthage and Ephesus and Troy, Athens and Pompeii and Borne. Great reputations have been acquired by the display of courage and hardihood in traversing countries that have no history, and nothing to tell us concerning questions of the greatest interest to the human race. The most costly apparatus has been provided and the most cultivated men employed at government expense for the survey of coasts and rivers and mountains. The sea has been sounded, and burning deserts have been traversed, and icy peaks have been climbed, and strong-built ships have been thrust in among the freezing horrors of the arctic zone, just to find an answer to one or two questions in geography.
This is all well, and it were better that more rather than lens should be done to make the human family fully acquainted with every acre of land and water in its great possession of the globe; and yet it is passing strange that this spirit of modern research should so long have neglected the sacred land where its own fire was first kindled. From Palestine carne the divine impulse which is now carrying all Christian nations forward toward the full possession of all the riches of the earth, and to the highest attainments in knowledge and spiritual culture; and yet, of all the lands of the ancient East, Palestine is the last to be searched and surveyed with scientific accuracy.
We have had maps of the country in great numbers. The out-lines, natural features and comparative positions of a few well-known towns have been given with substantial correctness, and these imperfect maps have given great interest to the study of the sacred records; and yet they were all made up from mere impressions, momentary observations taken by travelers with pocket compass, or by a glance at the sun in passing hastily through the land. Within the memory of persons still young, not one square mile of the Holy Land had been surveyed with scientific accuracy, not one spot had been determined in latitude and longitude by independent observations taken on the ground. No base line had been laid down for a survey, no system of triangulation instituted, no competent engineer had been employed with time and instruments and assistants at command to do the work in the best manner.
The most sacred land on the face of all the earth, the land for the possession of which millions have sacrificed their lives, the land whose history and traditions and association have the strongest bold upon the heart of the most cultivated nations, the land whose hills and streams and mountains have been wrought into poetry and prayer, whose homes have been visited by angels, whose paths have been trodden by the Son of God, whose capital city is the symbol of heaven,—this land has been wrapped in mystery while the light which it sent forth to the ends of the earth has been growing in brightness for eighteen hundred years.
The work of exploration has at last begun in earnest, and with the good hope that it will not tease till every square mile is traversed and mapped, every ancient site, so far as possible, is identified, every relic, inscription and monument which can throw light upon the Scriptures is subjected to the most rigid and intelligent examination.
The earliest and most reliable authority concerning Palestine, aside from the Bible, is the Jewish historian, soldier and scholar Josephus. He was born in Jerusalem four years after the crucifixion of Christ. He was thoroughly educated in all departments of Hebrew learning, and he displayed great courage and capacity as a general when entrusted with the military defense of Galilee. Overcome at last by superior force, he surrendered to the Romans, and he was held prisoner by them till they completed the conquest of the country. He was present during the final siege of Jerusalem, and he saw its capture and its utter destruction by Titus.
During his eventful life Josephus had occasion to traverse the country again and again, and to make himself minutely and accurately acquainted with its most sacred localities. He wrote at great length concerning the history of his native land, the customs and opinions of his people, and their ultimate dispersion among the nations. If we overlook his enormous self-conceit, his childish exaggeration in description and in numerical statement, and his servile flattery of his conquerors, we shall find him one of the most interesting of all ancient writers. Certainly he tells us more about Palestine than can be learned from all other ancient sources taken together except the Bible.
There is a rude map or table of roads and distances in the Roman Empire, supposed to have been made at the close of the fourth century. This is of some service in identifying a few ancient sites in Palestine. Various Christian pilgrims, visiting the Holy Land from the fourth to the fifteenth century, made notes of their journeys. They give a few facts concerning the condition of the country as they saw it; but their facts are mingled with many fables and superstitions. Mohammedan writers have added a little to the information derived from Christian sources.
The time is within the remembrance of men now living when travelers first began to go through Palestine for the express purpose of critical inquiry and careful observation. Dr. Edward Robinson of New York visited the Bible lands for the first time thirty-seven years ago. He made his second journey fourteen years later. He had given his life to biblical studies in this country and in Germany. For fifteen years he had been making special preparation for his first journey.
Dr. Robinson began his researches with the determination to separate fact from fable, history from tradition. He would tell the Christian world in the plainest terms how much can be known about places that bear sacred names, and about other places named in sacred story, but not yet found in the land. He devoted his great learning, his strong frame and his stronger will to the sacred task of building up a biblical geography out of materials gathered from accurate survey and personal observation.
In both journeys Robinson had the company and the assistance of American missionaries who were equal with him in accuracy of judgment and in devotion to the truth, and who had the rare advantage of perfect acquaintance with the language and the people from long residence in the country. He did not live to complete the work which he began; but no traveler before or since his time has equaled him in fullness of preparation for his work, and in exact, profound and painstaking research. To him is the Christian world indebted for the first impulse toward a thorough scientific survey of the Holy Land.
The countrymen of Robinson have done much to carry on the work which he so well begun. Thomson's "Land and the Book” is equal in accuracy with the more elaborate "Researches," and it is the counterpart of Robinson's work in grace of manner and elegance of composition. We have volumes, journals and articles of great value from Lynch, Hackett, Wolcott, Barclay, Osborne and others. Among English works, Wilson's "Lands of the Bible," Williams' "Holy City," Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," Tristam's "Land of Israel" and Porter's "Hand-book for Syria and Palestine" are worthy of especial mention as valuable contributions to sacred geography.
To the English must be given the credit of forming the first society and entering upon the systematic work of raising funds for a full, minute and scientific survey and exploration of the Holy Land. This was done ten years ago; and now a similar American society is organized and acting in co-operation with the English survey. The land is divided between the two, the English taking the west side of the Jordan and the Americano the east. The English are already far advanced in their work. When both societies have finished the task they have undertaken, each will share the fruit of the other's labors. They will jointly issue a map of the whole country on the scale of an inch to the mile.
The map will exhibit to the eye every ancient road, bridle-path and ruin; every noticeable hill, valley and pass; every plain, brook, forest and fountain; every ancient well, historic site and biblical name, that can be identified with reasonable certainty. The survey is in the hands of professional engineers of unquestionable competency. They have the use of the most approved and costly instruments. They proceed upon the same methods of observation which are adopted in the most accurate surveys of coast and country in England and America. When they have done their work and published the result to the world, we shall have the first full and accurate map of Palestine. With that map in hand, the traveler will know better where to go and what to see than he can now learn from the best native dragoman in Syria.
The expeditions are accompanied by men of science who are intent upon subjecting the Holy Land and everything in it to the most rigid and exhaustive investigation. They hold themselves responsible to the Christian world for a full and fair report concerning everything that can throw light on the sacred page. They will decipher ancient inscriptions, trace out architectural ruins, observe geological formations, collect and describe plants, birds, animals, fishes, record the changes of temperature, and study all the varied aspects of nature. They make the country their home in all months of the year, and their whole occupation is to see and learn and describe everything that will make the land better known to the Christian world. Surely every reader of the Bible must wish them success in their severe and perilous undertaking.
Recent exploration in the Bible Lands has already done much to increase our store of knowledge, and to give clearness and consistency to what we knew before. Beginning at the south, the region from Suez to Sinai has been accurately surveyed and mapped. It has been settled beyond a reasonable doubt that the rugged congeries of rocky heights facing the great curved plain Er Rahah was the scene of the giving of the law as described by Moses.
The wells of Abraham have been identified at Beersheba, and some advance made toward an examination of the reputed burial place of the patriarch under the mosque at Hebron. Moriah, rather than Gerizim, is still accepted as the scene of the offering of Isaac.
Excavations of great depth, attended with great toil and opposition, have been made in and about Jerusalem. The foundation stones of the temple area have been found buried in banks of rubbish from fifty to a hundred feet deep. The builder's mark in red paint could in some cases be still traced, just as they were placed in Solomon's time. Vast cisterns for water have been found cut in the rock beneath where the temple stood. The base of arches supporting the bridge on which Solomon passed over from Zion to the house of the Lord has been found eighty feet below the bed of the present street.
A stone pillar has been discovered with a Greek inscription, showing that it was set up to mark the limit beyond which none but Jews might approach toward the holy place. Quarries beneath the city have been explored and cuttings have been traced in the rock, just as they were left incomplete by builders in the days of Solomon and Herod. Something has been done toward determining the course of the ancient walls and aqueducts, the form of the valleys in and around the city, the structure of houses, and the solidity of the work done in the olden time.
Seven years ago a written stone was discovered at Dibon, in the land of Moab. The inscription is made in the same characters which David used when he kept sheep on the hills of Bethlehem and wrote the twenty-third Psalm with the mountains of Moab in sight. The record, though much mutilated, has been deciphered, and it is a most explicit and remarkable confirmation of the record which we have in the second book of the Kings. It is believed that the stone was inscribed near nine hundred years before Christ.
The third statement of the American Exploration Society contains a full and elaborate identification of Mount Pisgah, whence Moses saw the land which he was not permitted to possess. The territory about Pisgah has been explored, and a base-line laid down for the survey of the whole region east of the Jordan.
The mound that bears the name of ancient Jericho has been excavated and found to be a heap of ruins. I have entered the trenches made in the mound, and have seen the mud-brick built into the walls of houses that fell in the fan of the city. The shores of the Sea of Galilee have been explored with renewed zeal and fidelity, and the sites of Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida made more clear. The sudden storms of wind that come down upon the lake have been described and much information gathered to illustrate the scene of our Lord's miracles on the sea and the land.
This work of exploration requires great courage, endurance and perseverance on the part of the noble and highly-cultivated men who have undertaken to carry it on. It costs great toil and fatigue, and it has already resulted in the loss of several precious lives. But it advances step by step toward a result in which the whole Christian world will rejoice. When the survey is complete, and the whole land, with all its productions and possessions, has been explored, the men who did the work will be honored as instructors and benefactors by all who believe that the Bible is the Book of God.
The land to be surveyed is not large. In this respect it is like all other lands that have done most to give life and law to the world. Egypt is only a little triangle of green meadows at the mouth of the Nile, and a double bank of mud made by the overflow of the river where it creeps like a slimy serpent in its crooked course across the sandy desert. Standing on a housetop anywhere between Cairo and the cataracts, one sees at a single glance the whole breadth of the mighty kingdom whose temples and monuments were already old when the history of the Hebrew people began. Standing on the Acropolis at Athens, one surveys the whole extent of country that gave Letters and art and philosophy to all schools and universities in the most cultivated nations for two thousand years. England is only a little patch of earth pushed out into the cold North Sea, and separated from Europe by a channel of angry waters worse to cross than the ocean. And yet the life and thought and power of England have encompassed the globe, and upon the universal diffusion of her language and literature rest the best hopes of mankind. Palestine is only a narrow slip of land cut off from the great continent of Asia by a gorge a thousand feet Jeep and backed by barren mountains and burning deserts. It is so small that one can see the whole extent of its historic ground from the top of a hundred hills. And yet that little land, so insignificant that the great monarchies of the East scarcely named it in their annals, has given the best philosophy to the schools, the best hope to the heart and the test life to the world.
Palestine was called the Holy Land by the ancient prophets of Israel and by the devout pilgrims from other lands in a later age. It was consecrated by the faith and sacrifices of holy men of old and by the divine tragedy of the cross. It has been the highway of armies and the battle-field of nations for more than three thousand years. It has passed through all extremes of glory and of desolation. It has been cultivated like a garden and crowded with millions of inhabitants. And it has been overgrown with thorns and thickets, and given up to become the range of ravenous beasts and the haunts of unclean birds.
Wherever the traveler directs his steps through its whole extent, he finds himself surrounded with ruins. Broken-down terraces, abandoned wells and cisterns, empty tombs, fragments of pottery, sculptured stones, blocks of pavement, mounds of ashes, deeply-worn foot-paths, deserted fortresses, subterranean galleries, outlines of wall-girt cities, are silent witnesses to the number and greatness of the people that have made this land their home. It has passed under the rule and the ruin of ten generations of conquerors, and every sculptured stone and broker wall is a monument to some one of the ten. Exploring among these successive layers of ruins, from the Saracen back to the Canaanite, is like reading the old Hebrew Book backward, and every sentence wrought out from stone or pit or wall throws light upon the story of the past and the destiny of the future.
The portion of the Holy Land which was the scene of the principal events in sacred story is not larger than the State of Connecticut. The whole territory included in the more extended use of the name Palestine, embracing both sides of the Jordan, is less than half as large as the State of New York. And small as is the country ordinarily visited by the traveler, it seems to him less than it really is, because in passing from place to place he comes out upon so many heights where its whole extent lies within the range of his eye.
The sea on the west and the white wall of the Moab mountains and the highlands of Bashan on the east, seen through the clear air, look as if they could be reached in an hour's ride from the central ridge. Ami when the air is not clear, the illusion is often more complete. The first time I looked toward the wilderness through a notch in the hills below Jerusalem there was a blue haze hanging over the whole landscape. And it seemed to me that the heights beyond the Dead Sea were only just behind the ridge of Olivet, and that the shout of a strong voice might be heard from one to the other. Standing on the heights of Gerizim and Bethel and Mizpeh, and looking northward and southward from Hebron to the hills of Galilee, I was many times impelled to exclaim, Can this be the whole extent of the land that was once so great among the nations, and whose story has gone out to the uttermost parts of the earth?
The first feature which arrests the attention of the American traveler on approaching Jerusalem from the west or south is the bare, brown aspect of' the whole country. No forests, no green fields, no winding streams, no grassy meadows, no woods or footpaths bordered by rows of trees, no pleasant cottages on the hillsides or in the valleys surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, no carriages whirling along smooth highways, no groups of happy children shouting and singing at play, no pretty villages embowered in green, none of the ordinary signs of peace and prosperity which arrest the attention of the traveler in the older portions of our own country.
The soil of Palestine has the color of iron rust, the rocks are of a dull, ashen gray, as if burnt by internal fires or blistered in the sun; the olive trees are nearly as gray as the rocks. The bare round hills are built up of limestone ledges that rise one above another like the galleries of an amphitheater. The beds of the narrow valleys are torn up by winter torrents, and left bare and bleaching in the fierce light all summer long. The steep hillsides are washed and worn down by rain, or terraced so that the traveler looking up from below only sees the bare walls of rugged stones.
The approach to towns must be made over a rampart of rubbish that has been accumulating for ages. The mound of filth and ashes is guarded by wild, wolfish dogs and lean, long-eared donkeys. It is the favorite playground of children that look as wild as the dogs and as hungry as the donkeys. At the appearance of a stranger the dogs howl and the children scream and the donkeys bray, and soon the whole population is out on heaps and house-tops to see What is coming. The town is only a huddle of rude cabins made of mud and stones, and looking in the distance so much like the bare hills and the brown earth out of which it is built that one needs a practiced eye to see any town at all. The streets are always crooked, and often so narrow that the footman must turn back when he meets a loaded camel, or stoop and let the ungainly beast swing his burden over him. The rooms in the houses are cheerless and dark. Among the villagers the accommodations for man and beast are so nearly alike that I have mistaken one for the other. The traveler who takes lodgings with the people will find himself and horse sheltered in the same room with half a dozen Arabs and two or three dozen cattle, sheep and goats to keep him company for the night.
The valleys that lie low down between the naked hills are some-times planted with the fig and the olive, both of which have a strange propensity to assume gnarled, twisted and crooked forms as if bent and burdened with the bare weight of existence in such a dry and stony land. The peasants in planting set three olive sticks in the ground and twist them together for mutual support. But when they grow up into trees, they Look as if they were wrestling together for the possession of the ground, or they suggest the group of Laocoon and his sons strangled and agonizing in the folds of the serpents.
The cultivated trees never stand in rows or regular forms of any kind. If there is any fence, it is either a ragged wall that never runs a rod in a straight line, or it is a hedge of cactus set with spines and-having so many crooks and corners-that the rider must watch both sides of the path at every turn to avoid running upon a bristling phalanx of living spears. The fruit-bearing trees increase the feeling of loneliness and desolation in the traveler as he passes along, because there are seldom any houses in light, and the appearance of cultivation suggests the thought that the inhabitants have fled to some stronghold for safety, their houses have been burned down and only a few olive trees left standing to show that anybody ever lived there.
The peasants scratch the ground lightly in the hollows among the hills and scatter their seed, and then flee away to their distant homes. When the harvest comes, they return and gather up the grain, tread it out upon the bare ground, and flee again with their plunder as if they were foragers in an enemy's country. I have many times ridden through the half-grown wheat when there was not a sign of a habitation or a human being in sight, and the whole country around was as desolate as if an invading array had swept through and had carried away all the people captive. Once in a great while a native may be seen coming in the distance, and he is always armed with some kind of weapon—a spear or a club or an ox-goad—and he is upon the lookout for enemies, as if he alone had escaped the terrible invasion and were stealing back to see What had been left of his home.
One can hardly be blamed for carrying a look of distrust and suspicion in such a land as Palestine. The aspect of loneliness and desolation which rests upon the whole country is not that of the desert, the mountains, the forest or the sea. In the wilds of nature one has a feeling of safety and of satisfaction that the hand of violence and of wrong has never reached these solitudes. But in passing through the waste places of Palestine one is always thinking of the thousands that were once there and are now gone, of the homes and gardens and fields that were once full of life and are now silent as the habitations of the dead. Everywhere he seer the signs of violence and desolation, and he soon acquires a habit of keeping himself upon the watch against danger, as if he were a spy in a hostile country.
The empty cisterns and grain-pits where now there is no sign of inhabitants, the hillsides cut into tombs where there is no city, the caves with ashes on the floor and smoke-stains on the roof, showing that they have been hiding-places of fugitives and robbers, the pathways worn deep into the rocks where now neither man nor beast ever passes, the mounds of earth which, when explored, prove to be heaps of ruined houses, the wells cut a hundred feet through solid rock where now the people use a stone for a hammer and have never seen a drill in their lifetime, the remains of broken pavements a d broad highways in a land where the sound of carriage-wheels is never heard, the vast stones cut out of the quarry and carried long distances for building where now nobody moves anything heavier than a load for a mule's back,—all these strange things suggest violence and robbery and desolation.' And the traveler soon comes to feel that the land itself has a look of threatening and of danger.
This dreary and depressing aspect of the Holy Land is nowhere so evident as at Jerusalem. Standing upon the ridge of Olivet and looking down upon the city, one sees no reason why it should be there, or what there can be in the whole surrounding region to support it. North, south and west the country looks bare and desolate, nearly of the same color with the rubbish and ash-heaps that lie about the walls. Eastward the stony wilderness of Judea rolls down in wild naked hills and waterless ravines to the bed of the Jordan and the deep grave of the Dead Sea. The rocky platform of the ancient temple, comprising one-sixth of the space within the walls, is mainly occupied by one great mosque, which looks better fitted for a tomb than a temple. There are many waste places elsewhere in the city, small as it is, and the crooked streets and gray stone houses have no grace in form or color to attract the eye. The camels corning out of the eastern gate are the most ungainly creatures that walk the earth, and their Arab riders, dressed in rags that are never washed, are the fit companions of the beasts. The mule-trains climbing up out of the Kedron look as if they had been kicked and cudgeled till they had no sensibility left except when they repay the kicks of their masters in the same kind. The noises that are heard are loud, harsh and angry: the barking of dogs is frightful; the cry of jackals makes the night hideous.
These things arrest the attention and sadden the mind of the traveler when he first arrives in Jerusalem, and when making his first few days of journey in the Holy Land. The mode of traveling is wearisome and attended with many delays and discomforts. The time that one would give to quiet meditation is often intruded upon by petty annoyances and provoking interruptions. The heat of the day and the chill of the night keep the vital powers upon severe strain, and greatly impair the elasticity of spirit and limb which one has most need of when far from friends and homo; and so, to the tired traveler newly arrived at the Holy City, the whole land often seems to be wrapped in gloom.
But the feeling of sadness and disappointment soon gives place to the calm, deep conviction that this at last is the Holy Land the land whose sacred memories have touched the hearts of millions and kindled the fires of faith and love in the uttermost parts of the earth; and then the very dust of her ruined cities and the loneliness of her deserted fields become precious in his sight. He sees in them all the sacredness of sorrow and the beauty of desolation. He would not change the aspect of the land if he could. He thinks it is a wise and a kind providence that has kept it unchanged for ages that it may give its silent and sad testimony to the divine Word. He dreads the coming of the day when the thunder of the railway train shall shake the hills of Judea, steamboat excursions shall be advertised for the Sea of Galilee, and the smoke of manufactories shall cloud the heavens where Elijah kindled the evening sacrifice on the slope of Carmel.
After the first feeling of depression and disappointment has worn off, everything in the Holy Land is interesting and instructive to the Christian traveler. The flowers that bloom everywhere appear more brilliant in their glorious beauty because they grow among dull, gray rocks and they spring up out of the bare, brown earth. The bright little birds that rise before the sun and fill the morning air with music sing the more sweetly because the land seems so sad, and the gloom by contrast brings out the gladness of the song. When I saw the light-limbed gazelles skimming along the stony billows of the desert like the stormy petrel at sea, leaping over the tops of the tall reeds in the vale of Esdraelon, bounding up the steep hillsides in Northern Galilee, I thought the whole landscape was cheered and brightened by that graceful embodiment of life and joy. I have never seen the half-green wheat appear so fresh and green as it did when contrasted with the brown earth and limestone ledges about Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Hebron. Even the ancient olive and the dark-leaved fig and the black vines just building appear beautiful when mingled with the glistening orange and lemon and the blazing oleander and the brown pomegranate in the sunny nooks among the Galilean hills.
All the aspects of nature and all the occupations of men in Palestine become intensely interesting when they call up the language of the Holy Word, and they carry us back to the times of Abraham and David and the evangelists. We forget all the weariness, the annoyance and the discomfort of travel, and we make every day's journey an act of worship and thanksgiving. We pass from hill to hill and from fountain to fountain along the same paths that the patriarchs trod, and we pitch our tents beside the same wells from which they watered their flocks. We cross the battle-plain of great armies, and we climb the high places where kings were slain and the shield of the mighty was thrown away. We rest in the quiet vale where the Son of God was hidden from the world thirty years. We walk along the lakeside where he healed the sick and fed the hungry and spoke the word of life. We rest on the slope of Olivet, and are cure that within the range of the eye is the scene of his agony, the place of his cross and the rock of his tomb; and when we come home, the memory of travel in that land seems like a sacred dream, a season of rapture in which the things of earth and heaven were so blended and beautified together that we can only say with the wondering disciples on the sacred mount, "It was good to be there." Thenceforth we read the Holy Book in the light of the Holy Land, and one bears witness to the other and both speak for God.
If now we sum up all that has been learned, first and Last, in the Bible lands to illustrate and confirm the sacred record, we shall find the testimony full and true. We can give only a few of the leading facts derived from the history and the antiquities of countries which are most frequently mentioned in the Bible.