Part 5
When I saw our boatmen the other day on Galilee pulling with all their might, but in vain, against the sudden west wind, so peculiar to that particular lake, I saw before me the fishermen of Peter's type, dressed in the same loose garments, going through the same dangerous work that he and his fellows had to face habitually. How easy it was, with that living illustration before me, to see the struggling boat's crew on the night that Jesus, remaining to pray alone on the mountain on the eastern shore, sent them forward to Capernaum without Him, and how easy to see them trying to make their way as described in Matthew xiv. 24. "But the boat in the midst of the sea was tossed with the waves: for the wind was contrary." And then the divine Figure following them, moving over those tossing waves, can be imagined, approaching, full of calm reassurance, to still their fears at His apparition--"It is I, be not afraid." The direction in which the boat was steered, the mountain whence the divine Figure came forward and overtook the boat--all now appears to the mind's eye in powerful vividness, in the setting of land and water that one has seen.
Again, the poor demoniacs that lived in the tombs that are cut out of the sides of those same mountains "over against Galilee" (there are outcast maniacs like them to-day in the deserts, if not "possessed" as these men were),--I fancy I can see the look of the wild animal in their faces as they met our Lord, and hear the quick, wild cry of one of them: "What have I to do with thee, Jesus, Son of the most high God?"--and the hoarse answer to Christ's question, "My name is Legion!" I have before me the recollection of a strange creature I saw running out of a sepulchral chamber in a ruined temple on the Upper Nile, like the incarnation of Satan in some of the Old Masters' pictures: the head bald, and of the same cinder-coloured hue as the evil face, with its large pointed ears, and the muscular body. I do not mean that the possessed man of the Gospel might have been like this dweller in tombs, but one sees strange beings in the deserts whose shelters are the resting-places of the dead.
I continue to be haunted by the feeling that the sight of the Holy Places is too easily and too unceremoniously obtained nowadays. I hope we do not feel less devoutly with regard to them than in the "Ages of Faith," and that it is only our modern way to take these things as we do. Do you remember how history tells us that Richard Coeur de Lion, after his defeat by the Saracens some distance short of Jerusalem, falling back towards the coast, baffled in his heroic efforts to redeem the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel, refused to look on the city which came in sight in the rear of his line of march as he and his knights crested a high hill near Emmaus? He would not look; he had failed; his eyes were too unworthy to rest upon the City of the Lord. And to-day, with the Infidel still in possession, the Christian tourist, nothing doubting, takes a good look through his binocular on sighting the same Jerusalem. I remember hearing that as some friends of ours, forming part of a mixed company,
came in sight of the city, one of their number dropped on his knees in as unobtrusive a manner as was possible under the circumstances. "I did not know your brother was a _fanatic_," whispered an American to his sister.
As regards certain details of life in this country that so much embarrass and disappoint some travellers, do not imagine that I affectedly ignore their existence; but I do feel grateful that in my view of the whole scene they have everywhere kept their proper place. I know how disappointed some people are on their account, and I should be sorry if I was thought intolerant in my self-satisfaction at being so fortunate.
One lady, in a little book I once read, describing her journey, takes for her text: "He is not here, but is risen." In bitter chagrin she acknowledges the fact that nowhere in Jerusalem could she see Our Lord through her surroundings. I asked a friend once if she would like to see the Holy Land: "Certainly not!" she exclaimed; "I have read Mark Twain's book." I inquired of an English traveller at Jaffa the other day, who was on his way home, how the Holy Places had impressed him. His answers were dispirited: the dirt, the flies, etc., etc., had annoyed him. His ears were still ringing with the ubiquitous "Baksheesh!"; the lepers had spoilt some of the best views--and so on. How much better it would have been for him not to come here, like the Mark Twain lady, and to have preserved his Oxford impressions of the Bible uncontaminated!
In Our Lord's time, although the cities were splendid, the poor and the diseased were just as much _en évidence_ as now, and where He was His poor clustered thickest. Yet who thinks of the merely squalid details of those crowds when reading the Gospel narrative? Why, then, dwell on them so much here to-day as we follow His footsteps on the very soil He trod? I must say any danger of distractions I may have felt has not come from what I have seen of the _native_ element here. Not long ago a party of Christian (?) European trippers (I will not define their nationality) reaching the Jews' Wailing Place at Jerusalem, charged with their donkeys all along the line of those preoccupied figures standing praying with their faces buried in their Testaments or pressed against the stones of the great wall, and knocked them over.
But "Many men many minds," and as no country stirs the sincere heart as this one does, one must accept each thoughtful traveller's account of his experiences as being genuinely felt.
I would warn intending tourists who are earnest and sensitive about this sacred land against forming large parties for the journey. Amongst the group of fellow-travellers there is sure to be at least one discordant unit. Facetious remarks, ignorant questions, thoughtless exclamations, are harder to bear here than elsewhere. Of course, if the party forms a religious pilgrimage these warnings do not apply; but even a pilgrimage in company has drawbacks, if the time is limited, and many inevitable distractions. Select as few companions as is practicable--one only, if possible, entirely one with you in faith and feeling. Also, any one in delicate health should not attempt the entire journey. I have seen more than one sad procession of returning tourists escorting a litter containing some poor collapsed lady, depending on the fore-and-aft mules that carried her for a smooth transit back to Jerusalem and the carriage road. Woe betide her if either of the beasts came down or even stumbled!
When I wrote to you from Jerusalem I told you how convincing one feels the traditional sites of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre to be in spite of modern scepticism. But more modern still is the verification of their authenticity. It has lately been proved, by that "research" which we seem to require nowadays, that they stand _outside_ the line of the city walls of our Lord's time. The great stumbling-block to those who could not accept the word of Tradition consisted in the idea that those sites had always been within the city as now, for it is known that the Jewish law forbade places of execution and of burial within the walls. To show you how the shape of Jerusalem, marked out by its fortifications, has changed during its long history, I may mention that, whereas the house of the Last Supper stood within the lines in Our Lord's time, it stands far outside the walls of to-day.
* * * * *
And now the last sunset we shall see from the Land of Promise is steeping Lebanon in rose and violet, and the slender shadows of the palms are lengthening across the sandy spaces of the plain. The sea has not a sail upon it, and the sky not even a cloud "the size of a man's hand," such as Elijah's servant saw from the top of this Carmel which overshadows us.
Undisturbed by wind or cloud, the mind can dwell upon thoughts which the approaching hour of leave-taking renders more poignant.
* * * * *
The afterglow is now kindling its fires, and transfiguring a scene one had thought could not be rendered more beautiful. Of all the splendours of Nature the afterglow is the most surprising. I think in the East it comes more swiftly after sunset than in Italy, and it is more astonishing in its display of light. I have often, in Egypt, tried to paint it, but it is no easy matter, for, although the light seems so powerful it is really too low to allow one to see one's work. The sky becomes a low-toned grey-green-blue ... what shall I call it?--a tone of the greatest subtlety, against which the illuminated objects on the earth shine with the colours of flame rather than of the sun. There follows this last effort of the dying day what I may call the last sigh,--a few moments of delicate greys of infinite tenderness, and then night,--absolute night. They are ringing the Angelus up at the Carmelite Monastery on the wooded heights. Those monks live a lonely life on the mountain whence their Order takes its name. The author of _The Land and the Book_ speaks of this lonely monastery with its monks "chanting Latin to nobody." Only to the great God Who chose this little country wherein to testify His love for man; Who has trodden with weary feet those hills we have traversed in the journey that ends to-day!
_Friday, 1st May._
At 1.30 this morning we left these blessed shores, deeply grateful for the privilege of treading the soil of Palestine which had been accorded us. We put off in boats for the Austrian Lloyd steamer lying in the offing by the light of a waning moon. By 8 A.M. we anchored off Jaffa, where we lay all day, and at sunset stood out to sea, soon losing sight of the Holy Land in the shades of night.
_The letterpress has been printed by Messrs. R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh._
End of Project Gutenberg's Letters from the Holy Land, by Elizabeth Butler