Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land Part 14

I remember the old Arab fisherman, who was camped with his family in a black tent on a meadow where several lively brooks came in (one of them large enough to turn a mill). I persuaded him by gestures to wade out into the shallow part of the lake and cast his bell-net for fish. He gathered the net in his hand, and whirled it around his head. The leaden weights around the bottom spread out in a wide circle and splashed into the water. He drew the net toward him by the cord, the ring of sinkers sweeping the bottom, and lifted it slowly, carefully--but no fish!

Then I rigged up my pocket fly-rod with a gossamer leader and two tiny trout-flies, a Royal Coach-man and a Queen of the Water, and began to cast along the crystal pools and rapids of the larger stream. How merrily the fish rose there, and in the ripples where the brooks ran out into the lake. There were half a dozen different kinds of fish, but I did not know the name of any of them. There was one that looked like a black ba.s.s, and others like white perch and sunfish; and one kind was very much like a grayling. But they were not really of the _salmo_ family, I knew, for none of them had the soft fin in front of the tail.

How surprised the old fisherman was when he saw the fish jumping at those tiny hooks with feathers; and how round the eyes of his children were as they looked on; and how pleased they were with the _bakhshish_ which they received, including a couple of baithooks for the eldest boy!

I remember the place where we ate our lunch in a small grove of eucalyptus-trees, with sweet-smelling yellow acacias blossoming around us. It was near the site which some identify with the ancient Bethsaida, but others say that it was farther to the east, and others again say that Capernaum was really located here. The whole problem of these lake cities, where they stood, how they supported such large populations (not less than fifteen thousand people in each), is difficult and may never be solved. But it did not trouble us deeply. We were content to be beside the same waters, among the same hills, that Jesus knew and loved.

It was here, along this sh.o.r.e, that He found Simon and his brother Andrew casting their net, and James and his brother John mending theirs, and called them to come with Him. These fishermen, with their frank and free hearts unspoiled by the sophistries of the Pharisees, with their minds unhampered by social and political ambitions, followers of a vocation which kept them out of doors and reminded them daily of their dependence on the bounty of G.o.d,--these children of nature, and others like them, were the men whom He chose for His disciples, the listeners who had ears to hear His marvellous gospel.

It was here, on these pale, green waves, that He sat in a little boat, near the sh.o.r.e, and spoke to the mult.i.tude who had gathered to hear Him.

He spoke of the deep and tranquil confidence that man may learn from nature, from the birds and the flowers.

He spoke of the infinite peace of the heart that knows the true meaning of love, which is giving and blessing, and the true secret of courage, which is loyalty to the truth.

He spoke of the G.o.d whom we can trust as a child trusts its father, and of the Heaven which waits for all who do good to their fellowmen.

He spoke of the wisdom whose fruit is not pride but humility, of the honour whose crown is not authority but service, of the purity which is not outward but inward, and of the joy which lasts forever.

He spoke of forgiveness for the guilty, of compa.s.sion for the weak, of hope for the desperate.

He told these poor and lowly folk that their souls were unspeakably precious, and that He had come to save them and make them inheritors of an eternal kingdom. He told them that He had brought this message from G.o.d, their Father and His Father.

He spoke with the simplicity of one who knows, with the a.s.surance of one who has seen, with the certainty and clearness of one for whom doubt does not exist.

He offered Himself, in His stainless purity, in His supreme love, as the proof and evidence of His gospel, the bread of Heaven, the water of life, the Saviour of sinners, the light of the world. "Come unto Me," He said, "and I will give you rest."

This was the heavenly music that came into the world by the Lake of Galilee. And its voice has spread through the centuries, comforting the sorrowful, restoring the penitent, cheering the despondent, and telling all who will believe it, that our human life is worth living, because it gives each one of us the opportunity to share in the Love which is sovereign and immortal.

_A PSALM OF THE GOOD TEACHER_

_The Lord is my teacher: I shall not lose the way to wisdom._

_He leadeth me in the lowly path of learning, He prepareth a lesson for me every day; He findeth the clear fountains of instruction, Little by little he showeth me the beauty of the truth._

_The world is a great book that he hath written, He turneth the leaves for me slowly; They are all inscribed with images and letters, His face poureth light on the pictures and the words._

_Then am I glad when I perceive his meaning, He taketh me by the hand to the hill-top of vision; In the valley also he walketh beside me, And in the dark places he whispereth to my heart._

_Yea, though my lesson be hard it is not hopeless, For the Lord is very patient with his slow scholar; He will wait awhile for my weakness, He will help me to read the truth through tears._

_Surely thou wilt enlighten me daily by joy and by sorrow: And lead me at last, O Lord, to the perfect knowledge of thee._

XI

THE SPRINGS OF JORDAN

I

THE HILL-COUNTRY OF NAPHTALI

Naphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free highland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep mountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between.

"Naphtali is a hind let loose," said the old song of the Sons of Jacob (Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our way northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people dwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns on sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of tillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty, and they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed.

Our good little horses are shod with round plates of iron, and they clatter noisily among the loose stones and slip on the rocky ledges, as we strike over the hills from Capernaum, without a path, to join the main trail at Khan Yubb Yusuf.

We are skirting fields of waving wheat and barley, but there are no houses to be seen. Far and wide the sea of verdure rolls around us, broken only by ridges of grayish rock and scarped cliffs of reddish basalt. We wade saddle-deep in herbage; broad-leaved fennel and trembling reeds; wild asparagus and artichokes; a hundred kinds of flowering weeds; acres of last year's thistles, standing blanched and ghostlike in the summer sunshine.

The phantom city of Safed gleams white from its far-away hilltop,--the latest and perhaps the last of the famous seats of rabbinical learning.

It is one of the sacred places of modern Judaism. No Hebrew pilgrim fails to visit it. Here, they say, the Messiah will one day reveal himself, and after establishing His kingdom, will set out to conquer the world.

But it is not to the city, shining like a flake of mica from the greenness of the distant mountain, that our looks and thoughts are turning. It is backward to the lucent sapphire of the Lake of Galilee, upon whose sh.o.r.es our hearts have seen the secret vision, heard the inward message of the Man of Nazareth.

Ridge after ridge reveals new outlooks toward its tranquil loveliness.

Turn after turn, our winding way leads us to what we think must be the parting view. Sleeping in still, forsaken beauty among the sheltering hills, and open to the cloudless sky which makes its water like a little heaven, it seems to silently return our farewell looks with pleading for remembrance. Now, after one more round among the inclosing ridges, another vista opens, the widest and the most serene of all.

Farewell, dear Lake of Jesus! Our eyes may never rest on thee again; but surely they will not forget thee. For now, as often we come to some fair water in the Western mountains, or unfold the tent by some lone lakeside in the forests of the North, the lapping of thy waves will murmur through our thoughts; thy peaceful brightness will arise before us; we shall see the rose-flush of thy oleanders, and the waving of thy reeds; the sweet, faint smell of thy gold-flowered acacias will return to us from purple orchids and white lilies. Let the blessing that is thine go with us everywhere in G.o.d's great out-of-doors, and our hearts never lose the comradeship of Him who made thee holiest among all the waters of the world!

The Khan of Joseph's Pit is a ruin; a huge and broken building deserted by the caravans which used to throng this highway from Damascus to the cities of the lake, and to the ports of Acre and Joppa, and to the metropolis of Egypt. It is hard to realize that this wild moorland path by which we are travelling was once a busy road, filled with camels, horses, chariots, foot-pa.s.sengers, clanking companies of soldiers; that these crumbling, cavernous walls, overgrown with th.o.r.n.y capers and wild marjoram and mandragora, were once crowded every night with a motley mob of travellers and merchants; that this pool of muddy water, gloomily reflecting the ruins, was once surrounded by flocks and herds and beasts of burden; that only a few hours to the southward there was once a ring of splendid, thriving, bustling towns around the sh.o.r.es of Galilee, out of which and into which the mult.i.tudes were forever journeying. Now they are all gone from the road, and the vast wayside caravanserai is sleeping into decay--a dormitory for bats and serpents.

What is it that makes the wreck of an inn more lonely and forbidding than any other ruin?

A few miles more of riding along the flanks of the mountains bring us to a place where we turn a corner suddenly, and come upon the full view of the upper basin of the Jordan; a vast oval green cup, with the little Lake of Huleh lying in it like a blue jewel, and the giant bulk of Mount Hermon towering beyond it, crowned and cloaked with silver snows.

Up the steep and slippery village street of Rosh Pinnah, a modern Jewish colony founded by the Rothschilds in 1882, we scramble wearily to our camping-ground for the night. Above us on a hilltop is the old Arab village of Jauneh, brown, picturesque, and filthy. Around us are the colonists' new houses, with their red-tiled roofs and white walls. Two straight streets running in parallel lines up the hillside are roughly paved with cobble-stones and lined with trees; mulberries, white-flowered acacias, eucalyptus, feathery pepper-trees, and rose-bushes. Water runs down through pipes from a copious spring on the mountain, and flows abundantly into every house, plashing into covered reservoirs and open stone basins for watering the cattle. Below us the long avenues of eucalyptus, the broad vineyards filled with low, bushy vines, the immense orchards of pale-green almond-trees, the smiling wheat-fields, slope to the lake and encircle its lower end.

The children who come to visit our camp on the terrace wear shoes and stockings, carry school-books in their bags, and bring us offerings of little bunches of sweet-smelling garden roses and pendulous locust-blooms. We are a thousand years away from the Khan of Joseph's Pit; but we can still see the old mud village on the height against the sunset, and the camp-fires gleaming in front of the black Bedouin tents far below, along the edge of the marshes. We are perched between the old and the new, between the nomad and the civilized man, and the unchanging white head of Hermon looks down upon us all.

In the morning, on the way down, I stop at the door of a house and fall into talk with an intelligent, schoolmasterish sort of man, a Roumanian, who speaks a little weird German. Is the colony prospering? Yes, but not so fast that it makes them giddy. What are they raising? Wheat and barley, a few vegetables, a great deal of almonds and grapes. Good harvests? Some years good, some years bad; the Arabs bad every year, terrible thieves; but the crops are plentiful most of the time. Are the colonists happy, contented? A thin smile wrinkles around the man's lips as he answers with the statement of a world-wide truth, "_Ach, Herr, der Ackerbauer ist nie zufrieden._" ("Ah, Sir, the farmer is never contented.")

II

THE WATERS OF MEROM

All day we ride along the hills skirting the marshy plain of Huleh. Here the springs and parent streams of Jordan are gathered, behind the mountains of Naphtali and at the foot of Hermon, as in a great green basin about the level of the ocean, for the long, swift rush down the sunken trench which leads to the deep, sterile bitterness of the Dead Sea. Was there ever a river that began so fair and ended in such waste and desolation?

Here in this broad, level, well-watered valley, along the borders of these vast beds of papyrus and rushes intersected by winding, hidden streams, Joshua and his fierce clans of fighting men met the Kings of the north with their horses and chariots, "at the waters of Merom," in the last great battle for the possession of the Promised Land. It was a furious conflict, the hordes of footmen against the squadrons of hors.e.m.e.n; but the shrewd command that came from Joshua decided it: "Hough their horses and burn their chariots with fire." The Canaanites and the Amorites and the Hitt.i.tes and the Hivites were swept from the field, driven over the western mountains, and the Israelites held the Jordan from Jericho to Hermon. (Joshua xi:1-15.)