RAMBLINGS IN THE HOLY LAND.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume I, Issue 7, 1 September 1855, Page 26

RAMBLINGS IN THE HOLY LAND.

The Holy Land, even now, is greener and fresher than any country we have seen since we left Jersey and France. The hand of God is evidently upon it, causing cou tless thorns and thistles to spring up, even upon Bethel and the mountain of Abraham. But the moment that! even the rudest culture is applied to its hills and; valleys, it becomes a waving plain of eorn; a forest of olive-trees, fig-trees, and vines; an evergreen meadow covered with cattle. What a paradise this land must have been in the days of its prosperity ; and what a paradise it may again become when the rebellious nation acknowledges the Saviour! The valley of Naphtali is beautiful as an emerald ; the little plain of Capernaum Is fertile as a garden ; and many a hill of Ephraim resembles a hundred terraces rising one above another in shady promenades. No doubt in summer the rich green of the fig-tree, and of the trailing vine, relieves the sombre foliage of the olive-trees; but at this season of the year the olive-groves alone sufiice to adorn the hills. But these delightful spots only serve to show the extent and completeness of the desolation which reigns around. The plain of Naphtali, on which might graze a thousand herds, soon becomes an immense morass extending to the waters of Merom, and gives sustenance to nothing but pelicans and cormorants, and the myriads of wild ducks that we see continually wheeling in long curved lines above the marsh. The mass of tall reeds that shelter these wild fowl, seen from the cave in which we slept, glowed at sunset with every warm and brilliant tint: ♦ in Jt G mornin S it *as shrouded bv a lazy mist. The great plain which stretches for thirty miles between Carmel and the Jordan, and for twenty, between the hills of Nazareth and those of Samaria, also presents a most desolate aspect. Instead of swarms of labourers from Nazareth, Nam, and Endor,—from the villages on and around Mount Tabor,—from Jezreel, Megiddo, and the cities of the plain, —we saw, during a whole day s journey, but two solitary Arabs, guiding with one hand a very primitive plough, and goading on a yoke of black oxen with a sort of spear held in the other. The high road is a scarcely beaten path, filled with deep and dangerous holes made by the rain or burrowed by! wild beasts. The green slopes of Little Mount Hermon—whose dew, according to the sweet singer of Israel, was a fit emblem of fraternal love •—now he uncultivated; and, indeed, most of the hills of which the Holy Land is in great part composed, are nothing but arid masses of stone. Notwithstanding all this, Palestine is more beautiful than Syria or Greece, chiefly on account of the greater freshness of its verdure. We saw the Jordan winding along the plain of Naphtali,

and, after being some time lost to view, expanding into the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee ! With what indescribable emotions we first beheld its waters! How delight fal to walk quietly along its shores and read the story of Jesus ! With a Bible in one hand and a map in the other, and this Sea of Galilee before our eyes, with what hallowed pleasure we exclaimed, —Here, at the foot of this hill, must have been Bethsaida. In that little valley must have been Capernaum. There Jesus often stayed, and talked to peasants, probably not unlike those we meet. On the other side of the lake are the cliffs of Bashan, and the country of the Gergesenes. How of r en has Jesus crossed and recrossed these waters! As He walked along the beach among the fishermen, He called His first disciples, —men, probably, Buch as we see now, of robu3t form and manly countenance, with dark lustrous eyes, and black hair, mustaebios, and beard, and attired in large turban, and at most two garment* of the coarsest texture. How many a Simon Peter in appearance have I not seen at Tiberias! It may have been here, where we are jostled by the crowd, that Jesus was so thronged by the multitude that He entered into a boat to preach to them. The surrounding scenery gave Him objects ♦hat would engage the attention alike of the fisher and of the husbandman. Neither would He fail to touch the hearts of the women, (then, as now, in the East so generally despised,) by condescending to speak to them with softer accents and with kinder look, as they stood in the background eager to hear. Everywhere He spread health as He passed, and called forth love to God and man.—On the opposite shore I see a spot where He may have landed; and, further up the slopes on which He may have fed the five thousand. Yonder, He may have embarked when He sent His disciples in a boat without Him. Near that far peak He may then have retired to pray. My eyes may now rest on the very place where He walked on the water. I fancy I see Him advance: the disciples are afraid; Peter leaps into the sea, his faith wavers, he sinks. Christ stretches forth His hand, as a father to bis ehild; saves, reproves, embraces him, all at once. I fancy the waters became as calm as they are now, reflecting their fiowery banks so perfectly, that, in some parts, I cannot tell where land and water meet. And I love to fancy that they became radiant as now with every sunset tint, when Jesus, roused from sleep by the anxious disciples, stood on deck and said, "Peace, be still." But soon we pass by the Mount of Beatitudes, j where Jesus, seeing the multitudes, pronounced those remarkable sayings, beginning, "Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." My horse trod under foot the lilies which entirely cover acres of ground, I could not but think of Jesus, when, near the close of His

discourse, He pointed to this gay expanse, and said, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Instead of going by the shortest route, we passed by the probable site of Cana of Galilee. Women drawing water at a well, and a few mud huts, were all that we saw. At length we came to Nazareth, a better built town than any we bad seen since Damascus, situate on the slope of a calcareous hill. And was it here, then, that Jesus lived as an humble carpenter's boy ? They took us to see the church and grotto of the Annunciation, the house of Joseph the carpenter, the rock whence the inhabitants wished to throw Jesus headlong, the stone which (as is affirmed by uninterrupted tradition) served fcr a table when Jesus ate with His disciples both before and after His resurrection. Let us leave fathers and pilgrims to believe, and Protestants and sceptics to doubt; all this concerns us not. What we know is, that this is Nazareth. and that here Christ spent much of His youth! It is less in visiting the shows, than in walking through the streets, that we feel how often Jesus"the carpenter's son" was grieved at the wjekedness of a perverse generation. While standing on the summit of the hill that overhangs the town, —and while gazing on Mount Carmel, the plains of Acre and of Tyre, and the blue line of the Great Sea beyond,—we may well think of Him who so often went up into a mountain apart to pray. From Nazareth we travelled to Jerusalem. How much more worthy is the road between these cities to be called "The Sacred Way," than those of Rome or Eleusis!—As we entered the plain of Esdraelon, we saw the graceful semicircle of Mount Tabor at our left, and to us it was no ordinary mountain. Every step on that road was more than classic ground. To the east where the sites of Endor, Main, and Jezreel, now dotted by insignificant villages; but there still rose Tabor, Little Hermon, and Gilboa, while Jordan flowed far off behind them. Great Carmel stretched its barren length on the west, until in the distance it jutted out into the sea. The sun darted through clouds that were seen over it, suggested the drama of Elijah's sacrifice, when Ahab rushed across this plain to Jezreel, the man of God running before him. How the tragedies of Naboth and Jezebel —the marshalling of armies—the victories and defeats—and the long trains of captive nations—rushed upon the mind! And as we passed the grassy, undulating hills of Gilboa, how touching seemed the lamentation of David, "The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen !" Wesley an-Methodist Magazine.