CHAPTER XII. THE SCENE OF THE MINISTRY. 'Give true hearts but earth and sky, And some flowers to bloom and die; Lowly thoughts may best infuse." KEBLE, "First Sunday after Epiphany." CHRIST's first miracle of Cana was a sign that He came, not to call His disciples out of the world and its ordinary duties, but to make men happier, nobler, better in the world. He willed that they should be husbands, and fathers, and citizens, not eremites or monks. He would show that He approved the brightness of pure society, and the mirth of innocent gatherings, no less than the ecstasies of the ascetic in the wilderness, or the visions of the mystic in his solitary cell. And, as pointing the same moral, there was something significant in the place which He chose as the scene of His earliest ministry. St. John had preached in the lonely wastes by the Dead Sea waters; his voice had been echoed back by the flinty precipices that frown over the sultry Ghôr. The city nearest to the scene of His teaching had been built in defiance of a curse, and the road to it led through "the bloody way." All around him breathed the dreadful associa tions of a guilty and desolated past; the very waves were bituminous; the very fruits crumbled into foul ashes under the touch; the very dust beneath his feet lay, hot and white, over the relics of an abominable race. There, beside those leaden waters, under that copper heaven, amid those burning wildernesses and scarred ravines, had he preached the baptism of repentance. But Christ, amid the joyous band of His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples, chose as the earliest centre of His ministry a bright and busy city, whose marble buildings were mirrored in a limpid sea. That little city was Capernaum. It rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly Paradise. There were no such trees, and no such gardens, anywhere in Palestine as in the land of Gennesareth. The very name means "garden of abundance," and the numberless flowers blossom over a little plain which is "in sight like unto an emerald." It was doubtless a part of Christ's divine plan that His ministry should begin amid scenes so beautiful, and that the good tidings, which revealed to mankind their loftiest hopes and purest pleasures, should be first proclaimed in a region of unusual loveliness. The features of the scene are neither gorgeous nor colossal; there is nothing here of the mountain gloom or the mountain glory; nothing of that "dread magnificence" which overawes us as we gaze on the fiery dome of tropical volcanoes, or the icy precipices of northern hills. Had our life on earth been full of wild and terrible 1 John ii. 12, Kaтéßn—a touch of accuracy, since the road is one long descent. 2 "Quare vocatur Gennezar? ob hortos principum (ganne sarim)” (Lightfoot, Cent. Chorogr. lxxix.). catastrophes, then it might have been fitly symbolised by scenes which told only of deluge and conflagration; but these green pastures and still waters, these bright birds and flowering oleanders, the dimpling surface of that inland sea, so doubly delicious and refreshful in a sultry land, all correspond with the characteristics of a life composed of innocent and simple elements, and brightened with the ordinary pleasures which, like the rain and the sunshine, are granted to all alike. What the traveller will see, as he emerges from the Valley of Doves, and catches his first eager glimpse of Gennesareth, will be a small inland sea, like a harp in shape,1 thirteen miles long and six broad. On the farther or eastern side runs a green strip about a quarter of a mile in breadth, beyond which rises, to the height of some 900 feet above the level of the lake, an escarpment of desolate hills, scored with grey ravines, without tree, or village, or vestige of cultivation-the frequent scene of our Lord's retirement when, after His weary labours, He sought the deep refreshment of solitude with God. The lake-with its glittering crystal, and fringe of flowering oleanders, through whose green leaves shine the bright blue wings of the roller-bird, and the kingfishers may be seen in multitudes dashing down at the fish that glance beneath them-lies at the bottom of a great dent or basin in the earth's surface, more than 500 feet below the level of the Mediterranean.3 Hence the This is said to be the origin of the ancient name Chinnereth," a beautiful onomatopoeia for a harp. The Wady Hammâm, or "Valley of Doves," is a beautiful gorge in the hills by which the traveller may descend from Hattin to Mejdel. 2 Except at one spot, the probable scene of the cure of the Gadarene demoniacs where the hills run close up to the water. 3 Heuce the plain of Gennesareth is called by the Arabs El-Ghuweir, burning and enervating heat of the valley; but hence, too, the variety of its foliage, the fertility of its soil, the luxuriance of its flora, the abundant harvests that ripen a month earlier than they do elsewhere, and the number of rivulets that tumble down the hill-sides into the lake. The shores are now deserted. With the exception of the small and decaying town of Tiberias-crumbling into the last stage of decrepitude -and the "frightful village" of Mejdel (the ancient Magdala), where the degradation of the inhabitants is best shown by the fact that the children play stark naked in the street-there is not a single inhabited spot on its once crowded shores.1 One miserable, crazy boat-and that not always procurable-has replaced its gay and numerous fleet. As the fish are still abundant, no fact could show more clearly the dejected inanity and apathetic enervation of the present dwellers upon its shores. But the national features still remain. The lake still lies unchanged in the bosom of the hills, reflecting every varying gleam of the atmosphere like an opal set in emeralds; the waters are still as beautiful in their clearness as when the boat of Peter lay rocking on their ripples, and Jesus gazed into their crystal depths; the cup-like basin still seems to overflow with its flood of sunlight; the air is still balmy with natural perfumes; the turtle-dove still murmurs in the valleys, and the pelican fishes in the waves; and there are palms, or "the little hollow," to distinguish it from El-Ghôr, “the great hollow," i.e., the Jordan valley. 1 A few Bedawîn may sometimes be found at Ain et-Tâbijah (Bethsaida). Renan truly observes that a furnace such as El-Ghuweir now is, could hardly have been the scene of such prodigious activity, had not the climate been modified by the numberless trees, which under the withering influence of Islam have all been destroyed. PLAIN OF GENNESARETH. 177 and green fields, and streams, and grey heaps of ruin. And what it has lost in population and activity, it has gained in solemnity and interest. If every vestige of human habitation should disappear from beside it, and the jackal and the hyena should howl about the shattered fragments of the synagogues where once Christ taught, yet the fact that He chose it as the scene of His opening ministry1 will give a sense of sacredness and pathos to its lonely waters till time shall be no more. Yet widely different must have been its general aspect in the time of Christ, and far more strikingly beautiful, because far more richly cultivated. Josephus, in a passage of glowing admiration, after describing the sweetness of its waters, and the delicate temperature of its air, its palms, and vines, and oranges, and figs, and almonds, and pomegranates, and warm springs, says that the seasons seemed to compete for the honour of its possession, and Nature to have created it as a kind of emulative challenge, wherein she had gathered all the elements of her strength. The Talmudists see in the fact that this plain-"the ambition of Nature"belonged to the tribe of Naphtali, a fulfilment of the Mosaic blessing, that that tribe should be "satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the Lord;"3 and they had the proverb, true in a deeper sense than they suppose, that "God had created seven seas in the land of Canaan, but one only-the Sea of Galilee-had He chosen for Himself." 1 Acts x. 37: St. Peter says, "That word which was preached throughout all Judæa, and began from Galilee." Luke xxiii. 5: "Beginning from Galilee." The Rabbis refer to its extraordinary fruitfulness. (Bab. Pesachim, f. 8,2; Berachoth, f. 44, 1; Lightfoot, ubi supr.; Caspari, p. 69. &c.) QiXotiμíav ἄν τις εἴποι τῆς φύσεως (Jos. B. Jud. iii. 10, §§ 7, 8). 3 Deut. xxxiii. 23. M* |