/ / A VISIT TO MY FATHER-LAND, BEING NOTES OF A JOURNEY TO SYRIA AND PALESTINE IN 1843, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cun¬ ning.”—Ps. cxxxvii. 6. BY RIDLEY H. HERSCHELL, AUTHOR OF A “ BRIEF SKETCH OF THE JEWS,” &C., &C. PHILADELPHIA: HENRY LONGSTRETH, No. 347 MARKET STREET. STEREOTYPED BY R. P. MOGRIDGE. PRINTED BY SMITH & PETERS, Franklin Buildings, Sixth S^eet below Aren, Pliiladeinhm. \ TO SIR CULLING EARDLEY SMITH, BART. My Beloved Friend, f It may appear absurd to dedicate this humble production to any one; but I feel pleasure in thus acknowledging my gratitude to you, by whose kind¬ ness my visit to my father-land was planned, and through whose liberality it was accomplished. This visit has been productive of much enjoyment to me, in which enjoyment you would have largely participated, had you been able, as at first proposed, to visit Palestine along with me; since, so far from being ashamed to claim affinity with the despised Jew, I know it is rather a source of gratification to (hi) IV DEDICATION. you that you are connected with the seed of Abra¬ ham. And however the expression of my feelings in regard to the Eastern churches may be viewed by others, I know you will join me in regretting, that anv British Christians should have thrown an ad- •/ ditional stumbling-block in the way of the Jews, by recognising these corrupt communions as churches of Christ. I am, my beloved Friend, Gratefully and affectionately yours, RIDLEY H. HERSCHELL. London, May 1st, 1844. f PREFACE TO THE FOURTH THOUSAND. I cannot allow another edition of this little work to go forth, without expressing my thankfulness, that, with all its faults, it has been so favorably re¬ ceived by the public. I am well aware that some things I have said in it are very unpalatable to many whom I sincerely love. I have been asked to purge it of these, and to reduce it to a simple statement regarding the present appearance of those localities mentioned in Scripture. To this I can only reply: God forbid that I should ever cease to testify against that which I believe He sees to be evil. If what I have said were not in some measure felt to be true , it would not have caused the annoyance it has done to some sincere Christians. These are not times for temporizing: “ Let God be true, and every man a liar,” in so far as he opposes the truth of God. 1* (v) VI PREFACE. I have been told that some, who cannot impugn the truth of any thing I have stated, have imputed unworthy motives to me in making the statements I have done. With this I have nothing to do ; they, and not I, must answer for their evil surmises. It would be absurd to expect our course to be as smooth and pleasant when we go against the general current of religious opinion, as it is when we glide along with it. It has gratified me much to learn that this humble publication has been the means of drawing the at¬ tention of many to the study of the prophetic Scrip¬ tures. May it continue to be thus honored. London, October ls£, 1845. CONTENTS American Missionaries - Anna, Saint - - - Athens - - - Avignon—Pope’s Palace - Baalbec - Burka - Bethany - Bethlehem - Bethsaida - - - Beyrout - Brook Kedron Capernaum - - - Concluding Reflections - Consecration of a Church - Constantinople Conversation with a Jew - Corfu - Cornelius - - - - Damascus - - - Dead Sea - - - Druze Prince - - - Education in Syria Egypt - Empress Helena Fig Orchard - Fountain of Elisha Garden of Gethsemane - Gilgal - Greek and Romish Churches Greek Church Greek Church Schools - Isle of Patmos - Introductory Remarks - Jacob’s Well Jaffa - - - Jericho - Jerusalem - Jews’ Place of Wailing Jews, The - Page - 177 19 - 33 14 - 60 94 - 139 - 158 - 74 58 - 161 74 - 185 53 27 - 30 - 171 - 61 - 165 - 181 177,182 - 184 - 139 - 92 - 168 - 134 167 - 142 31 - 178 55 - 9 - 103 - 170 - 169 - 116 - 131 - 189 17 at Rome (vii) Vlll CONTENTS Jewish Ladies John the Baptist Joseph’s Tomb Lake of Tiberias Lubban - Letter of the Archbishop - Lepers in Jerusalem Lyons - Mar Yohanan Mar Saba - - - Message to Queen Victoria Mission at Jerusalem Miraculous Fire Mount Carmel - Mount Moriah Mount of Olives Mount Tabor Mount Zion - Nazareth - Nestorians - Paris - Persecution of the Jews - Pool of Siloam St. Peter’s - Popish Coins Pope’s Postillions Prayers to St. Anna Prophecy of Ezekiel - - Rachel’s Tomb Regeneration - Rhodes - River Jordan - Rome - - - - Spiritual State of Palestine Samaria - - - Sardinian Dominions Sasa - Scene in the Holy Sepulchre Shechem - Shiloh - Slave Market Syra—Smyrna - Tractarianism in America Tyre - Visit to the Mint - Visit to Loretto - Visit from the Bedouins Visit to the Pasha Want of Medical Aid Wilderness of Judea Worship of St. Anna - Page - 66 163 - 109 73 - 110 149 - 156 13 - 38 160 - 47 153 - 146 174 - 122 136 - 82 120 - 85 37 - 12 67 - 133 18 - 25 26 - 21 124 - 157 64 - 57 74 , 165 - 16 90 - 95 15 - 71 144 - 100 111 - 51 33,34 - 38 176 - 24 26 - 72 182 - 81 162 - 20 A VISIT TO MY FATHER-LAND. There are already so many journals of travels in Palestine, as well as more elaborate and valuable works illustrative of Scripture history and customs, that I at first determined to confine myself to a few observations on the state of my brethren, the Jews, unconnected with any personal narrative, or notice of the country of my fathers. But when I consider that all these works are beyond the reach of the poor of Christ’s flock, and that many of the middle class, also, have not leisure to peruse them, I feel it right, for their sakes, to mention something about those places that are interesting to every one who loves the word of God. This I have chosen to do in the mode which I knew would be most agreeable to those who have the first claim on me, the people under my pastoral care, by giving the substance of the journal written at each place; as, to them, at least, the impression made, and the thoughts suggested, on the spot, will be far more interesting than any more elaborate description drawn up afterwards. For the ( 9 ) 10 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. same reason, I shall not confine my observations to Palestine, but make such remarks as occurred to me on the moral and religious state of the different countries through which I passed on my way thither. The present state of the professing Church of Christ is not only interesting to all who have the glory of God at heart, but is intimately connected with the subject which at present occupies so many minds, the conversion of my brethren, the Jews, to Chris¬ tianity. Besides the above, I feel that I have another, and a less pleasing duty to perform. A conflict has arisen in these latter days between the word of God and the word of man, in a quarter where such a conflict was supposed long since to have terminated. If “ teaching for doctrine the commandments of men,” be attended with evil, even amid the Protestant light of England, how disastrous must be its conse¬ quences amid the darkness of Greek and Romish superstition! Yet many of the saints of God, who see and mourn over its evil developments in British colonies and foreign countries, are, from their peculiar position, hampered in their testimony against them. Against these I feel that I must testify boldly. This is no time to wink at evil, and speak smoothly of it, in order to please men. A matter that in itself is merely trifling and absurd, may become a soul- destroying error, if it countenance and confirm men in their allegiance to those corrupt communities, INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 11 falsely called Christian Churches, that degrade the religion of Christ into a routine of outward forms and observances. I believe we have arrived at the time when every thing that can be shaken, must and shall be shaken, that the things which cannot be shaken, and they only, may remain.* Let not the Lord’s people seek to prop up any thing that is false. “ How does God view this ? Does the idea, conveyed to the minds of men by this or that practice or form of words, accord with His eternal truth ?” This is the test to which we must bring all things: these questions, solemnly put, as in His sight, would at once solve many difficulties, and prevent all resort to that modern loop-hole, the non-natural sense. The events that are daily passing around us, loudly call on us to oppose the spirit of Antichrist, whether it meet us in the form of professed Protestantism, or of Greek or Romish superstition. The details of my intercourse with the Jews would give additional interest to the journal, if introduced in their proper places; but this I have resolved to avoid ; and to give what relates to them in a separate form at the end. Nothing can be more hurtful to the cause of Christianity among them, than the re¬ porting of conversations held with them upon the subject, with such circumstances of time and place being mentioned, as point them out to their towns- * Heb. xii. 26, 27. 12 PARIS. men or acquaintances. If a respectable Jew find that he cannot converse on Christianity with a mis¬ sionary, or a converted brother, without its being blazoned abroad, he will naturally be reluctant to do so; and the intercourse between English and foreign Jews is so constant, that whatever is published con¬ cerning them in this country, soon becomes known on the continent. Having made these few preliminary remarks, I shall now proceed to give such extracts from my journal, as I think will be acceptable to the class for whom it is chiefly intended; adding such re¬ flections as occurred to me either at the time or after¬ wards. In supplying such information as may be necessary for readers who have not perused other works on the subject, I shall freely make use of the descriptions and statements of abler writers than myself. I left home, accompanied by my friend, Mr. J. F. M., on the 9th of February, 1843, and reached Paris on the 11th. Although in London we are too well used to the sight of vanity and sin, yet there is something in the ungodliness of Paris that cannot fail to strike one on entering it for the first time, or on returning to it after a long absence. You feel that you are where “ Satan’s seat isand seem to behold the awful sight of a city wholly given over to the service of sin and folly. But it is a comfort to know that even here, there are a few of the children LYONS. 13 of God. It was delightful, in the midst of all this evil, to unite with a little flock of true worshippers; who have been called out of the errors of Popery, and the darkness of nature, into the marvellous light of the Gospel. The Rev. Mark Wilks has done, and is doing, a great work in Paris; and it is very desirable that his schools, and other schemes of use¬ fulness, should receive more aid from the Christian people of Britain than they have yet enjoyed. The salvation of souls should be equally precious in their sight, whether this is sought to be accomplished on the plains of Africa, or in the lanes of Paris. At Lyons, also, there is an interesting work going on, similar to that in Paris. The labors of the Rev. C. A. Cordes, the French Protestant pastor, have been greatly blessed; and the schools here, as well as in Paris, have been of much use, not only to Gentile, but also to some Jewish children. One little anecdote I must mention. Mrs. Cordes was one day questioning the girls on religious subjects, and asked one little girl what was the ground of her hope for eternity. The child answered: “ That Christ died for me.” On hearing this reply, a num¬ ber of the children cried out: “ Oh ! she is a Jewess, and yet she says Christ died for her !” “ Well,” rejoined the little girl, “ though I am a Jewess, still Christ died for me.” How remarkable it is, that, even in childhood, the Gentiles are accustomed to look on the Jews as strangers and outcasts! 2 14 AVIGNON-POPE’S PAiACE. At Avignon I was much interested by the ruins of the Pope’s palace, the scene of the martyrdom of many of the saints of God. We were shown first into the chapel, where was the altar before which the children of God, bound with chains, had to make a declaration of their faith. We were then shown the dungeon where they had been imprisoned; upon the walls of which are still legible several texts of Scripture inscribed by these faithful witnesses for the truth. — “ Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled “ Watch and pray, that ye enter not into tempta¬ tion “ He shall call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble ; I will deliver him, and honor him.” These, and many other ap¬ propriate texts, are still to be seen. These saints, who “ loved not their lives unto the death,” being dead, yet speak; telling us to be faithful and uncom¬ promising ; to resist, if need be, even “ unto blood, striving against sin,” and false religion. They also testify how precious, to the suffering saint, is the re¬ vealed word of God; and how, in all circumstances, the same blessed truths are the staff and stay of God’s people. We were also shown a curiously constructed place, strong and massively built, something like a brick-kiln, with a sort of chimney at the top. Here some precious sons and daughters of God were burned to death “ for the testimony of Jesus part SARDINIAN DOMINIONS. 15 of the wall is still discolored by the smoke of the fagots. After this we were conducted to the torture room, in which some of the instruments of torture still remain ; — awful tokens of that persecuting church, which hates the light now as much as ever it did. At Nice and Genoa I enjoyed much delightful in¬ tercourse with English Christians : but nothing can be more melancholy than the religious state of Italy. I have seen much of Popery both in Prussia and France ; but in neither of these countries has it been able to “ take away the key of knowledgerefus¬ ing to enter in, and hindering those who would. But in Italy this is done most effectually. In the Sar¬ dinian dominions, not a Bible, nor a religious tract, can be given away without the risk of imprison¬ ment. About two years since, a Swiss gentleman went to the baths at Aix, in Savoy. A woman was employed as a spy, who professed to be a Protest¬ ant, and asked him for some religious books. He complied with her request; she took them imme¬ diately to the priest, and the priest to the police; and in a few hours after he gave the books, he was thrown into a dungeon with the lowest criminals, where he was kept for nine months. A similar at¬ tempt was made to entrap a friend of mine, when he was staying at Oneglia. The police tried to per¬ suade the waiter of the inn to ask the loan of books from him; and induced an old Italian gentleman in 16 ROME. the town to ask Bibles with the same view. Happily, my friend was aware of their devices, and escaped the snare. On the 18 th of March, I arrived in Rome. I might fill a volume with the reflections which this wonderful city naturally suggests; but my limits forbid more than a few brief notices. Among the numerous remains of heathen magnificence, cruelty, and superstition, one of those which most powerfully affected me, was the arch of Titus. This was raised to commemorate the conquest of Jerusalem by that emperor. A train of captive Jews, together with the table, the seven-branched candlestick, and the vessels of the temple, are sculptured upon it. What a monument of the faithfulness of God’s judgments ! “ Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God,—the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth,—and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.”* But if this ancient memorial of the captivity of my people affected me, how much more did the sight of their present captivity in this which calls itself the “ holy city!” I have witnessed their oppression and degradation in many parts of the continent; but never did I see them so “ trodden down” as in Rome. They live in a certain part of the city called * Deut. xxviii. 47, 4p, 83. ROME-THE JEWS. 17 the Ghetto, closed in by two gates, at each of which stands a sentinel; and so strictly are they confined to this place, that, when the Tiber over¬ flowed many of their houses, a short time since, the sufferers were not allowed to move out of it, to obtain even temporary accommodation in another quarter. Close to one of the gates is a church, on the outside of which is a representation of the cru¬ cifixion, under which there is written, in Hebrew, “ I have spread out my hands all the day unto a re¬ bellious people.”* No Jew can go out or in by this gate without beholding what he can only regard as a studied insult to his feelings. Did the Pope and his cardinals ever read the Epistle to the Ro¬ mans, given forth by the Holy Ghost through Paul ? “ Boast not against the branches,—thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.” Plow wonderfully has professing Christendom overlooked God's oft-repeated declaration, that, though He punishes the Jews for their iniquity, He is “ sore displeased” with others who “ help on the affliction !” I went to St. Peter’s on the day the Pope, during Lient, pays a weekly visit to it. What a sight this was ! In England we have much of the spirit of Popery; but of what may be called its material part, its outward embodiment, we know nothing. Hence it is, that those who denounce Popery as idolatry, * Isa lxv. 2. 2 * 18 visit to st. peter’s. are often regarded as bigoted fanatics, or, at least, as persons, who, in their zeal for Protestantism, are guilty of gross exaggeration. But for any one who has been in Rome to speak in measured terms of Popery, is a melancholy illustration how the love of system and of party can bring a man deliberately to “ call evil good, and good evil.” St. Peter’s is a splendid edifice, and the Pope was attended by a retinue quite in keeping with it; Swiss guards, officers in rich uniforms, cardinals in their red robes, courtiers in state dresses, “ gold, and sil¬ ver, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet,” “ the lust of the eye, and the pride of life,” every thing that is “ of the world,” and is “ not of the Father,” accompanied this representative of the poor fisherman of Bethsaida. The professed object of his visit to St. Peter’s was to worship the invisible God, “ whom no man hath seen nor can see.” And what was his first act? He knelt down to a bronze statue, originally made to represent Jupiter, but now called St. Peter; he put his head under the foot of this statue, remaining in this attitude for two minutes; then put his lips on the foot for about as long. If this were not worshipping Peter, I know not what outward worship means. And what is the natural effect of this on the mind of the ignorant? To carry them one degree lower in the scale of idolatry, even to the worship of the piece of sense¬ less bronze before them. I saw a mother take her ST. ANNA. 19 little infant, and rub its face on the toe of the image. Many of the ignorant populace of Popish countries are as complete worshippers of wood and stone, as the heathen inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. That they have profaned the holy name of Jesus by bestowing it on one of their idols; and have been made acquainted with a confused jumble of broken fragments of Scripture history and doctrine, certainly cannot entitle them to the name of Christians. That the Virgin Mary is worshipped as a goddess is well known, and has been often stated and proved; but among their “ lords many, and gods many,” I became acquainted in Rome with one of whom I had never before heard. I one day observed the waiter at the restaurateur’s where I dined, reading a little book with seriousness and attention. I asked what it was ; he told me it was a book of prayers. Sus¬ pecting it to be prayers to the Virgin, I asked to whom the prayers were addressed. “ To Saint Anna.” I inquired who Saint Anna was ; and was told she was the “ grandmother of God !” This book of prayers I purchased of him, and will now give some account of, that the religion of modern Rome may be fairly estimated. It is a small pamphlet of twenty-four pages, printed at Rome in 1830. The title is, “Devout Exercises in honour of the most glorious mother Saint Anna; which are practised every Tuesday in the year, in the parish church of St. John the Evan- 20 WORSHIP OF ST. ANNA. gelist, by a pious assembly of devotees of the said Anna.” The origin of this pious assembly is first set forth,* and is said to be, “ That seeing there is but a small attendance of the faithful at the church of St. John, on occasion of the holy viaticum being carried to the sick, some devout persons (concur¬ rently with the orders and wishes of Pope Clement XIII., published on the 22d December, 1758, by Cardinal Guadagni, then vicar of his holiness) thought of establishing, in this venerable church, a pious assembly, or confraternity of brothers and sisters, under the auspices of the most holy sacra¬ ment, and of the glorious mother, Saint Anna, whom they chose as their special protectress.” A copy of the decree of the vicar-general, testifying the Pope’s approbation of this pious union, is next given. Then follow several prayers to Saint Anna, and a sum¬ mary of the indulgences granted to this faithful com¬ pany of brothers and sisters. The prayers bid defiance to the Jesuitical dis¬ tinctions between the two kinds of worship, latria , and dulia ; the one kind paid to God, and the other to the saints. I can afford space for but few ex¬ tracts ; but these few will fully bear out this assertion. “We congratulate you, O glorious Saint Anna, who, for your eminent virtues and sublime sanctity, were chosen by God to be the mother of the queen of angels; and, prostrate at your feet, we pray you PRAYERS TO ST. ANNA. 21 with all our heart to obtain for us, from the divine incarnate Word, the pardon of our sins. We sup¬ plicate you to obtain from God for us, that our prayers may be favorably heard.” The same sentiments are repeated in different words in every prayer; and in several of them there is no mention made of our blessed Saviour. Why should there be; these Romish idolators have other Saviours, and other intercessors. In proof of this I transcribe the whole of the third prayer.* “ We adore you, O glorious Saint Anna; and by that unspeakable joy which you experienced, when the most holy soul of Mary was united in your bosom to her most pure body, we humbly pray you to obtain for us from God, by your most efficacious intercession, that we may be pure in mind and body, in order to enjoy His presence, promised to those who are clean of heart. Amen.” This absurd and impious idolatry reaches its climax in the following prayer, (which I also give entire,) in which there is no mention of God at all; the two goddesses, Anna and Mary, being able of themselves to bestow divine grace and protection. “ We bless you through all ages, O glorious Saint Anna; and by the joy which your heart felt in * I do not feel it necessary to give the original Italian, as it is probable the whole book will be reprinted, with a translation. 22 PRAYERS TO ST. ANNA. touching, caressing, and imprinting kisses, not less pure than tender, on the most pure face of the babe Mary, your daughter, we humbly pray you to im¬ plore from the same, our lady, her most efficacious protection and grace, that we be not deceived by the cunning of the infernal enemy, and may avoid every criminal act, however small. Amen.” I shall conclude my notice of this extraordinary manual of devotion, by some extracts from an act of self-dedication to Saint Anna. “ O most glorious and most blessed Saint Anna, mother of the great mother of God, I, N., in pre¬ sence of all the court of heaven, elect and confirm you to be, after Jesus and Mary, my chief advocate and mother; I declare my desire always to esteem, serve, and love you as such, all the term of my life. “ I am rejoiced at your high sanctity, dignity, and glory, in your having for a daughter the queen of heaven. “ I propose to exert all my power to promote your glory : and to do the utmost I can, that you may be revered and loved. Deign to receive me into the number of your servants; to adopt me for your son ; and to keep me ever under the mantle of your protection. “ Procure me light, and inward grief for my sins; make me amend my life, and imitate those virtues, by which you were so pleasing to the divine eyes. “ Come, most compassionate mother, together PRAYERS TO ST. ANNA. 23 with your most delightful daughter, to my aid and defence, when I shall be presented at the divine tri¬ bunal, to be judged for all the years and days of my life. Deliver me from that horrible sentence, and from the eternal pains of hell, that I have so many times deserved.” All comment on this would be superfluous; and this book, bearing on its title page the sanction of Papal authority, was given to this poor man by a priest! We can only cry, “ O Lord, how long !” I cannot help saying, that I regard the tractarian heresy as a judgment on the Church of England, for her sin in recognising the orders of the “ man of sin,” instead of protesting against Rome, as no church of Christ at all, but a system of idolatry. But I must linger no longer in Rome ; one feature more of the “ mystery of iniquity,” and I have done. One day, in company with some friends, I visited the mint. We were shown a cabinet containing medals struck in the reigns of the various Popes. The dies of these are all preserved ; and the govern¬ ment officers willingly strike off as many of them as the visitors please to purchase. One would imagine that some few of them would have been prudently left in the shade, or rather that the dies would have been destroyed, so that no memorial of the coins might remain. If medals had been struck in Eng¬ land, in commemoration of the atrocities of Mary’s reign, or of the legal murders of that of Charles the 24 VISIT TO THE MINT. Second, they would not have been preserved and struck off in the present day, but would have been indignantly disowned by succeeding governments. Not so the unchangeable papacy ; it is no wise ashamed of any of its previous acts; but gives you such coins as the following, with the same readiness with which the English would present a foreigner with a Waterloo medal. The destroying angel, with a cross in one hand and a spear in the other : Inscription, “ Massacre of the Huguenots,”* 1575. Reverse, “ Gregorius XIII. Pont. Max. An. I.” A wild boar hunt: Inscription, “ The pious shep¬ herd wages war only against wild beasts.”f Re¬ verse, “ Paulus II. Venetus. Pont. Max.” Paul II. ascended the Papal throne in 1464, and fiercely persecuted the Lollards; the boar hunt, therefore, must refer to them, who were indeed hunted like wild beasts. Christ driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple: Inscription, “ My house shall be called a house of prayer.”:): Reverse, “ Paulus IV. Pont. OP. T.M.” This no doubt refers to that pontiff’s proposed expulsion of the Jews from Rome. * Ugonottorum Strages. f Solum in feras pius bellatur pastor. i Domus mea domus orationis voc. POPISH COINS. 25 But perhaps the most surprising of the whole, is the following honest confession in hard metal, of what is so often denied in words; namely, that they worship the Pope. Crowning the Pope: Inscription, “ Whom the} create they adore.”* Reverse, “Adrianus VI. Pont. Maxim.” This candid acknowledgment that, like the hea¬ then, they worship the work of their own hands, is a degree of simplicity one hardly expected in Ro¬ manists. On the 30th of March, we left Rome by the dili¬ gence. It appeared very odd to see upon the coach, and upon the sleeves of the postilion’s coat, the mitre and keys. This is rather an extraordinary practical commentary upon the verse, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” The spirit¬ ual head of a kingdom, “ not of this world,” uses the keys of the kingdom of heaven as a mark of earthly sovereignty! In travelling through the Pope’s dominions, one is constantly reminded of the unscriptural nature of his pretensions. Who can look on one of his soldiers, for example, without be¬ ing reminded of the words, “ My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.”f * Quem creant adorant 3 | John xviii. 36. 26 VISIT TO LORETTO. I cannot say that the Pope’s diligences are at all arranged for the comfort of the passengers; nor can I speak very favorably of their speed. I often thought of the proverb that speaks of making mountains of mole-hills ; for at every little rise in the road, we had bullocks to help us up; and at every little descent, the wheel was locked, and again was unlocked, by a little winding machine that made no small noise, which at night was a great disturbance and annoy¬ ance to us. On the third day after leaving Rome, we arrived at Loretto. This place is famous for one of the lying wonders of Popery. It is said that the angels lifted up the house of the Virgin Mary in Nazareth, and flew with it to Loretto, where it now stands in the inside of a church. Soon after our arrival we went to visit this church. It is much resorted to by pilgrims from all quarters, who go there to worship “ the mother of God,” as they blasphemously call her. The interior of the church is rather handsome; but the great object of attraction is a small square building within it, called the Virgin’s house. The outside of it is decorated with sculptured figures of the prophets, and a white marble pavement; which latter is much worn by the poor deluded worshippers, whose practice is to go round it on their knees. On entering the door, which is guarded by a soldier, you get into a small apartment, from which the light of heaven is excluded, and a few lamps shed a dim CONVERSATION WITH A JEW. 27 light around, a fit emblem of this false religion. In this stands a figure of the Virgin as large as life, dressed up, and ornamented with sparkling jewels ; and the lamps are so arranged as to throw a bright light upon this figure, while every other object is in shade. We were much struck with the resemblance of this image to that of Diana of Ephesus, which we had seen at the Capitol. On seeing this idol, I could not help asking myself, “Am I in Europe, and in the nineteenth century ?” Yes, in this enlightened age, thousands of devotees come to pay their homage to this dressed doll; and yet Italy is called by courtesy a Christian country! Is it reasonable to expect that any one who is concerned for the honor of his Lord, can speak in measured terms of such a system of lies as Popery 1 We reached Ancona on the 1st of April, and on the evening of the 2d we embarked on board of an Austrian steamer. One of our fellow-passengers was a Jew; and as an interview on the high seas is not liable to the objections that attend reporting an interview on land, I may mention that I had much interesting conversation with him. He seemed an upright and sincere man, and entered readily into conversation with me. One evening, after the other passengers had retired, he came to me and said, that his mind had been very much disturbed and unsettled about the coming of the Messiah. He had always been taught to believe that before His coming, the 28 CONVERSATION WITH A JEW. Jews were to become more religious; but instead of this, they are becoming more and more ungodly, and if this be so, will the Messiah ever come? I told him, that to me, who believe He has already come, as the one great sacrifice for sin, this is no dif¬ ficulty; as He himself says in reference to His second coming: “ When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth V 1 He said this to Jews, and it is literally taking place among them; but God is not leaving Himself without witnesses, as the prophet has said, “ Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.”* This small remnant of witnesses consists of truly religious Jews, who believe in Jesus Christ as their Messiah, and walk in holiness of life. I then asked him what he meant by being religious? He said, putting on the phylacteries, by which we are reminded of God’s commandments ; and repeat¬ ing about the sacrifices, which reminds us of God’s pardoning mercy. I asked him what Scriptural authority there was for putting on phylacteries ? He seemed amazed at my ignorance, and repeated the passage in Deut. vi. 6, 8. “And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.” I * Isaiah i. 9. CONVERSATION WITH A JEW. 29 told him that if God meant the words of Moses to be put into a leather case, it ought to be the whole books of Moses, and not merely one passage from them; but that any one giving heed to the spirit of that chapter, and not to the mere letter, would see it had a far deeper meaning than binding on a few words of the law to the forehead and arm ; that it meant the laying up of God’s precepts in the heart, and practising them in the life and conversation. He still insisted that if it were not for the phy¬ lactery, and other outward observances, there would be no religion at all among the Jews; and that for the sake of the unlearned, especially, it is necessary to have many outward observances. I reminded him that one of the blessings promised at the coming of the Messiah, is, that to the meek or poor the good tidings of salvation is to be announced; and that “ the wayfaring man, though a simple one, shall not err” in the way of holiness. I then explained to him how the pardoning love of God is seen in Christ Jesus; and how I can behold in Him, Jehovah tzid- kenu, the Lord our righteousness; that I see in Him my resurrection from the dead, and look forward with confidence to His second coming in glory, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality. He said, “ I wish I could believe all this ; but business occupies my thoughts so much, that I have no time for thinking on these things ; and besides this, I live in a bigoted 3* 30 CORFU. Roman Catholic country, where all the displays of their religious ceremonies are very offensive to the feelings of a devout Jew; and if I wished to become a Christian, I must, by the law of the land, become a Roman Catholic; and I have seen so much wick¬ edness and bigotry among the Jews who become Romanists, that I shrink from the idea of becoming one of them.” He then related to me several cases of Jews who have become Jesuits, which I do not consider myself at liberty to repeat. On April 4th we cast anchor at Corfu; and we called immediately on Mr. Lowndes, of the London Missionary Society, who received us very kindly. He showed us the different schools established here by government, and by the London Missionary Society. We were not a little astonished, in one of these schools, to see several Greek priests learning reading and writing along with the boys; the sight of these bearded priests, in their sacerdotal garments, learning their B, a, ba, and twice one are two, gave us no very high idea of the state of learning among these self-styled successors of the apostles. On mentioning this afterwards to a friend, and express¬ ing my surprise that persons so grossly ignorant could be admitted into the priesthood, he said it was by no means uncommon; that they learn to repeat the service by rote, and their flocks neither know nor care about the amount of their attainments. He told me an anecdote highly illustrative of the march GREEK CHURCH. 31 of intellect in Greece. On seeing one day, as we did, a priest in a school among little boys, he entered into conversation with him; and learned, among other things, that the annual income of many of the priests is a mere pittance, quite inadequate to supply them even with the necessaries of life; that he himself had at one time only what amounted to about £2 10s. of our money per annum. My friend asked him what he did to help out his income: “ I kept a school;” answered he. Here, for the first time, I beheld the worship of the Greek Church; and I was truly astonished at it. The officiating priest was rattling over the service with a rapidity that rendered it impossible to hear any articulate sound; but in this portion of the service the people took no part, nor did they give the slightest heed to it. They came into the church, crossed themselves, bowed themselves till their faces nearly touched the ground, got up again, crossed themselves, and down again, many times over ; they then ran to the pictures on the wall, crossed and bowed before them, and then kissed them one after another. I looked on in utter amazement to see them thus running about the church like mad people; and here, again, I asked myself: “Am I in a Christian land, as it is called, and does this profess to be Christian worship?” So much for my first im¬ pressions of what some persons in England, ignorant of its real character, call “a sister church.” 32 ATHENS. We left Corfu on the 5th, and reached Patras on the 6th. From thence we proceeded towards Athens, and, after a somewhat rough voyage, ar¬ rived there on the 8th. We lost no time, but went immediately to the Acropolis, and I was overpowered by the scene ; it surpassed any thing I could have imagined. The labor and art which are displayed there, and the massiveness of the structures, all cry aloud, as it were, and declare the former glory of Athens. From the Acropolis we proceeded to Mars’ Hill, where Paul stood before the wise and noble of Athens. Mars’ Hill is an elevated rock standing opposite the Acropolis. From this spot Paul had a full view of all the splendid buildings that then adorned Athens; and as he looked on their magnifi¬ cent temples, of which the Athenians were justly proud, “ his spirit' was stirred in him,” when he saw that these only ministered to their idolatry, and he said to them: “ God that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of Heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.”* It is impossible to describe the vividness with which this address of Paul’s came to my mind ; and how very appropriate it is there felt to be. And if he stood there now, what could he say to the Athenians? Would he not still count them in all things “too superstitious?” Would he not think * Acts xvii. 24. ATHENS. SYRA. 33 their worship only a different form of idolatry; and declare that the God he served is still to them an “ unknown God V 9 I looked with the deepest interest on the Corinth ian hills, and on the road to Corinth, on which Paul travelled when he departed from Athens. The lively feelings with which we view the spots that have been trodden or inhabited by eminent saints of God, teach us how easily these feelings may grow into idolatry ; how easy it is to begin by simply commemorating a saint, and end in worshipping him. But how would all such undue veneration be rebuked by these holy men : “ See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant.”* We left Athens with much regret, as we should have enjoyed spending several days in examining its interesting ruins. On Sunday the 9th we reached Syra. We expected to have found public worship there, in connexion with the Church Missionary Society ; but, owing to the absence of the Rev. Mr. Hildner, there was none on that day; we, therefore, returned to the steamer, where we could enjoy some quiet reading. I felt on this, and on many other occasions, the blessedness of being able, at all times, to enter within the veil, and to hold communion with Christ, and with the Church universal, in heaven and earth. * Rev. xxii. 9. 34 SMYRNA. We left Syra on the 10th, and did not reach Smyrna until the 12th, at noon, having been obliged to lay at anchor for twenty-four hours on account of a high head wind. On approaching Smyrna I read the epistle sent to it by our Saviour, Rev. ii. Here once flourished a holy and spiritual church ; but, alas ! the glory has departed. Though the name and the outward forms of Christianity remain, there is no body of spiritual Christians to whom the Lord could now say, “ I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, but thou art rich.” I called on Mr. Temple, the American missionary ; from whom I received an interesting account of Mr. Cohen’s labors among the Jews. The late Rev. John Hartley, whom I met at Nice a short time be¬ fore he fell asleep in Jesus, mentioned to me his hav¬ ing baptized Mr. Cohen, about fourteen years ago, at Constantinople, along with some others of his brethren the Jews. -This stirred up great persecu¬ tion on the part of the unbelieving Jews, who, by bribery and other unworthy means, got their con¬ verted brethren thrown into prison. On this, seve¬ ral of the Armenian Christians of Constantinople raised a sum of money among them, to obtain jus¬ tice for their persecuted Jewish brethren. I may here mention, that, by general testimony, the Ar¬ menian is by far the best of the eastern churches; and that body is the only one that takes any interest in the conversion of the Jews. Mr. Hartley had SMYRNA. 35 heard nothing of Mr. Cohen for a long time, and de¬ sired me to make inquiry about him. Mr. Cohen is connected with the London Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews and it was with great pleasure I heard such a favorable testimony borne to the faithful labors of this Christian Jew. After leaving Mr. Temple, I went to call on Mr. Barker, the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and there I found Mr. Cohen. I soon pro¬ ceeded with him to the Jewish quarter; and was de¬ lighted, indeed, to find how highly he is respected by the Jews. The poor come to him to unburden their hearts, telling him all their griefs, and looking up to him for counsel with the utmost deference. He goes to work in the right way among his brethren ; living among them, and gaining their affections, by taking a deep interest in all that concerns them ; thus prov¬ ing to them that Christianity is a living principle, and not a mere system of doctrines. If we seek the highest interests of a people, we must prove to them that we really feel love towards them ; and this is especially necessary in the case of the Jews, who have been so much oppressed by nominal Christians. I am led to make these remarks by finding a con¬ stant tendency among Christians to trust too exclu¬ sively to mere theological argument, as the only in- • I have since learned that he has left it. 3G EMBARK FOR CONSTANTINOPLE. strument to be used in attempting to convert the Jews. Finding that the steamer from Smyrna to Beyrout would not start for more than a week, we resolved to occupy the intermediate time in visiting Constan¬ tinople. On the afternoon of April 14th we went on board the steamer that was to convey us thither, and soon discovered most interesting fellow-travel¬ lers. These were, Mar Yohannan, a bishop of the .Nestorian Christians, three American missionaries, with their wives, and two female teachers, all on their way to Persia, to labor among the Nestorians. One of the missionaries, the Rev. Justin Perkins, has already labored several years among them. Some time since, he returned to America, accom¬ panied by Mar Yohannan, who was deputed by the Nestorians to thank their Christian brethren in America for what they had already done, and to request them to send more laborers among them. This request had been complied with ; and the whole party were now on their return to Persia. Having been much interested in the Nestorian Christians by Dr. Grant’s account of them, I felt particularly delighted at this meeting. When Mr. Perkins intro¬ duced me to Mar Yohannan, I was much struck with his decidedly Jewish countenance. On shaking hands with me, he said, in broken English: “I be a Jew, we be brethren.” With this newly found brother, who seems a sincere Christian man, I had NESTOR IANS. 37 much interesting conversation. We spoke of their origin. He said there was no doubt it was Jewish; 1 but of which tribe he considered doubtful. My own impression has always been that they are the de¬ scendants of the early Jewish Christians, the “ many thousands of Jews which believed, and were all zealous of the law,”* in the days of the apostles ,* and who were scattered abroad at the destruction of Jerusalem. He said it was the opinion of some among them that they are descended from the Jeru¬ salem Jews. It appears to me doubtful that the ten tribes will ever be discovered in a body; and Scripture does not lead us to suppose they will be found either as professing Christians or as Jews; because it is prophesied of them that they are to serve the gods of the nations among whom they are cast out: “ The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even wood and stone.”f This must be spoken of the ten tribes; because no such scattering of the two tribes occurred until after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; and, amid all their sins, the two tribes have never, since their dispersion, been guilty of worshipping other gods, but have always viewed idolatry with abhor¬ rence. * Acts xxi. 20. | Deut. xxviii. 64. 38 TRACTARIANISM. Mar Yohannan asked me many questions about the state of Christianity in England; particularly as to whether there was much love and Christian union. I explained the nature of the divisions among us; j telling him that all true Christians are agreed in essentials, and only differ on minor points. He asked me whether the bishops allow pious dissenters to preach in the Church of England pulpits; I answered, No ,* at which he seemed much grieved, and said : “ We let all good ministers preach in our churches.” One of his first questions to me, was: “ Are you high Church V* Having satisfied him on this point, he said: “ I am glad of it; I do not like high Church; high Church will soon become Pope.” I asked him to explain what he meant by high Church ; and learned, from his account, that those views, known in this country as Puseyite or Tracta- rian, are rapidly spreading among the Episcopalians of America. As this extraordinary heresy is one of the most striking signs of these latter times; being, as it were, the making “ an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live,”* it may be worth while to give my readers some account of its workings in America; and the most distinct mode of doing this will be to give an extract from a work recently published by Mr. Perkins. Rev. xiii. 14. TRACTARIANISM IN AMERICA. 39 “ This modern pharisaism,”* says he, “ has thrust itself upon my attention, in the course of my visit to the United States, in connection with the Nes- torian bishop, in instances enough, if described, to fill a volume, and in a manner not a little painful to contemplate. Not long after our visit to Virginia, an editor of a religious newspaper in that state sent me a number, which tells the whole story in a few words, and from which I give below an extract to the reader. “ ‘ A new Argument for Episcopacy. “ ‘ The Rev. Mr. Perkins, and Mar Yohannan, have recently been on a visit to the friends of Mr. and Mrs. Holladay, in Virginia. A few days ago, the Episcopal clergyman, in one of our towns in which they stopped for the Sabbath, importuned the good bishop to attend his church half of the day, which the stranger did. The clergyman, in the integrity of his heart, seized upon the opportunity to make a glorification of Episcopacy, a thing which has been so repeatedly attempted, in similar circum¬ stances, since Mar Yohannan’s arrival in this country, as not a little to annoy him, as he himself * A residence of eight years in Persia among the Nes- torian Christians. By the Rev. Justin Perkins. An¬ dover, 1843. 40 TRACTARIANISM IN AMERICA. informs us,—the artless Nestorian, in his own simple language, having come to America, not to divide Christians here, but to hold communion with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ, of whatever name; whereas the Episcopalians, he adds, always inquire eagerly of him about the forms and ceremonies of his church, (the first question uniformly being, How many orders of the clergy have you ?) while they ask hardly ever a word about the state of morals or vital religion among his people. “ ‘ But we hasten to the logic of the subject. The Episcopal clergyman in question labored to prove to his congregation, in the presence of Mar Yohannan, that the Nestorians are Episcopalians; and, as they refer their conversion to Christianity back to the time of the apostles, therefore , modern Episco¬ pacy must be apostolic. One link in the ponderous chain of argumentation, leading to this conclusion, as alluded to by the good clergyman, (and we sup¬ pose originated by him,) was the resemblance be¬ tween Mar Yohannan’s cloak and the Episcopal robe . But, unfortunately for the argument, Mar Yohan¬ nan’s cloak is the common Persian cloak , worn alike by all sects and classes in Persia, as Mr. Per¬ kins informs us,—nothing but the bishop’s cap in his dress being peculiar and distinctive of his clerical office. * * Oh, what a pity that the builders of Christ’s spiritual temple (for such we believe many of our Episcopalian brethren to be) should think so TRACTARIANISM IN AMERICA. 41 much more of the fabric and fashion of their scaf¬ folding, than of the temple itself! * * How must such zeal for form appear, to an artless mind unac¬ customed to it ? Listen and see how it does appear. In our town, on the first evening of Mr. Perkins’ and Mar Yohannan’s arrival here, two Episcopalian clergymen were the first to make their way to their lodgings ; and wished the bishop to be at their churches both morning and evening on the Sabbath —one of them confidently urging: “ We have a claim, because you belong to us.” “ I do not wish to hear this word,” earnestly replied Mar Yohannan ; “ I have not come here to make difference among Christians; I love all who love our Lord Jesus Christ. The name is nothing; but faith and lave. I desire to see all Christians in your happy country love one another: I do not wish to have you say you belong to us. We all have one Lord ; we will all go to one heaven.” What reply could our worthy Episcopal brother make to this pointed lec¬ ture from the artless Nestorian prelate? Not one word.’ (From the Watchman of the South , May 12th, 1842.) “ While it is much to be lamented,” continues Mr. Perkins, “ that a Christian prelate from be¬ nighted Asia, should witness such developments of a narrow exclusiveness among Christians in Pro¬ testant America, it is matter of unfeigned gratitude to God, that he has not, as we trust, been thus 4 * 42 TRACT ARIANISM IN AMERICA. injured. He has been disappointed by it, and often not a little grieved; particularly by some open attacks upon himself in periodicals.” Mr. Perkins then quotes a long article from the Churchman, an Episcopal paper, of New York, of which I can only afford room for an extract. “ What effect should Mar Yohannan’s associating himself with separatists have upon us ? If an English bishop came to this country, and, avoiding his legitimate brethren, threw himself into the hands of separatists, what effect would it have on his reception ? Has not this bishop, by his intercommunion with separatists, so put himself under the censure of the church, and so violated unity, that he must be put in the same category with those in whose company he is found ? And all this will be in accordance with the apostolic canons ; the directions of which on these points are : 1st, That heretics shall not be received into com¬ munion : 2d, That no strange bishop shall be re¬ ceived without letters commendatory : 3d, That those bishops who pray with heretics shall not be received into communion; and those who suffer them to officiate as clergymen shall be deposed. In one or all of these points, Mar Yohannan will certainly be found wanting ; and either is sufficient to exclude him from communion.” (The Churchman, Nov. 12th, 1842.) Mar Yohannan wrote an answer to these charges, a translation of which is given by Mr. Perkins. It LETTER OF MAR YOIIANNAN. 43 is so full of simplicity and good sense, that I will transcribe the greater part of it, omitting the portion in defence of Nestorius, as being irrelevant to the main subject. Mar Yohannan’s Vindication. “ My brethren of the Episcopalians : “ What evil or wicked thing have I wrought in relation to you, that some of you should write about me in your newspapers and scatter them through all America ? “ I am one poor man, and my nation is poor. I came to thank Christians in this country for having helped us, and to ask them to help us more, for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are members of one another; if one member suffer, do not all suffer with it ? Well, if you had desired our good, would you not sometimes have inquired of me thus: What is the condition of your people in that land of heathens? Is there a church there? Are there good men ? Are there tokens of the influence of the Holy Spirit ? What is the state of knowledge and instruction? What are the morals? But from very few of you have I heard one of these questions. You ask: How many orders have you ? My friends, forms are nothing ; ‘ neither is circumcision any thing,, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.’ “ If you say that our church is built upon the 44 LETTER OF MAR YOHANNAN. apostolic foundation, the oldest of the churches, why shall we place our confidence in age, name, or forms 1 No, but in the Lamb of God, who descended from His throne on high to save that which was lost. Observe and behold ; the Creator of the heights and of the depths did not demean himself so loftily as some denominations, who say —We are ; there is no other true church. The Lord said, Every man who exalteth himself shall be abased, but whoever humbleth himself shall be exalted. Again : your church came out from the church of the Pope. Is there not some leaven of the Pope still remaining in many of you 1 Take care; if you say c No, this word is a mistake,’ I have proofs. What are those pictures in some of your churches 1 This is a mark of the Pope. I know you do not worship the pic¬ tures : but your children who rise up after you, seeing them in the churches, will worship them. Mark that second commandment. God said—Thou shalt not make unto thee any likeness or resemblance of any thing in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth. Another com¬ mandment of God is, Love your neighbors as your¬ selves ; but you say —Our church is great. Very well; your church has become great, has it ? Why ? That it may despise small churches ? Our Lord Jesus Christ says, Whoever will be greatest, let him be servant of all. This haughtiness is another mark LETTER OF MAR YOU ANNAN. 45 of the Pope, who teaches that none will be saved who are out of our church. * * * * “ I do not say that your way (church polity) is not a good one—very good, if you properly follow it; not in exclusiveness and ostentation, saying—We are the only true church; nor in hypocrisy, like sepulchres which are white without, but within full of all uncleanness. God looketh upon the heart. It is important for Christians to abound in love, and not in vain-glorying. But every tree is known by its fruit; men also, by their works. “ I love Episcopalians, and Congregationalists, and Presbyterians, and Dutchmen, and Lutherans, and Methodists, and Baptists;—all, as brethren in Christ. There is no difference in them with me. The greater brethren are all these; and if there be less, we are the least. We open our churches to their priests, and receive them as the priests of God and the apostles of our Lord. Our Lord said—Who¬ soever receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet’s reward. And whosoever receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man’s reward. Thus have we learned from our Lord. “ You are displeased with me, are you, because I have associated with the Presbyterians and Congre¬ gationalists ? So the newspaper teaches. I do not practise partiality. Is it very strange that I associate most with the Presbyterians and Congregationalists l 46 LETTER OF MAR Y0HANNAN. No ; they are equally our brethren ; and they have come and helped us, in books and teachers, and have done a great and good work for our nation. Ought I to abandon them and form new alliances ? We do not so understand propriety and justice-. Would it not have been a great wonder, very wrong in me, and very bad for my nation, had I forsaken them and connected myself with others ? It would be a black reproach, and a great sin for us thus to abuse the good they have done us. God would be displeased with us for such a course of ingratitude. But we will never be unmindful of their beneficence. We will cling to these benefactors as we do to Nestorius. Our Lord Jesus Christ said—Whoever shall give to drink a cup of cold water shall not lose his reward. How much greater will be the reward of those who have given to drink the instructions of Christ. And shall we abuse the good work they have done for us ? Never. We must obey God, rather than man; and keep the commandments of God, rather than the commandments of men. We all have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is over all, and in all ; over us, over you, and over them; who will judge us all at the last day, and if found at his right hand, will raise us all to the same heaven. We shall dwell in peace together there. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the MESSAGE TO QUEEN VICTORIA. 47 Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with us all for ever. Amen. “ Your fellow-sinner and unworthy Christian brother, “ Mar Yohannan.” “Nov. 1842.” Mar Yohannan asked me why we did not send missionaries to the Persian Jews. I said that pro¬ bably we may do so, if God permit. He said— “ Let them be pure and holy men of God, who will desire to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Before taking leave of Mar Yohannan, I must mention a request of his that amused me highly. “ I have a great favor to ask you,” said he, “ will you promise to grant it to me?” I replied that I would, if it were in my power to do so. “ It is,” said he, “ that you would ask Queen Victoria to write a letter to the King of Persia, to tell him not to let the Koords oppress us. We are willing to pay our taxes, and to live honestly and peaceably; but the Koords injure and oppress both us and our uncles, the Jews.* I do not ask Queen Victoria to send an army ; if she will only write to our King, I am sure he will pay attention to what she says.” It was with much difficulty I could persuade this simple * This has been painfully confirmed by the recent ex¬ terminating attack on the hapless Nestorians. 48 CONSTANTINOPLE. good man that it was quite impossible for me to con¬ vey any message to Queen Victoria; however, to pacify him, I promised that on my return to England I would publish his request, either in the newspapers, or in^a book, by which means it might meet the eye of some one who might communicate it to the Queen. I was much struck by this simple testimony to the influence of Britain. If her power were wielded for the glory of God, how much good she might accomplish among the nations of the earth ! We arrived at Constantinople about five o’clock in the morning of the 16th April. The view of the city from the water is indeed magnificent. “ The first part of the city which meets the view upon entering the Bosphorus from the south, is called Stamboul. Here the massy dome of St. Sophia, and graceful minarets of every kind, crowd upon the sight. Pa¬ laces, mosques, and baths, seem to be without num¬ ber in this renowned capital. And then the rich verdant trees that surround so many of the white marble buildings, and the clear blue sea, which, like a deep, full river, laves the shore and flows up the ^harbor, combine to give Constantinople a gorgeous beauty which is perhaps unrivalled by any city in the world.”* The beauty, however, is confined to the view from without. In the interior, the streets * Narrative of a Mission of Enquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland, p. 466. CONSTANTINOPLE. 49 are narrow and filthy, infested to a most annoying degree by dogs that belong to no one, but live by what they can pick up in the streets, where they re¬ main day and night. Through the day they are generally asleep, and when roused, or driven out of the way, are too lazy to bark, but go to sleep again. I was strongly reminded by them of the Prophet’s description of unfaithful pastors—■“ They are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.”* Hateful and disgusting as these wretched animals are in the eyes of men, how much more hateful in the sight of a holy God are selfish and worldly-minded men, who presume to call themselves pastors of Christ’s flock ! At night, these dogs go howling about the city, exactly ac¬ cording to the description of the Psalmist—“ They return at evening, they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city.”j* It was on Sunday morning we landed at Constan¬ tinople, and after breakfast one of the American missionaries, with whom we had travelled, called to take us to worship with his brethren. It was, in¬ deed, a refreshing season to join in praising our Heavenly Father with these dear brethren, nearly all of whom are engaged in missionary labor. I was delighted to find among them the Rev. Mr. Schwartz, a Christian Jew, connected with the Lon- * Isaiah lvi. 10. 5 j- Psalm lix. 6. 50 JEWS IN CONSTANTINOPLE. don Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews.* This “ unity of spirit” is indispensable in a missionary to the Jews. What can they think of Christianity if they see those who profess it standing aloof from one another, or hear one sect of Christian ministers denouncing as “ unauthorized teachers” others who give abundant proof of piety, ability, and every other requisite for missionary or ministerial work ? Mr. Schwartz labors among the German Jews in Constantinople, and has much intercourse with them ,* and some have been, by his instrumentality, stirred up to seek the Lord their God, and Jesus whom He hath sent. Mr. Schauffler, the American missionary, devotes himself to the Spanish Jews. For a considerable time he met with great opposition. The chief Rabbi not only excommunicated all Jews who dared to visit him, but even prohibited any of them from en¬ tering the street where he lived. Since the publica¬ tion of Mr. Schauffler’s translation of the Bible into Jewish Spanish, however, the general feeling of the Jews towards him is much more favorable. They feel that he has conferred a great boon upon them, and his-translation of the Bible is much sought after by them. * Now in connection with the Free Church of Scotland’s mission to the Jews. SLAVE MARKET. 51 In walking through the streets of Constantinople, I was much struck with the dress of the Turkish women. They wear a handkerchief bandaged over the forehead, and another over the nose, and lower part of the face, so that nothing but the eyes is seen. This forcibly reminded me that, though still in Eu¬ rope, I was now in a city where Christianity is openly denied. The degradation of the females which prevails in Mohammedan as well as heathen countries, shows how much women owe to that di¬ vine revelation which declares that “ in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” The slave market is another proof how far behind the rest of Europe Turkey is in civilization. The chief part of the business appeared to be over when I visited it, as there were only a few young women and boys left. The purchasers went up to these poor creatures, felt their arms, and examined them as one would examine cattle. The merely animal expression of their countenances bespoke the lowest state of mental degradation, and gave an awful pic¬ ture of what corrupt human nature can do ,* that man should bring his fellow-creature, with a soul as immortal as his own, to the level of the brutes that perish ! If we feel indignant at a Turk for doing this, what shall we say to men calling themselves Christians, who venture to defend a system so hor¬ rible ! " On the 22d we returned to Smyrna, and on the 52 RETURN TO SMYRNA. 23d went to the morning service at the English chapel. Before relating what I saw and heard there, I must make a remark which applies not only to this, but to every future occasion on which I may see it right to notice the doings of churches or reli¬ gious societies. In these days of division and party strife, a lover of peace is strongly tempted to let things alone, and pass over in silence what he can¬ not notice with approbation. This is rather to con¬ sult his own ease and safety, than the advancement of Christ’s kingdom. Besides, does it not really savor of a sectarian spirit to say, “ I do not belong to the Church of England; its doings are no busi¬ ness of mine?” If we feel that we belong to the Church of Christ, the proceedings of every section of that church must be interesting to us, and must be either painful or pleasing, as we consider them in harmony with, or contrary to, the mind of God. I believe the time is come when all false delicacy must be laid aside, and the truth spoken out, as unto the Lord, and not unto men. What might have been considered a few years ago as a piece of isolated absurdity, can now be viewed in no other light than part of a widely extended plan to restore the errors of Popery. The building which has for some years been used as a place of worship in Smyrna, in connection with the Church of England, was on this day consecrated, as it is called, by the Bishop of Gibraltar. When CONSECRATION OF A CHURCH. 53 the congregation were assembled, the Bishop entered, carrying a silver staff on his arm, about the size of an ordinary poker, on the top of which was a cross. He walked up to the communion table, followed by three ministers in surplices, and laid the silver staff on the table where the communion vessels were set out for show, the Lord’s Supper not being dispensed on that day. Having done this, he and his attend¬ ants walked back again to the door, where they faced about, and walked again towards the altar, the Bishop repeating: “ Open to me the gates of right¬ eousness,” and the rest of the service prescribed for the occasion. Now I will ask any candid member of the Church of England, whether this silly aping of Popish ceremonies is expedient in places where hitherto Christianity has been seen only through the medium of Romish and Greek churches. Should not the great aim of Protestant Christians be, not thus to identify themselves with Popery, but to show that their Christianity is something very differ¬ ent from it? On Monday, the 24th of April, about three o’clock in the morning, we left Smyrna in an Austrian steamer for Beyrout. The accommodation was good, and the weather very favorable ; the only discomfort we felt was from the crowded state of the deck, which was nearly filled with passengers. These were chiefly Turks, and a great part of their time was spent in acts of devotion. Each one, every 54 AUSTRIAN STEAMER.-TURKS. time he prayed, took out a little pocket compass, to ascertain in what direction Mecca lay, that he might turn his face towards it. Their devotions consisted chiefly in bending many times to the ground, raising the ears with the thumbs, which a fellow-passenger explained to me meant lifting up their ears for an answer to their prayers; and turning their faces to the right and left, which I was told is to frighten away the evil spirits. The concluding ceremony was stroking the face and beard several times, which was said to signify the wiping away of sin. When the wind got up a little they went through all these movements with redoubled earnestness. A person on board asked one of them why he prayed so much ; he replied, because the wind blew, and he was afraid. If Christianity does not present to us a living, spiritual reality, but only sends us to rites and ceremonies for comfort, wherein is it better than Mohammedanism, or any other false religion ? If Protestantism does not manifest the clearest gospel light in the midst of those so devoted to forms, her colonial establish¬ ments will be little else than “ darkness visible.” About three o’clock in the afternoon the captain pointed out to us the Isle of Patmos. The weather being very fine, we were enabled to go close by it; and a ruin was pointed out to us which is said to be that of the prison where John was confined. Whether this were the case or not, mattered little to me ; there was the island itself, where our blessed Saviour ap- ISLE OF PATMOS.-REFLECTIONS. 55 peared to the beloved disciple, and I viewed it with the deepest emotion. To this lonely and desolate spot, far removed from his brethren and children in the gospel, was John banished, “ for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”* Here was no consecrated building, no outward ordinance; but here the Lord met him, and communed with him; and the barren rock was indeed consecrated ground to John. My recent visit to Smyrna, one of the churches to which Jesus sent a message from hence, led me to think of the tenor of the charges delivered by this the true Bishop of souls. Does He speak to the churches of government or of ritual ? Does he reprove them for inattention to outward forms, or exhort them to the observance of times and seasons? No; the inward life in the soul, and its outward manifestations in walk and conversation, are the only subjects on which he touches. “ I have some¬ what against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” “ I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.” “ Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Alas! who can listen to the tone of gratulation in which too many sections of the church speak of their state, without being reminded of this address to the * Rev. i. 9. 56 ISLE OF FATMOS.-REFLECTIONS. church of Laodicea ; and fearing that if our Bishop and Head of the Church now sent a message to pro¬ fessing Christendom, it would be couched in the same language! How many thoughts crowded on my mind as I gazed on this barren and desolate island ! The won¬ derful vision vouchsafed to John,—the chart of pro¬ phecy displayed to him,—the awful and glorious things that “ shall be hereafter things still future, yet perhaps not far distant! Oh, how speedily man’s silly inventions and vain speculations fall before a believing view of “ the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star 1” We need no offi¬ ciating priest, no abstractive called the church , to bring us into communion with God. “ The Spirit and the Bride say, Come, and let him that is athirst come; and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” How blessed, to the humble Chris¬ tian, these latest revelations of the Divine mind, authoritatively promulgated on this lonely rock! And how awful the threatening that sums them up! “ If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.” Is not “ unwritten tradition,” of which we now hear so much, somewhat like an addition to God’s words 1 On Tuesday, the 25th, we landed at Rhodes, where the apostle Paul touched on his way from Ephesus to Jerusalem. The town looked dull and RHODES. 57 deserted; but this was accounted for by our being told it was on that day a feast of the Greek church, and that the greater part of the inhabitants had gone out of the town to make merry. The British Consul kindly sent his dragoman with us, to show us the street of the knights. I soon discovered that our I guide was a Jew, and learned from him that there are between two and three hundred Jewish families in the place. The street of the knights is a long, narrow street, with old houses on each side, on the walls of which are carved the arms of the knights who were engaged in the crusades. These our guide pointed out to us; and added, contemptuously, pointing to an image of the Virgin—“ That is the figure of a woman.” Before we left Rhodes, a number of Jews and ! Jewesses came on board the steamer to look at the machinery, who were courteously received by the captain. It was interesting to me to see so many of my nation ; and curious to observe, in the dress of the women, the same love of wearing ornaments that existed among them of old. Some of the child¬ ren had their foreheads covered with little gold coins threaded on a string, which had a very odd appear¬ ance. We left Rhodes the same evening; and on the 27th, about noon, arrived at Cyprus. Here I was again reminded of Paul; and also of Barnabas, who was a native of Cyprus. Although this island is i 58 BEYROUT. very fertile, every thing about it has the appearance of poverty and desolation. It is now very thinly inhabited; and large tracts of land are uncultivated. We are told that land can be purchased at from two to four shillings an acre. I could not help wishing that some of our starving population of England were transported hither, to cultivate the land that lies waste. There are no Jews in the island of Cyprus. On the morning of the 28th we landed at Beyrout. I was very kindly received by the American mis¬ sionaries ; the Rev. Eli Smith invited me to stay in his house, where I was much refreshed in spirit by prayer and conversation with these dear brethren. As I paid a longer visit to this place on my return from Palestine, I shall reserve the account of it until my second visit. We left Beyrout on the 2d of May, accompanied by three other travellers. We were now obliged to perform all our journeys on horseback; the roads in Syria, if roads they may be called, being quite unfit for carriages of any kind. Soon after leaving Bey¬ rout we began to ascend the mountains of Lebanon, and continued ascending for seven or eight hours. The change from the warm climate of Beyrout to the cold air of the mountain ridge was very great. When we got to the height of about 6000 feet, we began to descend the other side of the ridge; and at seven o’clock we arrived at Aksah, a small village SLEEPING APARTMENT. 59 in the plain that lies between the ridges of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon. This village consists of a few mud hovels, into the largest of which we were ad¬ mitted for the night; the family who inhabited it going to sleep in the stable to make room for us. After a fatiguing ride on horseback of fourteen hours, I hoped to enjoy a refreshing sleep; but in this I was sadly disappointed. To convey an ade¬ quate idea of the combined annoyances of our apart¬ ment would be a vain attempt. The room was so filled with the smoke of cow-dung, (which when dried is used for fuel,) that we could not see any thing at a yard distant. After taking a little food, we spread our mats on the floor, and lay down to rest, as we fondly hoped ; but, alas! no sooner had we settled ourselves, than such a fierce onset was commenced by the tiny inhabitants of the place, that all the previous assaults made on us in Italy and elsewhere, were as nothing in comparison. In a little time I heard sundry strange noises in the room; and being unable to sleep, I got up, and took a light to examine what sort of companions we might have in the apartment that was professedly given up solely to our use. In one corner I found a calf; in another, a sick goat; over our heads, pigeons ; and to com¬ plete the company, a cat with a litter of kittens. In the morning, when we were dressing, we were greatly annoyed by the women of the house, and some of their neighbors, coming to the door to look at the 60 BAALBEC. strangers; appearing quite unconscious that there was the slightest impropriety in their doing so. We were but little refreshed by our night’s lodg¬ ment, for rest it could not be called; and on first setting out on our journey we suffered much from the cold. Our route lay through the plain of Bekaa, which is beautifully situated between the two lofty mountain ridges ; and the snowy top of Hermon was in our view all day. In the evening we arrived at Baalbec; and finding the ground still too damp for pitching our tent, we took up our abode in the convent. Baalbec is the ancient Heliopolis, and the Baaleth* of Scripture, built by Solomon. It contains the ruins of magnificent buildings in the Grecian style; but when, or by whom, erected, is unknown. The re¬ mains of the Temple of the Sun are a wonderful monument of the power of man. Some of the pillars of the portico remain, which are upwards of 70 feet in height; but the most extraordinary part of it is the great size of the stones in the sloping wall around the raised platform on which the temple stood. Many of them are from 30 to 35 feet in length; and at one corner are three enormous stones, each of them about 60 feet in length. There is one stone still lying in the quarry close by, hewn out on three sides; this M. measured, and found it * 2 Chron. viii. 6. DAMASCUS. 61 of the amazing dimensions of 665 feet long, # by 13 feet in breadth, and the same in thickness. The framers of these great works doubtless thought that their names would be handed down to the latest posterity ; but their memory is perished. At present not only man’s greatest, but even his meanest works, outlive himself; but God hath said that in the days when He will “ Rejoice in Jerusalem and joy in his people,” his chosen “ Shall wear out the work of their hands.”f We left Baalbec on Friday, the 5th, and arrived at Damascus about three o’clock in the afternoon of the 6 th. The journey on the second day wa's very unpleasant; the heat was great; the glare of light from the white rocks was painful to the eyes ; and the ascent up the stony hill, near the city, steep and difficult. After all these disagreeables, one is much delighted, on reaching the summit of this hill, with the first view of Damascus, as it lies stretched out below, interspersed with trees and gardens. In travelling through Syria and Palestine, the aspect of all around is generally so cheerless and desolate, that any appearance of verdure and cultivation is doubly welcome, and strikes the eye by the effect of contrast, in a way the same scenery would never * I find that Yolney, quoted by Keith, makes the length 69 feet 2 inches, f Isaiah lxv. 22,— margin. 6 62 DAMASCUS. do if seen in any part of Europe. It is only in thi^ way that I can account for the glowing descriptions given by different travellers, of places that seemed to me by no means to deserve such high eulogiums. The interest attached to this part of the world is something very different from beauty of scenery, or splendor of architecture; it consists in its being the home of the Bible; in every thing that one sees, recalling to mind some ancient custom, and almost every locality being connected with some important or interesting event. Here I was in Damascus, the oldest existing city in the world; probably founded soon after the dis¬ persion at Babel. The steward of Abraham’s house was “ Eliezer of Damascus.” Amid all the revolu¬ tions of empires, and the overthrow of mighty cities in the east and in the west, here stands Damascus still; a city associated with Elisha, Ahaz, and Rezin ! It existed before the call of Abraham, and survived the dispersion of the Jewish nation; it stood at the coming of our Lord in humiliation, and may con¬ tinue till his second coming in glory. But its more ancient associations did not long de¬ tain me from meditating on its connection with that wonderful man who was rightly accused of “ turning the world upside downand to whose instrument¬ ality the present state of Europe, as the centre of civilization, may be traced. When Saul, “ yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter,” set out PAUL.-REFLECTIONS. 63 on his journey to Damascus, he little thought of the mighty change that awaited him ere he should reach this ancient city. “ As he journeyed he came near Damascus ; and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven; and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?” # The fierce persecutor of Jesus at once becomes His docile follower—“ Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?” is the rule of his life from that day forward; and Saul of Tarsus is indeed “ a new creature.” Such is regeneration, needful not only to the open opposer of religion, but to every son of Adam,—to every possessor of that “ carnal mind” which is “ enmity against God.” And though we look not for a visible light to shine around the awakened sin¬ ner, yet must the light of the glorious gospel shine into his heart, “ to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus ;”f in order that he may “ put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt accord¬ ing to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of his mind, and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”:}: The teaching of our Lord and His apostles is full of this important doctrine; of the necessity of this * Acts ix. 3, 4. -j- 2 Cor. iv. 6. t Eph. iv. 22—24. 64 REGENERATION. great change “ from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God.” And yet there are men calling themselves ministers of the gospel of Christ, who represent this mighty change as taking place in an unconscious infant, in consequence of an outward ceremony ! It is, indeed, a subtle device of Satan to persuade men that they are already “ members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the king¬ dom of heaven,” while they are yet in the “ gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.” While “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint,” he tells them that they are among “ the whole,” who need no physician; and thus prevents them from applying to the Great Physician, who alone is able to heal their spiritual disease. He who has personally experienced this blessed change is not likely to imagine it took place in his baptism, nor to value himself on having “ kept the white robe of baptism undefiled he knows what sin is, and what real purity of heart is, too well, to mistake the restraints of education and society for that “ holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” Rather will he be disposed to exclaim, as Paul did on reviewing his state previous to his con¬ version, “ What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ: yea, doubtless, and I count * Pusey on Baptism, p. 53. JEWISH HOUSES. 65 all things but loss for the excellency of the know¬ ledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord.” # Damascus, like all other towns in Syria, is a dirty, disagreeable place. We took up our abode in what is called a European Hotel, and flattered ourselves we should be free from the usual Oriental annoyance of vermin; but so far was this from being the case, that our room contained scorpions, in addition to the usual varieties of invaders. When I was in Italy, I thought nothing could exceed the filth and discom¬ fort of Italian inns : but a very short sojourn in Syria led me to see that no part of Europe is quite so low in the scale of cleanliness. We visited several of the houses of the wealthy Jews, and were received with the utmost kindness and courtesy by the ladies of the family, the gen¬ tlemen being from home. Their houses are very handsome, and are built and furnished in the usual eastern style. On entering the door from the street, you do not go into the house, but into a large square court, round which the different apartments are situated. In some of these courts there is a reservoir of water in the centre, planted round with orange and lemon trees. The room in which the ladies re¬ ceived us was large and lofty; the ceiling highly ornamented with painting and gilding, and the walls similarly decorated, and hung with looking-glasses. * Phil. iii. 7, 8. 6 * 66 JEWISH LADIES. The lower end of the room, into which you first enter, is paved with marble ; this may occupy about a third of the apartment: the remainder consists of a platform about a foot and a half high, covered with a Turkey carpet, or, in some instances, with fine matting. Round three sides of this platform there is a farther elevation, about a foot or more in height, and about the width of an ordinary sofa, called the divan; and on this the family and their guests sit, or rather recline. The divan is covered with damask, or with the richest Persian carpeting. The dress of the ladies was very splendid; they wore loose eastern robes of silk, with a sort of breast¬ plate or stomacher covered with gold, and jewelled ornaments on their heads. Their manners were affable and pleasing. They regaled us with coffee and sweetmeats, with the usual accompaniment of pipes, or nargilas. The nargila, which is like the Indian hookah, consists of a glass vessel full of water, that stands on the floor, through which the smoke is made to pass; it is inhaled through a long flexible tube, having a mouthpiece. I was very awkward in the use of this machine, (which it would have been esteemed very uncivil to decline,) and could not get it to smoke at all, which one of the young ladies of the family perceiving, with a good-humored smile at my awkwardness, took the mouthpiece out of my hand, and after two or three good whiffs, put it in smoking trim, and returned it to me. PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. 67 I made inquiries as to the state of female educa¬ tion among the Jews ; and was surprised to find that in many of the wealthiest families the daughters were unable to read. I am surprised that Sir Moses Montefiore, who takes such an interest in our brethren, has not effected some improvement in this matter. I must not omit to mention one decoration of the ladies, which, though in my opinion it rather marred their beauty, yet afforded an interesting illustration of Scripture. From the outer corner of each eye a black line is painted upon the cheek, which gives the appearance of two slits or rents. This explains Jer. iv. 30, “ Though thou rendest thine eyes* with painting, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair.” These ladies, as well as all the Jews I saw in Damascus, expressed their gratitude to the English for the kind interest they had taken in the sufferers during the recent persecution. Most of my readers will remember that a certain Father Thomaso, a Roman Catholic priest, suddenly disappeared; and the Romanists at Damascus immediately accused the Jews of having murdered him, in order to obtain his blood for the celebration of the passover. It was in vain the Jews protested their innocence, and that they never use blood at the passover. Many of the * This is the literal translation of the Hebrew; see the margin. 69 PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS. most wealthy and respectable Jews were cast into prison, and inhumanly flogged in order to induce them to confess their guilt. Not content with this, the government had even the barbarity to cause a number of the Jewish children to be flogged, in the expectation of extorting some confession from them. Four Jews died in consequence of this torture and imprisonment; and it is probable that many others would have fallen victims to Popish and Mohamme¬ dan cruelty, had it not been for the interest taken by the English nation at large in the persecuted Jews, and the efforts of Sir Moses Montefiore. This is by no means a solitary instance of the persecuting spirit the Romanists manifest against the Jews in the East; several instances of similar attempts to criminate the Jews were mentioned to me, from which I select only one. A young woman, a Roman Catholic, disappeared from Sidon,andher relatives and the other Romanists began immediately to accuse the Jews of having murdered her. Pro¬ videntially for my poor brethren, the Prussian Vice- Consul at Beyrout made some investigation into the matter, and discovered that she had eloped with a priest! I must once and again remind Christians of what I do not think they take sufficiently into account,—the effect which such exhibitions of the Christian religion (falsely so called) have upon the minds of the Jews. They are persecuted both by the Greek and Romish churches; and these two DAMASCUS. 69 churches are the chief specimens of Christianity that in the East are presented before them. Can any thing, therefore, be more grossly absurd than that members of a Protestant church, who go to the East for the express purpose of converting the Jews to Christianity, should seek in any way to assimilate themselves to those corrupt churches, instead of using every endeavor to show that they are in all respects different from them !* We spent one Lord’s day in Damascus, and it was melancholy to think that in the city where Paul first “ preached the faith which once he destroyed,” there was not a Christian church with which wo could worship. I trust there are many of those, who, for the sake of supporting a theory, maintain that the Romish and Greek churches, though cor¬ rupt, are still churches of Christ, who would shrink from acting consistently with this profession by join¬ ing in their worship, even where no other offered. For my own part, I do not hesitate to say that I do not reckon them churches of Christ at all; they are heathenism, mixed up with certain Christian dogmas, that become completely neutralized by the mixture. * Since the above was written, the Rev. Messrs. Gra¬ ham and Allen have been sent by the Free Church of Scotland, as missionaries to the Jews in Damascus. I re¬ joice to think that from these excellent men my brethren will hear Gospel truth in all its purity. 70 PITCHING THE TENT. The one Mediator between God and man, the one only mode of a sinner’s justification,—all, in short, that is peculiarly Christian, is virtually denied in these churches. In addition to this, the mode of worship in the Greek church is so absolutely foolish, that I could much more easily join in the worship of a Jewish synagogue. In these circumstances, it is delightful to realize the promise of our gracious Saviour, that even when there are but two met together in His name, He is with them. We left Damascus on the morning of May 9th. The road was dreary and desolate; and after a ride of eight hours, we arrived at the village of Sasa. It presented the usual forlorn appearance of an Arab village, and its wild inhabitants looked like savages. Here for the first time we pitched our tent. The tents used in the East differ little from those that are common in this country, only that, instead of being white, or nearly so, they are composed of alternate stripes of yellow and blue, or some other contrasted colors. The spot where we pitched was very unpleasant, our flooring being composed of dry mud; but we could get no better near the village. It was very interesting to me thus to “ dwell in a tent,” like my forefathers. It excites a lively re¬ membrance that “ here we have no continuing city, but seek one to come;” even a “ city that hath foundations,” as opposed to an assemblage of tents SASA. KUNEITIRAH. 71 pitched on the surface of the ground. It was de¬ lightful to reflect, that the same God who watched over my fathers in all their journeys is my God, who will guide me by His counsel through all my pilgrimage here, and afterwards receive me into glory. In the evening, as we sat in our tent, we heard a loud crying and howling, as of some one in great distress. We ran out to see what was the matter, and found the noise proceeded from a Bedouin, whom our muleteers had bound hand and foot; they found him lurking about our tent, and supposed he came there to steal. At our desire they let him go, and we had no further molestation. The next morning we struck our tent at an early hour, and set out on our journey. The ride to-day was rather more agreeable, there being some little appearance of vegetation occasionally to relieve the eye. A few dwarf oaks and thorn bushes were a welcome sight amid the general desolation. About four o’clock, p. m., we arrived at the village of Kunei- tirah, if village it may be called, consisting only of a few mud hovels and Bedouin tents. It is rather prettily situated, and is surrounded by cultivated fields, and flocks of sheep and goats feeding. It is impossible to give an idea of the pleasure derived from the sight of a little cultivation in this barren land, on which the curse of God so evidently rests. “ He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the water 72 VISIT FROM BEDOUINS. springs into dry ground; a fruitful land into barren¬ ness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.”* This has been fulfilled to the very letter; shall we not then confidently expect the great and mighty change both on the land and the people, that is so frequently predicted ? “ Is it not yet a very little while that Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest? And in that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.”f After our tent was pitched, a number of Bedouins came and sat down at our tent door, looking at us with much curiosity and interest. My friend M. took out his six-barrelled pistol for their amusement, and fired off the percussion caps. They listened to the successive reports with astonishment, and lifting up their hands, said—“ It is from heaven.” Such are their notions of a heavenly gift! I happened to make use of a Pisa match, which is ignited by merely pinching one end of it. This also delighted them. “ It is magic,” they cried out. The next morning we again set out at an early hour. The scenery was more agreeable and the soil more fertile, than any we had hitherto seen in this quarter. It was melancholy to see thousands of acres lying waste, and the country lonely and * Psalm cvii. 33, 34. f Isaiah xxix. 17,18. LAKE OF TIBERIAS. 73 depopulated. “ If ye walk contrary to me,” said the Lord to my forefathers, “ your highways shall be desolate.”* “ I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned, for they laid the pleasant land desolate.”! The people to whom the Lord gave it are far away, and the few strangers that are scattered up and down in it do not seem at home. It yet waits for the time when “ He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him as a shepherd doth his flock;”! and then will the promise be fulfilled, “Thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away.”§ Afler riding about four hours, we came in sight of the Lake of Tiberias. It was deeply interesting to behold a spot so intimately connected with the history of our blessed Lord. This is that “ sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias,”|| and which is elsewhere called the Lake of Gennesaret.1T On the borders of this lake stood the towns of Bethsaida and Capernaum; and its “ mountains and desert places” were often resorted to by Jesus for the pur¬ pose of private devotion. * Levit. xxvi. 21, 22. f Zech. vii. 14. \ Jer. xxxi. 10. § Isaiah xlix. 19. || John vi. 1. H Luke v. 1 7 74 RIVER JORDAN. After travelling an hour and a half more, we crossed the river Jordan, by the Jisr Benat Yacob, that is, the bridge of the daughters of Jacob. Tra¬ dition says that this is the place where Jacob crossed the Jordan on his return from Mesopotamia, and where his gratitude was called forth at the remem¬ brance of all the mercies the Lord had bestowed upon him. “ With my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands.”* Hitherto we had been only on the east of Jordan, in that portion of the land that was the inheritance of the two tribes and a half, but now we were really within the promised land, “ the good land that is beyond Jordan.” Here we rested for an hour, and took our midday meal, drinking, for the first time, of the water of Jordan. As we proceeded on our journey, we met several camels and asses laden with goods, which strongly reminded us of Scripture times. Finding we could not reach the town of Tiberias that evening, we pitched our tent near the lake, between the supposed sites of Bethsaida and Caper¬ naum. Of these two cities, against which our Lord denounced a “ woe,” not a vestige remains, and the places where they once stood are a mere matter of conjecture. As I meditated on that sure word of prophecy, and saw its exact fulfilment, I could not * Gen. xxxii. 10. REFLECTIONS. 75 help applying the like warning to Christendom at the present day ; and of all parts of Christendom, to highly favored England. No other land possesses so much of gospel light; yet how many therein are hating that light, and refusing to walk in it 1 This was an interesting resting place; as, though the precise sites cannot be ascertained, there is no doubt that in this immediate neighborhood were “the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done,”* who came to be “ a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people, Israel.” Yet, alas! Israel is not yet gathered, and of the Gentiles there is but a little band that are His followers. As I walked by the lake, one of the first objects that caught my eye, was an Arab Mussulman praying, with his face towards Mecca. How wonderful, that in the mysterious providence of God the religion of Mahomet, the false prophet, has been permitted to spread far more widely than the religion of His well- beloved Son ! “ Go into all the world, and proclaim the good news to every creature,” was the command of Jesus to His disciples. The first disciples obeyed, and many were added to the church. Satan, finding his empire invaded, accomplished his highest device, that of getting the world introduced into that which was called the Church of Christ, and thus he brought in the confusion that has continued in the visible * Mat. xi. 20. 76 LAKE OF TIBERIAS. church, even to the present time. The good news ceased to be proclaimed; man’s inventions made the word of God of none effect, and the dominion of error prevailed far and wide. And the followers of the false prophet now rule in the land that God gave to his chosen people ; the land where Jesus dwelt, and communicated the light of truth, and from whence He sent forth His disciples into all the world. When we look at the unbroken ranks of Mahometanism, and remember how few are disposed to listen to that which involves the penalty of a violent death, (it being a capital crime in a Ma¬ hometan to forsake his religion,) we should be dis¬ posed to despair of any better state of things, were it not for the sure word of prophecy on which God hath caused us to hope,—“ I have sworn by Myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”* The lake of Tiberias, where several of our Lord’s disciples followed their calling as fishermen, still abounds in fish. We saw a man wade into the water a little way, and throw in a small hand-net, which he soon brought out filled with fish. I thought of Jesus, who, when “ walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were * Isaiah xlv. 23. STORM ON THE LAKE. 77 fishers. And He saith unto them, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”* Peter the humble fisherman, became Peter the humble and self-denying apostle. My mind involuntarily wandered to his professed successor, with his Swiss guard and regal pomp, and to the statue that bears his name, to which idolatrous honors are paid. What would have been the feelings of this godly “ elder,” had it been revealed to him that he should in after ages re¬ ceive the homage due to Christ alone! On this side of the lake there are a few trees to be seen, a rare and welcome sight in Palestine; we were also much struck with the quantity of rhodo¬ dendrons of large size, and in full flower, that grew near where we had pitched our tent. And when some of the fish we had just seen caught were broiled for our repast, the scenes of Scripture times came vividly before us. When we first arrived at the lake, it was perfectly calm; but shortly after our tent was pitched the wind suddenly arose, and blew so strongly that we had some difficulty in keeping the tent from being blown away. The surface of the lake rose in large waves, so that we could quite understand the gospel narrative, that when “ Jesus went into a ship with his disciples, there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy.”f * Mat. iv. 18, 19. f Luke viii. 22, 23. 78 TOWN OF TIBERIAS. In the morning we bathed in the clear waters of the lake, and felt much refreshed. We set out to¬ wards Tiberias about half-past six o’clock, and arrived there soon after eleven. The town looked a heap of ruins. It is situated close to the lake, and was formerly surrounded, except on the side next the water, by a high wall, but the great earthquake of 1837 threw it down, as well as most of the houses. Besides this calamity, it was visited by the plague about two years since, and many of the in¬ habitants died of it. We took up our abode in the house of a Jew, and in the course of the day I saw and conversed with many of my poor brethren. The Jewish population suffered severely in the plague, nearly a third of them, according to the information of our host, having died of it. Those that remain are generally very poor, the greater number of them living in tents. Tiberias is one of the four cities which are reckoned holy by the Jews, the other three being Jerusalem, Saphet, and Hebron. The Jewish population of these cities is on this account replenished from time to time with Jews from Europe, chiefly from Germany and Russia, who come to live, or, in many instances, to die, in one of the holy cities. In the evening vre took a w r alk towards the little assemblage of tents that forms the chief portion of the Jewish quarter. It was Friday evening, the commencement of the Jewish Sabbath. We heard JEWS IN TIBERIAS. 79 in every direction the voice of prayer; they had just returned from the synagogue, and were pro¬ nouncing the prayers on the cup of blessing at their evening meal. We saw one venerable-looking old o o rabbi, dressed in a white robe, and having a white beard, and severals other rabbis with him, who were strangers that had come to spend their Sabbath in Tiberias. He performed the ceremony with a great deal of solemnity and feeling ; and it was interesting to see him consecrating the bread before he cut it in pieces and divided it among the family and guests. I could not help crying unto the Lord, speedily to make known to poor Israel that Bread of life that came down from heaven, of which if a man eat he shall never die. The lake of Tiberias is about twelve miles long, and six miles broad, at its widest part. It is sur¬ rounded by hills ; in some places these rise abruptly from the water, and in others retire further back, leaving some level ground by the side of the lake. The river Jordan may be said to run through it, as it enters it on the north, and issues from it again at the southern extremity ; taking its course from thence to the Dead Sea. The town of Tiberias is situated on the western side of the lake, as was also Caper¬ naum. Whenever our Saviour is spoken of as being by the sea-side, or as crossing the sea, this locality is meant. It may therefore be supposed how deeply interesting it is to the Christian to feel that he is 80 TIBERIAS. really in the very place where his beloved Lord dwelt, and taught, and wrought miracles. In those places that have only traditional authority to rest upon, one has always the feeling that this may be the spot, or it may not; and this doubt destroys the interest; but the grand features of nature are un¬ changeable, and in looking on the sea of Galilee you know that you behold the very lake which Jesus so often crossed on errands of mercy, on the surface of which He walked, and the waves whereof He re¬ buked and stilled into a calm. On looking across from Tiberias you know that you see the country of the Gadarenes, where He cast out the legion of unclean spirits. “ Being told that on the coast di¬ rectly opposite, where the hills seemed very steep, and close upon the water, there were many tombs cut out of the rocks, our desire was excited more than ever to cross the lake, for we were sure that the opposite side was * the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee.’ From a comparison of all the circumstances, it seemed likely that the scene of the amazing miracle wrought upon the man possessed by legion was directly opposite, and that the steep place of which they spoke might possibly be the hill down which the herd of swine ran violently into the sea.”* * Narrative of a Mission of Enquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland. WANT OF MEDICAL AID. 81 On the same eastern side of the lake also was the “ desert place” where our Lord miraculously fed the multitude. Alas ! how desert are all the places there now ! I thought of the boats of the fishermen of Bethsaida and Capernaum, and of the “ other boats” that came from Tiberias, as I looked on the wide expanse of the lake, where not a single boat is to be seen. We were told there is only one boat on the whole lake, but we did not see even this one. “ I will make ^your cities waste, and I will bring the land into desolation.”* Our Jewish landlord was suffering severely from the common disease of the country, ophthalmia. On the evening we arrived I administered some simple remedies to him, and in the morning he was so much better that he knew not how to express his gratitude. He kissed my hand many times, and thanked me in the most fervent manner. This led me to see how desirable it is, since the gift of healing has ceased in the Christian Church, that every missionary station should have a medical man attached to it, that those who come to introduce the religion of Jesus may imitate him as far as they can in going about healing all manner of sickness. Where the two can be united in one person it is better still, as the medical missionary can obtain access where the visits of * Levit. xxvi. 31, 32. 82 MOUNT TABOR. another missionary would not be received.* It is very melancholy to see the ravages of disease in Syria, in cases where there is every reason to be¬ lieve timely medical aid would effect a cure. I was much struck in Damascus to see so many persons, in the prime of life, totally blind. In that large city there is not a single medical man. On the morning of Saturday, May 13, we left Tiberias for Nazareth. As we drew near Mount Tabor, we sent on the servants with the luggage, and took the guide we had hired at Tiberias to con- duct us to the top of it. After we had ascended the mountain a little way, we found the place to which he had brought us steep, rugged, and all but im¬ passable ; and we then discovered that our guide, like too many who take on themselves the office of re¬ ligious guides, knew nothing of the way in which he professed to lead us, never having ascended the mountain himself. We had therefore nothing for it but to clamber up to the top the best way we could, which at length we succeeded in doing. * A society has lately been organized in London, called the “Syrian Medical Aid Association,” for the purpose of sending pious physicians to Syria, who may minister both to soul and body. We had much intercourse with their excellent agent, Dr. Kerns, at Beyrout. It is to be hoped that British liberality will enable them soon to in¬ crease the number of their agents. VIEW FROM MOUNT TABOR. 93 Mount Tabor is a detached mountain, rising about a thousand feet above the plain. It has, ever since the fourth century, had the reputation of being the mount of transfiguration ; but this could not be the case, as there is abundant evidence from history that in the time of our Lord the summit of Tabor was occupied by a fortified city, and therefore was not a spot to which Jesus would lead his disciples with the view of being “ apart by themselves.” The ruins of the city are still to be seen on the top of the mountain. Yet the legend attached to it has always made it resorted to by travellers ; and if they cannot persuade themselves that it is really “ the holy mount,” they at least enjoy an extensive view from the summit, of places familiar and interesting to every reader of Scripture. The mountains of Ba« shan and Gilead appear in the east and south-east; in the south are the mountains of Gilboa, and on the west Carmel. The sight of these naturally recalled to my mind the glorious promise made by God, of the restoration and conversion of my dear brethren, —“ I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon Mount Ephraim and Gilead. In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none ; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found; for I will pardon them whom I reserve.”* * Jer.i. 19, 20. 84 VIEW FROM MOUNT TAEOR. Mount Tabor, though not the mount of transfigu- ration, is not devoid of interesting Scripture recollec¬ tions. It was here that Deborah and Barak assem¬ bled the ten thousand warriors, by whom Sisera was discomfited. Through the plain of Esdraelon, which lies to the west and south-west of Tabor, flows “ that ancient river, the river Kishon,” celebrated in the triumphal song of Deborah and Barak.* To the south of Tabor lies Endor, where Saul re¬ sorted to consult the woman who had a familiar spirit; and still further south are the mountains of Gilboa, on which that unhappy king and his sons fell. Not far from Endor is the village of Nain, where Christ raised the widow’s son. Feeling much oppressed with thirst from the heat and fatigue of our ascent, we anxiously sought for some water to refresh us. At length our guide found a very deep well, and with some difficulty contrived, by tying a stone to my leathern bottle, to bring up some water from it. We felt much re¬ freshed by it, and thought it so precious that we were afraid lest a drop should be wasted. I realized the peculiar appropriateness of the figure so often used in Scripture,—“ My soul thirsteth for thee ; my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.”f Would that our longing after • Judges v. 21. f Psalm Ixiii. 1. NAZARETH. 85 the sensible presence of God were a feeling as real and intense as the thirst of the flesh! After spending about two hours on the summit of Tabor, we again descended, and proceeded on our way to Nazareth, which we reached soon after 4, p. m. The attendants having arrived some hours before us, had pitched our tent in a fig orchard, a pleasant, open place, outside the town. “ The town of Nazareth lies upon the western side of a narrow, oblong basin. The houses stand on the lower part of the slope of the western hill, which rises steep and high above them. The name of Nazareth (Arabic, en-Nasirah) is found in Scrip¬ ture only in the New Testament. The place is mentioned neither in the Old Testament nor in Jose¬ phus, and was apparently a small and unimportant village. ‘ Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth V is a question implying any thing but re¬ spect ; and the appellation of Nazarenes was in like manner given to the first Christians in scorn. Yet to the present day the name for Christians in Arabic continues to be en-Nusara , that is, Nazarenes.”* “And when they had performed all things accord¬ ing to the law of the Lord, they returned into Gali¬ lee, into their own city Nazareth. And the Child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wis- * Robinson’s Biblical Researches in Palestine, Yol. Ill* p. 195—6. 8 86 NAZARETH.-REFLECTIONS. dom.” “ And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.”* I cannot convey an adequate idea of my feelings on finding myself at Nazareth ; I could hardly real¬ ize that I was in the very place where the Saviour of the world, Jesus of Nazareth, lived for thirty years. I know not how others feel, but to myself it is much more difficult to realize that Christ is really man, than that He is really God; it is easier to contemplate Him “ exalted at God’s right hand to be a prince and Saviour,” as one to whom “ all power is given in heaven and in earth,” than to view Him as being in all respects a brother man. It seems to exceed our belief that He who from all eternity “ was with God, and was God,” really be¬ came a man, and lived upwards of thirty years on this very earth, mingling familiarly with other men, suffering all the evils of poverty, and the trials that arise from intercourse with the ignorant and the de¬ praved ; “ enduring the contradiction of sinners against himself!” The Holy Spirit has not seen fit to record much of the life of Jesus during the thirty years He lived previous to His entering on His public career ; there is not a single incident of His life given from the time He was twelve years old until He was thirty. But in those psalms where David was carried by the * Luke ii. 39,40, 51. NAZARETH.-REFLECTIONS. 87 Spirit of God beyond his own feelings and sufferings to those of Christ, we have some glimpses of the exercises of His holy soul, while living in close con¬ tact with sinful men. John the Baptist prepared for his ministry by a life of retirement in the wilder¬ ness ; but He whom it behoved to be made in all things like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest, was trained in the domestic circle; participated in family affections, and cares, and duties. He “ was subject” to His mother and her husband; He lived in social inter¬ course with His brothers and near relatives. They who know the sufferings to which a Christian is ex¬ posed by constant association with those who are not like-minded with him, may have some perception of the daily agony of spirit endured by our blessed Lord. And that His near relatives were not at the commencement of His ministry like-minded with Him, we are plainly told. “ For neither did His brethren believe in Him.” “ The world cannot hate you,” said Jesus to them; “ but me it hateth, be¬ cause I testify of it that the works thereof are evil.”* Doubtless, when our Lord walked the streets of Nazareth, and witnessed the various manifestations of the sin and selfishness of human nature, He ful¬ filled that precept of the law,—“ Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him.”f And oh, to what suffering must this have * John vii. 5, 7- j- Lev. xix. 17. 88 NAZARETH.-REFLECTIONS. exposed Him! Those who dwell apart in their “ ceiled houses,” carefully shunning all intercourse save with the polished and refined, hating and de¬ spising the “ vulgar rabble,” can but ill imagine the sufferings of Jesus during His years of privacy and retirement. The restraints of education tend power¬ fully to soften the manners ; and the artificial habits of modern society produce that outward smoothness in social intercourse which prevents the collision of evil passions, and can even exhibit an interchange of smiles and civilities between those whose hearts are burning with hatred and envy. But it was not in the polished circle that Jesus spent his life on earth; the mean, the coarse, the vicious, “ the pub¬ licans and sinners,” were those with whom He came in constant contact. And did he keep aloof from them in spirit, though necessitated to mix with them in person ? Ah ! no, He knew that the meanest among them was still His brother, possessed of some of the kindly affections and better feelings of humanity ; He poured forth on them His social sym¬ pathy, and sought theirs in return. “ I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for com¬ forters, but I found none.”* “ But as for Me, when they were sick, My clothing was sackcloth; I hum¬ bled myself with fasting; I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother.”f But human * Psalm lxix. 20. f Psalm xxxv. 13, 14. NAZARETH.-REFLECTIONS. 89 sympathy and affection were denied Him ; the Cap¬ tain of our salvation was made perfect through suf¬ ferings, that His people in all ages might feel that there is no sorrow in which He cannot sympathize with them to the uttermost. His holy soul deeply felt this unkind treatment; He loved His neighbors too well to be able to endure their injuries with cold- hearted indifference, or to repel them with silent con¬ tempt. He uttered His complaints to the only ear that was open to them, even the ear of His Father, and our Father. “ For thy sake I have borne re¬ proach, shame hath covered my face. I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children. I made sackcloth my garment, and I became a proverb to them. They that sit in the gate speak against me; and I was the song of the drunkards.”* Cutting reproach and ribald jest¬ ing were the response made to the Saviour’s yearn¬ ing for human sympathy ! These, and similar reflections, occurred to me as I walked about by moonlight the evening of our arrival at Nazareth. The next day was Sunday; and here again, though there are three communities professing to be churches of Christ, the Greek, the Romish, and the Maronite, there was none which we • could recognise as a church by worshipping with them. A just description of the present spiritual * Psalm lxix. 7, 8, 11, 12: 8 * 90 SPIRITUAL STATE OF PALESTINE. state of Palestine might be given, by exactly revers¬ ing the description of its former state, as predicted by Isaiah, and fulfilled in the time of our Lord’s sojourn on earth. We may say with truth,—“ The people that have seen a great light now walk in darkness; those upon whom the light hath shined now dwell in the land of the shadow of death.” I remember some years since, when conversing with a Polish Jew, and explaining to him what Chris¬ tianity is, he said with sincere astonishment,—“ If all this be true, why do they not send missionaries from England to convert the Christians in Poland, as well as the Jews ? I am sure you must know that the Christians there have no more of the religion you have been telling me of than the Jews have.” Any Jew in Palestine has a right to put the same question; and would be quite justified in saying,— “ If you call that Christianity, I shall cling more closely to Judaism.” Those who wish to teach Christianity to the Jews, instead of smoothly com¬ mending, must boldly reprove and repudiate the spurious Christianity of the East. As the morning advanced, the heat of the tent became intolerable ; at half-past ten o’clock the ther¬ mometer inside the tent was 104, F. We therefore went into a room in the Latin Convent, where we remained until the cool of the evening. While there we read and considered Luke iv., in which is nar¬ rated the commencement of our Lord’s ministry. CHRIST AT NAZARETH. 91 After having taught in the synagogues of Galilee, in such a manner that “ there went out a fame of Him through all the region round about,” “ He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as His custom was, He went into the Synagogue on the Sabbath-day, and stood up for to read.” As He expounded to them the errands of love on which He had come, “ to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and preach deliverance to the captives,” they “ all bore Him witness, and won¬ dered at the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.” But when he came to rebuke, and to a personal application of His discourse, they “ were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust Him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill where¬ on their city was built, that they might cast Him down headlong.” Thus, “ He came to His own, and His own received Him not.” We have no record of His ever again preaching in Nazareth, or even visiting it; as, though it is afterwards mentioned that He returned into “ His own country,” that is, Lower Galilee, it is evident from Mat. iv. 13, xii. 46—50, and xiii. 1, that both He and His family had moved their abode to one of the towns on the lake of Ti¬ berias. The men of Nazareth put away from them the word of salvation, and the Lord went to other cities and villages, visiting them no more. And thus it is still. So long as the Gospel is preached in general terms, men of the world listen to it, and even 92 FIG ORCHARD. approve it; but when it is pressed home, when it is said, “ Thou art the man,” they are, like the men of Nazareth, “ filled with wrath;” and if they cannot thrust the preacher from them, they remove from him, and seek “ smooth things” elsewhere. In the afternoon we returned to our orchard of fig trees, and I felt indescribable pleasure in looking around me, and thinking that the eyes of our blessed Saviour had rested on the same objects I now beheld, that perhaps He had walked in the very place where I was now walking. It gave to me a feeling of the reality of His humanity, such as I never had before. Beneath the church of the Latin Convent is a grotto, in which, it is said, the Virgin Mary was when the Angel appeared to her. The church is from this called the Church of the Annunciation. Over this grotto is said to have stood her house, which has since taken its flight to Loretto. These monkish traditions have seldom any other effect than that of breaking in upon and disturbing one’s own sacred associations. Some of them are palpably absurd. The Mount of Precipitation, as they call it, or the spot from whence the men of Nazareth were about to cast down Jesus, instead of being on the “ brow of the hill whereon the city is built,” is a pre¬ cipice about two miles distant from Nazareth. We left Nazareth on the morning of the 15th, and as we rode along I gazed on every object with un¬ abated interest. We had still in view Endor and / A WELL SCENE. 93 Nain, Jezreel and Shunam, and the mountains of Gilboa. About noon, we stopped at a well to take some refreshment; there was no pleasant shade to shelter us, but a well of good water is even more in¬ dispensable to a traveller in a dry and thirsty land than “ the shadow of a great rock,” acceptable as this is. Soon after we arrived, a number of women came to draw water; and, as usual, a great deal of quarrelling ensued among them as to who was to get first to draw the water. We had a similar scene of squabbling constantly before our eyes at the well of the Virgin at Nazareth, which was close to the place where our tent was pitched. How many Scripture scenes did this recall to mind! The in¬ terview of Moses with the daughters of Reuel, where the same contest seems to have taken place ,* as well as the more ancient ones of Eliezer with Rebecca, and Jacob with Rachel. I was much struck with the appearance of many of the young v/omen, who, though merely clothed with a coarse wrapper, had several bracelets on their arms, and wore ear-rings and nose-jewels. One of them filled the trough for our horses and mules, but not quite with the grace of Rebecca or Rachel, as she evidently expected a backshish* for so doing;. I could understand Eliezer’s test of an amiable and generous woman, likely to make his master’s son happy. * A gift. 94 BURKA. After resting about an hour, we proceeded on our journey. Our ride was far from agreeable, as we met several rough and savage-looking personages, armed with guns and spears. The country is in a very disturbed state ,* there is a constant warfare going on between the Bedouins and the Arabs. We learned afterwards that there had been a fight that day, in which the former lost ten, and the latter thirty men. They constantly rob and plunder one another, and there seems no law nor government to interfere. In this country one sees more plainly than in any other that the swords are not yet turned into ploughshares, nor the spears into pruning-hooks ; for every villager one meets is armed, and a shepherd tends his flock, not with a pastoral staff and crook, but with sword and gun. About five o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at a village called Burka, distant from Samaria about an hour’s journey. We could not get any place to pitch our tents free from thorns; this, indeed, was a very common evil; but here it was worse than usual. We tried to get, in the village, a spade or hoe, with which we might clear the ground, but such imple¬ ments were quite unknown to the inhabitants of Burka, and are so to many others in this land. It says much for the fertility of the soil (where the ground is arable at all) that they obtain such crops as they do, since all their agriculture consists SAMARIA. 95 in scratching the surface of the ground with a wretched plough. We at length procured an axe, and with it con¬ trived to clear the floor of our tent a little, so as to enable us to spread our mats. We were much an¬ noyed by the people of the village crowding about our tent, as it required constant watching lest we should have our things stolen. Next morning we set out at six o’clock, and in about an hour we came to the sight of ancient Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel after the revolt of the ten tribes. It was built by Omri, the sixth king of Israel. “ He bought the hill Samaria of Shemer for two talents of silver, and built on the hill, and called the name of the city which he built after the name of Shemer, owner £f the hill Samaria.”* The scenery here is truly beautiful; it is one of the very few spots in Palestine to which I could apply such an epithet. Many other portions, I doubt not, were so in their days of culti¬ vation, and will again be so when “ the land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden ;”f but in their present waste condition, they are very unlike all that we are accustomed to call beautiful in Italy, or any European country. “ The fine round swelling hill, or almost mountain of Samaria, stands alone in the midst of this great * 1 Kings xvi. 24. f Ezek. xxxvi. 35. 96 SAMARITANS. basin of some two hours* in diameter, surrounded by higher mountains on every side. The mountains and the valleys around are to a great extent arable, and enlivened by many villages and the hand of cultivation. From all these circumstances, the situa¬ tion of the ancient Samaria is one of great beauty.”f “ It continued to be the capital of Israel for two centuries, and until the carrying away of the ten tribes by Shalmaneser under King Hoshea, about 720, B. C. Augustus (‘ the Roman Emperor’) be¬ stowed Samaria on Herod the Great, who ultimately rebuilt the city with great magnificence and strength, and gave it the name Sebaste, in honor of Augus¬ tus.”^: Samaria is associated with several of the miracles oLElijah and Elisha; and its New Testament asso¬ ciations are also interesting. In our Lord’s time the Holy Land was divided into four separate regions— Galilee in the north, Samaria in the middle, Judea in the south, all these being within, or on the west side of the Jordan; while the region beyond, or to the east of Jordan, was called Percea. The Sama¬ ritans mentioned in the New Testament were the * About six miles. J Robinson’s Biblical Researches in Palestine, vol. iii. 138. t Robinson’s Biblical Researches, vol. iii. 147. The name Sebaste is the Greek translation of the Latin epithet or name Augusta. PROPHECIES AGAINST SABIARIA, 97 descendants of the mixed multitude placed by the King of Assyria “ in the cities of Samaria, instead of the children of Israel.” The Samaritans had a temple of their own on Mount Gerizim, and offered sacrifices according to the law of Moses; but the Jews refused to acknowledge them as being of the true religion, and had a great enmity against them. As a reproach to our Lord, they said to him,— “ Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil.”* The Samaritans seem to have formed a sort of middle class between Jews and Gentiles. When our Lord sent forth his twelve apostles, He said,—“ Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”f And though a Christian church was gathered in Samaria through the preaching of Philip, several years before the con¬ version of Cornelius and his friends, it is evident these were reckoned the first Gentile converts.* Many are the denunciations in Scripture against Samaria, and they have been fulfilled to the very letter. I cannot illustrate this better than by quoting the interesting account given by the Scotch deputa¬ tion. “ We read over the prophecy of Micah (Mich, i. 6) regarding Samaria, as we drew near to it, and conversed together as to its full meaning. We asked Dr. Keith what he understood by the expression, 4 1 * John viii. 48. f Mat. x. 5, 6. 98 FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. will make Samaria as an heajp of the field? He replied, that he supposed the ancient stones of Samaria would be found, not in the form of a ruin, but gathered into heaps in the same manner as they do in clearing a vineyard, or as our farmers at home plear their fields by gathering the stones together. In a little after we found the conjecture to be com¬ pletely verified. We halted at the eastern end of the hill,” and “ ascended on foot by a narrow and steep pathway, enclosed by rude dykes, the stones of which are large, and many of them carved, and these are piled rather than built upon one another. Some of them are loose, and ready to fall. Indeed the whole face of this part of the hill suggests the idea that the buildings of the ancient city had been thrown down from the brow of the hill. Ascending to the top, we went round the whole summit, and found marks of the same process everywhere. The people of the country, in order to make room for their fields and gardens, have swept off the old houses, and poured the stones down into the valley thereby literally fulfilling the latter part of the verse above alluded to,—“ I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley.” Besides these remains of the ancient city of Sama¬ ria, there are a great many pillars standing, the * Narrative of a Mission of Enquiry to the Jews by the Church of Scotland, p. 293-4. RUINS OF CHURCHES. 99 remnants of a magnificent colonnade, supposed to be of the time of Herod the Great. But the most en¬ tire and conspicuous ruin of the place is that of the church of St. John the Baptist, said to be erected over the spot where he was buried. This three¬ fold character of the ruins was very striking to my mind; Samaritan, Pagan, and nominally Christian edifices, all involved in one common destruction. And can we say that the last did not deserve its doom as much as the other two ? Nowhere do the absurdities of Popery, or the useless ceremonies of formal Christianity, appear so revolting as in the Holy Land, because there they obviously appear a vain mockery of that former dispensation, which, when it had served the end for which God appointed it, “ was abolished,” “ for the weakness and unpro¬ fitableness thereof.” There is scarcely a place in Palestine where you can say to the Jew,—“ Behold the desolation of your cities ;” where he cannot point to the ruined church, and say in return,—“ What meaneth this ?” There is a modern village called Sebustieh, si¬ tuated a little way up the hill of Samaria ; its name is a corruption of Sebaste, the name given to Sama¬ ria by Herod the Great. The Jews, however, seem to have retained the ancient name, as the city is al¬ ways called Samaria in the New Testament. After travelling rather more than two hours far¬ ther, we arrived at the town of Nabloos, the She- 100 SHECHEM. chem of the Old, and Sychar of the New Testament. It is a long, narrow town, situated at the base of Mount Gerizim, in the valley between that hill and Mount Ebal. These mounts of the blessing and the curse, (Deut. xxvii. 11—13 ; and Josh. viii. 33, 34.) rise each to the height of about eight hundred feet above the narrow valley that divides them, which is here not above five hundred yards wide. How affecting to look upon Mount Ebal, and remember that the curse has come upon Israel to the uttermost! But a time shall yet come, when, the veil being taken from their hearts, all the promised blessings shall be theirs. They shall yet be “ blessed in the city, and blessed in the field.”* This place is full of Scripture recollections : it is the first spot mentioned in the promised land. After the Lord had said unto Abraham, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred,” this was the first place he came to ;f and here the Lord appeared to him and said, “ Unto thy seed will I give this land.” Near this Jacob spread his tent on his re¬ turn from Padan-aram, and dwelt for a time, until the wickedness of his sons in slaying the men of Shechem made a removal desirable ; and the Lord ordered him to Bethel. It was here that all Israel assembled to make Rehoboam king, and that the re- * Deut. xxviii. 3 9 * \ Gen. xii. 6, 7. SAMARITANS. 101 volt of the ten tribes took place. It was also one of the cities of refuge, to which the man-slayer might flee from the avenger of blood. “After the exile, Shechem is mainly known as the chief seat of the people, who thenceforth bore the name of Samaritans. When the Jews returned under Zerubbabel from their exile, and began to build Jerusalem and their temple, the Samaritans also desired to aid them in the work. “ Let us build with you, for we seek the Lord as ye do, and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar-had- don.”* It was the refusal of the Jews to admit them to this privilege that gave rise to the subse¬ quent hatred between the two races.”f It is a re¬ markable circumstance that to this day there is a small remnant of the Samaritans still living in this place. They only amount to about a hundred and fifty individuals; but they are still as distinct from Jews and Gentiles as they were in the days of our Saviour. The five books of Moses, or Pentateuch, is the only part of the Bible they receive: of this they have some very ancient manuscripts, and with the exception of a few unimportant verbal differences, their version of the Pentateuch is exactly the same as that of the Jews. This is one of many instances in which the wrath of man has been overruled by * Ezra iv. 2. f Robinson’s Biblical Researcnes, vol. iii. 116. 102 SAMARITANS. God to His glory. It is a great proof that the Jewish Scriptures have been handed down without alteration, when this testimony to their faithfulness is borne by a people who have always been at en¬ mity with them. At the first establishment of the Samaritans in Palestine, more than 700 years before Christ, “ one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and 'taught them how they should fear the Lord.”* From him they would receive the Pentateuch in use in the kingdom of Israel. Although Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, (whose residence was this very Shechem,) in¬ troduced idol-worship into the kingdom, and ordain¬ ed feasts, “ which he had devised of his own heart,” it is evident the knowledge of the true religion had not been entirely rooted out; as may be proved, not only by the instances of Elijah and Elisha,'und the seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, but by the existence of several schools of the prophets at Bethel and elsewhere.! By the “ sons of the prophets” would the law be carefully pre¬ served; and it was probably a copy belonging to some of them that the Samaritans received, as their instructor was from Samaria, and not from Judah, and they never had any friendly intercourse with the Jews. From the time of Solomon, therefore, we have the five books of Moses handed down to us en- * 2 Kings xvii. 28. f See 1 Kings xx. 35. Jacob’s well. 103 tirely independent of the Jews, and by a people who have always been at enmity with them. Even in the present day there is a great shyness between the Jews and Samaritans; they not only do not inter¬ marry, nor worship together, but have no social intercourse. We only remained a few hours at Nabloos, being now anxious to arrive at Jerusalem as soon as possi¬ ble. About half an hour after we left the city we came to Jacob’s well. The visit to this memorable spot was indeed a spiritual feast to me, calling up, as it did, such rich stores of meditation, reaching from the time of Jacob to the days of Jacob’s Lord, “ the Angel who redeemed him from all evil.” Jacob was journeying from Padan-aram to the land of his fathers : he had wrestled with the Angel of the Covenant and received the name of Israel, “ a prince of God“ and he came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, and pitched his tent before the city. And he bought a parcel of a held where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Ha- mor, Shechem’s father, for an hundred pieces of money ; and he erected there an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel ;”*thatis, “ God, the God of Israel.” Here, then, I was in the first spot in the Holy Land that had ever been possessed by my fathers, as Abraham had owned nothing but a burying-place * Genesis xxxiii. 18—20. 104 Jacob’s well. therein. When Jacob first left his father’s house, after having enjoyed a glorious vision at Bethel, “ He vowed a vow, saying : If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God’s house.”* God had fulfilled all his petitions, and brought him again in peace to his father’s land ; but instead of hasten¬ ing to Bethel to perform his vow, he settled down here for some years. How prone are we, in the time of outward prosperity, to forget the vows “ which our lips have uttered, and our mouth hath spoken, when we were in trouble !” Jacob had bit¬ terly to repent this sojourn near Shechem; it pro¬ bably began in worldly expediency, and it ended in shame and bloodshed. It must have been a time of religious declension with Jacob when his household had “ strange gods among them.’’I But family af¬ fliction in its most trying form, that of family sin, roused him from this state, and God reminded him of his vow. “ God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fled- dest from the face of Esau thy brother.’’^ This property Jacob retained, and used as pastu- * Gen. xxviii. 20-22. t Gen. xxxv. 2. $ Gen. xxxv. 1. Christ at Jacob’s well. 105 rage for his flocks after he was settled in Hebron. When Joseph was sent to inquire after the welfare of his brethren, they had gone “ to feed their father’s flock in Shechem.”* It is to this day one of the few places in Palestine that are well watered and fertile. “ It is difficult,” says Robinson, “ to ac¬ count for the fact that a well should have been dug here at all, on a spot in the immediate vicinity of so many natural fountains. I can solve this diffi¬ culty only by admitting that this is probably the ac¬ tual well of the patriarch. The practice of the patriarchs to dig wells wherever they sojourned is well known ; and if Jacob’s field, as it would seem, was here before the mouth of the valley of Shechem, he might prefer not to be dependent for water on fountains which lay up that valley, and were not his own.”t There is a low vaulted chamber built over the mouth of the well, the lower part of which may have been originally the ledge that surrounded it, on which, or on a similar one of an older date, our Lord may have sat to rest when weary with his journey. I cannot express the feeling of vivid re¬ ality which the sight of this well gave to the history and the scene connected with it. Jesus “ left Judea, and departed again into Galilee: And he must needs * Gen. xxxvii. 12. t Robinson’s Bib. Res. vol. iii. 112. 106 WOMAN OF SAMARIA. go through Samaria,”* which lay directly between Judea and Galilee, unless He had taken a very cir¬ cuitous road, crossing and re-crossing the Jordan. As he sat on the well, faint and weary, “ there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water.” All travellers express surprise why a woman of Samaria should come a mile and a half to draw water, when there are fountains close to the town of Sychar. I think there is every reason to suppose she did so as a religious ceremony, similar to that practised by the Jews in Jerusalem on the great day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Let it not be supposed that her being a professor of religion was at all inconsistent with her leading an immoral life; in the East to this day the most devout expressions of piety towards God are often uttered by persons of vicious character, without their having an idea that there is any incon¬ sistency between their avowed principles and their practice. This is a constant source of complaint among missionaries in Syria.! When our Lord had told this woman “ all things that ever she did,” she perceived He was a prophet, and immediately * John iv. 3, 4. f “ She was a Druze, and talked most fluently and piously. Pious language being so universal in this coun¬ try, we must trust more to the influence of our example than our words upon those around us.”—Memoir of Mrs. Smith, of the Mission in Syria, p. 276. Boston Edit. 1840. WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 107 sought instruction from Him on the disputed point between Jews and Samaritans as to which was the holy place, where men ought to worship. How striking is the reply of our Lord, when considered in the very place where the fulfilment of its predic¬ tion is now so manifest,—“ Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.” He next plainly told her with which of the contending parties the truth then lay. “ Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” To one of His brethren according to the flesh, these words, “ We know what we wor¬ ship,” are peculiarly affecting, our Lord so plainly identifying himself with the Jews. But how impor¬ tant to all His true disciples of every nation under heaven is the declaration that follows,—“ But the time cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him; God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”* As if he said,—“At pre¬ sent ‘ salvation is of the Jews there is with them, and their institutions, an arbitrary and official sanc¬ tity, appointed by God Himself; and all who would worship aright must be joined with them ; but the hour is at hand when this state of things shall pass * John iv. 21—24. 108 REFLECTIONS. away. Now there are 4 ordinances of divine ser¬ vice, and a worldly sanctuary,’ because 4 the way into the holiest of all is not yet made manifest now there 4 are priests that offer gifts according to the law, who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things ;’t but when the 4 one sacrifice’ has been offered, when the great reality has come, all these shadows shall vanish, official sanctity of place and person shall cease, and nothing shall hencefor¬ ward be accounted as worship, save the homage of the heart,—the worship of God in spirit and in truth.” More than eighteen centuries have elapsed since this declaration, (John iv. 21—24,) and yet we find in the Christian church, instead of a universal testimony that it is the Spirit alone that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing, a. cleaving to outward rites and ceremonies, as if these were still the ap¬ pointed channels through which the Spirit is con¬ veyed I A large portion of the professing Church of Christ seem still in the condition of the Samari-' tan woman, obliged to go to the well of Jacob to draw water, instead of possessing in themselves 44 a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” If I am still to be dependent on a priest either for the commencement or sustenance of spiritual life, I see little to distinguish the Christian from the Jewish dispensation ; if, instead of hereditary priests of a * Heb. ix. 1, 8. f Heb. viii. 4, 5 Joseph’s tomb. 109 sacred family, chosen by God Himself, I am directed to regard as officially holy, priests made by the will of man, in many cases from mere worldly motives ; if I am to have priests without Urim and Thummim, and a temple without a Shechinah, instead of giving me a substance in lieu of a shadow, I am only pre¬ sented with an empty mockery of a glory that has departed. The Church of Christ may still be edified by real gifts, and real sanctity ,* but the ritual and official are mere “ beggarly elements,” passed away for ever. The place where Jacob’s well is situated is called in the New Testament, “ The parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.”* “ And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor.”f At a short distance from the well is a tomb, said to be built on the spot where Joseph’s bones are buried. In the tradition respecting Jacob’s well and Joseph’s tomb, Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Mohamme¬ dans all agree, and the situation in regard to Sychar corresponds so exactly with the Scripture account, that there is no reason to doubt its correctness. The present name of Sychar, Nabloos, is a corruption of its Roman appellation, Neapolis. I must not omit to mention that one of the American mission- * John iv. 10 f Joshua xxiv. 32. 110 LUBBANA. aries, some years ago, sounded Jacob’s well, and found it seventy-five feet deep, having ten feet of water in it. The Samaritan woman might truly say “ the well is deep.” - I After viewing this interesting spot we proceeded on our journey. The travelling on this day was rendered very uncomfortable by the scarcity of water. My friend M. having lost his leathern bottle, we had only mine to depend upon; and the water it con¬ tained was soon spent. I thought of poor Hagar when suffering a similar privation. At length we came to a little pool of water supplied by a feeble spring. It was full of insects. One of the Arab guards, who had accompanied us from Nazareth, seeing me hesitate to drink it, kindly pulled down his shirt sleeve over his wrist, and offered it to me as a filter ! I need hardly say I declined his obliging offer. We pitched our tent this evening at a village called Lubbon, the ancient Lebonah, mentioned in Judges xxi. 19. Like other Arab villages, it consists merely of a few huts built of mud; but the situation is fine, being on the acclivity of one of those terraced hills that are frequently met with in Palestine. With great labor the sides of the hills have been cut into flat terraces, or ledges of rock, to which soil must have been artificially conveyed. On these terraces the vines were cultivated. This explains the allu¬ sion of the Psalmist in speaking of Israel as a vine SHILOH. Ill brought out of Egypt: “ The hills were covered with the shadow of it.” From the terraces of this, and of some of the other hills, the soil has been com¬ pletely washed away, and nothing but the bare rock remains. But the sure word of prophecy has said to the daughter of Israel: “ Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria.”* About three miles from Lubban, “ on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to She- chem, and on the south of Lebonah,”f is the site of the ancient Shiloh, where the ark and tabernacle were from the time of Joshua until that of Eli. Surely if any thing could consecrate a portion of this accursed earth, the visible manifestation of Jehovah’s presence for so many years must have done so; but what is the fact ? When God “ forsook the taber¬ nacle of Shiloh,” the place became common and unclean. Even in the days of type and shadow, there was no holiness conceived to remain after God had departed. Soon after we had pitched our tent, we saw a number of the villagers running out, armed with guns and swords. W'e learned that the inhabitants of a neighboring village had stolen away some of their cattle ; and they were going forth to endeavor to recover them. In about an hour after, they re¬ turned in triumph, shouting with all their might. *Jer. xxxi. 5 f Judges xxi. 19. 112 A FRAY. Happily, the victory was a bloodless one; at the firing of the first gun, the prey was abandoned, and the robbers fled. This gave us a melancholy picture of the state of the people; rapine and petty warfare without* and the utter absence of every thing like domestic comfort at home. Who can sufficiently estimate the blessings of civilization! How con¬ stantly does it follow, how rarely does it precede, a knowledge of true religion; which, like its divine author, sheds its temporal blessings on the just and the unjust; those who refuse to admit its light within them still enjoying the advantages derived from its shining around them. Next morning we rose very early to set out on our journey to Jerusalem. I felt a feverish restless¬ ness and anxiety to reach that city, which had been associated in my mind from childhood, with all that is sacred and venerable; and I often said within myself as we rode along: “ Is it possible that this very day my feet shall stand within the gates of Je¬ rusalem ?” Our route lay for some time through a fertile plain which had some appearance of cultivation; there being: several fields of millet in it. But the farther we advanced on our journey, the more barren and desolate the country became. My mind was alter¬ nately occupied with two very different pictures. At one time I thought of the days when all the male population of Israel went up “ three times in a year ’ 5 APPROACHING JERUSALEM. 113 to Jerusalem; “ whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.”* In all proba¬ bility, six of the tribes, whose possessions lay north¬ ward of where I then was, travelled by this very road; the party increasing at every stage of their journey; “ company by company,” until they all “ appeared before God in Zion.”j' As I thought of this goodly assembly, all animated by one spirit, and intent on one common object, receiving each new accession of brethren with friendly greetings, and beguiling the way with social converse, the me¬ lancholy contrast presented by the present state of the country forcibly recalled the opposite picture, as de¬ lineated in the writings of the prophets. Nay, I should not say the picture was recalled; the very reality was itself before me. “ The highways” are indeed “ desolate” and “ lie waste ;” instead of being trodden by a joyous company of Israel’s sons, a few strangers from distant lands come to behold the judgments of the Lord, and to “ say, when they see the plagues of that land,—that it is not sown nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein :—Wherefore hath the Lord done thus in this land ? What mean- eth the heat of this great anger The marks of the curse are indeed upon the land. Sometimes a green spot will be seen at a distance, * Ps. cxxii. 4. -j- Ps. lxxxiv. 7. 10 * 4 Deut. xxix. 23, 24. 114 APPROACHING JERUSALEM. giving the idea of fertility; but when approached, it is found to bear only the tokens of the original de¬ nunciation,—thorns and briers. We rode on hour after hour, amid increasing desolation. The latter part of the way lies over a succession of mountainous ridges, where there is no regular road, but the horses clamber up the best way they can, sometimes over smooth slabs of stone, and sometimes through heaps of loose stones. My im¬ patience to see the holy city increased every hour. As we climbed up each ridge, I expected that, from its summit, I should behold Jerusalem; but I was doomed to many disappointments; as summit after summit only gave to view another range of hills to be surmounted. It forcibly reminded me of the journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem, which is a steep and difficult path, presenting one mountain after another to be overcome; but we know that at last we shall reach the City of God; and should not the certainty of this reconcile us to all the difficulties of the way ? While on this tedious journey, I was made fully to understand the comparison of the Psalmist: “ As the mountains are round about Jeru¬ salem, so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth even for ever.”* At length the long-expected moment arrived: about noon we reached the summit of the hill Scopus, and * Psalm cxxv. 2. ARRIVAL AT JERUSALEM. 115 all at once Jerusalem burst upon my view. The feelings of such a moment cannot be described ; they can only be faintly imagined by those who have not experienced them. Every Christian traveller speaks of the feeling as overpowering : what, then, was it to me, as at once a Christian and a Jew ! The scene of the world’s redemption,—the metropolis of the country of my fathers,—“ the City of the Great King!” I could, in some faint measure, realize the feelings of my blessed Lord and Master, when “ He beheld the city, and wept over it.” But here, as everywhere else in the Holy Land, you are indebted to association alone. That which actually meets your view is a comparatively modern eastern city; her bulwarks and her palaces are those of the false prophet. The Lord has abhorred His sanctuary; He has given it to be “ trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be ful¬ filled.”* How near this may be, who can tell! We went first to the Damascus gate, but were not admitted ; we then went round to the Jaffa gate; and by it I entered the Holy City. My feet stood “ with¬ in the gates of Jerusalem;” a pilgrim and a stranger I entered the city of my fathers, “ Jerusalem, which is in bondage with her children ;”f yet, through the great mercy of God, a citizen of “ the Jerusalem which is above.” * Luke xxi. 24. f Gal. iv. 25 116 JERUSALEM. My first object of inquiry was after letters from my real home,—my distant home in my adopted country. Not having heard of my family for several weeks, I was truly rejoiced to find letters awaiting me here. I fully realized the Scripture truth : “ As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”* I had soon the pleasure of meeting with two brethren in Christ, and according to the flesh, Bishop Alexander, and Mr. Caiman; from both of whom, as well as from the American missionaries, I received the most Christian and friendly attentions during my stay in Jerusalem. I had also the pleasure of re- newing my acquaintance with another Jewish brother, the Rev. Mr. Ewald. I feel it right especially to bear testimony to the kindness of Bishop Alex¬ ander ; opposed as we are in our views of many things that relate to the Church of Christ, and dif¬ fering from him, as I do, on the subject of the mis¬ sion at Jerusalem, which difference I never for a moment concealed from him, he continued from first to last to treat me with the utmost courtesy and hospitality. We spent the day after our arrival in visiting, under the guidance of Mr. Caiman, the various re¬ markable localities immediately round the city, as we wished first to take a general view, and return afterwards to those spots that most deeply interested * Prov. xxv. 25 J JERUSALEM. 117 us. Instead of detailing the events of each day, it will be more interesting to my readers to give them a brief account of the city, and the chief places of in¬ terest in and around it. “ Jerusalem lies near the summit of a broad mountain ridge. All around are higher hills ; on the east, the Mount of Olives; on the south, the Hill of Evil Counsel, so called, rising directly from the Yale of Hinnom; on the west the ground rises gently to the borders of the Great Wady, while on the north a bend of the ridge connected with the Mount of Olives bounds the prospect at the distance of more than a mile.”* The present city is surrounded by a wall, and entered by four gates. Dr. Robinson made a careful measurement of the wall, and found it to be two and a half miles round. Jerusalem is first mentioned in connection with Melchizedek, who was king of Salem. That this is the same place which was afterwards called Jerusa¬ lem, is evident from Psalm lxxvi. 2. “ In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion.” We next hear of it under the name of Je- busi, or the city of the Jebusites, whom the children of Benjamin could not drive out, but who continued to dwell in this their fortified city until the time of David. When David was anointed king over all Israel, he went up to this strong-hold to extirpate the last of the heathens from the land of Israel; they * Robinson’s Biblical Researches, 1 . 382. 118 JERUSALEM. trusted in the lame and blind idols which they set on the wall as a defence; but David overcame them, and made this city the capital of his kingdom. It was builded “ as a city in which men were to be united togetherit was to be a centre of unity to the whole nation of Israel,* “ whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel.”* Three times in a year was it filled with “ the many thousands of Israel” who went to the “ city of their solemnities” to keep the appointed feasts. From the sacred bond of union which Je¬ rusalem thus formed, it was regarded with holy veneration ; and is spoken of as the type or personi¬ fication of the church. “ If I forget thee, O Jerusa¬ lem, let my right hand forget her cunning :”t “ Pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; they shall pros¬ per that love thee.”:}: It was in the days of Solomon that the city was in the height of its glory ; when he “ made silver in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar trees as the syca¬ more trees ;”§ when “ Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude and “ dwelt safely, every man under his vine, and under his fig tree.”|| When thinking of its former magnificence, and * Psalm cxxii. 3, 4. t Psalm cxxxvii. 5. t Psalm cxxii. 6. § 2 Chronicles ix. 27. }] 1 Kings iv; *20, 25. JERUSALEM. 119 viewing it now, how appropriate do the words of Jeremiah appear ! “ How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow ! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how ^ she become tributary !” “ The ways of Zion do mourn, be¬ cause none come to the solemn feasts.”* The word of the Lord went forth against Jerusalem ; that word which is “ a fire, and a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.” He said by the prophet Micah that “ Jerusalem shall become heaps ;”t and it has been literally fulfilled. The modern city is built on the heaps of rubbish accumulated by the ruins of ancient buildings. So great are these heaps, that in digging for the foundation of a house, they have to go to an immense depth before they can get to the solid rock. On this account a great many of the present houses are built on arches. The glory and magnificence of Jerusalem are gone; she is in bondage, as well as her children. The jealousy of her Turkish pos¬ sessors is ever on the watch, lest any thing should seem to interfere with their despotic sway ; and any material change in her condition, while they continue to have the rule, appears impossible. That which naturally comes to be described, after the city, is Mount Zion ; the whole of which was anciently enclosed within the wall of the city, and * Lament, i. 1, 4. t Mic. iii. 12. 120 MOUNT ZION. about one-half of which is within the modern city wall. “ David took the strong-hold of Zion, the same is the city of David; so David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David.”* This con¬ tinued the ro^al residence, and became also the burial-place of the kings ; but that which gave it a sacred character, and made it afterwards, like Je¬ rusalem, used to signify the church and nation of Israel, was the ark of God being placed there by David. When we consider that the ark was made by the express command of God, and that He gave the most minute directions respecting it, we cannot but wonder at the entire oblivion into which it seems to have fallen for so long a period. For upwards of ninety years, that is, from the death of Eli, until David was king over all Israel, the ark appears to have been in a state of disuse. We hear once, it is true, of Saul calling for it ;t but David says express¬ ly, when about to take it to Mount Zion, “ Let us bring again the ark of our God to us ; for we in¬ quired not at it in the days of Saul.”J It was pro¬ bably to teach Israel again to honor it, as the visible symbol of His presence, that God saw fit to cut off Dzzah for his rashness in touching it. This judg¬ ment seems to have reminded David that the ark was not to be put upon “ a new cart,” after the fash¬ ion of the Philistines, but borne upon the shoulders of the Levites. * 1 Sam.v. 7,9. -j-1 Sam. xiv. 18. t 1 Chron. xiii. 3. MOUNT ZION. 121 “ And David made him houses in the city of Da¬ vid, and prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched for it a tent. Then David said : “ None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites; for them hath God chosen to carry the-ark of God.”* David and all Israel brought up the ark with shout¬ ing and great joy, “ and set it in his place, in the midst of the tabernacle that David had pitched for it.”t From this time until the building of the tem¬ ple, to which the ark was removed, Zion was the holy place, or sanctuary of the Lord ; and the name continued ever after to be used by prophets and holy men, to designate the whole of Jerusalem, including the temple. “ I am the Lord your God dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain.“ Is not the Lord in Zion What now remains of the glory of Mount Zion ? Nothing. Its regal splendor, its hallowed sacred¬ ness, are gone: “ Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field was the word of the in¬ spired prophet to “ the heads of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel ;”|| and there is now a field of barley growing on Zion, as a testi¬ mony that the word of the Lord standeth sure. Where now are her bulwarks and her palaces, which the Psalmist pointed out to the consideration * 1 Chron. xv. 1,2. j- 2 Sam. vi. 17. § Jer. viii. 19. || Mic. iii. 9, 12. 11 4 Joel iii. 17. 122 MOUNT MORIAH. of the faithful? They are swept away with the besom of destruction. Mount Zion is separated by a narrow valley from Mount Moriah, a locality full of interesting asso¬ ciations. Here the father of the faithful was put to the trying test of offering up his well-beloved son. On this mount, in dutiful submission to his Heavenly and his earthly father, he lay bound, from whom afterwards proceeded the many thousands of Israel. When Jerusalem was visited with pestilence, as a punishment for the sin of David in numbering the people, it was on this mount the destroying angel showed himself. It was at that time the property of one of the original inhabitants of Jerusalem, Arauneh, or Oman, the Jebusite. “ And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite. And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand, stretched out over Jerusalem.”* David was com¬ manded to erect here an altar unto the Lord, and this he fixed upon as the place whereon the temple should be built. “ Then David said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt-offering for Israelf’f And here, in due time, was the magnificent temple reared up by Solomon, the peaceful prince, the successor of Melchizedek, * 1 Chron. xxi. 15, 16. •j- Ibid. xxi. 1. MOUNT MORIAH. 123 “ king of Salem, which is king of peace,”* and the type of that “ Prince of Peace,” who shall “ reign over the house of Jacob for ever.”f The temple of Solomon, with its courts, occupied the whole summit of Mount Moriah. But though it was “ exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries,it was not this outward splendor that constituted the glory of the temple; it was the shechinah, the abiding presence of the Lord, that was “ the glory in the midst of it.” When the building was completed, and Solomon had invoked the presence of the Lord, He condescended to take possession of the habitation prepared for him : “ Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt- offering and the sacrifices; and the glory of the Lord filled the house ;”§ even as it had before filled the tabernacle in the wilderness.|| Here was the true church pointed out with sufficient clearness; to separate from this was indeed schism. This visible manifestation of God’s presence continued until the commencement of- the captivity. In the visions of Ezekiel, we have a detailed account of the departure of the glory of the Lord from the temple. While a captive by the river Chebar, he was carried “ in the visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the inner * Heb. vii. 2. § 2 Chron. vii. 1. j- Luke 1. 33. t 1 Chron. xxii. 5. I! Exod. xl. 34. 124 PROPHECY OF EZEKIEL. gate—and behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there: Then said he unto me,—Son of man, seest thou what they do, even the great abomina¬ tions that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary V ’* * In the fol¬ lowing part of the vision we are told that “ the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub and stood over the threshold of the house ;”f the glory then re¬ moves to “ the east gate of the Lord’s house and finally “ the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city, and stood upon the mountain which is on the east side of the city ;”§ that is, the Mount of Olives. When speaking of these localities, in connection with this vision of the departure of the shechinah, I cannot resist directing my reader’s attention to another remarkable vision of the same prophet yet to be fulfilled. The latter portion of Ezekiel’s pro¬ phecy is occupied with the subject of the future glory of Israel; in which, doubtless, “ there are many things hard to be understoodbut this much is very plain, that the things therein predicted did not come to pass at the return from Babylon. Respecting the “ house” which occupies such a prominent part in that vision, I offer no opinion; that to which I now wish to direct attention is, the return of the glory of * Ezek. viii. 3, 6. * Ibid. 19. | Ezek. x. 4. § Ibid. xi. 23. PROPHECY OF EZEKIEL. 125 God, whose departure we have just seen so minutely described. “Afterwards he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east; and be¬ hold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east; and his voice was like a noise of many waters, and the earth shined with his glory ;— and the glory of the Lord came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is towards the east; —and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the house. And he said unto me: Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever.”* Compare this with the following Scriptures : “ My tabernacle also shall be with them; yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for ever more.”f “And his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one.”:}: “ And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.”§ These Scriptures I leave, without note or comment, to the consideration of the Christian reader. * Ezek. xliii. 1—7 f Ibid, xxxvii. 27, 28. \ $ Zech. xiv. 4, 9. § Rev. xxi. 3. 11 * / 126 FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. We have seen that Zion is ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem has become heaps ; the last denunciation uttered by the prophet Micah has also been fulfilled, that “the mountain of the house” should become “ as the high places of a forest.” This latter expres¬ sion signifies the places where the worship of a false religion was carried on; the “ high places” of the heathen, in the prophet’s days, being always in a wood or grove. This, also, has been fulfilled to the very letter. The mosque of Omar, the sanctuary of the False Prophet, occupies the place where the temple of the Lord once stood; and, as if to fulfil the prophecy more minutely, the Mohammedans have planted around it cypress and orange trees; so that, looking at 't from a distance, it indeed appears “ like the high places of a wood” or forest. It may be instructive to inquire why God has thus permitted that which He has Himself called “ My holy mountain” to be defiled ; “ What meaneth the heat of this great anger ?” He has condescended to answer this question very plainly. Before pro¬ nouncing the denunciation already so often alluded to, He gives the reason of it: “ They build up Zion with blood, and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord and say, Is not the Lord among us ? None evil can come upon us. Therefore shall Zion, for your sake, be STUDY OF PROPHECY. 127 plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.”* The judgments upon Jerusalem afford an example of what is common to many prophetic intimations. The predicted consummation was viewed by the pro¬ phet as a great whole; and he simply announced its ultimate condition as one great event, without giving any hint that it was produced by successive events, occurring at different times. The objection so often made to a first and second fulfilment of the same prophecy ought to be silenced at once by what we know has actually taken place with regard to Je¬ rusalem. Its desolation is always spoken of in the prophets as one event; yet it has had two distinct fulfilments, at a distance of more than six hundred years from each other. The immediate cause of its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, is declared by God himself to have been the idolatry and bloodshed of Manasseh. In reference to that overthrow, the Lord says: “ I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.”j* Those who prayed “ for the peace of Jerusalem” were comforted by predictions of her future restoration. It was said to Jerusalem — u Thou shalt be built, and to the temple, thy foundation shall be laid.”J Je¬ rusalem and the temple were rebuilt and beautified. * Micah iii. 10—12. j- 2 Kings xxi. 13. $ Isaiah xliv. 28 128 REFLECTIONS. Who that saw this restoration would have surmised that a second destruction more complete, and a se¬ cond desolation more protracted, yet awaited both ? My limits prevent me from pursuing this subject; I merely throw out this hint to the diligent student of the word of God, that the successive fulfilments of the same prophecy, and the announcement, in one prophecy, of two events as simultaneous, or closely following each other, which in reality are separated by a long period, is the true key to many of the prophetic Scriptures. Could any one discover in the prediction uttered by John the Baptist, that the fulfilment of the first part was just at hand, and that of the latter part many centuries distant ? Between the event recorded in v. 11 of Mat. iii. and those events recorded in v. 12, the whole of the present dispensation intervenes. To return to the destruction of Jerusalem, it is worthy of remark, that though idolatry was one great cause of its destruction by the Babylonians, the Jews were generally free from this sin after the captivity. Nor was there any want of attention to the outward forms of religion. In our Saviour’s time, the ordinances seem to have been rigidly ob¬ served. Does He give any countenance to the no¬ tion, so frequently brought forward in the present day, that where the form is, we are bound to believe the spirit of God and His blessing are there also ? Did He tell His disciples to believe that purity dwelt REFLECTIONS. 129 in a whited sepulchre, or that they must receive a wolf in sheep’s clothing as one of the true flock? No ; the “ Spirit of Christ,” whether uttered by Him¬ self or by the mouth of the prophet,* spoke the same thing. By Isaiah, He said of the ordinances ap¬ pointed by His own command, “ Incense is an abomination to Me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.”! By Mica'll He said, as we have already seen, that the ungodli¬ ness of the rulers and teachers of the Jewish nation was the cause why Zion should be ploughed as a field; and He Himself said, “ Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess :” “ Ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer ; there¬ fore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”! I have dwelt at some length on this subject, be¬ cause it appears to me one of great importance. Is it not awful that the children of God should appear to attach some holiness to that which they know to be unholy,—which they know God sees to be un¬ holy ? Are there now no religious services that are an abomination to Him ; no “ solemn meetings” that He cannot away with? “ Woe unto them that call evil good.” * 1 Peter i. 11. fglsaiah i. 13. J Matt, xxiii. 25, 14. 130 WALL OF THE TEMPLE. Although, according to our Saviour’s prediction, not one stone of the temple is left upon another, there is every reason to believe that the foundations, and some of the lower part of the wall that now encloses the Mosque of Omar, are remains of the ancient wall that enclosed the area where the Tem¬ ple stood. In one part there is distinctly seen, springing out from the wall, the commencement of an arch formed of very large stones, which has evi¬ dently belonged to the bridge that, according to Josephus, connected Mount Zion with Mount Moriah. At another portion of the old wall the Jews assemble to mourn over the desolation of their city and tem¬ ple. After the revolt of the Jews under Adrian, they were not allowed to approach the Holy City ; “ and it was not till the age of Constantine that they were permitted to approach so as to behold Jerusa¬ lem from the neighboring hills. At length they were allowed to enter the city once a year, on the day on which it was taken by Titus, in order to wail over the ruins of the temple.”* One Friday afternoon Mr. Caiman took M. and me to the Jews’ place of wailing. After going along a narrow lane, we came to a small open space, one side of which was bounded by the wall that sur¬ rounds the area of the great mosque. The lower part of this wall is evidently very ancient; and there * Robinson’s Bib. Researches,!. 350. Jew’s place of wailing. 131 is historical evidence that, as far back as the twelfth century, the Jews regarded it as having belonged to the court of the ancient temple. The scene that here presented itself was one of the most striking I beheld in Jerusalem. About thirty men, and half as many women, were assem¬ bled together, all without shoes, the ground whereon they trod being in their estimation holy. Some were seated on the ground reading, some were praying, and others kissing the wall. I entered into dflhver- sation with some of the Polish and German Jews, and inquired what they were reading. Several were reading portions of the Psalms; other the Lamenta¬ tions of Jeremiah; and one venerable looking old man was reading the account of Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, recorded in 1st Kings, viii. Who could not sympathize with him in contemplating the contrast between the glorious scene therein described and the present desolation of the city and temple ? Nothing could give a more vivid picture of the hu¬ miliation of Israel than these poor Jews, strangers and outcasts in what used to be their own city. “ The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces.”* “ The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands * Lament, ii. 7. 132 ANCIENT ERIDGE. of the potter !”* The sons of Zion, instead of being objects of interest and pity, are exposed to the con¬ tempt and hatred, not only of the Mohammedan pos¬ sessors of their city, but of the professors of false Christianity who dwell in it. I cannot describe the vividness of truth with which the words came home to me, as I listened to one of my poor brethren reading the 12th verse of the 1st chapter of Lamen¬ tations,—“ Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by ? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.” We went from this spot to examine more minutely the fragment of the arch, that interesting relic which so clearly demonstrates the antiquity of the portion of the wall to which it belongs, and which is a strong presumptive evidence that those parts of the walls that are of similar architecture are equally ancient. M. measured three of the stones that compose this fragment, and found them respectively twenty-one, twenty-three, and twenty-five feet in length. The distance from this point to the precipitous rock of Zion, on the other side of the valley, w'as measured by Dr. Robinson, and found to be three hundred and fifty feet, which was probably the length of the bridge that united the two mounts together: joining the royal residence to the house of God. While stand- * Lament, iv. 2. POOL OF SILOAM. 133 ing in the valley between these renowned eminences, and examining the remnant of the bridge that united them, it was interesting to remember that Moriah belonged to the tribe of Benjamin, and Zion to Judah, These two brethren have always been peculiarly united. “ Send the lad with me,” said Judah to his father; “ I will be surety for him.”* When the ten tribes revolted from the house of David these two remained loyal: and to this day the descendants of these two brethren continue united in suffering, wan¬ dering together over the wide world, without a country or a home. At the other end of the same valley is the pool of Siloam, a reservoir for water, surrounded by ancient walls of hewn stone. It was in this pool our Lord desired the blind man to wash after He had anointed his eyes with clay. The water that sup¬ plies the pool comes from a fountain, or perhaps it may rather be called another pool, nearly a quarter of a mile distant, a channel being cut through the hill from the one to the other. It has been conjec¬ tured, and there is great reason for the supposition, that the upper pool (which is now called the Foun¬ tain of the Virgin) is itself supplied by a spring that rises in Mount Moriah, immediately under the site of the Temple. There is a spring or fountain directly under the mosque of Omar, of the water * Gen. xliii. 8, 9. 12 134 GARDEN OF GETIISEMANE. of which Dr. Robinson’s drank, and found it had the same peculiar taste he had remarked in the water of Siloam. This reminds one of the vision of Eze¬ kiel, in which he saw waters proceeding “ from under the right side of the house at the south side of the altar and of the prophetic declaration of Joel respecting the latter days, that then “ a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord.”f “ Jesus went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron, where was a garden. And Judas knew the place, for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples.”^: The brook Cedron or Kidron, is now only a dry channel, through which no stream flows, except during the heavy rains of winter; but on crossing it, near the north-east corner of the city, you come to a plat of ground, enclosed with a stone wall, which has long been pointed out as the Garden of Gethsemane ; and as the situation corresponds to the place described in the Gospel narrative, being near the Mount of Olives, there is little reason to doubt that in or near this spot the mysterious agony of our blessed Lord, when he “ offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death,”§ took place. In this enclosure are eight very old olive trees. I felt this a solemn spot; it was impossible *Ezek. xlvii. 1. $ John xviii. 1, 2. f Joel iff. 18. § Heb. v. 7. GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. 135 to visit it, for the first time at least, without a lively recollection of Him who “ poured out his soul unto death.” I felt how natural to the human mind is the worship of the visible,—the love of relics. I could not resist pulling many twigs of those ancient olive trees. It is easy to understand how, from the time of Peter unto the present day, men should be disposed to say, when deeply impressed in a parti¬ cular spot, “ let us build a tabernacle” here; but even if experience had not shown the futility of such attempts to perpetuate the impression, I believe the principle is in itself wrong, as tending to encourage a low estimate of the degree in which God’s pre¬ sence may be now enjoyed. If we really believe that where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, He is there in the midst of them, actually, though invisibly, present, we ought to feel that to us the place where he is now present in spirit is more holy than the place where He was in person many hundred years ago ; and thus the upper room, the open field, or our own private chamber where God condescends to meet with us, should be to us “ none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven.” I firmly believe, that if we seek to affect the mind by the aid of architecture, painting, or music, the impression produced by these adjuncts is just so much subtracted from the worship of the unseen Jehovah. If the outward eye is taken up with material splendor, or forms of external beauty, 136 MOUNT OF OLIVES. the mind’s eye sees but little of “ Him who is invi¬ sible;” the ear that is entranced with the melody of sweet sounds, listens not to the “ still small voice” by which the Lord makes his presence known. Gethsemane is situated near the base of the Mount of Olives, lying at a little to the right of the path which leads to the top of the Mount. This mount might almost be called the home of Jesus when he was in Jerusalem : “ In the day time he was teach¬ ing in the temple; and at night he went out and abode in the mount that is called the Mount of Olives yea, when “ every man went into his own house, Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives ;”f while the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. After walking for about half an hour up a rather steep ascent, we came to the highest summit of the mount. From this there is an extensive view, it be¬ ing the highest point in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem. The Dead Sea is distinctly seen, and the valley of the Jordan, which may be traced out by the narrow strip of verdure which distinguishes its banks from the more “ dry and barren land” around. How many associations crowd into the mind on this mount? When David went forth from Jerusa- * Luke xxi. 37. f John vii. 53 ; viii. 1. MOUNT OF OLIVES. 137 lem, on the rebellion of his son Absalom, he “ went up by the ascent of Mount Olivet, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot.'”* While in this state of humiliation, did not the Holy Spirit lead the royal prophet beyond his own sufferings, to those of*his Son and his Lord, who afterwards spent so many nights on this same spot, pouring out His soul in agony for the sins of men ? Who knows how many of those psalms, in which are blended the utterances of the feeble and sinful David, and the utterances of Him who, “ though He knew no sin,” was “ made sin for us,” were suggested to the mind of the Psalmist, as he walked, weeping and barefoot up this mount! It was here that Jesus sat with his disciples, when he delivered to them the prophetic announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the events that characterise “ the great and terrible day of the Lord,” of which the judgments on Jerusalem were * a type. A very ancient tradition makes the Mount of Olives the scene of the ascension ; but it is express¬ ly said in Scripture that Jesus “ led them out as far as Bethany;” which is about half a mile beyond it, on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. In Acts i. 12, it is true, we are told that the disciples “ return¬ ed unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet;” * 2 Samuel xv. 30. 12 * 138 MOUNT OF OLIVES. but this involves no contradiction. The nearest road from Bethany to Jerusalem is directly across the Mount of Olives; and what more natural than that, after having parted from their beloved Master, they should linger for a while in the place where they had so often taken sweet counsel with Him ? The men “ in white apparel” had said to them, “ This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven and Zechariah had prophecied in connexion with the final affliction of Jerusalem, that “ His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives.” May we not suppose that on coming to the spot where, a few weeks before Jesus had told them “ the signs of his coming, and of the end of the world,” that they tarried for a time, before re¬ turning to the bustle of the city, to “ comfort one another” with anticipations of their Lord’s return; that here “ they worshipped him,” and were thus enabled to “ return to Jerusalem with great joy ?”f Bethany is a mean village, containing about twenty families ; but is deeply interesting from hav¬ ing been the abode of those whom Jesus loved ; the place to which He so often resorted to enjoy the sympathy and friendship of a pious family, after having “ endured the contradiction of sinners against himself.” How interesting to contemplate the holy, * Acts i. 11. t Lake xxiv. 52. BETHANY. 139 £ yet real humanity of Christ! That He who was “ Lord of all” should condescend to bestow a spe¬ cial love on some of His disciples! Possibly it was to take a last farewell of this family, that He “led them out as far as Bethany” before leaving the earth. The pretended house and tomb of Lazarus, to¬ gether with the house of Simon the Leper, are shown at Bethany ; but these, and all similar tradi¬ tions, are generally fictions of the fourth century, or later ; and in many cases are not merely doubt¬ ful, but directly opposed to the scriptural account. After the professed conversion of the Emperor Con¬ stantine to Christianity, pilgrimages to the Holy City became the fashion of the day; his mother He¬ lena went thither at the age of eighty ; and caused churches to be built at Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives, to commemorate the nativity and the ascen¬ sion. This continued the fashion of the religious world for many succeeding centuries : and each cen¬ tury presented some new discovery of a venerated locality, and the erection of a church or monastery on the supposed site of a memorable place or scene of a remarkable event. In due time all these dis¬ coveries came to be ascribed to Helena ; and al¬ though in the writings of her contemporaries she is only said to have built the two churches above men¬ tioned, “ in the fourteenth century not less than thirty churches were ascribed to her within the 140 REMARKABLE TOMBS. limits of Palestine.”* These “ lying vanities” met us at every stage of our journey in the Holy Land ; but so far from thinking any of them worthy of no¬ tice, I conceive they would only be to my readers, as they were to myself, an impertinent annoyance, destroying hallowed associations, and tending to make one view with suspicion all reported localities of ancient places. With very few exceptions, there¬ fore, I pass over in silence the monkish traditions. On the east side of the valley of Jehoshaphat are four remarkable tombs, hewn out of the solid rock, to which are now given the names of Jehoshaphat, Absalom, St. James, and Zecharias. In the earlier notices of these, different names are assigned to them ; so that all that is said about them is mere conjecture. A thought struck me in regard to them, which I merely throw out as a possibility, without pretending to assert its correctness. These tombs are held in high estimation by the Jews; they visit them and pray beside them. I met many Jews at the tomb of Zecharias, some of whom were in¬ scribing their names upon it. They, in common with the Christians, call this the tomb of Zechariah, the son of Barachiah. I regret that I omitted to ask them by what name they call the one allotted by the Christians to St. James. The style of architecture, * Robinson’s Bib, Res. ii. 16. TOMBS. 141 being mingled Grecian and Egyptian, shows them to be comparatively modern. “ If they existed pri¬ or to the destruction of Jerusalem,” says Robinson, “ they are probably to be referred to the times of the Herodes.”* Supposing this to be the case, their construction would, in the time of our Saviour, be a recent event; and as we know, that even under their vassalage to the Romans, there were some rich men ar^ong the Jews, such as Joseph of Ari- mathea, who had tombs for themselves which they had “ hewn out in the rock,”t it is at least not im¬ probable that all, or some of these tombs, may have been erected, or, more correctly speaking, “ hewn out,” by the more wealthy of the Scribes and Pha¬ risees, in honor of some of the prophets. May it not be in allusion to these very tombs that our Lord says, “ Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypo¬ crites ! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” Then, after relating how they would deal with the first preachers of the gos¬ pel, He adds : “ That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son * Bib. Researches, i. 521. f Matt, xxvii. 60. 142 GREEK AND ROMISH CHURCHES. of Barachias one of the prophets to whose me¬ mory they had lately made a monument. It is painful to the child of God to behold the mosque of the false prophet stand where that temple once stood, in which God manifested his presence by the shechinah ; it is melancholy to see God’s ancient people in darkness and ignorance, oppressed and despised, in their own city ; but it is even more sad to see there the mixture of folly, falsehood, and wickedness, that calls itself Christianity. I have elsewhere mentioned! the effect necessarily produced on the minds of my brethren, the Jews, by the false representation of the Christian religion exhibited to them by the Papists in Poland and Germany; but here, where the Lord from heaven Himself intro¬ duced a new and spiritual dispensation, the exhibi¬ tion of folly and blasphemy presented by the Greek and Romish churches, exceeds, perhaps, what is to be met with elsewhere. The palm of superiority in evil, however, must be accorded to the Greek and other Eastern churches, whose exhibitions during Easter have no parallel except in the rites of the heathen. As I did not arrive in Jerusalem until three weeks after the Greek Easter, I did not myself witness the extraordinary scenes that are * Matt, xxiii. 29, 35. f Brief Sketch of the Present State and Future Expecta¬ tion of the Jews. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 143 yearly enacted in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre : but my friend, Mr. Caiman, who has resided seve¬ ral years in Jerusalem, has kindly permitted me to publish a letter written by him to a friend in Eng¬ land, immediately after he had witnessed the melan¬ choly and revolting spectacle. During the Greek Easter week, Jerusalem is re¬ sorted to by thousands of pilgrims, not only from all parts of Palestine and Syria, but even from such distant places as Syra, Smyrna, and Constantinople. Last Easter it was computed that not less than ten thousand persons were present. This holy fair is celebrated with revellings and jollity, nearly akin to those of secular meetings that go under the same name. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a pile of clumsy buildings, professing to cover, in most con¬ venient juxta-position, both Calvary and the tomb of Christ; and furnished after the most approved fash¬ ion of monkish falsehood and audacity, with every thing that can be thought of, connected with the great event thus shamefully desecrated ; of all of which, it may be said truly, in the words of the Scotch deputation, “ the wonder is, that the writers (‘ of travels’) should have been so careful in describ¬ ing what no serious mind can regard but as ‘ lying wonders.’ ”* 0 * Narrative of a Mission of Enquiry to the Jews, p. 185. 144 SCENE IN THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. This church, and the relics it contains, are the great objects of attraction to the pilgrims; and here, on the last day of the week, is performed the impi¬ ous juggle of the holy fire. Omitting the first part of Mr. Caiman’s letter, I extract the portion that re¬ lates to this blasphemous imposture of, what the advocates of apostolic succession denominate, “ a sister church.” “ Having thus given a brief outline of the edifice, I shall now proceed to describe the ceremony I have alluded to, namely, that of the miraculous Greek fire, which takes place on the Saturday of the Greek Easter week; and which serves, in the hands of the Greek and Armenian priests, the same purpose that the keys of Peter do in the hands of his skilful suc¬ cessors, the Popes: it unlocks every coffer and purse of the pilgrims, and renders them at the dis¬ posal of the inventors and perpetrators of this lying wonder. “ To notice all that was passing within the church of the Holy Sepulchre during the space of more than twenty-four hours, would be next to impossible; because it was one continuation of shameless mad¬ ness and rioting, which would have been a disgrace to Greenwich and Smithfield fairs. Only suppose for a moment the mighty edifice crowded to excess with fanatic pilgrims of all the Eastern churches, who, instead of lifting up pure hands to God, without wrath and quarrelling, are led by the petty jealousies SCENE IN THE SEPULCHRE. 145 about the precedency which they should maintain in the order of their processions, into tumults and fight¬ ings, which can only be quelled by the scourge and whip of the followers of the false prophet. Suppose further, these thousands of devotees running from one extreme to the other,—from the extreme of savage irritation to that of savage enjoyment, of mutual revellings and feastings; like Israel of old, who, when they made the golden calf, were eating, and drinking, and rising up to pla^. Suppose troops of men, stripped half naked to facilitate their actions, running, trotting, jumping, galloping, to and fro, the breadth and length of the ehurch; walking on their hands with their feet aloft in the air ,* mounting on one another’s shoulders, some in a riding, and some in a standing position, and by the slightest push are all sent d^wn to the ground in one confused heap, which made one fear for their safety. Suppose fur¬ ther, many of the pilgrims dressed in fur caps, like the Polish Jew T s, whom they feigned to represent, and whom the mob met with all manner of contempt and insult, hurrying them through the church as criminals who had been just condemned, amid loud execrations and shouts of laughter, which indicated that Israel is still a derision amongst these heathens, by whom they are still counted as sheep for the slaughter. All these, and similar proceedings marked the introduction of this holy miraculous fire; and when questioned about the propriety of such con- 13 146 MIRACULOUS FIRE. duct within a Christian place of worship, and with the name of religion, the priests will tell you, that they once tried to get quit of these absurdities, and the holy fire was withdrawn in consequence of it! f “About two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, the preparations for the appearance of the miraculous fire commenced. The multitude, who had been here¬ tofore in a state of frenzy and madness, became a little more quiet; but it proved a quiet that precedes a thunderstorm. Bishops and priests in their full canonicals, then issued forth from their respective quarters, with flags and banners, crucifixes and crosses, lighted candles and smoking cencers, to join or rather to lead, a procession, which moved thrice round the church, invoking every picture, altar, and relic, in their way, to aid them in obtaining the mira¬ culous fire. The procession then returned to the place from whence it started, and two grey-headed bishops, the one of the Greek, the other of the Ar¬ menian church, were hurled by the soldiers through the crowd, into the apartment which communicates with that of the Holy Sepulchre, where they locked themselves in ; there the marvellous fire was to make its first appearance, and from thence issue through the small circular windows and the door, for the use of the pilgrims. The eyes of all, men, women, and children, were now directed towards the Holy Sepul¬ chre with an anxious suspense, awaiting the issue of their expectation. MIRACULOUS FIRE. 147 “ The mixed multitude, each in his or her own language, were pouring forth their clamorous prayers to the Virgin and the saints, to intercede for them on behalf of the object for which they were assem¬ bled ; and the same were tenfold increased by the fanatic gestures and the waving of the garments by the priests of the respective communions who were interested in the holy fire, and who were watching by the above-mentioned door and circular windows, with torches in their hands, ready to receive the virgin flame of the heavenly fire, and convey it to their flocks. In about twenty minutes from the time the bishops locked themselves in the apartment of the Holy Sepulchre the miraculous fire made its appear¬ ance through the door and the two small windows, as expected. The priests were the first who lighted their torches, and they set out on a gallop in the direction of their lay brethren: but some of these errandless and profitless messengers had the misfor¬ tune to be knocked down by the crowd, and had their firebrands wrested out of their hands ; but some were more fortunate, and safely reached their destination, around whom the people flocked like bees, to have their candles lighted. Others, however, were not satisfied at having the holy fire second hand, but rushed furiously towards the Holy Sepulchre, regard¬ less of their own safety, and that of those who ob¬ structed their way; though it has frequently hap¬ pened that persons have been trampled to death on 148 MIRACULOUS FIRE. such occasions. Those who were in the galleries let down their candles by cords, and drew them up when they had succeeded in their purpose. In a few minutes thousands of flames were ascending, the smoke and the heat of which rendered the church like the bottomless pit. To satisfy themselves, as well as to convince the Latins, (who grudge so pro¬ fitable as well as so effectual a piece of machinery being in the hands of the schismatical Greeks and Armenians, and one which augments the power of the priest and the revenue of the convents, and who, therefore, exclaim against the miraculous fire,) the pilgrims, women, as well as men, shamefully expose their bare bosoms to the action of the flame of their lighted candles, to make their adversaries believe the miraculous fire differs from an ordinary one, in being perfectly harmless. The two bishops, who a little while before locked themselves in the apartment of the Holy Sepulchre, now sallied forth out of it. When the whole multitude had their candles lighted, the bishops were caught by the crowd, lifted upon their shoulders, and carried to their chapels amidst loud and triumphant acclamations. They soon, however, re-appeared, at the head of a similar pro¬ cession as the one before, as a pretended thank-offer¬ ing to the Almighty for the miraculous fire vouchsafed, thus daring to make God a partaker in their lie. An express messenger was immediately sent off to Bethlehem, the birth-place of Christ, to inform the LETTER OF THE ARCHBISHOP. 149 brethren there, and to invite them also to offer up their tribute of thanks for the transcendant glory of the day. Thus closed the lying wonders of the holy week of Easter. ,, Such is the picture of Christianity annually pre¬ sented to the eyes of the Mohammedans ; and though no Jews are permitted to witness it, they hear of it from their Musselman neighbors, with whom they are on more friendly terms than they are with the Christians. Surely the very first act of any mis¬ sion to the Jews ought to have been to testify against, and to repudiate all alliance with those apostate Eastern churches, in order to convince them that they came to teach a Christianity very different from any thing that goes by that name in Jerusalem ; and therefore every Christian must regret this not being the case with the present mission there, but that the following letter was sent instead : “ Letter commendatory from the Most Rev. the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, dec. “ To the Right Reverend our Brothers in Christ, the Prelates and Bishops of the ancient and Apos¬ tolic Churches in Syria, and the countries adja¬ cent, greeting in the Lord. “ We, William, by Divine Providence, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England, and Metro¬ politan, most earnestly commend to your brotherly love the Right Rev. Michael Solomon Alexander, Doctor in Divinity, whom we, being well assured of 13* 150 LETTER OF THE ARCHBISHOP. his learning and piety, have consecrated to the office of a bishop of the united Church of England and Ireland, according to the ordinances of our holy and Apostolic Church, and having obtained the consent of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, have sent out to Jerusalem, with authority to exercise spiritual juris¬ diction over the clergy and congregations of our church, which are now, or which hereafter may be, established in the countries above mentioned. And in order to prevent any misunderstanding in regard to this our purpose, we think it right to make known to you, that we have charged the said bishop our brother not to intermeddle in any way with the ju¬ risdiction of the prelates or other ecclesiastical dig¬ nitaries bearing rule in the Churches of the East, but to show them due reverence and honor; and to be ready on all occasions, and by all the means in his power, to promote a mutual interchange of re¬ spect, courtesy, and kindness. We have good rea¬ son to believe that our brother is willing, and will feel himself in conscience bound, to follow these our instructions ; and we beseech you, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to receive him as a brother, and to assist him, as opportunity may offer, with your good offices. “ We trust that your Holiness will accept this communication as a testimony of our respect and affection, and of our hearty desire to renew that amicable intercourse with the ancient churches of REFLECTIONS. 151 the East, which has been suspended for ages, and which, if restored, may have the effect, with the blessing of God, of putting an end to divisions which have brought the most grievous calamities on the Church of Christ. “ In this hope, and with sentiments of the highest respect for your Holinesses, we have affixed our archiepiscopal seal to this letter, written with our hand at our palace of Lambeth, on the twenty-third day of November, in the year of our Lord one thou¬ sand eight hundred and forty-one.” All this to these reverend impostors,—to these “ Holinesses,” who set fire to a few ounces of alco¬ hol, and then solemnly thank God for having sent a miraculous flame down from heaven ! I cannot suppose that the Archbishop of Canter¬ bury, or any of those concerned, were fully aware of the state of those churches whose ministers were thus addressed; but how grievous is it that the head of the mission at Jerusalem should have been intro¬ duced under such auspices ; that such a document should have been published and promulgated in Arabic, that Jews and Mohammedans might see the “ amicable intercourse !” I am well aware of the obloquy to which I expose myself by these remarks ; but I seek not to please men ; “ for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” If I sought a life of ease, I should glide along with the current of public opinion, and “ prophesy smooth 152 REFLECTIONS. thingsbut I dare not speak of any thing other¬ wise than as God sees I think of it. Nor am I in¬ termeddling with that which is no concern of mine; I have to bear the shame of this unholy alliance among my unconverted brethren, who are but ill-in¬ formed in regard to the sectional distinctions o£ the Christian Church, and therefore naturally hold one Christian answerable for the views and opinions of another. It is true I could tell my brethren in Je¬ rusalem, that the church to which the mission be¬ longs is very different indeed from the Eastern churches ; but what avails such an assertion in the face of a public document that gives not the slightest hint of any such difference ? It may be said that the lives of the missionaries will show their Chris¬ tianity to be different. Most willingly do I admit this ; but to be able to judge of their walk and con¬ versation, would augur a degree of intercourse from which the more pious Jews will shrink. Any diffe¬ rence they do perceive, they do not lay to the ac¬ count of their Christianity, but to their belonging to England. Let it not be said that in these remarks I am ac¬ tuated by enmity to the London Jews’ Society. Whatever faults and mistakes it may have commit¬ ted it has been the instrument of much good to the Jews, and by its distribution of Hebrew New Testa¬ ments, has in many quarters stirred up a spirit of inquiry, of which we shall hereafter see the fruits. MISSION AT JERUSALEM. 153 As little am I actuated by any enmity to the Church of England. Why, of all sections of the Christian Church, should I feel enmity at the only one that for many years did any thing for the welfare of Israel ? I speak as a member of the Church of Christ, to my fellow members of the Church of Christ; urging them to prayer and consideration, as to how this stumbling-block is to be removed out of the way of my brethren, the Jews. Let them re¬ member how God judged Israel of old, when they had any alliance with the idolatry of the nations; and having established themselves on that Zion which the Lord loveth, and hath chosen, to put His name there, let them tremble at appearing partakers of other men’s sins, lest God should blow upon all their efforts, and visit them with His sore displeasure. I am forced, very much against my inclination, thus to state my views in regard to the mission in Jerusalem. Many Christians, who are its friends and well-wishers, have urged me to do so; and had I passed it over in silence, my motives for so doing would have been misconstrued. The great and im¬ portant lesson the Jews ought to be taught, is, that Christianity is a spiritual religion ; an internal power, regulating the heart and conduct; and that all out¬ ward ordinances and arrangements, though useful as instruments, are in themselves of no value, apart from this internal principle. The apostate Eastern churches, therefore, consisting only of outward 154 MISSION AT JERUSALEM. forms (to say nothing of their false doctrine,) ought at once to have been disowned ; and while their Bishops might have been treated with courtesy as men, should never have been recognized as ministers of Christ. The very simplest mode of worship, also, of which the Church of England admits, ought, according to this view, to have been adopted, to make the line of demarcation between it and the Eastern churches as broad as possible. A bishop in his full canonicals, preceded by a Janissary with two silver-headed staves, and followed by three robed priests, do not form the best arrangement for convincing the Jews of the simplicity of Christian worship. In this I am not at all speaking as a Non¬ conformist. A large body of attached members of the Church of England will join me in saying, that there is a wide difference between its services, when conducted in the simplest manner that is consistent with order, and when encumbered with as many outward trappings as its Protestant character will admit of. It is with the utmost reluctance I make these re¬ marks. Far more agreeable is it to me to testify, that I believe my dear brother, Bishop Alexander, to be a truly Christian man: and who knows what work may yet be allotted to him in the providence of God ? The first Sunday I spent in Jerusalem I saw four of my brethren baptized ; two of them residents there, MISSION AT JERUSALEM. 155 and two who had been sent thither to be baptized from another of the society’s stations. The bishop gave them a touching and excellent address. Most heartily do I say, “ The Lord add unto them an hundred fold, and may his eyes see it.” And above all, may those he baptizes be members of the true church, and not merely swell the already over¬ crowded ranks of nominal Christianity ! It is certainly a remarkable sign of the times, that a Jew should be sent out as bishop to Jerusalem by the most powerful nation of the earth. Whatever its spiritual results may be, it is quite evident it is already regarded as a political movement, not only by the Turks, but by the other European powers. Britain had a consul in Jerusalem for three years before any other nation, except Prussia, thought of having the same; but no sooner did she send a bishop than France, Russia, and Austria sent con¬ suls forthwith ,* and thus in Jerusalem—which is, in a commercial point of view, but a paltry, inland, eastern town, without trade or importance of any kind,—sit the five consuls of the great European powers, looking at one another, it is difficult to say why or wherefore. To use the words of Dr. Keith, in his interesting work recently published: “A country which for previous centuries no man inquired after , excites anew the liveliest interest among the greatest of earthly potentates.”* * The Land of Israel, p. 476. 156 LEPERS IN JERUSALEM. There is a curious fact I learned in Jerusalem, which was told me with much triumph by some of my brethren. Within the last few years there have been fourteen converts from Christianity to Judaism. What has been the motive of this strange movement I cannot tell; but it will easily be believed the Jews are delighted to have such a set-off to any conver¬ sions effected among them. But I must linger no longer in Jerusalem. One interesting fact I will mention, and then take my leave of it. There are still lepers dwelling in Jeru¬ salem. Near the Zion gate are some miserable hovels, where the leprous families reside, apart from others, associating and intermarrying only with each other. How forcibly does this recall the remem¬ brance of Him who spake the word, and the leper was cleansed ! Though Jerusalem is favored more than most Eastern cities, in having two excellent medical men, Dr. Macgowan, of the mission, and Dr. Frankel, a Jewish physician, sent there by Sir Moses Montefiore; yet to the poor leper nothing avails but that “ gift of healing” which subsists in the church no longer. No traveller can visit Jerusalem without being sensible what an acquisition to it the worthy British consul is; whose kind attentions and friendly aid are always at the service even of those who have no claim on them beyond that of being strangers in a Rachel’s tomb. 157 strange land. And it would be well if all British residents abroad showed the same example of high- toned morality that Mr. Young exhibits. On Monday, May 21st, M. and I, in company with Dr. Wilson, of Bombay, and Mr. Graham, Scottish Missionary to the Jews, set off for Bethlehem. On our way we saw the aqueduct that conveyed the water from Solomon’s pools to Jerusalem. The next object of interest was Rachel’s tomb. The present building is an ordinary Mohammedan tomb ; but there is every reason to believe that it occupies the place where “ the pillar of Rachel’s grave” once stood. The Jews hold it in high veneration; and make pilgrimages to pray there. The Mohamme¬ dans, who also venerate it, do not permit the Jews to enter within it; even Sir Moses Montefiore when he visited it, was obliged to remain outside. There is a hole in the wall at which they pray, so that their voices enter into the tomb. On considering the situation of this tomb, being in the highway between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, we can at once understand both the poetic allusion of the prophet Jeremiah, to “ Rachel weeping for her children,” and the appli¬ cation of it by Matthew to the massacre of the infants at Bethlehem. Even to this day may Rachel weep over her children, “ scattered and peeled,” “ meted out and trodden downbut her mourning is not always to continue: “ There is hope in thine end, 14 158 BETHLEHEM. saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.”* Bethlehem is about six miles from Jerusalem, and is situated on the slope of a ridge. The valleys and fields around it are tolerably well cultivated, and pro¬ duce good crops, so it may still be called “ a house of bread.” How many interesting associations are connected with this spot! Here Naomi and Ruth dwelt on coming from Moab,* some of these fields were once the possession of the wealthy Boaz. A portion of his inheritance descended to his grandson Jesse; here David was born ; and here, when the fulness of time was come, the Son and Lord of David, the true “ Ruler of Israel,” was born ;—the Lord of glory came into the world He had made, a helpless infant! Mysterious truth! Can we wonder that many should disbelieve it? The real wonder is, that many who profess to believe it, are so indiffer¬ ent about it. The more we contemplate this won¬ derful event, the more do we feel that “ no man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost.”f What a momentous night was that, when Christ, “ the true bread,” came down from heaven ! I looked with the deepest interest on the fields round Bethle¬ hem, and at a little distance from it, in some of which the shepherds were feeding their flocks when the angel announced the “ glad tidings,” that a Saviour * Jeremiah xxxi. 17. j- 1 Cor. xii. 3. REFLECTIONS. 159 was born. The inhabitants of Bethlehem are at present all nominally Christian ; yet what do they know of Christ? They know no more of Him as a Saviour from sin, as a restorer of the lost image of God in the soul of man, than the Mohammedans around them. In the church of the convent at Bethlehem is shown the cave of the nativity, as it is called. It is certainly possible that this cave may have been a place for cattle, belonging to an ancient Khan or inn; but it is equally probable that it was fixed upon, in the days of Helena, as the most convenient spot to which they could attach the tradition, without any sufficient warrant for doing so. As the sepul¬ chre of Moses was hidden from the Israelites, so it may be better for us that an air of uncertainty hangs over the precise spots connected both with the birth and the death of Christ; that we may be kept from the worship of the visible, and from attaching pecu¬ liar sanctity to any thing material, which has a necessary tendency to weaken our faith in the universal spiritual presence of Christ with His members. In the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, we see one of those unintentional coincidences that so strikingly mark the fulfilment of prophecy. Micah had said, by the Spirit, more than seven centuries before: “ But thou, Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee 160 MAE SABA. shall he come forth unto me who is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”* Whether Mary and Joseph were acquainted with this prophecy, or whether the knowledge of it was confined to the “ chief priests and scribes,” we cannot tell; however this might be, Mary remained quietly in Nazareth, not taking the fulfilment into her own hands, by a timely removal to Bethlehem. A heathen emperor must issue a decree just at the set time, and thus bring the mother of Jesus to the place appointed for His birth. Do we not recognise in this the hand of Him who “ seeth the end from the beginning ?” St. Jerome lived in the convent at Bethlehem when he translated the Scriptures into Latin ; a cave is shown as the apartment he occupied when so engaged. Of the absurdities shown by the monks, I shall say nothing further, than that, as everybody must be accommodated with some memorial, Joseph must needs have an apartment as well as others ; but all they have been able to spare for him is a mere niche, or hole in the wall, into which he must have had some difficulty in squeezing himself. From Bethlehem we proceeded to the convent of Mar Saba, where M. and I were to remain for the night, as we intended to proceed next morning to the Dead Sea. After about an hour’s ride, the * Micah v. 2. BROOK. KEDRON. 161 country became very wild and desolate, being the commencement of the Wilderness of Judea, a large tract of desert country that stretches along all the west side of the Dead Sea. The convent of Mar Saba is an extraordinary place. It was founded by the person whose name it bears at the end of the fifth century, and has ever since been inhabited by a succession of monks of the Greek church. The brook Kedron, which rises, or, I ought to say, which did rise, to the north of Jerusalem, here has flowed through a deep ravine, the sides of which are preci¬ pitous, and the convent is built up one side of the ravine; the foundation being nearly on the level of the torrent bed, while the entrance is from the high ground above. The bed of the brook Kedron, like that of nearly all the ancient rivers of Palestine, is quite dry, merely serving the purpose of draining off the heavy rains of winter. Dr. Wilson called our attention to this dry channel, stretching uninter¬ ruptedly to the Dead Sea, as being ready prepared for the “ living water” mentioned in Ezek. xlvii. The same stream is also alluded to in Zech. xiv. 8; the “ former sea” in that verse remaining the eastern or Dead Sea. We could fully understand the allu¬ sion in that verse: “ In summer and in winter shall it be:” a constantly flowing stream, not as now, the mere rush of a winter’s torrent. We parted with regret from Dr. Wilson and Mr. Graham, who returned to Jerusalem. We were 14 * 162 WILDERNESS OF JUDEA. joined by our former fellow-travellers, who were to accompany us to the Dead Sea, and our formidable looking guard, consisting of a Sheik or chief, and fifteen Arabs. It is impossible to take such a jour¬ ney without a guard ; and as to the number of which it is to consist, you are almost entirely at the mercy of the Sheik, with whom you must make the best bargain you can. Dr. Wilson had perceived among the rocks a small animal, which he thought was the coney of Scripture. M. promised to endeavor to get one for him, which, by the help of the Bedouins, he suc¬ ceeded in doing. We climbed up to see its nest, which was a hole in the rock, comfortably lined with moss and feathers, answering to the description given of the coney in Psa. civ. 18, and Prov. xxx. 26. At five o’clock next morning we left Mar Saba for the Dead Sea. The farther we penetrated into this wilderness, the more sterile and desolate it be¬ came ; it can only be described by the Scripture phrases, “ a terrible wilderness,” a “ waste and howling wilderness.” The narrow track we pursued sometimes followed the undulations of the rocky heights, and sometimes we were hid in mountain passes between them. It was in this “ dry and thirsty land, where no water is,” that David gave utterance to the sixty-third Psalm. This same desert tract of country seems to have taken different names, according to the towns on which it bordered ; JOHN THE BAPTIST. 163 as the wilderness of Ziph, the wilderness of Tekoa ; and it was through various parts of it that David wandered when he fled from Saul. A large natural cavern, considerably to the south of where we now were, is shown as the cave of Adullam. But the subject that was uppermost in my mind during the ride in this awful wilderness, was, the character and preaching of John the Baptist. “ In these days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea : and the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat w r as locusts and wild honey.”* Why does the Holy Spirit tell us the dress and the food of John ? Because John was, like his father Zacharias, a priest “ of the course of Abia” or Abijah; he had a right to wear the priestly robe, to be girded with the ephod, and to feed on the meat of the sacrifices. Why did he not reside in Jerusalem ? Why did he not “ execute the priest’s office in the order of his course,—to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord ?” Be¬ cause he was appointed to be the forerunner of a new dispensation, in which the ceremonial priesthood of the few, was to give place to the spiritual priest¬ hood of the whole body of believers. He therefore refused his priestly garments, and put on the ordi¬ nary dress of the wandering Ishmaelite of the desert; * Matt. iii. 1, 4. 164 JOHN THE BAPTIST. that he might testify to the Priests and Levites, that “ the voice of one that crieth” must now be listened to because it is truth, and not because it is announ¬ ced by a man wearing a certain garment. He lived in the wilderness, thereby to declare that every place was his Bethel ; and to show to those who laid so much stress on the locality of the Temple, that the dispensation was at hand, under which, as had been predicted by the prophets, “ in every place in¬ cense shall be offered” unto the name of the Lord. And while “ they which minister about holy things, live of the things of the temple, and they which wait at the altar, are partakers with the altar,” John lived on the common food of the desert; his altar was everywhere ,* and perhaps on some of the very rocks on which my eye rested, he offered up “ spirit¬ ual sacrifices, acceptable to God.” What a strange eccentric being must John have appeared to the priests and the Pharisees of his day ! His nonconformity must indeed have scandalized them. Had he been disposed to listen to them, we can imagine how much sage advice they would have given him, about remaining in his calling; how many pleas of additional usefulness, and more ex¬ tensive influence, they might have urged, to induce him to abandon his divisive courses ! But John knew that priesthood had decayed, and “ waxed old,” and was “ ready to vanish away ;” and that a dispensation was about to commence, that was not THE DEAD SEA. 165 a counterpart, but a contrast to the former ; a con¬ trast in so far, that all that was ceremonial and material in the one, was to be succeeded by that which is spiritual and real in the other. About half-past ten o’clock we reached the Dead Sea. No one can look on this remarkable spot without feeling that the curse rests upon it. It is a salt lake or inland sea, about fifty miles in length, and generally from ten to twelve miles broad. The Arabs call it “ the Sea of Lot.” “ The phenomena around the Dead Sea are such as might naturally be expected from the character of its waters and the region round about,—a naked, solitary desert. It lies in its deep cauldron, surrounded by lofty cliffs of naked limestone rock, and exposed for seven or eight months in each year to the unclouded beams of a burning sun. Nothing, therefore, but sterility and death-like solitude can be looked for upon its shores.”* The water is intensely salt, with a bitter, disagreeable taste. Thick incrustations of salt are deposited on some parts of its banks, w r hich the Arabs gather for the use of their families and flocks. The river Jordan empties itself into the northern end of it. The “ cities of the plain” are supposed to have stood at the southern end of this lake ; where there is a hilly ridge that is called by the Arabs at this * Robinson’s Bib. Researches, ii. 219. 166 THE DEAD SEA. day “ the stone of Sodom,” and which they say is 44 composed wholly of rock salt, too bitter to be fit for cooking, and only used sometimes as a medicine for sheep.”* It is impossible to look without awe on this monument of the 44 severity of God,” espe¬ cially in recollecting that the inspired apostles, Peter and Jude, both refer to it, with a voice of warning, when speaking of 44 false teachers, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies” into the Church of Christ. We bathed in the Dead Sea, and found its water extremely buoyant, though perhaps not quite in the degree we had expected. In the autumn, after the long drought of summer, it is probably much more so ,* and at the north end, where we bathed, it may be in some measure affected by the influx of the fresh water of the Jordan. Dr. Robinson, the most cautious and correct of travellers, who bathed con¬ siderably farther south, says : 44 The water is exceed¬ ingly buoyant. Two of us bathed in the sea, and although I could never swim before, either in fresh or salt water, yet here I could sit, stand, lie, or swim in the water without difficulty.”')* We next proceeded over a sandy plain, and through scenes of utter desolation, to the banks of the Jordan. The place we visited is said to have * Robinson’s Bib. Researches, ii. 206. f Ibid. ii. 213. G GILGAL. 167 been the scene of our Saviour’s baptism ; and not far from the same spot the passage of the Israelites must have taken place. Here there are a few shrubs and small trees ; and after so much desola¬ tion, any green thing is welcome to the eye; but I could not help calling to mind the poetical allusions to the u green banks of Jordan,” with which hymns abound ; and thought the mere shreds and patches of vegetation that are now to be seen on them pre¬ sent a very different picture to the eye. It is at this place that the Greek pilgrims conclude the festivities of their unhallowed week ; men and women, in a state of nudity, promiscuously bathing in the stream. The current is here so rapid, that it is dangerous to do more than dip in at the very edge of the water; those who venture farther are frequently carried down the stream and drowned. We next proceeded towards Jericho. On our way we must have passed near “ Gilgal, in the east border of Jericho,” where Joshua and the Israelites encamped after they had crossed Jordan. Here “ the reproach of Egypt was rolled away” from them; and here they kept the first passover in the promised land. Their last act before leaving Egypt to set out on their pilgrimage was to celebrate this type of redeeming love ; and their first act in Canaan was this memorial of it. They crossed the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, the day the 168 FOUNTAIN OF ELISHA. lamb was to be set apart ; and kept the passover at Gilgal on the fourteenth day of the same month. No trace of Gilgal, nor of the ancient Jericho, re¬ mains. Although the precise site of Jericho cannot be fixed upon, there is no doubt that it was in the immediate vicinity of the place that still bears its name. There is a square tower, called the castle of Jericho, which Robinson supposes to be as recent as the twelfth century; and there have been notices of the place from Scripture times until now. A fdthy Arab village is now the only representative of the once famous Jericho. There is some cultivation in the plain of Jericho, by means of irrigation. We pitched our tent for the night under the shade of some trees, close by the stream which flows from the Fountain of Elisha. This was an interesting spot, as there is no reason to doubt that the fountain is the very same on which Elisha performed the miracle of healing its waters.* Even the cautious Robinson says: “It is the only one near Jericho, and there is every reason to regard it as the scene of ElishaVmiracle.”f The water was once “ naught,” and the ground in consequence of this “ barren.” Elisha cast a cruse of salt in it, “ and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more dearth or barren * 2 Kings ii. 19—22. f Robinson’s Bib. Res. ii. 283. ROBBERS. 169 land.” The word of the Lord standeth sure; the water is now sweet and pleasant; and it is the water of this fountain that irrigates the neighboring crops. When beholding the standing evidence of this mi¬ racle, I could not help thinking of the nauseous wa¬ ters of the Dead Sea; and asking why we should not take the prophecy literally, that relates to its healing. When Ezekiel saw the vision of the wa¬ ters that flowed from the sanctuary, his heavenly guide said to him : “ These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, (‘the desert or plain of Judah,’) and go into the sea; which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.”* Then may the “ desert rejoice, and blossom as the rosefor “ every thing shall live whither the river cometh.”f The road from Jericho to Jerusalem is one of the wildest and most dangerous in Palestine, and is still the favorite haunt of robbers ; so that a man cannot even now go “ from Jerusalem to Jericho” without the risk of falling “ among thieves ;” while the “ good Samaritans,” alas ! are there no longer. It is chiefly on account of this part of the journey that so large an escort is necessary. Shortly before we came, a gentleman travelling this road happened to linger behind the rest of his party, when he was im- * Ezek. xlvii. 8. \ Ezek. xlvii. 9. 15 170 JAFFA. mediately surrounded by robbers, who literally “ stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed.” On Tuesday, the 30th of May, we bade adieu to Jerusalem, and set out for Jaffa, the ancient Joppa. About an hour after we left Jerusalem we were much struck with the beautiful verdure of the trees in the orchards near which we passed ; a sight so rare in “ this land of drought” and barrenness. Such spots vividly call to mind what Palestine was, and what it will yet be. There is no object of inte¬ rest on this road ; Ramleh, the only town we passed through, is traditionally said to be the ancient Ari- mathea; but there are strong reasons for believing this cannot be the case. Jaffa is a small seaport town, entirely devoid of interest in itself, but fraught with interesting recol¬ lections to the Christian. Here dwelt the benevolent Dorcas, whom Peter raised to life, and restored to her weeping friends. But the most interesting event connected with it is, that here was first revealed “the mystery,—which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men,—that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel.”* Hitherto there had been no entrance into the Church * Eph. iii. 5, 6. CORNELIUS. 171 of God but by the gate of Judaism; but here God showed unto Peter that the middle wall of partition was broken down, and that Jew and Gentile alike entered into life through faith in Christ. Peter’s monitory dream prepared him to go with the mes¬ sengers of Cornelius, nothing doubting. Caesarea, which we passed on the following day, is a small town on the coast, about thirty miles from Jaffa. Here lived the devout Cornelius, who was probably a proselyte of the gate ; one who believed the reve¬ lation of God contained in the Jewish Scriptures, but who had not joined himself to the Jewish church. This man, from his acquaintance with the Jews, (he “ was of good report among all the nation of the Jews,”) must have heard something of the reputed Messiah, and of the wonderful things that had hap¬ pened among the Jews during the ten preceding years ; and it is possible his mind may have been exercised on these matters ; and the prayers that came up “ for a memorial before God,” may have been prayers for light and guidance on the subject. His knowledge of what had transpired was probably very dark and confused ; as those times did not pos¬ sess the facilities for knowledge to run to and fro, that modern ages afford. God answered his prayers, not by immediate illumination of his own mind, but by sending a fellow-man to preach the glad tidings to him. And what did Peter tell him? That there was an apostolic church, in connection with which 172 CORNELIUS. there was safety, and out of which there was no hope of any thing but certain “ uncovenanted mer¬ cies?” That in the mysterious rite of water bap¬ tism, he should be regenerated, and made a member of this Church ? He said not one word of all this. He simply narrated the life and death of our blessed Lord and Saviour, and then added : “ Through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive re¬ mission of sins.”* And, as if to show that the out¬ ward rite is but the sign, not the instrument of the Spirit’s gift, “ while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.”t Here was the true Epiphany—the manifestation to the Gentiles. Here was the “middle wall of par¬ tition broken down,” the abolition of “ the law of commandments contained in ordinances,” that Jew and Gentile might be “ builded together for an habi¬ tation of God through the Spirit.”^: And Peter, who had heretofore thought it an unlawful thing for a “man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation,” tarried some time with Cor¬ nelius and his Gentile friends. My dear brethren of the Gentiles, a Peter, a Paul, and a Timothy, a Silas, a Barnabas, and a Philip, were willing to spend and be spent to preach the * Acts x. 43. t Ibid. ver. 44. 4 Eph. ii. 14, 15, 22. JAFFA. 173 Gospel to the Gentiles; they hesitated not to expose themselves to persecution and privation,—to “ perils by the heathen, to perils in the city, to perils in the wilderness, to perils in the seathey were “ in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”* Israel is now in unbelief, and ye de¬ sire that “ through your mercy” some of them, at least, “ may obtain mercy.” O, then, remember, that for this end something more is needed than an annual guinea subscription. Our design was to sail from Jaffa to Beyrout. For this purpose nothing was to be had but an open boat manned by Arab sailors. To add to our dis¬ comfort, the Italian servant who had hitherto accom¬ panied us, refused to embark with us, being afraid of sea-sickness. He, however, brought to us the master of a boat, who professed to speak Italian, and with him a legal agreement was drawn up in due form, which the British vice-consul told us was quite necessary. There was nothing in Jaffa to make us wish to remain there longer than necessary. While at dinner I perceived with dismay the light dress I wore speedily becoming black with vermin ; on complaining of this to our host, he coolly told me that I must have brought them from the house of Simon the tanner, four empty walls we had visited in the morning. * 2 Cor. xi. 26, 27. 15* 174 MOUNT CARMEL. In the evening we embarked in our boat, which was as filthy and uncomfortable as can well be im¬ agined. The master’s whole stock of Italian con¬ sisted of two words, Signore and buono ;* our com¬ munication with him was consequently of a very limited nature. The bottom of the boat was filled with sand, on which we spread our mats and carpet bags, and rested for the night the best way we could. Next morning we landed at Khaifa, or Haifa, a village at the base of Mount Carmel. After enjoy¬ ing the luxury of bathing, we procured donkeys, and ascended to the top of Carmel. This is a ridge of no great height, running obliquely from the Medi¬ terranean, in a southeast direction, for nearly eight miles, its highest point being about 1200 feet above the level of the sea, close to which it rises. What an interesting scene of Scripture history did this mount recal! And what a melancholy reflection to think, that after all that God has revealed to man since the days of Elijah, there should still subsist idolatry too near akin to that of the worshippers of Baal! The cry, “ 0 Mary, hear us,”—“ O Anna, hear us,” is as vain as the cry of “ O Baal, hear us and the penances of Rome are dictated by the same spirit that led Baal’s prophets to “ cut them¬ selves after their manner with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out.”f Here was the scene of * Sir and good. -f 1 Kings xviii. 28. MOUNT CARMEL. 175 the early Jewish reformer’s testimony ; ten days before I had been in the scene of the later Jewish reformer’s testimony, of him who came “ in the spirit and power of Elias.” And what now meets the traveller’s eye on these spots ? Two convents, the one of the Greek, the other of the Romish church. Each of these has been recently repaired and adorned by their respective partisans. The Emperor of Russia lately gave a large sum of money for repairing and ornamenting Mar Saba; and the convent on Mount Carmel has recently been entirely and substantially rebuilt, chiefly through money from France, and now looks more like a fortress than the abode of peaceable monks. How utterly discouraging to the Christian would be the successive disappointments that have followed every reformation, were it not for the “ sure word of pro¬ phecy,” in which God “ hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven : And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which can¬ not be shaken may remain.”* Glorious day, when falsehood, and error, # and every thing that opposeth itself to the truth, shall become “ like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor!” After leaving Carmel we resumed our voyage. The next morning we passed close to Tyre, the * Heb. xii. 26, 27 . 176 TYRE.-SIDON. once mighty city, now the abode of a few fishermen, so literally has the word of the Lord been fulfilled: “ I will make thee like the top of a rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon.”* We also passed Sidon, where Paul was permitted to land when on his voyage to Rome as a prisoner, having “ liberty to go unto his friends to refresh himself.”f Alas ! it would be little refreshment to the Christian’s spirit to visit Sidon now ! “ The town stands upon a high rising ground, which projects a considerable way into the sea. It is enclosed by a high fortified wall on the eastern side, and two mosques tower over the other buildings of the town.”:j: After two tedious nights and days in our open boat, we at length landed at Beyrout, and were kindly received by our excellent friends there. Beyrout is a bustling town, of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, and, contrasted with the stillness and desolation of Palestine, gives one at first the idea of a return to civilized life; but this delusion is of short duration; it is but a dirty Turkish town, although two-thirds of the inhabitants are nominally Christians. Some of my dear friends in England having, as well as myself, taken a deep interest in the cause of education in Syria, I made it my business to ob- * Ezek. xxvi. 14. j- Acts xxvii. 3. 4 Narrative of a Mission of Enquiry to the Jews, p. 340. AMERICAN MISSIONARIES. 177 tain all the information I could on the subject, both from the European and native residents there, and by personally visiting the schools. And I feel it an act of common justice, to give the credit of any thing that is done there in the way of education, to those to whom alone it is due, the American mis¬ sionaries. These excellent men have labored there for about twenty years ; endeavoring, by the estab¬ lishment of schools, and instructing the adult natives as they have opportunity, to improve the spiritual and moral condition of the Arabs, the professors of various kinds of spurious Christianity. Their efforts have been much interrupted by the unsettled politi¬ cal state of the country; but they have still per¬ severed, and we may hope that in due season they will reap more abundant fruit than they have yet been enabled to do. Through their instructions many of the youths in Beyrout are well acquainted with English; most, if not all, the Syrian young men, who have come to this country from Beyrout during the last few years, owe their education wholly to the American missionaries. They estab¬ lished the only female school ever attempted at Beyrout, to which Mrs. Smith, the wife of one of the missionaries, devoted herself with an assiduity that injured her health, and led to her premature removal from earthly labor. This day-school they have been obliged to discontinue, since the establishment of the camp of Albanian soldiers; but there are 178 GREEK CHURCH SCHOOLS. several young women taken under the roof of the different missionaries, who are carefully instructed in whatever is needful to render them useful in this world, as well as in the things that pertain to their eternal welfare. The missionaries have a printing press, at which they print portions of Scripture, and books and tracts on evangelical Christianity. “ The printing in the year 1841 amounted to 636,000 pages, nearly half of which were portions of the sacred Scriptures. The books and tracts distributed ex¬ ceeded nine thousand, and nearly eight thousand of these have been distributed in Beyrout.”* All this activity has at length stirred up the Greek church to jealousy ; and they have got rival schools, and a rival printing press. There is a school of 150 boys, under the superintendence of the Greek bi¬ shop ; and another small school, containing about sixteen younger boys. These schools, of course, are taught by members of the Greek church, and the children attending them are taught prayers to the Virgin, and all the other errors of that apostate community. In addition to Arabic, they are taught a little Italian, but no English is taught. Both these schools we visited ; and though it is always pleasing to see any amount of real knowledge com- * Thirty-third Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. 1842 MISSIONS IN LEBANON. 179 municated, and the mere art of reading is an invalu¬ able acquisition, we could not but feel that every child sent there, who might otherwise have gone to receive the truly evangelical instruction of the American missionaries, is thereby deprived of the opportunity of hearing of that “ true light,” which alone can illumine his darkness. Surely it is folly to talk of the Greek church holding all the essentials of truth; what does it signify, practically, what a church holds , if it does not teach the truth ? The printing press belonging to the Greek church, is worked by some of the young men whom the American missionaries instructed in the art of printing. These faithful servants of God have much to suffer from the ingratitude of those to whose welfare they devote their best energies. Many on whom they have bestowed almost paternal care and attention, “ go back, and walk no more with them.” Their services in Arabic are generally attended by about forty persons, with the serious and devout appearance of many of whom I was much pleased. The missionaries do not begin their instructions by attacking the errors of the Greek church ; they set before them simply the pure doctrines of the gospel; and no sooner do the people receive these, than they feel it impossible to remain any longer in connection with a system of error. They have a missionary station among the 180 THE DRUZES. Druzes on Mount Lebanon ; and there, as well as in Beyrout, have the useful appendage of a pious physician ; or, I should rather say, the useful ap¬ pendage of medical skill; for the physicians them¬ selves, as well as their wives, are, in every sense of the word, missionaries. We paid an interesting visit to this station, and found Mrs. Van Dyck, the wife of the physician, engaged in the instruction of three young Druze princesses, as they are called, the daughters of some of the Druze chiefs. There was an appearance of propriety in the demeanor of these girls, that showed the good effects of Mrs. Van Dyck’s influence. I must again repeat, in op¬ position to the hasty and incorrect statements of some travellers who have not taken the trouble to examine for themselves, that there is not, nor ever was, any female school in Beyrout or the neighbor¬ hood, except the one already alluded to, as having been established by the American missionaries; that there is nothing whatsoever doing for female education except by them; and that there is no evangelical or protestant religious instruction com¬ municated to the native population, either male or female, except by those laborious and excellent per¬ sons, of whom some recent travellers in these parts take no more notice in their printed narratives than if they did not exist. While we were with Mrs. Van Dyck, some of the elder Druze princesses came in, wearing the tantour ' DRUZE PRINCE. 181 or horn, which has a most extraordinary appearance. A silver horn, about two feet in length, is firmly bound round the head, and a white veil thrown over it; while from the back of the head hangs down a bunch of tassels, ornamented with silver, which weighs several pounds. One of the Druze princes or Sheiks invited us into his house, and said, in a tone of interest and anxiety : “ When will England come and take possession of us ? We are in a miserable state of confusion and strife; will not England take pity upon us ?” This rough warrior, accustomed all his life to the broils and petty warfare of half-savage life, seems at length to possess that craving for guidance which a recent writer represents as the feeling of the uneducated masses of every country at present: “ He would fain (though as yet he knows it not) find for himsel f a superior that should wisely and lovingly govern. It is for a manlike place and relation in this world, where he sees himself a man, that he struggles. At bottom, may we not say it is even for this: That guidance and government, which he cannot give himself, which in our so complex world he can no longer do without, might be afforded him.”* The feeling expressed by this Druze chief is very general throughout Palestine. It is to be regretted that inter- * Chartism. By T. Carlyle, p. 22. 16 182 VISIT TO THE PASHA. national etiquette prevents England from complying with a desire so generally felt. With regard to the project of some benevolent persons in this country, of benefiting Syria by means of a native agency, I will take the liberty of saying, what every European resident in Beyrout will con¬ firm, that in the present state of the country, a me¬ chanical education would be much better suited for this purpose than a literary one. And the expecta¬ tion of doing any thing whatsoever through the co¬ operation of the Greek priests, I must believe to be a mere chimera. If any portion of the Greek church is to be improved, it must be by another Luther coming out of her, and testifying against her ; laying down his life, if need be, for the testimony of Jesus. And I would really dispel an illusion, caused by the halo which the word bishop throws around the per¬ sonages to whom it is applied. In this country, it is true, a bishop is always a gentleman, and a man of education; but in Syria a bishop is generally an ignorant Greek, almost as dirty and degraded as the Arab population around him. Before leaving Beyrout, we paid a visit to the Pasha, which highly amused us. He was seated on his divan, with his feet tucked under him, in the usual Oriental fashion; he wore a loose robe, like a dressing-gown, and a high red cap on his head. The only article of furniture in his apartment was a large English arm-chair, which some one had presented to EDUCATION IN SYRIA. 183 him ; but this was evidently more for ornament than use. Several attendants stood at the lower end of the room, with their eyes steadily fixed upon him, so that with the slightest movement of his hand he could signify his wishes to them. It was a complete illus¬ tration of the text, “As the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their masters.”* Coffee and pipes having been brought in, the Pasha began to inquire relative to the subject that seemed uppermost in his mind in regprd to England,—the aerial machine. He asked all manner of questions about it. and seemed to labour under a sort of dread that the English would, ere long, come flying through the air, and take possession of Syria. We men¬ tioned to him the Thames Tunnel, as another of the wonderful works of England: but this did not appear to impress him so much; and, by way of a set-off to it, he asked us whether we had ever seen the bridge at Constantinople; seeming to think a road over the water quite as wonderful as a road under it. As my object is not to describe persons, but things, I have not adopted the prevalent custom of travellers, that of mentioning and eulogizing every person they happen to meet with ,* but I cannot take leave of Beyrout without acknowledging the kindness of Mr. Wildenbruch, the Prussian Consul-General, whom I * Psalm cxxiii. 2. 184 EGYPT. met as a stranger, and from whom I parted as from an old friend. From Beyrout we proceeded in a small sailing vessel to Alexandria, where we only remained a few days. I therefore saw very little of the country where my fathers were in bondage; but a very cur¬ sory observation enables one to see that its own in¬ habitants are in bondage to sin and Satan. It is indeed the land “ where death and darkness reign but they shall not reign there always, for a day is coming when “ the Lord shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians shall know the Lord in that day, whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt, my people.”* We left Alexandria by the steamer on the 20th of June, and on the 11th of July, after five months of pleasant association together, my esteemed fellow- traveller and myself had the happiness of again set¬ ting foot in England, his native, and my adopted country, much gratified with having seen so many interesting places, and thankful for the gracious pro¬ tection we had enjoyed in all our wanderings. And now, having been permitted to behold the de¬ solation of my father-land, to witness its moral and physical degradation, what, it may be asked, is the impression left on the mind ? A feeling of hope and expectation, that as the night is so dark, the dawn * Isaiah xix. 21, 25. CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 185 must be near. When Isaiah was told by the Lord of the grossness of heart, the heaviness of ear, and the blindness of eye, that should come upon his people, he inquired how long this was to continue: “ Then said I, Lord, how long? And He answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, and the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.” All this has come to pass. Shall we not, then, confi¬ dently expect the speedy fulfilment of the Lord’s gra¬ cious promises to His people Israel ? “ Thus saith the Lord God, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my peo¬ ple of Israel, for they are at hand to come. For behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown ; and I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded. And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit; and I will settle you after your old estates, and will do better unto you than at your beginnings; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”* But the restoration of Israel is connected with the close of the Gentile dispensation. “ Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of * Ezek. xxxvi. 7—11. 16* 186 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. the Gentiles be fulfilled.”* Whatever may be meant by the accomplishment of the times of the Gentiles, vve may venture to say that it does not mean a time of outward ease, and worldly prosperity, such as , many of the professing churches of Christ now enjoy; “ for there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”f In this highly favored land, I never can look on the luxury of the rich, contrasted with the miserable destitution of the poor, without remembering God’s threatening upon “ them that dwell carelessly in the isles.”:): How well does the description of the state of those that were “ at ease in Zion,” previous to its day of visitation, apply to many of the higher class of society in England at this day ! “ Ye that put far away the evil day, that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall; that chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to them¬ selves instruments of music like David ; that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the chief ointments ; but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.”§ The affliction of their poor brethren is but a passing thought to many of the great and affluent: when the cry of the poor disturbs their re¬ pose, they start up; throw him an alms, and then * Luke xxi. 24. | Ezek. xxxix. 6. ■f Mat, xxiv. 21. § Amos vi. 3—6, CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 187 think of him no more. This is not that wise consi¬ deration of the case of the poor to which God has attached a blessing. The condition of the laboring poor is viewed through the medium of party politics, instead of being calmly pondered as in the sight of a heart-searching God. O that the great and noble of the land would regard this as the chief work they have to do at the present crisis; that they would direct their efforts not merely to alleviate the effects of poverty, but to discover and remove the cause! “ Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton.”* Let the complaints of the poor and needy arouse you, before their cries enter “ into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” “ It may be a lengthening - of thy tranquillity.” It may stay impending judg¬ ments, like the timely repentance of Nineveh. “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil that He had said that He would do unto them, and He did it not.”f He whose first coming was in poverty and affliction, will come again in power and glory, when he shall “judge the poor of the people; he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.”;}: I by no means wish to encourage in the poor the erroneous notion that the rich are necessarily hard¬ hearted, and indifferent to their sufferings; or to afford them an excuse for the indulgence of bitter * 1 James v.4. f Jonah iii. 10. 4 Psalm lxxii. 4. 188 CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. and unkind feelings against those who are providen¬ tially placed in a station superior to their own. Ine¬ quality of outward circumstances has subsisted in the world from the very earliest ages; and no con¬ trivance of man can ever remove this inequality; though, doubtless, many of its evils might be reme¬ died. The Christian poor, especially, have little cause to murmur at those “ light afflictions which are but for a moment.” Think, dear friends, what an eternal weight of glory is before you! Shall we, who are citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, fret ourselves on account of the vanity and folly, the heartlessness and oppression, of those who know not God 1 Those who do know Him, whether rich or poor, will never oppress or neglect their fellow-crea¬ tures, and least of all, their brethren in Christ. Throughout the whole of Scripture, God repre¬ sents Himself as the friend and protector of the poor. What a source of comfort is this to him whose heart feels its own bitterness,—to him who hath “ no help of man at all!” Let the poor of Christ’s flock rejoice in the many assurances of their Lord’s special care over them; and let them “ rejoice in hope of the glory of God“ looking for that blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of the great God, and our Saviour, Jesus Christ,”* when “ they shall ob¬ tain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”f * Titus ii. 13. | Isaiah xxxv. 10 THE JEWS. \ Having already exceeded my limits, I must con¬ dense my account of my brethren as much as possible. A lengthened account of conversations held with them would neither be interesting nor useful; as in speaking on the same subject, to the same class of persons, there must always be a great similarity both in the objections urged and the arguments em¬ ployed. In speaking of the Jews on the continent of Europe, therefore, I will divide them into three classes, and narrate the conversation held with one of each class, which may serve as a fair specimen of the whole. 1. The Unlearned. 1 began to converse with a poor Jewess by telling her that I was on my way to Jerusalem, the “ city of our solemnities,” where our forefathers, in the days of their glory, met to worship the God of Israel. When I proceeded from this to something of a more (189) 190 THE JEWS. personal nature, she said, “ O sir, I do not wish to change my religion; our religion is the oldest and best; I would not change it for all the money in the world.” I then tried to convince the poor woman that she had no religion at all; no knowledge of the God whom she professed to worship; no acquaint¬ ance either with Moses or the prophets. She said she can be guided by those who are learned and pious; that it is not for such as she to trouble them¬ selves with matters that are above their capacity. In short, she showed a degree of dutiful submission to her church that would have delighted a Tractarian beyond measure. I see not what he could have done in such circumstances, but to leave her in quiet possession of her errors. Perhaps he would urge, that being a Jewess, ignorant of Christianity, she must be instructed in it. Doubtless; but in what way could I do this but by pressing upon her, in the strongest manner, her personal responsibility to God ; the necessity of examining and endeavoring to ascer¬ tain what God has revealed to man for his salvation. The first step to be taken was to seek to overturn this blindfold submission to a church; to convince her that her soul was in danger, and that she must answer at the judgment-seat for her refusal to exa¬ mine what is truth. How congenial to the depraved human heart is this submission to authority in mat¬ ters of religion,—this shifting the responsibility from ourselves to any spiritual agent whp will transact THE JEWS. 191 the business for us ! The mighty influence of priest¬ craft in all ages ceases to astonish us when we reflect how willing men are universally to become its dupes. Ignorance is cherished, as affording immunity from the trouble of investigation. “ The book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee; and he saith, I am not learned.”* 2. The Talmudical Rabbi. This class and the last are two extremes that meet in one common point, reverence for tradition. In conversing with a French Talmudist, I was sur¬ prised at his using a line of argument I had never heard resorted to by any other Rabbi. He seemed well acquainted with Christian writings ; and as some Christians in the present day appeal to Jewish cus¬ toms in support of their views, he was disposed to avail himself in a similar way of the practice of Christians. In defending Jewish opinions and ob¬ servances, founded merely on tradition, he said that Christians also have many ceremonies they can only support by tradition. To this I replied, that the fact of Christians having committed the same error as the Jews, does not make it less an error, and that the supporters of tradition, whether Jews or Gentiles, are committing the sin of adding to the words of God, * Isaiah xxix. 12. 192 THE JEWS. and thereby saying that His authoritative revelation of His will to man is not sufficiently plain or copious, but must be helped out by tradition; which, instead of bearing upon it the stamp of the wisdom of God, in most cases plainly shows itself to be only the foolish vagaries of men. He then pleaded the re¬ spect due to the Talmud, on account of its antiquity, and its being the exponent of the views of wise and learned men. I told him that in matters of religion I could receive nothing on any plea but that of its being the truth of God, and pointed out to him several instances in which the tradition alters and annuls the original intent of the command of God. The Rabbi then charged me with pride in setting up my own wisdom in opposition to that of the wise ancients, and presuming to judge for myself what is truth. I told him the revelation made by God in the Holy Scriptures is addressed to every individual; that it is meant to be understood by men, and that every man is bound to make himself acquainted with it. All this he admitted. I said he ought not, then, to blame me for having studied the word of God with the prayer of David,—“ Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” I assured him that whosoever does this with an earn¬ est desire to know the mind of God, will be* guided by Him into all truth; but that if we only read the Scriptures in order to get support for favorite opi¬ nions, and preconceived notions, we are led to believe THE JEWS. 193 a lie, and to cling to it. I then read to him from the Bible some of the awful warnings given to the Israelites by Moses, and the prophetic denunciations uttered against them, and reminding him how very literally these had been fulfilled, urged upon him the necessity of taking Scripture in its plain and literal meaning. I also reminded him that from ancient times the teachers of Israel had been those who caused them to err, and read to him some of the solemn denunciations of Isaiah and Jeremiah against the teachers of error. I then appealed to him as a teacher of Israel on the awful responsibility he in¬ curred, if, as I fully believed, the tendency of all his instructions was to keep them from the true know¬ ledge of God. On this he began to cry out vehe¬ mently that I should not persuade him to be a Chris¬ tian ; that Christians were more wicked than Jews; with much more in the same strain; when I inter¬ rupted him by saying that we had not yet come to this advanced stage of the argument; that I wished first to prove to him that he was not a true Israelite. The rest of our conversation I do not feel it needful to narrate. If we in a measure succeed in removing Talmudical objections to Christianity, it is still but gaining access into the outer court of the fortress : the stronghold itself, man’s evil heart of unbelief, has yet to be assailed ; and its power of resistance to the truth is very much the same in all men. 17 194 THE JEWS. 3. The Freethinker. This is a class that I believe is on the increase among the Jews. I heard from a Christian friend, of a Jew, who had an office in the Synagogue, who he thought was willing to listen to the Gospel. I in¬ vited him to my hotel. I expressed to him the inte¬ rest I take in my brethren, and my anxiety for their welfare. “What do you call their welfare?” he asked. I spoke to him of the Scriptural hope of Israel, of a Redeemer who was to “come out of Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” To my surprise, he told me that he believed all that had been prophesied of in the Scriptures had been fulfilled in Christianity. I asked if he then believed Jesus to be the Messiah of the Jew’s. To this he evaded giving a direct answer; but seemed to regard Him in the light of a reformer of morals, and to view Christianity as the instrument of civilizing the human race; of which civilization all may enjoy the benefit, what¬ ever his own private religious opinions are. He did not believe any change of religion necessary. “I am born a Jew, and shall die a Jew.” I spoke to him of the fallen state of man, and pressed on him the subjects of death, judgment, and eternity, in which there is no support for the mind of man, save in a Mediator. But all this was as “ idle tales” to him; he had no solid belief in a future state; there may THE JEWS. 195 be and there may not be; we cannot tell any thing about it. This is perhaps the most hopeless state of mind for the reception of Divine truth. The weeds of superstition may be rooted out, and the good seed sown in their room: but in the barren soil of infi- i' 7 delity, nothing of a spiritual kind can grow. Yet are we not, on that account, to withhold the presentation of truth ; the Holy Spirit can take of the things of Christ, and effectually show them, even to the most hardened infidel; changing the barren soil into a fruitful field. I found many Jews on the continent, especially in France, who had read the New Testament, which the London Jews’ Society have largely distributed. This is a great step gained, as the word of truth may be brought home to their conscience in a time and manner they little expect. The Jews in the south of Europe have less ac¬ quaintance with Christianity than the Jews of France and Germany; but even among them there appears some shaking of the dry bones. Amongst the younger members of the community there seems a growing discontent with their present position; a de¬ sire for reform of some kind, some better religious standing, that is yet short of apostasy from Judaism. Among such, an able and judicious missionary may find many openings. The Jews who are natives of the East, are, like 196 THE JEWS. the other inhabitants, less intelligent than the Euro¬ peans. Indeed, as may naturally be expected, the character of the Jew in every country, is consider¬ ably modified by that of the people among whom he dwells. A great proportion of the Jews in Syria, however, are not natives of the East, but Europeans who, from various motives, settle there. From my interviews with them I shall select such particulars as may be interesting. I found many of them very devout, but at the same time bigoted and superstitious. They are generally great students of the Talmud. In one of the totvns I met an interesting young Jew lately ar¬ rived from Russia, who had accompanied his father to settle in the Holy Land. He expressed himself not satisfied with the measure of learning among the Jews in the town where his father had fixed his abode. I asked him if he considered himself a com¬ petent judge of his brethren’s learning: he said he was; and mentioned as a proof of this, that he knew several volumes of the Talmud by heart. I asked if he knew much of the Bible by heart. He said : “ No, it is not the fashion among us to learn the Bible by heart.” I asked him why his father had left Russia to settle in Palestine ? He said it was on account of the superior piety of the Jews in the latter country. “ The prayers here are most excellent,” said he: meaning, of course, that they are uttered in a devotional spirit, since the liturgy is THE JEWS. 197 alike everywhere. I inquired as to his views about the comino- of the Messiah. He said : “We must O expect his coming every day, but still he will not come till he pleases.” He had no doubt the Messiah will come and establish his kingdom ; and that this will probably take place at the end of the six thou¬ sand years from the creation. One old man asked me: What good have people derived from their belief in Jesus of Nazareth ? This question I endeavored to answer by explaining the nature and effects of Christianity. “ If this were the case,” said he, “ we should find Christians the best people in the world instead of the worst. The Mohammedans are not nearly so bad as the Chris¬ tians ; they do not oppress us so much.” Then followed the usual task of endeavoring to persuade him that the Eastern Christians are no Christians at all. I fear my readers will be weary of the con¬ stant recurrence of this subject; my apology is, that it met me at every turn; that never did I converse with a Jew who did not bring it forward ; that it is, in fact, the greatest of all outward obstacles in the way of any really pious and respectable Jew giving the subject of Christianity a moment’s consideration. I read to the old man our Lord’s sermon on the mount, as having been the first passage in the New Testament that particularly impressed me. He listened with great attention, and said : “ If these principles were carried out, the world would be in a 17 * 198 THE JEWS. very different state from what it is at present. Be¬ fore we parted he gave me a solemn admonition on the sin of forsaking the religion of my fathers ; and asked what benefit I had received that could com¬ pensate for being cut off from the people of God. This gave me a farther opportunity of explaining to him the unsearchable riches of Christ. Among other things I had gained, I could assure him that I possessed a much more intense love of my brethren than ever I had before I was a Christian. In conversing with another aged Jew on the sub¬ ject of a new birth unto righteousness, I was forcibly reminded of Nicodemus. “'What!” said he, with a smile, “ must I be born again ? I am an old man, must I become a little infant again ?” The things of the Spirit of God must always appear foolishness to the natural man. I think that in tracts written for distribution among the Jews, the fall of man, and consequent depravity of human nature, ought to be brought prominently forward. There is in every man’s conscience a feeling that, to a certain extent, re¬ sponds to the truth of this, and it is the foundation of all Christian doctrine ; it is that which renders a mediator between God and man needful. It is also desirable to point out to them, that in Scripture the judgments of God are not denounced against them for the neglect of outward worship, but for the alienation of their hearts from God, and to appeal to THE JEWS. 199 them as to whether that alienation does not continue still. And they should be reminded, that a restora¬ tion to their own land, with the addition of all out¬ ward prosperity, could not make them happy, un¬ less they experienced a moral and spiritual renova¬ tion ; unless they received the “ new heart and new spirit” promised by God. I must now, according to the request of many friends, give my views as to the best mode of endea¬ voring to convert my brethren to Christianity. It is asked by some : Why have any particular mode of converting Jews ? May they not be converted, like any other sinners, simply by the preaching of the Gospel '! Most certainly they might, if we could only get them to come to hear it. If the Jews would regularly attend the ministrations of a faithful preacher of the Gospel, nothing more would be re¬ quired. But before they can be brought to do this, much previous persuasion and instruction is required. No Jew would regularly attend a Christian place of worship, until he had made up his mind to abandon Judaism. In the first age of Christianity, the great majority of them were converted in their own land by their own brethren; those scattered in the Ro¬ man provinces, were preached to in their own syna¬ gogues. Although Christianity and the human heart remain unaltered, man’s outward circum¬ stances are changed from age to age ; and the out¬ ward means we use for bringing the truths of the 200 THE JEWS. Gospel to bear upon the mind of man, must be in some measure altered to suit these outward circum¬ stances. The first evangelists preached to the crowd in the open air ; this plan has in all ages, down to the present day, been pursued, and often successfully; but when attempted a few years back* with the Jews, there was nothing but scenes of riot and confusion. People are apt to forget that the Gospel of Christ has to encounter from the Jew T s, not merely the natural enmity of the carnal mind, but the prejudice against Christianity caused by more than a thousand years of bitter persecution from nominal Christians, and by the vice and un¬ godliness they daily behold among them. In short, the difficulties and obstacles in the way of a Jew’s conversion, can only be fully known to those who labor among them. In stating what I conceive to be the most eligible mode of attempting a mission among the Jews, let it not be said that I look too much to human instrumentality. I am quite con¬ vinced that God could bless any instrument, or that He could convert the whole world, if He pleased, without any instrumentality at all. But He has not only commanded human efforts, but in His provi¬ dential dealings with men, we do not find that He ordinarily works with instruments that are in them¬ selves inefficient. No one can deny that He might, * By the Rev. Edward Irving. THE JEWS. 201 had He so pleased, have brought about the Reforma¬ tion by an ignorant peasant ,* but He chose to do it by a Luther. I have no hesitation in saying, that the first thing requisite in establishing a mission to the Jews, is to find out a man fit for the work. A man may have piety, and zeal, and learning, and yet be utterly un¬ fit for it. Unless his piety be combined with an ardent love to the Jews as the chosen people of God, he is quite unfit to be a missionary to them. Unless his zeal be guided by a knowledge of the Jewish character, its habits, its prejudices, its peculiar temperament, it will then be a zeal not “ according to knowledge.” And unless his learning consist of that which the Jews account learning, it is to them no learning at all. They have as little understand¬ ing of, and as little respect for, that which consti¬ tutes the glory of a senior wrangler or first-class man, as the man of Oxford or Cambridge has for the learning of the Talmud. A missionary to the Jews must be able to meet them on their own ground ; must not only have patience to listen to their ques¬ tions and cavils, but ability to answer them. Many things that may appear mere captious objections to a Gentile Christian, are really difficulties that occur to the Jewish mind; warped as it is, in some points, by early associations. It is very awkward to speak of living characters, (and yet long may the one of whom I am now to 202 THE JEWS. speak continue to present this obstacle to freedom of animadversion,) but the case of the Rev. Dr. Duncan at Pesth, so completely answers my idea of what a mission to the Jews ought to be, that I must be permitted to adduce it. Here is a man who is learned, not only in a Gentile, but in a Jewish sense ; and one, whose age and position in society, show the Jews at once that he is not a mere hireling; but that, on the contrary, for such a man to become a missionary to the Jews, is a positive sacrifice in a worldly point of view. It surely will not be sup¬ posed that I mean to say a young missionary may not be equally sincere and self-denying ; but to the Jews this is not so obvious ; in very many cases they settle the whole matter satisfactorily to their own minds, by saying, “ He is paid for it.” Dr. Duncan settled down quietly among the Jews at Pesth, opening his house to them, conciliating them by kindness; conversing, arguing, reading with them ; admitting them to the hospitalities of a well-ordered family. For more than a year nothing seemed to have been done ; but there was an under current at work that in due time was made mani¬ fest ; and it has resulted in decidedly the most suc¬ cessful work among the Jews of modern times. Their Rabbis cannot affect to despise a man of his undoubted learning: nor can the Jews in their hearts believe that he is actuated by any thing but love to their nation. Some, it is true, have resorted THE JEWS. 203 to the old cry that has been raised against faithful missionaries in all ages, that his efforts are connected with political movements; but happily he, and the brethren who are now there, have no difficulty in disproving such a charge. But to all this it may be objected, that we cannot meet every day with such men as Dr. Duncan and Dr. M‘Caul. To this I can only reply, that in the present state of awakened feeling about the Jews, we may hope that men of piety and talent will use the same means to fit themselves for the work that these have done, and may be as willing to devote their energies to the cause of Israel. But it is chiefly at the commencement of a mission that such men are needed. When the work is once begun, labor¬ ers of a more ordinary kind may carry it on, though of course it is desirable that their attainments should never fall much below this standard. I must also express my strong conviction of the importance of London as a station for a mission to the Jews. There are more than twice as many Jews in London as in the whole of Palestine, while the number of actual laborers amonqr them is small indeed, compared with those in Palestine. In Bey- rout there are but twenty-four Jewish families ; and when I was there this scanty population had two missionaries ! A really efficient mission in London, so managed as to bring forward young men of intel¬ ligence and education, might be a nursery for mis- 204 THE JEWS. sionaries to the Jews in every part of the world. Like Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, there are dwelling in London Jews “ out of every nation un¬ der heaven and in no other place are there such facilities for gaining acquaintance with all that a missionary ought to know. My full conviction is, that London ought to be regarded as the principal missionary station, and that any decided movement among the Jews in London would attract more gene¬ ral notice than a movement in any other part of the world. I must now say a few words on a subject that is frequently discussed at present,—the propriety of giving temporal relief in connection with the reli¬ gious instruction of the Jews. No doubt it may be given, and probably is often given, in such an inju¬ dicious way as to operate as a bounty upon hypo¬ crisy. The best way to avoid this is, where cases of real distress are presented, let them be relieved simply on the score of benevolence; since, if they can meet with sympathy and relief as poor Jews, there will be no need to pretend a desire to inquire into Christianity. After many years’ experience, I have come, I may say almost against my will, to the conclusion, that little can be done in this country towards the con¬ version of the Jews without a temporary home for the shelter of inquirers. Indeed, this, with the neces¬ sary expense attending it, seems to me one of the THE JEWS. 205 chief reasons for carrying on measures for the con¬ version of Jews in this country by means of a public society. On the continent matters are very different. Suppose a Jew in any rank of life to be awakened there, it may happen that there is not within his reach any really pious minister who may hold forth to him the word of life. A missionary to the Jews is, therefore, indispensable. But in England, if any Jew, not merely in the upper ranks of society, but any tradesman or journeyman who is able to sup¬ port himself by his daily labor, wishes to inquire into the truth of Christianity, he will never think of going to a society for this purpose; he will apply for in¬ struction to some minister of the gospel, or Christian friend. For these, therefore, no special missionary nor society is needed; in the privacy of their own house or lodging they may search the Scriptures, unmolested by Rabbi or Elder of the synagogue. Very different is the case of the poor wanderer, who earns his livelihood by going from town to town; whose home is a public-house; whose daily compa¬ nions are the dregs of society. “ Why,” perhaps some committee-man of a Jews’ society may say, “ Why cannot the Jews learn religion like other people? Let them read the Scriptures diligently, and come to our missionaries with their difficulties. All this they may do without forsaking their lawful callings, and throwing themselves on us for main¬ tenance.” Ah! friend, wouldst thou reason thus if 18 206 THE JEWS. that poor Jew were thine own prodigal son ? Wouldst thou say: “ My son, it is true, is not in the best possible circumstances for attending to the concerns of his soul. He travels with jewellery; finds his best customers among the wretched inhabitants of the haunts of infamy; constantly associates with the worst of characters; spends his evenings in the tavern, and throws himself down to sleep in one corner of a room occupied by several others. Never¬ theless, if he is sincere, there is nothing in all this to hinder him to become a Christian.” Is he to take out his Bible, and diligently study it, amid the sounds of the fiddle and the drunken song ? Is he to kneel down and pray amid the shouts of derision, the filthy and blasphemous jests of the wretched crew around him ? Even in this state, doubtless, the grace of God could reach his heart; but this mode of reason¬ ing would set aside all efforts of a spiritual kind whatsoever; ministers, missionaries, churches, and private Christians, might desist from seeking the conversion of sinners ; might comfortably fold their hands and go to sleep, justifying themselves by the orthodox doctrine, that God can do it all very well without them ! “ But then,” says the objector, “ if we had a home, however homely, it would hold out an inducement to persons to pretend to be inquirers into Christianity, for the sake of board and lodging.” No doubt it might; and therefore a sound discretion must be THE JEWS. 207 exercised in the admission of inmates, who ought at first to be received only for a month on probation, during which time a superintendent of ordinary dis¬ cernment would be in a great measure able to judge of their sincerity. The outlay of some forty shillings would not be so great an evil, to rescue a poor Jew for a whole month from the polluting influence of evil association, and to place him in the genial at¬ mosphere of Christian kindness and purity; to instruct him in the word of God; to warn, to exhort, and to encourage him to cast himself as a helpless sinner on the free mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Suppose we give the largest allowance of such hypocrites for which any objector would contend; suppose there should be one every month ; then, at an outlay of one pound in every thousand of the annual income of the London Jews’ Society, we should have twelve Jews furnished with such knowledge as might, though now rejected, afterwards become to them “ a savor of life unto life.” If to any of them it should be¬ come “ a savor of death unto death,” his blood will be upon his own head, and will not be required at the hands of the society.* At first sight, it appears desirable to combine * In Liverpool, an institution such as I have described, supported and managed by members of the Church of England, has been carried on for some years with great success. 208 THE JEWS. manual labor with religious instruction, as in the Operative Jewish Institution in London. But the great expense incurred in teaching and carrying on any branch of trade, is not compensated by equiva¬ lent benefit to the inmates. Men in such circum¬ stances do not learn a trade thoroughly enough to be able afterwards to gain a livelihood by it. In cases where it is considered desirable that a person should learn a mechanical trade, it would be much better, after he has been instructed in Christianity, to ap¬ prentice him to a pious tradesman. In regard to what may be called the aggressive measures of a Jews’ society, the mode in which they should seek to excite a spirit of inquiry amongst Jews, I do not think any rules that may be laid down are of much value. I can only repeat, get fit men, and when they are fairly engaged in the work they will find fit measures. Lectures, tracts, visits,—all are good, if well managed; all are worthless if not well managed. Some well-meaning men may spend their lives in talking on religion to Jews, with no other result than that of greatly increasing the diffi¬ culties of those who come after them on a like errand. The separate and scattered state of believing Jews is much to be regretted. Many of them, especially in the higher classes of society, become completely amalgamated with their Gentile brethren, and cease to be known as Jews at all, while the great majority THE JEWS. 209 are driven hither and thither, by the difficulty of ob¬ taining “ the meat which perisheth.” Nothing would tend so much to excite a spirit of inquiry amongst the Jews as the movements of a body of their con¬ verted brethren; not as forming themselves into a new sect in the Christian church, but as bearing a united testimony for Christ before their brethren : co¬ operating with heart and hand for the spiritual and temporal good of Israel. I conclude by affectionately urging the consideration of this on all my converted brethren, reminding them, that in becoming Chris¬ tians, they do not cease to be Jews, and that, “ for their brethren and companions’ sakes,” they ought still to bear, if it yet be so, the reproach of belong¬ ing to that despised race ,* despised by men, but be¬ loved by God for the fathers’ sakes. DOCTRINES \ OF THE GREEK CHURCH. The following account of the Greek Church is written by a gentleman who has resided many years in the East. It may serve to correct the vague ideas entertained of it in this country, and dispel the notion of its being greatly superior to the Romish Church in purity of doctrine, which gene¬ rally obtains among those who are little acquainted with it. The Rev. H. Southgate, delegate of the American Pro¬ testant Episcopal Church at Constantinople, has de¬ clared,^ “The more I see of the Eastern Churches, the more deeply I am convinced that a union between them and us is practicable without any sacrifice of Catho¬ lic principle.” And again,t “So far as my own know¬ ledge yet goes, I can perceive nothing in the Eastern Churches to which I could make exception, if their whole form of worship and rites were imbued with a spiritual life. The want of this, and not false doctrines, (as purga¬ tory and tran substantiation; nor practices in themselves unchristian, as worshipping the host in the Romish Church,) is the grand and sole corruption, so far as I yet . know.” Mr. Southgate’s attention was called to this latter extract by certain clergymen in his own Church, at a sub¬ sequent period, but while he replied to some other stric- * See letter of Mr. S. to Mr. Tomilson, Secretary of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. t See Spirit of Missions, of Feb., 1841, an American Episcopal Church periodical. ( 210 ) 211 tures of theirs, he takes no notice of this paragraph, so that it may fairly be presumed that his views of the Eastern Churches remain unchanged. The same ideas of the practicability of a union with the Eastern Churches without any sacrifice of Catholic principle , it is understood, are entertained by the Oxford party generally, in England and America. And I infer from the letter addressed to the Eastern ecclesiastics, recommendatory of Bishop Alex¬ ander, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, that that prelate and his advisers hold similar sentiments. Mr. Southgate sees nothing amiss in the Eastern Churches, if only the whole form of worship and rites were imbued with a spiritual life . To be imbued with spiritual life means, I suppose, when we speak of acts of religious worship, that the Holy Spirit is present with the worship¬ per, accompanying or inditing his prayers, and giving life and power to the word heard or read. We are taught in the Scriptures, that in acceptable prayer the Spirit maketh intercession for us, and we are said to be sancti¬ fied through the truth. (Rom. viii. 26. John xvii. 17.) Now, if God be the only proper object of prayer, can we expect him to give his Spirit in aid of petitions addressed to false gods or to angels, or to departed saints 1 Take, for instance, the following prayer, used in the Syrian Greek Church, as well as in the Maronite Chapel: “ O Virgin, mother of God, forsake me not, who am seeking from thee victory and help. Have mercy on me, for in thee do I place my trust. O thou who art free from fault, grant me fountains of tears, that in them I may wash away my many sins, for in thee do I place all my hope. O, the espoused of God, hasten to my succour and deli¬ verance before I perish, that I may escape from the hands of malicious devices, and from the last awful catastro¬ phe.” Now, what say we to this 1 Can such a prayer be imbued with spiritual life 1 In other words, can we believe that such petitions, thus addressed, are ever in¬ dited or accompanied by the Holy Spirit 1 I tremble as I copy this prayer, and remember the High and Holy One who has declared, “My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.” And I tremble yet more when I hear a professedly Protestant missionary say, the forms are good,—they only need to be imbued with 212 spiritual life. Perhaps Mr. S. will say he never saw this prayer, as it seems to be used in Syria, and so feels him¬ self acquitted. But if not this, he must have examined very superficially not to have found others equally blas¬ phemous. He reads Greek, I believe; let him run over the service books of the “ Orthodox Eastern Church,” and the authorized expositions of them, and he will decide, if he be truly a Protestant, that something more is needed than that the existing forms be imbued with a spiritual life. Let him examine, for instance, the little manual called the Synopsis, and he will find therein nine prayers addressed to the Virgin Mary, one of them twelve pages in length. In these prayers he will hear her called “ our ' shield,” “ our hope,” “ our only refuge,” “ our propitiation he will hear her addressed in language such as should be used only in approaching the Supreme Being; and blessings asked such as it alone can grant. Mr. South¬ gate’s language certainly implies that he has not been in¬ attentive to the dogmas and practices of the Eastern Churches. How, then, he could hazard such un-Pro¬ testant assertions must be left for himself to explain. In the religious systems of the East, the Church is really put in the place of Christ, tradition in the place or alongside of the Scriptures, and the altar in the place of the pulpit. The people are taught to speak of union with the Church very much as Protestants are accustomed to speak of union with Christ: instead of “ out of me ye can do nothing,” it is, “out of the Church ye caii do nothing” The Church feeds, teaches, saves. And by Church is not meant the invisible Church, out of which, we all confess, there is no salvation, but this or that organization, of ne¬ cessity Episcopal; some limiting the possibility of salva¬ tion to their own communion, and others very conside¬ rately extending it. “ The Church,” says an old Greek* writer, and a sanctioned expositor of the Liturgy, “ is mar¬ ried to Christ through baptism, and unction, and ordination , and the communion, and the other mysteries not a word being said * Simon, Archbishop of Thessalonica, in the fifteenth century. His works have been translated into modern Greek, and published with a recommendation by one of the patriarchs. Jeremiah, Patriarch of Constantinople, in his discussion with the German divines, in the sixteenth century, made constant use of his writings. 213 about faith. And the authorized expounders of the Canons (see rMaXtov, page thirty-one, Athen’s edition) say, that the grace of the Holy Spirit no longer resides in the Romish Church, because trine immersion is not practised there. In this scheme salvation is made to depend entirely upon the performance of certain ceremonies , and these cere¬ monies performed in a particular way. This invisible, intangible corporation called the Church, is supposed to be pervaded in all its offices and ordinances with the Holy Spirit, however wicked the officers may be, and however absurd and unscriptural the ordinances. To this corporation the Spirit is supposed to be limited in all his gracious influences. The expounders of the Greek Canons, as we have just seen, expressly attest that the Spirit does not reside in the Romish Church, princi¬ pally because trine immersion is not practised there-; and of course he cannot dwell in any of the Protestant Churches. The Spirit is conveyed only through certain channels, and its conveyance depends upon* the will of certain men ; “ for,” say the expounders alluded to, “ it is by the grace of the Holy Spirit that the orthodox (i. e. the Greek) priests perform the mysteries. All others being \mbaptized, have not that grace, and of course cannot transmit it.” What follows 1 An individual not within the precincts of this imaginary corporation cannot receive the Holy Spirit. He must be transferred within those limits. But how is the transfer accomplished? Only by baptism. Here, then, we have the origin of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Without trine immersion, a man cannot get within the boundaries of the operation of Divine grace. With it he comes into a territory, every part of which is full of the Spirit. Even the water and the oil and the bread in that blissful region are redolent of grace, and the hands that administer them are all holy. Mr. Southgate sees nothing in the Eastern Churches as incompatible with a union, without any sacrifice of Catho¬ lic principle. All that is necessary is, that the existing forms of worship and rites be imbued with a spiritual life. Let us, then, look a little more in detail at some of these rites, as practised among the Greeks. I shall again quote from the Archbishop of Thessalonica, whose exposition of the service books is so highly esteemed among the eccle- 214 siastics. In his explanation of the baptismal service, we have these words—“ After a little delay, the priest breathes upon the water three times, thus infusing it with the more richly Divine grace in imitation of Christ, and in accordance with the word which says, the Lord moved upon the water, and which had reference to baptism. He then again seals the water with his hands, making the sign of the cross, and saying, ‘Let all opposing powers within be destroyed, that the water may become spiritual and holy, that no evil of the devil may be con¬ cealed in it, and that it may be able to create anew, to sanctify and to change into the sons of God such as are baptized in the same, and make them the children of light.’ ” After a description of certain other ceremonies preparatory to the baptism, he adds, “ Then the laver is tilled with the Holy Ghost, and the water contains within itself the invisible Christ.” After the baptism, we have this paragraph : “ The Divine water of baptism in which sin has been drowned, and into which Christ and the Holy Spirit have come, and wherein the man has been re¬ newed, should be poured out in some sacred place, and not where the feet of those who do not understand this mystery can tread upon it.” Once more from the same author: “ When the baptized person has been regene¬ rated, (baptized,) he comes out new and enlightened, and the son of God, from the holy laver, our spiritual mother, which is in place of the pure and holy womb of the mother of God.” “As the pure blood and holy womb of the Virgin, through means of the Holy Ghost, effected the incarnation of the Word of God, so the pure water of the laver and the Holy Ghost (i. e. the Spirit in the water, as in the womb of the Virgin) have wrought our pure second birth.” Let any one carefully read the prayers and exorcisms, as used in the baptismal service, and he will see that, awful as the preceding language of the Archbishop is, he is a devout and faithful expositor. Now, what says Mr. S. to this! Will there be no sacrifice of principle in effecting a union with a Church that holds such views 1 Is this form very good, and does it only need to be imbued with a spiritual life to make it acceptable to a Protestant clergyman ? Let us turn now to the Communion Service. And here / 215 we have for our teacher one of the patriarchs of Constan¬ tinople, Jeremiah, who lived in the latter part of the six¬ teenth century. About thirty years after Luther’s death, several learned German divines, one of them a professor in the University of Tubingen, opened a correspondence with the Patriarch just mentioned, on the subject of the differences between the Protestants and Romanists. The divines had hoped to find that the dogmas of the Greek Church w r ere substantially accordant with their Protestant views. The reply of the Patriarch, in three long letters, in which he exhibits in detail the doctrines of that Church, dispelled all their hopes. They had sent him the Confes¬ sion of Aug shir g, and had in a masterly manner answered two of his letters. But in his final reply, the Patriarch tells them that while they rejected some of the Sacra¬ ments, they perverted those they did receive; and he closes by begging them to write no more on theological subjects, inasmuch as they were determined to wrest from him the authority in which he trusted, viz., the holy and divine words of the Fathers. The Patriarch says, in regard to the Communion, “ The bread becomes the body of Christ, and the wine and water becomes the blood of Christ, by the intervention of the Holy Ghost, who changes them in a way incomprehensi¬ ble to the reason and understanding of man. The bread, I say, and the wine and water are changed by the Holy Spirit, in an incomprehensible manner, and are no longer two, but-one and the same. The bread and wine are not the symbols of the body and blood of Christ, (God forbid,) but the very deified body of the Lord.” Page 184, “ The Catholic Church (i. e. the Greek) has determined that after the consecration the bread is changed into the very body of Christ, and the wine into the very blood of Christ, by the Holy Spirit.” Page 49, “ By the grace of the Almighty Spirit the bread is changed and converted into the very body of the Lord, and the wine into the very blood of the Lord” Here, then, we have the doctrine of transubstantiation expressed in words the most explicit. And does this con¬ stitute no obstacle to the so much talked of union l The principal repository of Divine grace in this Church system is the chrism, or anointing oil ; into the baptismal 216 water, grace is conveyed as occasion demands; but in the chrism it has a permanent abode. For the Greek Church it is prepared at Constantinople by the Patriarch and his clergy. A long service is read over it, and a multitude of prayers offered; and during the process, the Holy Spirit is supposed to descend and diffuse himself through it. It is thence sent to the various churches, as need requires, and kept most reverentially; the people generally seeming to have no other idea of the Divine Spirit than as contained in this oil. For the Armenians it is made at Echmiadzin, the seat of their Patriarch, and in the several churches it is kept in small vessels, made in the form of a dove, which, I have been told by Armeni¬ ans, the people actually call the Holy Spirit. “ By this chrism,” says the expounder of the Liturgy, whom we have before quoted, “ Christ is formed in our hearts, and we become the temple of God the Father, and also of his Son Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. This chrism, therefore, completes our baptism, and makes us temples of the Trinity. On this account it is used after baptism, and gives us the indwelling of the Spirit.” Does Mr. S. see nothing here in the way of a union with the Eastern Churches 1 Mr. S. tells us, in an extract at the beginning of this article, that he discovers as yet in the ‘‘ Eastern Churches” no “ false doctrines,” “ nor practices in themselves un¬ christian.” We leave it for our readers to decide, if they do not find both, from the quotations we have made from the highest authorities in the Greek Church. On this subject we shall not enter at present, if at all. A volume, rather than an essay, would be required to do justice to it. P. S.—We have alluded to a Greek manual of prayer, called the Synopsis, and to the fact that it contains nine prayers, one of them twelve pages in length, to the Virgin Mary. We add here a short extract from another of them : “ Thou knowest, O mistress, mother of God, that I am as a foreign bird, not knowing where to lay my head, except on the mother of Christ and our God. Thou, O mistress, art my help, thou my propitiation, thou my shield, thou my sponsor before God, thou my father, thou my mother, thou my guide. In thee I repose all my hope,” &c. &c. / s DS107.H57 A visit to my father-land : being notes Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00066 5200