in 
 
 WITH 
 
 CHRIST 
 PALESTINE 
 
 A.T.SCHOFIELD M.D, 
 
tihravy of t:he trheolojical ^t>mm<xxy 
 
 PRINCETON . NEW JERSEY 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 REVEREND CHARLES ROSENBURY ERDMAN 
 D.D., LL.D. 
 
 .35b 
 
jf.rl;sai,em— ST. Stephens gate. 
 
m j 
 
 »iti) Cfjrisit in 
 ^alesitine 
 
 Four Addresses by 
 
 A. T. SCHOFIELD, M.D. 
 
 R. F. FENNO & COMPANY 
 
 18 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET, NEW YORK 
 
Contents 
 
 Bethlehem, or the Birth of Christ , , 5 
 
 Nazareth, or the Live of Christ • . , 25 
 
 Capernaum, or the Work of Christ . , 'Si 
 
 Jerusal m, or the Death of Christ , , 74 
 
These four Addresses, given m the Autumn of 1905 
 by request in a London Club, have been pubUshed 
 in the hope that they may be a help in realizing 
 some scenes m the life of Christ, and in learning 
 the lessons connected with them. They were 
 suggested by a visit to the Holy Land in the 
 previous year, 
 
 A. T. SCHOFIKLD, M.D. 
 6, Harley Street, W. 
 
FIRST ADDRESS 
 
 Bethlehem, or the Birth of Christ 
 
 THE Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem is always crowded. 
 It is the portal by which nearly every traveller 
 enters and leaves the city, and isr the highway to 
 Bethlehem, Hebron and Egypt We will journey 
 from it together to the birthplace of Christ, and seek- 
 to get a mental picture of the little town and its 
 surroundings. 
 
 Standing at the Jaffa Gate, we see stretching in 
 front of us a broad straight road leading do\\T< ihe 
 hill to a bridge. That bridge \? remarkable because 
 it is the dividing line between Judah and Benjamin. 
 The whole of the city of Jerusalem is in the latter 
 territory ; and across the bridge is the barren country 
 of Judah, in which Bethlehem lies. The road is full 
 of life. A great crowd of people is passing up and 
 down upon the right side. Many men are carry- 
 ing water-skins, full or empty ; for do\\Ti by the 
 bridge is a very celebrated fountain which supplies 
 the whole of this part of Jerusalem with water. 
 Those who pass down with the empty skins attract 
 little notice, but in returning the bloated forms 
 of the animals — fuU to bursting, and dripping on 
 the dusty way — form strange and repulsive objects. 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 On the left half of the road are strings of camels 
 coming up the hill, generally three tied together in 
 a string and led by a small black donkey, and all 
 laden with stone for the building of new houses in 
 and round Jerusalem. 
 
 As we pass down we see on the left-hand, 
 towering ever higher and higher, the bulwarks of 
 Zion — thirty or forty feet high, with towers at 
 intervals — built of large grey stones. The wall 
 rises higher as the road descends, showing the bare 
 rock below on which Zion is built, the two together 
 reaching a height, as we get down to the bridge, of 
 sixty or seventy feet above it. Here the hill of 
 Zion ends and the wall takes a sharp turn to the east 
 and runs straight along for half a mile to the Valley 
 of Jehoshaphat, forming the south side of Jerusalem 
 and of the city of Zion. 
 
 Stand now for a moment on this bridge and look 
 around. Here, on the right-hand parapet is the 
 fountain of which I spoke, perhaps the most remark- 
 able fountain in the world, because it is fed by 
 aqueducts of stone, mainly built by Solomon him- 
 self, and leading from the King's Pools, which he con- 
 structed some seven miles south in the hills of Judea, 
 in order to store the water which he first brought 
 to Jerusalem. His work was destroyed, and re- 
 paired by Babylonian and Persian kings, then later 
 on by the Saracens and Turks, and last of all by our 
 own Royal Engineers, who have so restored the 
 ancient conduits, that they now supply water to 
 Jerusalem in part along the original route. But 
 Solomon did more than supply Jerusalem with water. 
 
 If you will turn due east, you see in front of you 
 6 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 the dark and narrow Valley of Hinnom, with, as I 
 have said, the lofty wall of Zion running straight 
 along the left-hand side, till at the end it takes a 
 sharp turn north. This narrow gorge is very remark- 
 able. First of all, it is the boundary line between 
 Benjamin on the left and Judah on the right. Close 
 by the bridge, near where you stand, was the place 
 where the horrid image that Solomon erected to the 
 god Moloch was placed, in the arms of which infants 
 were burnt alive. Farther on are the ceaseless 
 smouldering fires that are never quenched day or 
 night, year after year, where all the refuse of Jeru- 
 salem is burnt, " where the worm dieth not and the 
 fire is not quenched " — fit type of Gehenna. Be- 
 yond that, you can clearly see a low brown hill across 
 the end of the Valley. That is the Mount of Offence, 
 for on it were built the palaces where Solomon 
 lodged hundreds of his wives, to the great scandal 
 of the men of Zion, who gazed at them from the 
 battlements of the city. Now they are all swept 
 away, and nothing is left but the grey village of 
 Siloam ; and below it you can see a square enclosure, 
 which is the Pool of Siloam, where the man went and 
 washed his eyes and returned seeing at the bidding 
 of Christ. 
 
 If you look along the right-hand side of the Hin- 
 nom valley, the most interesting spot is at the 
 farther end, near the Mount of Offence. That is a 
 notable field which you see there, for that blasted 
 tree that stands in its midst is the lineal descendant 
 of the tree on which Judas hanged himself. That 
 field is the Field of Blood, and the hill on which it 
 lies is the Hill of Evil Counsel. There, on the 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Wednesday of Passion Week, while our Lord was 
 resting quietly at Bethany for the last time before 
 His betrayal and crucifixion, the Scribes and Phari- 
 sees took counsel with Judas to put Him to death. 
 
 Proceeding southwards on the way to Bethlehem 
 a hiU rises in front of us, and on the left-hand side 
 stands a stone castellated building, a magnificent 
 monument to Christian charity, the English 
 Ophthalmic Hospital, where all sufferers from 
 diseases of the eye in the neighbourhood come to 
 be freely nursed and cured. 
 
 On the right-hand side are long lines of low alms- 
 houses, built by Sir Moses Montefiore, for the relief 
 of the indigent Jews of Jerusalem. 
 
 As we toil up the hill, a mile or so along the road, 
 we see a fountain in the wall, on the left-hand side. 
 This is said to be the memorable spot where the 
 Wise Men from the East, passing from Jerusalem 
 out of the Jaffa Gate and going to Bethlehem to 
 find Him who was bom King of the Jews, saw 
 the star they had beheld in the East re-appear, and 
 go before them and stand over where the young 
 Child was. We now proceed rapidly down the 
 long slope, with the white houses and towers of 
 Bethlehem appearing over the low hills to the left. 
 At the bottom the road forks, the left-hand branch 
 going to the town, the other one straight on to 
 Hebron and Egypt. At this fork some 3,600 
 years ago Rachel died. 
 
 Here, just at this place, by the right-hand 
 
 side of the road after coming down this steep 
 
 hill on the camels, in a tent hastily pitched, the 
 
 much-loved wife died in giving birth to Benjamin. 
 
 S 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 Jacob here put up a pillar, and over that pillar was 
 put a small building, a white sepulchre, and Rachel's 
 tomb is here to this day. There is little doubt that 
 this is the very spot where she passed away. 
 
 Let us turn now to the left up the short hill, 
 and we come to the Western Gate of Bethlehem. 
 By that gate is still the very well where David 
 sent three mighty men through the hosts of the 
 Philistines to draw water for him, but when they 
 brought it he thought it too precious to drink, and 
 Jie poured it out an offering before the Lord. 
 
 We proceed through Bethlehem, along the crooked, 
 narrow, shady streets, leaving the Church of the 
 Nativity on the left, and we come to the brow of the 
 hill, and standing on this eastern summit, with the 
 town behind us, we have in front a long valley, and 
 from our feet a green slope leading down to it. You 
 may not know how rare a colour green is in Judea, 
 for the country is nearly all grey for miles around. 
 Here it is green, like English turf, and here are 
 the rich pastures in front, where the shepherds 
 watched over their flocks by night when Jesus 
 was born in Bethlehem. On the left-hand side, at 
 the end of the valley, three miles from where we 
 stand, is the small grey village of the shepherds, 
 where they lived then, and where their successors 
 live now. 
 
 On the right-hand side, in the extreme distance, 
 you see a yellow patch in the valley. Those are the 
 only cornfields that have ever existed, so far as we 
 know, in this part of Judea. These were the fields 
 of Boaz, and on this very spot corn is grown to-day. 
 Beyond, over the grey hills of Judea, you see, some 
 9 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 thirty miles away, the bhie mountains of Moab, over 
 which Ruth and Naomi came to glean the ears of 
 barley in these very fields, and here Ruth met Boaz. 
 She found favour in his eyes, and you remember 
 how he offered her marriage, as the Jewish custom 
 was, when her nearest of kin refused to take her. 
 Boaz then claimed the right and married the 
 Moabitess. 
 
 Who was Boaz ? He was the great Sheik of 
 Bethlehem, the leading man there. His grand- 
 father, Nahshon, used to carry the Standard of the 
 Lion of the Tribe of Judah and command all the 
 hosts of Judah in the battle — the Lion, which is now 
 on our Royal Standard, so near are we interlinked 
 with these bygone stories. 
 
 The father of Boaz was called Salmon and married 
 Rahab, who was saved alive at the siege of Jericho. 
 Boaz was their son, a notable man, and a man of 
 large possessions. His house was a little below the 
 gate of the city, on our left ; in fact, it was just 
 where the Church of the Nativity is now, a little 
 down the hill and on the farther side of the town from 
 where we stand. And here was the house of Boaz, 
 where Boaz and Ruth lived together, and here Obed, 
 their son, was bom. There Obed married and lived ; 
 and there his son Jesse was bom, and there, in turn, 
 Jesse's son David was bom. And after David be- 
 came King, the house passed into his possession. He 
 reigned seven years at Hebron and then came to 
 Jemsalem. When he was driven out of the city by 
 his cruel son Absalom, under evil counsel, an old 
 man in Gilead, seventy miles away, called Barzillai, 
 showed him great kindness. So when David came 
 
BKIHLEHEM. 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 back to Jerasalem he wanted to pay his debt of 
 gratitude, and he sent for him and said, " Come and 
 hve with me at Jerusalem." But Barzillai said he 
 was too old, and sent his son Chimham. Chimham 
 came and was given for his own possession David's 
 house in Bethlehem. So it became, in course 
 of time, the house of Chimham. It is to this house 
 I now wish to direct your attention. This was 
 the house of Boaz, as I have said, a httle below 
 the gate, where Boaz and Ruth lived, and their 
 descendants, Obed, Jesse and David ; and then it 
 passed to Chimham. When he died, it appears to 
 have become an inn or a khan. It was a usual thing 
 for the rich man of the district to give a khan to the 
 village. It was considered a good act, like the 
 giving of a hospital or a park in the present day. 
 And this khan or inn of Bethlehem was originally 
 the house of Chimham, and after his death it was 
 called the Habitation, or Inn of Chimham. 
 
 Then followed the chequered history of the Kings 
 of Judah and Israel, and in later years, when Nebu- 
 chadnezzar had laid Jerusalem waste, there was just 
 a remnant of poor people left tilling the ground under 
 a man called Gedaliah. The chief of the people 
 was called Johanan, and amongst them were two 
 prophets ; one was Jeremiah and the other was 
 Baruch. A man called Ishmael rose up and took 
 Jeremiah captive. Johanan rescued him with some 
 difficulty, and then fled with some hundreds, if not 
 thousands, of people to Egypt, leaving their afflicted 
 country altogether. Johanan, taking Jeremiah and 
 Baruch with him, fled down by the way of Bethlehem, 
 where they haHed at the Inn of Chimham, that being 
 II 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the place where they could get camels and every- 
 thing necessary for the journey to Egypt. However, 
 like many of us, after they had made up their minds 
 what to do, they thought it would be no harm to 
 seek God's will in the matter, and so they asked 
 Jeremiah if he would pray, and inquire if they should 
 go to Eg3^t or not ; the sequel showed, however, that 
 they were determined to act in defiance of God's 
 will. Jeremiah took ten days, and at the end of 
 that time he told them that they were not to go to 
 Egypt, but were to return to the land whence they 
 came. This they utterly refused to do, rejecting 
 the counsel of God, whereupon Jeremiah said they 
 should not see the land any more. And they did 
 not. They went on down into Egypt, taking 
 Jeremiah and Baruch with them, and none of 
 them ever saw the hills of Judah again. 
 
 And now a silence falls over the Khan of Chim- 
 ham, the Inn of Bethlehem. We hear no more 
 about it until just 1,904 years ago this last Christmas 
 Day, when Jesus was bom of Mary in the rock stable 
 of this very inn. Jesus, great David's greater Son, 
 was born in David's house, the house of Boaz, the 
 house of Ruth. There can be little doubt of this 
 fact to those who have not only studied the Bible 
 generally, but pondered carefully the small allusions 
 to the situation of the house of Boaz, and com- 
 pared it with the site of the Church of the Nativity 
 as it stands to-day. They agree perfectly, and it 
 is almost certain that when you look down at that 
 silver star in the floor of the rock stable, you stand 
 by the absolute spot where the Saviour entered 
 the world. 
 
 12 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 Now, that is the story of Bethlehem, but before 
 we leave it let us pass across the hills of Moab and 
 look at the interesting scene pictured in the simple 
 verses of the first chapter of the book of Ruth. 
 
 Naomi, a widow, bereft of her sons and her 
 husband, living away in Moab, determined to 
 return to Bethlehem when she heard that the famine 
 was over. So 
 
 " She went forth out of the place where she was, and her 
 two daughters-in-law with her ; and they went on the way 
 to return unto the land of J udah. And Naomi said unto her 
 two daughters-in-law, Go, return each to her mother's 
 house : the Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt 
 with the dead and with me. . . . And they said unto 
 her. Surely we will return with thee unto thy people. And 
 Naomi said, Turn again my daughters : why will ye go 
 with me ? . . . And they Ufted up their voice, and wept 
 again : and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth 
 clave unto her. And she said, Behold thy sister-in-law is 
 gone back unto her people, and unto her gods : return thou 
 after thy sister-in-law. And Ruth said, Intreat me not to 
 leave thee or to return from following after thee : for 
 whither thou goest, I wUl go ; and where thou lodgest, I 
 will lodge ; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my 
 God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be 
 buried ; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but 
 death part thee and me." 
 
 Here in the lives of these two girls we see what so 
 often comes in our lives— the parting of the two 
 ways— the one leading to the right and the other to 
 the left. And how often the whole future of our 
 lives, unknown to us, depends on which of those 
 two turnings we take ! The two went up together 
 to a certain point ; they both wept ; they both 
 professed their love of Naomi ; but when it came 
 13 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 to the crucial test which decided their future, Orpah 
 kissed her mother-in-law and went back to her 
 country and to her gods, while Ruth clave to this 
 poor broken-down widow and saw in her a greater 
 attraction, a greater power than the whole of her 
 friends, the whole of her country, and the whole of 
 her gods. She readily turned her back upon these 
 three for the sake of this desolate, broken-hearted 
 widow. To us this is a parable pregnant with 
 meaning. These things were written aforetime for 
 our instruction. 
 
 The same thing occurs at some time or other in all 
 our lives. There is no man or woman who has 
 never heard the voice of God. He has spoken to us 
 at various times and in different ways, but there are 
 special occasions which stand out from the rest. 
 Some of us can remember when the issue of our lives 
 depended upon whether we hstened to that Voice 
 or not. Such an occasion came when that rich 
 farmer, returning from his haystacks and his barns, 
 which he was going to puU down and increase in size 
 owing to the fertility of his crops, suddenly felt a 
 check as he was entering his house. All you would 
 have seen was a blanching of the face and a momen- 
 tary hesitation, and then he passed on into the house 
 to his supper and to his bed and to his end. A most 
 commonplace occurrence, but in that eventful 
 moment God had spoken to the man and he had not 
 hstened. The Bible says, " God said, Thou fool, 
 this night thy soul shaU be required of thee." Do 
 you think God has ceased speaking ? Do you 
 think God is now silent ? No ! God speaks now 
 as He did then, and He spoke then as He does now. 
 14 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 It was not that the man saw a Form coming, and 
 heard a Voice saying those words to him. If you 
 had asked him he would have said, " Dear me, 
 a thought just struck me ; it flashed across me what 
 a fool I am." Whence was that thought that came 
 across him ? WTiat struck him ? The Voice of 
 God! 
 
 I think we have httle idea how often in our inner 
 thoughts, in the suggestions that spring to us deep 
 out of our own unconsciousness we hear the Voice 
 of the Almighty. And it is a great thing at a 
 critical time to be able to make the right decision. 
 This is the point. What was there about Ruth 
 superior to Orpah that enabled her at the crucial 
 moment, though she did not know it herself, to 
 make a right decision which influenced the whole of 
 her future life, which brought her into unexpected 
 possessions and privileges, and made her one of the 
 direct progenitors of the Son of God ? What 
 was it ? 
 
 Well, that is what I want to explain here. Will 
 you let me just turn you for an answer to St. James 
 ii. 12 : " So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall 
 be judged by the law of liberty." 
 
 Now, I am perfectly convinced that if one were 
 to speak to Christians on this and nothing else for 
 twelve months, there would still be numbers who 
 would not apprehend and really grasp what is meant 
 by this extraordinary phrase. A " law of liberty " 
 on the face of it contains a contradiction in terms. 
 Where there is law there is no liberty, and where 
 there is liberty there is no law. If I am under a 
 law to conclude this address at a certain fixed 
 15 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 moment, I have no liberty to carry it on beyond 
 then ; but if there be no such law, then I have 
 liberty in the matter — which I may say I will not 
 abuse. But at any rate, where there is liberty there 
 is no law, and where there is no law there is liberty. 
 They mutally exclude each other. Let me illustrate 
 this. There are, according to the Bible, three classes 
 of people in this world — the Jews, the Gentiles, and 
 the Church of God, or Christians. The Gentiles 
 Kipling speaks of as the lesser tribes without the 
 law. The Gentiles are without law. They have 
 got liberty but no law. The Jew has law but no 
 liberty. The Christian has the law of liberty. 
 What then is it ? Here are these three classes of 
 people. One has liberty and no law, another has 
 law and no liberty, and the Christian differs from 
 either in having a new thing that is unlike both, 
 that never was in the world before — the law of 
 liberty. What is that ? It is certainly not the 
 ten commandments, for that law leads to bondage ; 
 but what is it ? 
 
 Well now, let me again use an illustration that I 
 have found of great value. There are three sorts of 
 dogs in London. There is the dog that has got 
 liberty without law ; there is the dog that has got 
 law without liberty ; and there is the dog that knows 
 the meaning of the law of hberty ; for allow me to 
 tell you that this principle descends to the lowest, 
 as well as rises to the highest. 
 
 The dog which has got liberty and no law is the 
 
 stray dog, the strange dog, which owns no master 
 
 and has no home, but runs about London, having 
 
 perhaps in his own estimation a very good time, 
 
 10 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 though in imminent danger of being caught by the 
 poUce and hurried off to Battersea and having his 
 career brought to a violent end. Everywhere, 
 liberty without law is a position of danger. It means 
 licence ; it means indulgence ; it means recklessness ; 
 to men it means — being without God in the world. 
 Hundreds and thousands of young men and women 
 come up to London every year who have liberty 
 and no law. They may lead, in their own estima- 
 tion, a merry and a fast life, but it is a short one ; 
 for 'J. they act without restraint they only abuse 
 their liberty, and soon go under and are heard of no 
 more. So that liberty without law is in itself a 
 position of danger. The opposite to it, of course, is 
 law without liberty, which is a position of safety. 
 There is no danger in the possession of law without 
 liberty ; but at the same time there is not much 
 happiness in it. And that is the position which so 
 many Christians occupy, and that is the fundamental 
 cause why they get so little pleasure out of their 
 Christianity. That is the real, though unsuspected, 
 reason of it. 
 
 Now, what is law without liberty? Well, take 
 the dog again. I had a valuable collie which now 
 lies buried in the little cemetery in Hyde Park by 
 the Victoria Gate. When he first of all came up to 
 London he was strange ; he did not know me ; he 
 did not know town ; he wanted to run about here, 
 there and everywhere. Not a bit of it, I said. No ; 
 you are to have law and no liberty. So I went 
 and bought him a collar and a strong chain. When- 
 ever he went out one end of the chain was in some 
 one's hand, and the other was fastened on to his 
 17 B 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 collar. He could run about five feet. That was 
 the end of his liberty. He was in bondage. If 
 he wanted to run after the carriages or the dogs. 
 or to follow any one, he was always pulled back by 
 the chain. No liberty, but law, for his own safety. 
 To have let him free would have meant his 
 destruction. He would not only have been lost, 
 so far as I was concerned, but he would have been 
 either caught by the police, or by dog-stealers 
 round the comer, and carried off, and perhaps an 
 end put to his life. Law was his only safety ; he 
 could not have liberty because he did not under- 
 stand how to use it ; he did not know the law of 
 hberty. So he had law without liberty. Now, 
 that is the position of many Christians. I wonder 
 if there are any this afternoon who understand 
 this position, and who can say, " That is just my 
 case." 
 
 I was reading the other day in a book by Samuel 
 Smith, M.P., a description of the barrack system 
 of our large Poor-Law schools. He shows how 
 two thousand children or more are herded together, 
 how they are kept clean and safe, how they are 
 washed and dressed, but what a grey dulness there is 
 over them, and how sometimes they are not even 
 known by their names, but only by their numbers. 
 He says : " The barrack system has one fatal 
 defect — want of love. Children must be loved 
 into obedience." 
 
 Now, I have more than a suspicion, I have the 
 knowledge, that a large bulk of Christian people 
 are hving in this barrack system. They are sur- 
 rounded with stone walls, mostly of their own, 
 iS 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 or their friends' devising, which say in effect, " You 
 must not do this, and you must not do that, and 
 you must not do the other." They are herded 
 together inside these walls. They are clean and 
 they are fed and they are respectable, but there is a 
 grey dulness over them all. I will tell you why. 
 It is because they are not at home ; they do not feel 
 at home. There is not that warm interchange of 
 love between parent and child that brightens the 
 eye, and quickens the footstep, and makes Ufa 
 one continual joy. No ; it is an institution, a 
 barrack system. They are clean, respectable, and 
 Christian people ; there is no denying it ; they do 
 not do anything very wrong. But they are in 
 bondage ; they have not got the joy, they have not 
 got the liberty, that breathes in the spirit of true 
 Christianity. My collie had no liberty. 
 
 But there came a day, a never-to-be-forgotten 
 day in the history of that dog when I felt he 
 could be treated in a different way. To his 
 intense surprise, one morning I unbuckled the 
 chain when he got out of doors, and I said, 
 " Now go where you like." " Go where I like ! 
 Off I go and you never see me any more ! " 
 No ! I knew he could not do that now. The dog 
 bounded away down the road, and then looked 
 wistfully up, and trotted back again. There he 
 was behind my heels. He tried to run about, but 
 he could not run far, because I had got his heart. 
 That is the law of hberty. If you had seen that 
 dog you would have said he was as free as the air. 
 As a matter of fact he was bound by a stronger chain 
 than any sold by an ironmonger ; he was bound by 
 19 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the invisible chain of affection to me and he could 
 not break it. I could walk down the Bayswater 
 Road and down Regent Street, or Oxford Street, 
 go where I hked and do what I liked, and had no 
 need to look after him. There is nothing so affect- 
 ing as the heart of a dog. When he gives his heart 
 he gives it all, and never, never can he take it 
 back. A dog can die and often has died for a 
 loved master, but he can never break the chain of 
 love. 
 
 Now look at Ruth. Was she not rather like my 
 collie ? " Where thou goest I wiU go ; thy people 
 shall be my people ; where thou diest will I die and 
 there will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, 
 and more also, if aught but death part thee and 
 me." Is not that like a dog's heart ? Her mind 
 was made up because her heart was gone ; it was 
 her affection that governed her intellect. It 
 was no use reasoning with her and saying, " That 
 is very foolish ; it is much wiser to go back.*' No, 
 instinctively she chose the right without knowing 
 why she did it, or how. But we know. It was by 
 the law of love ! Oh ! how this law quickens the 
 wits, and gives the right instinct at the critical 
 moment ! How it gave it to her, and how much 
 she got by it ! Yes, what governed Ruth was 
 the law of liberty of St. James ii. 12 : " So speak 
 ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the 
 law of liberty." 
 
 Now, what is it we want here this afternoon ? 
 
 It is not the shghtest good your coming or my 
 
 coming just to talk together, unless we can really 
 
 in some way help each other. What is it we want ? 
 
 20 
 
BETHLEHEM, OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 Where is the screw loose in our Christianity ? 
 What is amiss ? Everywhere, aU over this country, 
 there have been for the last twenty years meetings 
 and corventions, large and small, for the " deepen- 
 ing of the spiritual life." What is the " deepening 
 of the spiritual life ? " Do you know what it is " 
 Touching God ! That is the whole secret. People 
 work themselves into a great state and rea^h lofty 
 pinnacles, and talk of surrendering this, that, and 
 the other. Surrendering or giving up is not the 
 right phrase in connexion with the law of liberty. 
 These are alien words. You cannot talk of sur- 
 rendering this and that to your Father. No ! 
 It is an affection that grows up day by day as you 
 get more into it. It is an interchange of thought 
 and love until you know His desire v^dthout His 
 ever speaking. "Be ye not as the horse or as the 
 mule, which must be held in with bit and bridle 
 lest they come near unto thee. I will guide thee 
 with mine eye." That is the Divine command. 
 It is the simplest thing on earth. 
 
 Now let us read one short message from Acts 
 xvii. 24. WTiy were we created ? Why are men 
 and women living on this earth at all ? Have 
 you ever answered the question ? Have you ever 
 considered the words of this discourse ? Let me 
 just read them to you, omitting what is not rele- 
 vant in the passage from St. Paul's wonderful 
 sermon on Mar's Hill. 
 
 " God made the world and all things therein. . . . 
 
 made of one blood all nations of men . . . that 
 
 they should seek the Lord " — that is what we are 
 
 made for — " if haply they might feel after Him, 
 
 21 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 and find Him, though He be not far from every one 
 of us." 
 
 What are we here for ? To feel after God. How 
 long to feel ? Until we touch Him. Do you not 
 loiow what it is in a dark room to suddenly touch 
 some one with the tips of your fingers, and how a 
 thrill runs through you from the contact. You 
 can so touch God. That is the very image St. 
 Paul uses — to feel after God. That is what we 
 are sent into this dark world for, to feel after God. 
 How long ? I ask again, " Until we find Him." 
 Will that be long ? " He is not far from every one 
 of us." Have you felt after Him and touched Him 
 in the dark, and has the thrill gone through yotc ? 
 If so, you wiU never be the same again, for yoahave 
 touched the Almighty. You are in contact 
 with Infinite Love and Infinite Strength. That 
 is what it means. That is what men are made 
 for. They are made to feel after God and to touch 
 Him Wlio is not far from any one of them. 
 
 What we really touch is His loving heart, and 
 that is easiest when we go along the path where 
 that love has been shown in the gift of His Son. 
 He is the Way, and none can come to the Father 
 save by Him. He that sees Hmi has seen the 
 Father, and whoso touches the hem of His 
 garment by faith, touches God and reaches His 
 heart. 
 
 But the crowd may throng and press and yet not 
 reach God. There may be souls in this room so 
 near to God that they could not be nearer without 
 touching, and yet they know it not. Have you 
 never seen a blind man pass some one so near 
 
 24 
 
BETHLEHEM. OR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST 
 
 that there is only a hair's breadth between them ? 
 If he put out his hand ever so httle they would 
 touch, but the friend goes by, and he does not 
 know how near they have been together. So we 
 pass by God and never know how near He is, 
 because there is not the touch. What stops the 
 touch ? The smallest thing, just as the thinnest 
 film will stop the current coming to the electric light. 
 
 The world, religion, doctrines, indifference, eager- 
 ness after other things — there are a hundred things. 
 You can put religious doctrines in the place of God 
 and touch them all, and handle them with great 
 familiarity, and yet never touch God. 
 
 I will tell you one thing. If we have touched God 
 we love God from that moment better than the 
 world. Now you know we may make a loud pro- 
 fession, but it is no use being shams and h5rpocrites, 
 and there are many Christians, I was going to say, 
 who love the world better than God ; but at any 
 rate, God is not first in their souls before the world. 
 But when they have touched Him no further effort 
 is needed ; He conquers. That is the law of hberty. 
 I did not go with a big whip and hoarse voice shout- 
 ing to my dog and lashing him to my heels. I kept 
 him under law until I knew I had got his heart, but 
 when I had got his heart there was no driving to 
 heel. He loved me better than all the world, and 
 he could not help it either. If we know God we 
 love Him better than the world, we love Him bettei 
 than religion, and, more still, we love Him better 
 than our Bibles. Now, to a Christian that seems 
 almost impossible. His Bible is the thing he clasps 
 to his heart ; he reads it day and night, and in the 
 2 , 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 law of the Lord is his dehght. Yes, but he has a 
 greater delight in the Lord than even in the Law 
 of the Lord. God Himself is even more than 
 His Word. I have known in many instances the 
 letter of this Book to so fiU the mind, and nice 
 questions with regard to it so disturb the thoughts 
 (though it cannot be too much studied) that God 
 is obscured rather than revealed. There may be 
 much religious knowledge and yet God Himself 
 not be known in the fulness of His Love. But such 
 personal knowledge is within the reach of any one 
 of us.^ We are all placed here for the purpose of 
 obtaining it. Let us remember as we close those 
 words of St. Paul : " He hath made of one blood 
 all nations of the earth, that they should seek the 
 Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find 
 Him (touch Him), though He be not far from every 
 one of us." 
 
 * See The Knowledge of God, its Meaning ^nd its Power. 
 (A. T. Schofield). Hodder & Stoughton. 
 
 94 
 
SECOND ADDRESS 
 
 Nazareth, or the Life of Christ 
 
 TO-DAY I have to tell the story of Nazareth, 
 or the Life of Christ. It would appear that 
 the father and mother of the Virgin had left the 
 comparatively barren country of Judea sometime 
 in their early history for the green hills and valleys 
 of Galilee, as so many dwellers in Judea did at that 
 time. Palestine is most fertile in the north, but 
 becomes barren as one passes south. Galilee is very 
 fruitful ; Samaria less so ; while Judea is almost 
 entirely sterile. That little valley by Bethlehem 
 that I described in the first address is an exception, 
 and is one of the most beautiful in the whole 
 country of Southern Palestine. 
 
 The father and mother of the Virgin moved 
 northwards, attracted also, doubtless, by the extra- 
 ordinary amount of Greek and Roman civilization 
 in Galilee, of which most Bible students know but 
 little. The cities, the traffic, the whole atmosphere 
 of large parts of Galilee at this time were Greek ; 
 the roads were Roman, the Government was Roman, 
 and the whole country was in a most prosperous 
 condition. This change of residence might be 
 paralleled by the migration of some peasants from 
 25 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the West of Ireland say into Kent, or some other 
 prosperous district in England. 
 
 Nazareth, though fertile, is the most obscure place 
 that is named in Scripture. It is never mentioned in 
 the Bible with the exception of the allusions to it in 
 the New Testament. It is found in no Jewish writ- 
 ings ; it has no Jewish name at aU, Nazareth being 
 a Greek word. It is an obscmre village, out of the 
 highways and byways of men, completely isolated, 
 and connected with no history either of war or of 
 conquest, or of anything of note whatever. Here the 
 Virgin's parents hved with their yoimg daughter 
 until she became betrothed to an elderly man 
 called Joseph, a jobbing village carpenter, of Naza- 
 reth. We know the history of how our Lord was 
 born in Bethlehem in the house of David, and also 
 how, after going to Egypt, his parents brought Him 
 to Nazareth. 
 
 The exact composition of the household seems a 
 Httle doubtful. It would appear that Marian, that 
 is the Virgin whom we caU Mary, had a half-sister 
 who was truly called Mary, the wife of Cleophas, 
 who had several children, probably four sons and 
 at least three daughters ; these would be then the 
 cousins of our Lord. Others think that they were 
 the children of Joseph by a former wife, and they 
 would then be half brothers and sisters to our Lord. 
 Be that as it may, at any rate the household at 
 Nazareth seems to have comprised our Lord, His 
 mother, and at least seven others. There seems 
 little doubt that Christ was the youngest of the 
 family when His parents came to Uve in Nazareth. 
 
 Let us try for a moment to picture a httle of His 
 26 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LHE OF CHRIST 
 
 surroundings there. Nazareth can best be doscribed 
 as a saucer, a mile across, full of fruit and flowers 
 and sun ; a saucer, not a cup ; a shallow, not a deep, 
 depression in the hills, the bottom of the saucer 
 being probably a thousand feet above the sea ; so 
 that we have to imagine an upland hollow almost a 
 perfect circle, the rim made of some thirteen little 
 hills of almost even height and enclosing a fertile 
 district a mile across, full of figs, ohves, pomegra- 
 nates, com, and every sort of flower glowang in the 
 bright Syrian sun. There are vines on all the hill- 
 sides, very much like those on the banks of the 
 Rhine ; and in the ravines large mulberry trees 
 and other vegetation. The flowers are really 
 innumerable, every field is full of them right up to 
 the very rim of the saucer, and then just at the top 
 there is a little bareness, where a sort of short 
 heather grows on the higher summits. 
 
 Now imagine resting on the northern slope of 
 this hollow with a southern aspect, a small and 
 irregular grey village about half way up, and 
 you see Nazareth. Here our Lord hved for thirty 
 years with His brothers and His sisters in the 
 house of Mary, Joseph probably dying sometime 
 during His early hfe, we do not exactly know 
 when. His home lay a Httle to the right of the 
 village, as far as we can tell, while the carpenter's 
 workshop was in the middle of the bazaar ; 
 for in Nazareth the workshops were never (as 
 depicted in mediaeval art) in the dwelling-house. 
 In the midst of the village at its upper edge was the 
 one fountain which supplied the whole of Nazareth 
 with a most copio'is flow of Uving, or springing, 
 27 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 water. Our Lord must have walked there by 
 the side of His mother as a Httle boy, hundreds 
 of times as she went with her five-gallon pitcher 
 poised on her head (a custom which gives the 
 women of Nazareth the best figures in Palestine), 
 to and from the spring for the water required 
 for the household every day. And then as He grew 
 older He would join His father in his trade. 
 
 I should like to say a word about that trade here, 
 because afterwards our Lord succeeded His father 
 in it, and at Joseph's death Himself became a 
 carpenter. Now, the carpenter in Palestine was 
 not confined to making articles in the workshop, 
 but went about the village repairing doors and win- 
 dows, going sometimes as far as the lake, twenty-five 
 miles off, to repair boats, and make masts and oars. 
 He also made yokes for the oxen, tables, chairs, 
 and wooden utensils, so that there would be hardly 
 a house in which Jesus would not be known by 
 virtue of His work. 
 
 But we must remember that there was this 
 about the carpenter's trade : it did not really 
 form a part of Christ's humiliation as man ; 
 though of course it did if we think of Him as God. 
 Though our Lord was bom in a humble sphere 
 of hfe, it was no further humiliation to become a 
 carpenter, because the occupation of a carpenter 
 was one of the few honourable trades in Palestine. 
 If a man were a carpenter, he could be chosen as 
 High Priest ; whereas if he were a tanner or a 
 weaver or a hairdresser, or an ordinary shop-keeper, 
 no Priest could be chosen from his rank ; while if he 
 were, like David or Amos, a keeper of flocks or herds, 
 28 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 he reached the verj^ lowest ranks of degradation. 
 So that the trade of a carpenter was amongst the 
 higher callings in Palestine ; and would be almost 
 equal to that of a lawyer or barrister here. At any 
 rate, it was possible for a carpenter to reach the 
 highest position. It appears that our Lord followed 
 this trade for well nigh thirty years in the village 
 and district round. 
 
 It might be thought, considering His wonderful 
 mission, that to be buried in a Httle flowery 
 hollow in the hills, as He was at Nazareth, 
 was not the best training in the world for the 
 Saviour ; because He would be shut out of all the 
 busy world of men and see nothing of what was 
 going on, in fact, know nothing really of Palestine 
 itself. But there is this peculiarity about Nazareth, 
 that just about twenty-minutes walk from the house 
 where our Lord lived there is the top of a heather- 
 clad hiU, 1, 600 feet above the sea, nearly as high 
 as the great range of Mount Carmel. There is no 
 doubt whatever our Lord must have spent hundreds 
 of hours on this wonderful and solitary spot, and as 
 those in the village do still who wish for quiet and 
 meditation. Here, away from the taunts of His 
 brethren, who " did not beheve in Him "—and what 
 a home tragedy is wrapped up in that phrase— He 
 could not only commune alone with God, but quietly 
 survey the wonderful panorama around Him. 
 
 Let us place ourselves here for a moment, and 
 just consider what Christ saw. Stand on this sum- 
 mit where Jesus stood scores of times and look due 
 north, with your back to Nazareth. On the left 
 hand, four miles away. He would gaze on the brilliant 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Greek city of Sepphoris, which was the capital of 
 Galilee, whilst He was living in Nazareth : it has 
 now passed away ; though so well known, its name 
 is never mentioned in the Bible. There were 
 several of these cities in Palestine, brilliant with 
 Greek temples and Greek baths and theatres and 
 Greek civilization and Greek gods ; but in not one 
 of them did Christ ever spend a night or do a 
 miracle ; and with two exceptions, none of them are 
 named in Scripture. He simply passed them by. 
 He was sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, 
 and we hardly realize how wonderfully He kept to 
 His mission unless we grasp the fact that Greek 
 civilization had at that time spread over the whole 
 of Galilee. On the right, four miles away, a great 
 contrast met His eye — the little dirty grey village 
 of Cana of Galilee, where when the hour was come He 
 would perform His first miracle of turning water 
 into wine. How often, with His omniscience, 
 must He have looked upon that little village where 
 He was going in a very short time to set His seal 
 on the rite of marriage and His blessing on the 
 simple joys of life. In front of Him, high above the 
 Httle hills and twenty-four miles distant, but looking 
 only about ten miles away, was a bare rock, and on 
 the top a very white town called Safed. That is the 
 " city set on a hiU " of His parables that " could not 
 be hid " ; and over and above it, at a distance of some 
 sixty miles, were the majestic snows of Hermon. 
 
 If the Lord then turned a Uttle round toward the 
 
 east, He would see the dip in the land where at the 
 
 bottom lay the Sea of Galilee, more than 2,000 feet 
 
 below where He was standing. He could not see 
 
 30 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the lake, but the hills where Capernaum lav. twenty 
 miles away, were plainly visible. Then, as He turned 
 due east, IMount Tabor, only five miles away, where 
 He was going to be transfigured and meet Moses and 
 Elias, rose up before Him. The transparent air of 
 Palestine makes distant objects wonderfully vivid. 
 Beyond Tabor again the hills of Perea and Bashan 
 bej'ond Jordan could be seen. 
 
 Turning round towards the south of Nazar'^'Iih, 
 and thus leaving the valley of the Jordan on 
 the east, and looking across the " saucer," two 
 ranges would appear below Tabor. There is 
 Little Hermon, the green hill next to it, and 
 then beyond that again there are the brown 
 Mountains of Gilboa, This is a low range coming 
 down to the Plain of Jezreel on the right, the great 
 Plain which stretched due west from the edges of 
 the hills round Nazareth for twenty miles, straight 
 in front of the spectator, right across the range of 
 vision, and extended south at least ten miles in 
 breadth, the greatest plain in Palestine. 
 
 As Christ, who was Himself the last King of the 
 Jews and the son of David, looked at those moun- 
 tains of Gilboa, versed as He was in the Scriptures, 
 He knew He was gazing at the very place where the 
 first King of Israel, Saul, and Jonathan the beloved 
 of David " lovely and pleasant in their lives " were 
 killed. From this very spot the Philistines carried 
 Saul and fastened his body against the walls of 
 Bethshan, d few miles away on the left, and hung up 
 his shield in the temple of Ashtoreth. Just below 
 this spot, deep in the cleft between Little Hermon 
 and Gnboa, was the cave where the Witch of Endor 
 31 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 lived, whom Saul consulted the night before the 
 battle with the Philistines. All this was about six 
 miles from where our Lord was standing. 
 
 Just at the foot of Gilboa, where the plain of Jezreel 
 began, about ten miles away, Christ could see some- 
 thing of a town still left in His days (now only 
 obscure ruins), the great city of Jezreel, for long the 
 capital of Samaria. And as He looked He would 
 remember how across that plain one day a cloud of 
 dust was seen advancing from the west, caused by 
 a rapidly driven chariot ; Jehoram, the son of Ahab, 
 and Ahaziah, King of Judah, looked out from the 
 tower of Jezreel and wondered what it was, and 
 sent messenger after messenger to see, but none 
 returned. At last as it drew nearer and they saw 
 it was driven recldessly they said, *' It must be 
 Jehu, the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously." 
 It would all be very vivid to the mind of One who 
 knew the story so well. How Jehoram and Ahab 
 went forth to meet Jehu in Naboth's vineyard, and 
 how Jehu drew a bow with his fuU strength, and 
 Jehoram was thrown into the stolen vineyard with 
 an arrow through his heart ; and how Jezebel looked 
 out the window with her painted face, but before 
 night was killed and thrown to the dogs. Such 
 would be one oi the Bible panoramas that would 
 pass before our Lord when He was in Nazareth. 
 
 And still looking south, and looking with equal 
 ease into the future, Christ saw a Httle way out on 
 the Plain the little town of Nain, where He was 
 going to raise the widow's son. The whole scene of 
 the great Jezreel plain was bounded in the distance 
 by the blue mountains of Samaria. 
 32 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 Turning, lastly, towards the west, He would see 
 at the end of the plain of Jezreel a small mound 
 rising up, with a village on the top. That was 
 Harosheth, one time the stronghold of Sisera, 
 where he kept 900 chariots of iron to scour these 
 two plains, the plain of Esdraelon that stretched 
 right away south-west to the Great Sea and the 
 plain of Jezreel on this side. 
 
 Critics have often scoffed at the idea of chariots 
 being used for battle in Palestine. But when you 
 see that they were kept just at the junction of the 
 two plains, you can perceive what a wonderfully 
 daring thing it was for Barak and Deborah to gather 
 Israel on the slopes of Little Tabor and Hermon, 
 and take them across the plain of Jezreel that lies 
 before us to do battle with Sisera and his chariots, 
 and eventually to overthrow them. Harosheth 
 itself forms the end of the great range of Carmel, 
 that also separates the two plains. Here our Lord 
 could see where Elijah vindicated Jehovah before 
 400 priests of Baal, and where he came with girded 
 loins before Ahab, twenty miles, to Jezreel. 
 
 And then as He looked away to the horizon He 
 would see the Great Sea — the Mediterranean — 
 stretching along the whole western vista, with the 
 towns of Acra, Joppa, Tyre and Sidon dotted all 
 along the coast, and He would watch the ships of Tar- 
 shish and of the isles, and all the Roman triremes and 
 Greek galleys coming and going from the various ports. 
 
 Such, then, was Nazareth, a place in itself of the 
 greatest seclusion and obscurity, and yet affording 
 opportunity from its hilltops for the most wonder- 
 ful education in Bible lore and in the whole history 
 33 c 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 and geography of Palestine. Here it was that our 
 Lord spent nine-tenths of His Hfe, little noticed, 
 and, so far as we know, Uttle thought of or spoken 
 about by man until the time came when He was 
 about thirty years of age. 
 
 Let none wonder that our Lord did not go forth 
 to His work before He was thirty. In all things 
 He acted according to the common customs of the 
 country. The Levites could not begin to minister 
 until they were thirty (from thirty to fifty), and 
 thirty was the recognized age when any public 
 profession, any public mission, was always taken up. 
 
 Shortly before this time, John, the cousin of our 
 Lord, had begun to minister in the wilderness of 
 Judea, and it was while he was announcing the 
 coming of the Messiah that our Lord began His 
 mission, at the right time, the appointed time, 
 without hurry, without delay, at God's time. 
 
 Christ commenced His public Hfe in the first 
 place by leaving this secluded spot where He had 
 lived so long, and going down to the wilderness of 
 Judea, and after a while coming to Bethabara, where 
 John was baptizing, and there He presented Him- 
 self to His cousin for baptism. John had already 
 aUuded to a greater One than himself, had already 
 pointed out his mission as forerunner to some 
 priests who had been sent down in disguise from 
 Jerusalem ; had said that he himself was not the 
 Messiah and had spoken of One greater than he, 
 " whose shoes' latchet he was not worthy to un- 
 loose." And in this spirit he baptized our Lord as 
 He stood in the Jordan, when the Holy Spirit like 
 a dove descended upon Him, and he heard a voice 
 34 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 from heaven saying, " This is My beloved Son, in 
 whom I am well pleased." It was thus our Lord's 
 mission began and His public career as the Sa\iour 
 of the world was inaugurated. 
 
 I should hke to pause here for just one moment. 
 I have often pondered upon that testimony from 
 Heaven : " This is My beloved Son, in whom I am 
 well pleased," and I have wondered why such a 
 message was given at such a time. Our Lord had 
 as yet done no single mighty work that could please 
 God ; He had as yet preached no single discourse so 
 far as we know. If the voice had spoken later, 
 say after a year of public work, we could understand 
 the expression of God's pleasure in the work of His 
 Son. But so far He had done nothing. It is true 
 He had even at that moment taken His place in 
 deepest humihty with " the excellent of the earth " 
 (Ps. xvi. 2), but I do not think this reason alone 
 fully accounts for the Divine testimony. 
 
 It seems to me this voice was marking the close 
 of the private life of our Lord, and the com- 
 mencement of His pubhc career ; and that God 
 chose this very moment to open the heavens to 
 record His public approval of His beloved Son's 
 private Hfe ; for though He was as yet utterly 
 unknown to man. He was well known to God. To 
 me it is most delightful that it was at the close 
 of the home-life of Nazareth that G<)d said, " This 
 is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." 
 Those thirty years of obscurity, which seem to have 
 been spent for nothing, had all ascended one by 
 one in the sweetest fragrance to God with the incense 
 of a perfect life, hved in obedience to His Father's 
 35 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 will. And God would not allow His Son to com- 
 mence His public career without setting this seal of 
 His Di\dne approval on that which no human eye 
 had seen, and which no inspired pen has described — 
 the private life of Christ. And I take it, it is the 
 same with us. 
 
 There are, I suppose, amongst Christians a 
 hundred private lives for every public one, 
 though so many of us are such public people in 
 the present day. But the private hfe, I believe, 
 will never pass unnoticed by God ; and we can be 
 quite sure that He who opened His heavens to 
 record His public approval of the private life of His 
 Son, spent in a little country village, wiU not forget 
 to set the seal of His approval upon the most obscure 
 private life of the least of His children that has 
 ascended up before Him with a good savour. I 
 don't think we need envy the public preacher. We 
 each of us have our calling of God, and if we remain 
 in it according to God, God wiU approve the one as 
 much as the other. 
 
 We must now pass on more rapidly, and until we 
 return to Nazareth again. After the baptism of 
 John, three, or at any rate two, of John's disciples 
 wished to have this greater One pointed out to them, 
 and John, seeing the Saviour walking along the 
 bank, said, " Behold the Lamb of God." The 
 Apostle John was one of these and James was 
 another, and then they found Peter, and the three 
 of them became the disciples of our Lord, and two 
 of them went at Christ's first invitation to see where 
 He dwelt ; probably it was in one of those little 
 huts of reeds which were put up temporarily not far 
 3t) 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 from the river, and there they spent the evening 
 with Christ, who soon afterwards returned back to 
 the hill country of Galilee, and performed His first 
 miracle at Cana of Galilee. You remember when 
 Nathaniel of Cana was brought to Christ at Caper- 
 naum he said, with the assurance of a neighbour who 
 had Hved all his hfe only four miles from Nazareth : 
 " Can any good thing come out of Galilee ? " He 
 knew every one in the town, and therefore he was 
 sceptical of any good thing coming from a place 
 with which he was so familiar. 
 
 But it was in this town of Cana that our Lord per- 
 formed His first miracle, of an amazing character, and 
 at a very opportune time ; for just then a great wave 
 of rehgious zeal against marriage had broken out, 
 headed by the Pharisees, who not only declaimed 
 against the practice of ha\'ing more than one wife 
 (a practice prevalent amongst the Greeks and richer 
 people), but who went so far as to declare that the 
 marriage state itself was not lawful for those who 
 would lead a holy life. 
 
 Our Lord here went out of Llis way, as I have 
 already said, to set His seal upon the sacred tie 
 and upon the simple happiness and pleasure con- 
 nected with it, in marked contrast to the ascetic 
 severity of His cousin John, from whom tliis miracle 
 marked him off for ever as One with a distinct 
 mission, not for a single locahty only, but for the 
 whole world. It was some time after this that Christ 
 came back to Nazareth. I pass over many interest- 
 ing intervening scenes elsewhere because I have 
 space to speak only of Nazareth in this address. 
 
 After the Lord had gath/^red more disciples, and 
 ?,7 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 had become known by more wonderful works, one 
 Sabbath day He appeared again in Nazareth. I 
 should like to ask your attention to this Sabbath 
 day. Christ had no doubt come back to the house of 
 His mother, who dwelt about half a mile from the 
 Synagogue ; and then on the Saturday morning — the 
 Sabbath morning — as He was wont, He would set 
 out with His mother and His disciples to the little 
 Synagogue. That lay on the left-hand side of the 
 village, just under the hill. 
 
 You must picture this Synagogue — a plain rect- 
 angular building of rough blocks of stone, with a 
 flat roof, utterly unlike the glorious structure at 
 Capernaum, which I hope to be able to teU you 
 about in my next address. The only ornamenta- 
 tion was round the door, where there would be 
 painted a vine and flowers and a wreath of fruit 
 round it in imitation of the vine at the Temple door. 
 Christ and His disciples and His mother would walk 
 along past the fountain (where He had so often 
 helped His mother to draw the water) to the door of 
 this S}Tiagogue. What, then, was the interior of the 
 building like ? What did our Lord see on that 
 Sabbath morning ? 
 
 The general appearance was not unlike the 
 inside of a parish schoolroom. There was a long 
 bare room with seats at the upper end, wooden 
 benches of superior construction covered with 
 rushes where the principal people of the village 
 sat, and plain benches at the lower end, while in the 
 middle there was a sort of raised pew or large railed 
 enclosure sufiiciently big to hold ten or more people. 
 Then there was a pulpit, a reading desk, and at the 
 38 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 south end a sort of cupboard or wooden structure, 
 inside of which was the Ark, which contained Rolls 
 of the Prophets and of the Law, which were read 
 ever}^ Sabbath day. 
 
 The congregation consisted first of aU of ten 
 men, who were called " batlanim " or " idlers." 
 They were men of leisure chosen from the village 
 to be always present on the Sabbath day to 
 make the nucleus of a congregation, so that who- 
 ever else was not there, they were always in their 
 seats. A Synagogue could not be built in a village 
 unless there were at least ten men who would 
 guarantee to attend. So these ten idlers would be 
 sitting there. In the railed structure in the middle 
 would be gathered the elders of the village, headed 
 by the chief elder or Rabbi ; and then beside the 
 cupboard at the far end stood the Chazzan or Deacon, 
 who was the man who had to attend to the Rolls of 
 the Law and keep order during the service. There 
 was one other official, the the Meturgeman, the in- 
 terpreter of these sacred Hebrew Scriptures into the 
 Aramaic dialect, which our Lord doubtless spoke in 
 Nazareth. 
 
 On this Sabbath morning Christ would take 
 His seat on the wooden benches with His fisher- 
 men disciples, who were all well known to the congre- 
 gation, and His mother would go behind the screen 
 with the rest of the women, for women were not 
 allowed to be seen during the service. Please notice 
 that in this Synagogue there never was any altar, any 
 priest, or any sacrifice. These were solely confined 
 to the Temple. There was no one part of the 
 S)niagogue more sacred than another, except just 
 39 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 where the Word of God was kept, and there was 
 great freedom of speech during the service. 
 
 The morning psalms would be sung when our 
 Lord had taken His seat, by a congregation probably 
 more than usually crowded, for by this time Christ 
 had attained a great fame. Our Lord was already 
 knowTi as a miracle worker, and to some extent 
 as a claimant for the Messiahship, but not clearly 
 so ; it was this morning that was to decide that 
 question. Many may not know that while our Lord 
 lived thirty years in Nazareth no fewer than twelve 
 false Messiahs had risen up in different parts of the 
 country, aU of them proving to be nothing and 
 passing away, so that the advent of a new 
 Messiah would in itself occasion Httle surprise. 
 
 Picture then the Saviour as He sits there on 
 the most momentous day of His life. The service 
 began quietly, the Psalms of David were sung, 
 as I have said, the Scripture read by the chief 
 elder and its translation given by the Meturgeman, 
 and the elder had commented on it, wisely or 
 unwisely, as the case might be. Then another 
 portion of Scripture had to be read, and our Lord 
 stood up to read it. There was handed to Him 
 the Roll of the Prophet Isaiah. The Chazzan 
 opened the Ark, took out the RoU and brought it 
 to Christ at the lower end of the Synagogue. As 
 he walked along everybody tried to kiss it and he 
 handed it to them for the purpose, and at last put it 
 into the hands of our Lord : so far aU was in order. 
 Then Jesus, the Messiah, began to read the words 
 recorded in Luke chap. iv. 
 
 We must observe that this Scripture which 
 40 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 He read was weU-known to all the Jews as the 
 great passage that referred to the coming Messiah ; 
 it was the Messianic message. Those in the 
 Synagogue regarded it as one of the most sacred 
 utterances in their Scriptures. No false Messiah 
 had dared to read it ; it had never been appro- 
 priated. No one had stood up as Christ was now 
 standing on this solemn Sabbath morning to read 
 these words ; and you can imagine the emphasis 
 as He read them : 
 
 " The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because he hath 
 anointed Me " — 
 that was with the sacred oil — 
 
 " He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. 
 He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
 deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the 
 blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the 
 acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 And then Christ closed or rolled up the scroll 
 and delivered it to the Chazzan who took it back 
 to the Ark, and sat down. All the elders 
 turned round in their pew, aU the congregation 
 had their eyes fastened on Him ; whispers went 
 about from one to another, " Who is that ? " 
 " Don't you know ? " " That's the carpenter." 
 " Don't you remember when He was last at our 
 house ? " There would be hardly one there but 
 would know Him personally by reason of some work 
 He had done during those thirty years. 
 
 Imagine the awe-struck and yet incredulous 
 amazement with which they heard this solemn 
 passage read by a fellow townsman, a carpenter, 
 as if He were applying it to Himself. Just try 
 and picture that scene. The eyes of cdl within 
 41 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the Synagogue were fastened on Him, and He 
 began to say to them : " This day is this Scrip- 
 ture fulfilled in your ears." That settled the 
 point. However much they might have said He 
 could not mean Himself, that clinched the matter, 
 and showed that He then and there challenged 
 them to the belief that they were in the presence 
 of the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. At 
 first they were pleased with what He said : the 
 full consequences of such a claim did not seem to 
 touch them at once ; they were charmed with the 
 gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth. 
 Then the inevitable questions began, " Isn't this 
 Joseph's son ? " " You remember Joseph ; this 
 is his son — the carpenter." Imagine His mother's 
 feelings when she heard these wonderful words 
 read ; she must have pondered them with wonder 
 in her heart behind that screen. 
 
 Then our Lord — I was going to say made 
 matters worse — for He deliberately pointed out 
 to them that this message was world-wide, that 
 He could not be a Saviour of the Jews alone, 
 He must be a Saviour of the whole world, and 
 He pointed out that when a blessing descended 
 it was often a Gentile who was blessed and not 
 a Jew. He instanced Naaman the S5n-ian, and as 
 they heard this a storm of religious bigotry rose and 
 swelled in their hearts, which grew to such an ex- 
 tent that they could contain themselves no longer. 
 
 Of course it was the Chazzan's duty to keep 
 
 order ; but this was no common brawl. The 
 
 whole congregation was filled with concentrated 
 
 rage, with a bewildered, stmned feeling, hardly 
 
 42 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 believing that their ears had served them aright, 
 and that in this Synagogue one so well kno\\Ti to 
 them should have dared to stand up and proclaim 
 Himself the Messiah, and then tell them that the 
 Messiah was not for the Jews only, but for those 
 accursed Gentiles with whom they had no dealings. 
 All in the Synagogue, when they heard these things, 
 were filled with rage ; they rose up, and as one man 
 they surrounded Him, hustled Him, drove Him 
 along in their midst to a height behind the Synagogue 
 where the cliff, apparently part of a stone quarry, 
 falls fifty feet sheer, and over the edge of this cliff 
 they sought to hurl Him. But He, passing through 
 their midst, went His way. 
 
 Whether he asserted His divinity, with that 
 divine glance which threw His assailants to the 
 ground, in the Garden of Gethsamene, or whether 
 He made Himself for the moment invisible and 
 so passed through them, we know not ; but they 
 were powerless — for His hour was not yet come. 
 Such was the result of the message of God to 
 Nazareth, on which He now turned His back, 
 and which He never entered again. 
 
 Before we leave the subject, let us just look for 
 one moment to whom the Scripture was addressed. 
 The message was to poor, broken-hearted, blind, 
 bruised captives. There is no message for con- 
 tented, self-satisfied, whole, free, rich people — none 
 whatever. And if any have received in their 
 hearts a message from Christ it is because they 
 have been either poor, or broken-hearted, or blind, 
 or bruised, or in captivity. For such the Deliverer 
 is strong ; to such the message is full of joy, for 
 43 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Christ can break every bond and make happy every 
 saddened heart. 
 
 Now I want to turn for a moment or two to a 
 most amazing chmax or conclusion of this remark- 
 able scene. Before stating it you will allow me per- 
 haps for one moment to allude to those remarkable 
 words of our Lord, " Recovery of sight to the blind." 
 St. Paul used the same expression when he declared 
 he was sent to open the eyes of the blind and turn 
 them from darkness to light. The opening of 
 the eyes is everywhere connected with the recep- 
 tion of the Gospel of Christ. In fact, Christianity 
 may be described as an operation for cataract. Man 
 was bom to see and Hve. The devil came into 
 Eden and said " Your eyes shall be opened and 
 ye shall be as gods," but instead of seeing God 
 Adam and Eve saw themselves. When a man 
 begins to see himself instead of God, he becomes 
 blind, and when Adam staggered out of Eden he was 
 a poor, blind being. 
 
 The world seemed enveloped in darkness and 
 in blindness for 4,000 years ; and all along its 
 history God sought by one prophet or another, 
 or by the law, to bring it back to the knowledge 
 of Himself, but the veil still remained dropped 
 over the eyes of men ; they could not see God after 
 Satan had put out their eyesight by sin. Some 
 could feel and grope. You remember that expres- 
 sion in the sermon at Athens — to feel after Him and 
 find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. 
 That describes the movements of a blind man exactly. 
 
 One of the most pathetic sights that was ever 
 44 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 witnessed on earth was when j|^e true Hgl.t shone 
 and when the Sun of Righteousness rose with 
 heahng in His wings and it was found necessary 
 to send a messenger to the bhnd men to tell 
 them the true Light was now shining. There is 
 no need for one to go about the streets of London 
 to tell us when the day dawns. We have our 
 eyesight. But if this were a city of the bhnd, it 
 would be needful to send messengers into the 
 streets to say when it was day time. The Baptist 
 had to announce that the true Light was now 
 shining, and to bear witness of the Light because it 
 was into a blind world that Jesus came. And that 
 is why one of the most gracious of our Lord's mis- 
 sions was to give sight to the spiritually blind, and 
 that is what He is doing to-day. And if there are 
 any who have not spiritual sight they may know 
 the great Restorer of sight is still as powerful as ever, 
 and in a moment He can so open the eyes of the 
 soul that we see what we have never seen before, 
 and never could believe was possible. So wonderful 
 are the things of God when the eyes open on them ! 
 Now for the sequel to the striking scene. In 
 the Mediterranean Sea there is a tall rocky island 
 called Patmos. Half way up the side is a cave, 
 and tradition tells us in this cave St. John saw 
 many visions, and wrote the Book of the Revelation. 
 Onetime when he was in this cave, some seventy years 
 after that Sabbath day in Nazareth, he was in a 
 trance, seeing a wonderful unfolding of the life of 
 Heaven, and he saw the throne of God and all the 
 glories of another world befo-e him, but he felt 
 himself oppressed with sorrow and the tears were 
 45 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 running down his cheeks. He found he was weeping 
 because there was a great question of opening a 
 book. There was some book sealed with seven 
 seals in Heaven, and no one was found there worthy 
 to open it. Search had evidently been made, but 
 none were found equal to the task. And John, in 
 sympathy with the scene, in some mysterious way 
 found the tears rolling down his cheeks as he wept 
 in real distress that no one could open this book 
 which was so securely sealed or look upon it. 
 
 At last one of the elders came to him and said : 
 " Weep not : behold, the Lion of the Tribe of 
 Judah, the Root of David, hath overcome to open 
 the Book." So John wiped his eyes, and raised 
 them to see this lion — a familiar emblem to him : — 
 he looked up to see a lion, but he beheld a lamb. 
 
 It is a most extraordinary thing, my friends, 
 and those who know something of the workings 
 and mysteries of the human mind know that what 
 we see is as often as not subjective, that is, the 
 result of the condition of our own mind, as ob- 
 jective, that is, caused by what is before our 
 eyes. Some people come to London from Paris, 
 and they see a dingy, smoky city. Others coming 
 to it from the Black Country or even Manchester, 
 look on it as a place of brightness and of gaiety. 
 We see through the medium of our own thoughts 
 as well as through our eyes. 
 
 The key to the change in the vision in heaven 
 from a Hon to a lamb is due to the Apostle John's 
 first acquaintance with our Lord. It was when the 
 Baptist said : " Behold the Lamb of God," that 
 Jesus filled the soul of John as a lamb. He never 
 46 
 
NAZARETH — THE WELL OF THE VIRGIN. 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 afterwards could see Him as anything else ; He 
 was the Lamb to John aU through, because he had 
 first learned to know Him as the Lamb of God, and 
 he never knew Him as the lion. 
 
 We shall carry with us to heaven the acquaint- 
 ance we have made with Christ here. No two of 
 us receive the same Saviour ; no two of us will 
 know the same Christ. There is but one Saviour, 
 there is but one Christ, but He is knowTi to each 
 of us in a way He is not knowTi to our fellows. 
 What great experiences there are here ! And 
 the more ups and downs there are in the rough 
 tracks of this world, and the more one has to lean 
 upon His helping and guiding hand, the more hnks 
 there will be, the more intimacy and knowledge 
 when we get to heaven. 
 
 We take a large part of our knowledge of Christ 
 with us to heaven. There is no doubt our eyes will 
 then be opened by the Holy Spirit to understand 
 Him as one cannot do now. But to each He will 
 be an Individuality ; He will be a Personality known 
 to us in a different way than to any one else. So 
 when John hfted up his eyes, those eyes that had 
 looked on Jesus as He walked, he could not see a 
 lion. He looked expecting to see a Hon, but there 
 was no lion to be seen ; he saw the Lamb. 
 
 And then he saw Him take the book, and when 
 He took the book, the Roll — in a moment the idea 
 might flash into John's mind, when did he last 
 see Him take a roU in His hands ? Oh, how memory 
 flies back through time in an instant ! Do you 
 remember that scene in Nazareth ? Did St. John 
 remember when that Chazzan handed his Master 
 .47 
 
VaTH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the scroll of Isaiah ? It all may have come before 
 him in a moment. And he may have seen the 
 carpenter's Son taking the roll again. 
 
 Do you know, my friends, those of you who have 
 turned to the passage in Isaiah, that when our 
 Lord shut up that scroll, in the particular place 
 where He closed it. He did one of the most remark- 
 able things He ever did. 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me."* 
 
 Ke read : 
 
 •' to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord," 
 
 and then comes a comma, and the verse goes on T 
 " and the day of vengeance of our God." 
 
 But at that comma in the middle of the verse, 
 in the middle of the sentence, Christ closed the book 
 to the astonishment of all in that S5magogue — 
 for they knew the passage well. He refused to 
 finish the sentence. He handed the roll back to 
 the Chazzan, who took it back to the Ark, and 
 the sentence was never finished. " To preach the 
 acceptable year of the Lord," (comma) — nothing 
 more. " I am He that shutteth and no m.an 
 openeth." That was what He said in Nazareth ; 
 but in heaven He says : " I am He that openeth 
 and no man shutteth." 
 
 And this is the miracle — that the Lamb in the 
 midst of the throne in heaven is the carpenter of 
 Nazareth; and the carpenter of Nazareth who shut the 
 book in the middle of the verse at " the acceptable 
 year of the Lord " opened it again before the Throne 
 of God and read on where He left off, and completed 
 * Isa, Ixi. 1, 2. 
 48 
 
NAZARETH, OR THE LIFE OF CHRIST 
 
 the verse, " And the day of vengeance of our God." 
 That is the subject of the Book of Revelation. The 
 seals are aU broken one by one, and what is read ? 
 " The day of vengeance of our God," Now mark ! 
 " I am He that shutteth and no man openeth," and 
 in Nazareth He said I will fulfil the Word of God 
 as far as the middle of the verse, but the rest shall 
 never be fulfilled tiU I reopen the book in heaven 
 And the unread remainder of that verse has never 
 been fulfilled yet. 
 
 For eighteen hundred years the roll of Isaiah 
 has been shut in the middle of that verse and sealed 
 by God with many seals. One comma alone 
 divides mercy from judgment, the Saviour of the 
 world from the Judge of all men — one single 
 comma ! We are here in virtue of the long-drawn 
 out tenacity of that one comma. 
 
 What is a comma ? The shortest breathing 
 space known to men in reading a passage. But 
 it is a majestic pause in the ways of God — that all 
 men might be saved, that all men might come to a 
 knowledge of the truth. The sole reason that 
 churches and chapels will be open next Sunday is 
 because the force and value of that comma and the 
 grace of God are not yet exhausted. But it will 
 be exhausted when the Lamb takes the book from 
 the right hand of Him who sits upon the throne 
 and begins to open it. The day of mercy will then 
 be over, the door will be shut — for the day of 
 vengeance of our God is at hand. 
 
 It is strange indeed to have the veil drawn aside 
 for a moment from these deep spiritual mysteries in 
 the midst of the bustle of London life. We seem to 
 49 D 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 be in a world apart. The veil is lifted for a moment 
 and we catch a glimpse of God and then it falls 
 down again, and we pass back into our ordinary 
 life, but we cannot return without bearing some 
 impression of the enormous issues which are work- 
 ing quietly behind the current course of this world. 
 We see its affairs moving onwards ; the varied 
 topics of the day are on our lips and occupy our 
 minds, but behind all these the lives of men are 
 depending upon the value of a single comma in 
 the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah — ^long drawn out 
 in the providence of God. 
 
 5© 
 
THIRD ADDRESS 
 
 Capernaum, or the Work of Christ 
 
 TO-DAY we are occupied with the pubHc Hfe of 
 our Lord by the Sea of GaUlee. We have 
 done with the peaceful seclusion of Nazareth, with 
 its panoramic hilltops, and descending some 2,000 
 feet and travelling some twenty-five miles we reach 
 the scenes of our Lord's chief labours. Let us now 
 focus our mental eyes and try and see the picture 
 before us. 
 
 Here is a lake of the shape of an Irish harp, 
 with a sharp bend on one side ; like the Lake of 
 Geneva, but a little less than a quarter of its size. It 
 is still more like Zug, but I mention Geneva because 
 so many of us know it. 
 
 Picture the Sea of Galilee then, a quarter of 
 the size of Geneva, and before you, as you look 
 toward the top of the lake, where Montreux Hes 
 on the north shore of Geneva, you see the large 
 town of Capernaum ; while the city of Geneva 
 might fairly represent the situation of Tiberias, 
 though Tiberias was not quite at the end of 
 the lake, but a little to the left-hand side. Be- 
 tween the two, the Sea of Galilee widens on the 
 left v^ath a deeper bay than in the Lake of Geneva, 
 while the right shore is straighter ; and in the angle 
 of this bend where Ouchy is, there is on Galilee, the 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 little village of Magdala. From Ouchy up to Mon- 
 treux, as it were, is a plain some three miles long, 
 and about one mile wide. This is the Plain of 
 Gennesaret, up and down which Jesus walked so 
 much. 
 
 The left-hand side of the sea, or the Savoy side 
 of the Lake of Geneva, is almost straight, and, 
 like Geneva, has a hne of high rugged hills 
 about half a mile from the shore. This was the 
 side where the swine ran violently down into the 
 sea, at the one spot (Gergesa), where the chff falls 
 sheer into the water : it is the country of the Gada- 
 renes ; and Gadara was outside the land of Palestine, 
 and forms a part of Perea — ^high and rocky and 
 frowning, whereas on the left side you get a low and 
 smiling landscape, just as you do in Geneva. 
 
 Try and picture aU this ; and in addition at 
 the head of the lake, as in every northern view 
 in Palestine, the great snowy head of Hermon far 
 away, which takes the place of the Dent du Midi at 
 the head of Geneva. So that you can see the whole 
 picture pretty well by comparison. Finally, we must 
 remember that this inland water is 500 feet below 
 the level of the sea, so that it cannot be seen in its 
 deep basin from Nazareth in the hills some twenty 
 or twenty-five miles away to the south east. 
 
 We wiU now turn to Capernaum, the Montreux 
 of the Sea of Galilee. Have you ever thought what 
 the name means ? Capher-naum, or the Tomb of 
 Nahum. Nahum (a rabbi, not the prophet) is 
 buried at Capernaum, and his tomb is there. I 
 have been to see it, only I dared not go very far in 
 because it was fuU of jackals at the other end, and 
 52 
 
i 
 
 
 ■'4p* 
 
 
 '^a^'-m 
 
 r-.;^N9HyMBy|^B 
 
 ?P^^8tete^* 
 
 
 «^- 
 
 ^^! 
 
 THE RUINS Ul LAI'hKSALM AND THE LAKE OF GENNESARETH. 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 you could see their eyes shining in the darkness. 
 But there stands the great Tomb of Nahum to this 
 day, behind where the city was, which evidently 
 gives its name to the place. Its name now is Tel- 
 Hum or Tel-nahum, which means the Mound of 
 Nahum, because nothing remains of it but a heap of 
 ruins now. Tel-Hum is very much the same thing 
 as Caper-naum ; so that its present name and the 
 name which it bore in the days of Christ are practi- 
 cally aUke. 
 
 Imagine, then, on the left-hand shore of the lake, 
 a few miles below where the River Rhone comes 
 into the Lake of Geneva or the River Jordan 
 into the Lake of Galilee, a large black town. All 
 the other towns in Palestine are white and the 
 villages brown ; but this is a black town and its un- 
 usual colour is due to its being built of basalt. There 
 are black igneous rocks near, from which stones for 
 Capernaum were quarried, so you must imagine a 
 town much darker than Aberdeen, for instance, built 
 of black rock, covering the whole of the lakeside for 
 some considerable distance. Above the town you 
 see a creek nmning in from the lake, sufficiently 
 narrow for a person speaking from a boat in the 
 middle to be easily heard by people on both sides. 
 That is probably the spot where Jesus sat in a ship 
 and spoke to the crowds on the shores. This could 
 be done nowhere else so well on the Sea of 
 Galilee. 
 
 To return to Capernaum. Imagine a noble struc- 
 ture such as was to be seen in no other town of 
 Palestine, a magnificent Greek synagogue built by 
 a Roman centurion at a very great cost, some 
 53 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 ninety feet long, with a portico, colonnades, handsome 
 cornices, and an elaborate frieze, parts of which are 
 lying with other ruins half buried in thorns and 
 nettles at the present time. It had also Corinthian 
 pillars, not at all unlike one of the smaller Ephesian 
 temples of that day. 
 
 This synagogue, built by Greek architects for the 
 Jews, was as different from the humble building 
 at Nazareth, where Christ read that prophecy of 
 Isaiah, as could be well imagined. It was not of 
 grey stone, but white marble, standing conspic- 
 uously on a small elevation, a white temple in a 
 black city ; and it would form one of the most 
 conspicuous objects on the bank of the lake. It 
 could be seen from every part for miles away ; and 
 was a splendid and beautiful building, a lasting 
 monument of the religious munificence of a Roman 
 centurion. From the remains lying about still on the 
 site, the general outline of the building can be made 
 out. Such, then, was the synagogue immortalized 
 by our Lord's ministry. 
 
 Behind Capernaum were a number of cornfields, 
 through which the disciples walked on the Sabbath 
 day. And then the ground rises slowly until two 
 miles behind Capernaum you come to a level plateau. 
 On this plain still stands an old khan or inn, the 
 khan Jub Jusef, which was there at the time of 
 Christ and long before. 
 
 In front of that busy khan runs the great 
 Roman road from Jerusalem to Damascus, and 
 a few miles farther on, Sai^l was struck down by 
 the blinding light of Heaven when he was riding 
 to Damascus. Behind this plain rises up what 
 54 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 is known in Galilee as " The Mountain." You have 
 heard of the Sermon on the Mount, but perhaps it has 
 never occurred to us why the expression " the 
 Mount " is used ; the reason is because that moun- 
 tain is never called a mountain, it is always called 
 the mountain, and has no other name. 
 
 It appears that our Lord, leaving Capernaum 
 one day, walked up through those fields, and on the 
 plain there was a great crowd. There were five 
 or sLx main roads that join together in front of 
 the khan. It was a centre from all parts of the 
 country, and as busy a place in those days as Clap- 
 ham Junction is in our own. Numbers of people 
 of all races coming and going met in a great crowd 
 on this plain at the foot of tlie mountain. 
 
 Jesus apparently left His disciples there, and 
 went up into the mountain to pray alone all night 
 to God. He then seems to have come down in 
 the morning from the mountain and to have 
 oiet His disciples, who perhaps were seeking Him, 
 and from them He chose twelve apostles. Then 
 He appears to have gone to a smaU natural 
 platform, a plateau just about twenty feet above the 
 plain, with the mountain rising up behind. 
 
 Jesus sat here with His disciples round Him and 
 spake unto them the Sermon on the Mount, which St. 
 Luke calls the Sermon on the Plain ; because, although 
 His disciples were on the mountain, there were hun- 
 dreds, and perhaps thousands of people on the plain 
 below. WTiether, therefore, it is called the Sermon 
 on the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain is imma- 
 terial : as one perceives the moment one stands 
 where Christ stood \n hen He preached those memor- 
 55 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 able fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of Matthew.* 
 Now I want to take you in spirit on one particular 
 Sabbath morning to Capernaum. It is nearly time 
 for the synagogue service. Scores of people are 
 flocking up from the shore and lower parts of the 
 town, and an unusual number come crowding into 
 the synagogue. There is no need for the ten men 
 of leisure (batlanim) to make up the congregation 
 to-day, because multitudes are streaming into this 
 immense synagogue, and there is a buzzing and a 
 noise going on in the crowd around the steps, show- 
 ing that something remarkable has happened. If 
 you mingle with them you hear them talk of an 
 extraordinary event which occurred the day before. 
 It appears from the excited gossip of the crowd 
 that the Prophet Jesus, the day before, had taken 
 ship to the other side of the lake, six miles away, 
 across to the country of Gaulonitis, and there He had 
 gone up to some green slope behind Bethsaida Julius, 
 and spoken to the vast numbers who had come from 
 every part — from Tiberias, and every other quarter 
 of the lake, to hear His gracious words. At the close, 
 finding that they were hungry, He had actually fed 
 them, as Jehovah fed Israel of old, with bread from 
 heaven. He had but five loaves and two or three 
 of the thick short fish, Hke perch, which abound 
 in. the lake, and two of which I have eaten myself 
 at breakfast. Such a small provision would not go 
 very far amongst five thousand people, for it was 
 hardly a sufficient meal for three or four. This 
 
 ^ The old site of the Horns of Hattin is now untenable 
 in consequence of the discovery of the site of Capernaum. 
 The former supposed site was on the plain of Gennesaret. 
 56 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 miracle had evidently really taken place, for the 
 story was repeated again and again. 
 
 The people were full of gossip, which was buzzing 
 and humming all around, because this Prophet was 
 not only going to preach to them that morning, 
 and perhaps heal a sick man, but they expected 
 that He was going to feed them ; and the unem- 
 ployed and outcast and all the loafers in Capernaum 
 would be in front of the synagogue that morning 
 to share in the meal. They felt sure the Saviour 
 Himself would come to the synagogue, because 
 such was His custom. 
 
 But there was another rumour passing about, 
 A mysterious whisper was heard that something 
 still more supernatural had happened. Some of 
 His disciples who had come in late last night had 
 told others of a most wonderful occurrence. Jesus 
 had not come back with them in the boat, which had 
 to start without Him because of the Sabbath — for no 
 one was allowed to set foot in a boat after six o'clock 
 on Friday night, when the day of rest began, or to do 
 any travelling. The people who had been fed had 
 to sail away early to get back to Tiberias and other 
 distant places, and the late departures, when they 
 came to the shore, found the disciples already gone, 
 so they took boat after Jesus. But Jesus had not 
 been found with His disciples ; the wind had 
 been contrary, and Peter and his companions had 
 rowed in vain against the westerly gale. 
 
 And then it was said that the form of this Prophet 
 
 of Nazareth, Jesus, was seen walking on the water. 
 
 He was then received by His awestruck disciples 
 
 into the httle ship, and the moment He entered it 
 
 57 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 the wind seemed to cease, and immediately they 
 arrived without further effort at the little creek by 
 the side of Capernaum. 
 
 Try now and imagine with what curiosity, with 
 what interest the gossiping crowd before the syna- 
 gogue would at length see Jesus with His httle band 
 of disciples coming up the hiU. A way would at once 
 be made for Him as He entered, and He would take 
 His seat in the building amongst the poorer people. 
 The men of leisure would be there, the elders also in 
 their rostrum in the middle ; and when the service 
 began, a few psalms would be chanted, the four short 
 psalms recited, and then the chazzan, or the roll- 
 keeper, the custodian of all the sacred writings, would 
 go to the ark and pull out the roll for the day, whicii 
 he passed along to be kissed by all the faithful as he 
 took it up to the elder, the chief rabbi. 
 
 Then when it was in the rabbi's hands, all the 
 congregation would rise ; Christ and His disciples 
 would rise, and they would all say these words : 
 
 " This is the law which Moses set before the children of 
 Israel, the law which Moses commanded us, the inheritance 
 of the congregation of Jacob. The way of God is perfect ; 
 the way of the Lord is tried ; He is a buckler to all who 
 trust in Him." 
 
 Then the passage would be read, the roll would 
 be taken back, the people would again rise and 
 say : 
 
 " Let them praise the Name of the Lord, for His Name 
 alone is exalted. His glory is above the earth and the 
 heavens." 
 
 There would be more psalms. The chief elder 
 
 followed with a short sermon on tiie text, and then 
 
 58 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 the hour would arrive for which all the people 
 had been patiently waiting, the time for questions. 
 
 All would turn to Jesus to see what was going to 
 happen. \Vliat explanation would He offer ? Was 
 He now going to feed them all and engage to supply 
 Capernaum with bread for the future, or what was 
 He going to do ? And they all hstened intently as 
 Jesus spoke of the manna, and while He spoke of the 
 manna He may very well have pointed to what you 
 can see lying on the grass to-day at Capernaum. On 
 one of the stones near the landing stage there is 
 sculptured a pot of manna, and the ark of the cove- 
 nant in a part of the frieze which ran round the wall 
 of the synagogue. When our Lord spoke He might 
 well have pointed to that, so remarkably preserved 
 to us. He spoke to them of manna, and He said,^ 
 speaking as if He were the bread, " For Him hath 
 God the Father sealed." This is thought to refer 
 to a custom of sealing loaves of bread that were fit 
 to eat. He is supposed to allude to the Jewish 
 practise of setting a mark on good bread, intimating 
 that He was Himself the one who was sealed by the 
 Father as pure bread fit to eat, good for food. But 
 all this was beyond His audience. 
 
 When the wonderful discourse (preserved for us 
 by the Apostle John) was ended they were angry, 
 discontented and puzzled and perplexed. They 
 wanted facts : He gave them truth. They wanted 
 bread : He offered them His flesh and blood. They 
 asked for earth : He opened to them heaven. No 
 wonder they were discontented ; they could not un- 
 derstand the marvellous points of that sermon. 
 * St. John vi. 
 59 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Now, having pictured this scene, I want to take 
 you to one other scene at Capernaum, and I will 
 read part of another discourse of our Lord in 
 Matthew xi. If you will compare this chapter with 
 Luke vii. 36 I think you will agree with me that the 
 discourse was probably spoken in a Pharisee's house, 
 and not, at any rate, in the synagogue. The words 
 which I will read are the closing words of the chapter, 
 and familiar to us all. 
 
 " Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, 
 and I \vill give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and 
 learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye 
 shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and 
 My burden is light." 
 
 I shaU aUude to the earlier part of the chapter in 
 a moment or two. " Come unto Me, all ye that 
 labour and are heavy laden, and I will rest you," 
 I will rest you. It is not so much giving them 
 rest, but being a rest to them : it is a personal 
 matter. I might give any one rest by putting 
 them on a bed ; but in this case the bed is Christ. 
 I will rest you. Christ Himself is the One in whom 
 I rest. This is the first statement, and it is uncon- 
 ditional and stands by itself. 
 The second offer is conditional : 
 
 " Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me ; for I am 
 meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your 
 souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is fight." 
 
 In the whole passage there are two distinct requests. 
 The first is " Come," the second is " Take " : there 
 is a rest given and a rest found ; but the rest given 
 is the result of coming to Christ ; the rest found is 
 the result of taking His yoke, 
 60 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 Let us look at the first rest for a moment, which 
 is primarily a rest of conscience ; the result of a 
 position, being in Christ and is continuous. The 
 second is primarily a rest of the heart, and is the 
 result of the habit or practice of wearing Christ's 
 yoke. 
 
 But though there are two rests they are both 
 for the same class, the " weary and heavy laden " ; 
 and what strikes us at once is what we noticed 
 with regard to Nazareth, that all the mission of 
 the Messiah in deUverance and heaUng was to the 
 broken-hearted, the prisoners, the blind, the bruised 
 and the poor ; and that if we are not either bhnd, 
 bruised, poor, broken-hearted or in prison, the 
 message is not for us. In the same way we notice 
 to-day that, " Come unto Me," is not addressed 
 to everybody ; it is not a universal invitation. 
 There are universal invitations, but this is not one ; 
 this is a particular invitation, and falls most 
 graciously upon the ears of those for whom it is 
 intended. " Come unto Me, aU ye that are weary 
 and heavy laden, and I will rest you." 
 
 Now, are there any of us who are weary and 
 heavy laden ? Are we tired of the round of life, 
 are we heavy laden with many burdens ? " Come 
 unto Me, and I wiU rest you." It is just as if some 
 one came to the poor unemployed late at night 
 who were hanging about in Trafalgar Square, weary, 
 cold, listless and hopeless, and many of them 
 crippled with disease, and said, " Come to me, I 
 will rest and heal you," and took them to a house 
 near and put them in warm beds and attended to 
 their ailments. 
 
 6i 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 be two oxen an-J the yoke may prevent one 
 going faster than the other : they are under the 
 yoke. But the chief great primary use of a " yoke " 
 is seldom grasped by Christian people ; most are so 
 occupied with the secondary uses I have named 
 that its great purpose is entirely missed. 
 
 A yoke first of all is a contrivance to enable 
 oxen to pull a load along the road or across the 
 field ; " yoke " is simply another word for " har- 
 ness." Harness is not put upon an animal prim- 
 arily for subjection or restraint or fellowship ; it is 
 put upon it to enable it to draw a load. That is 
 the meaning of harness ; that is what the collar 
 or yoke is especially for ; and yet you may search 
 many commentaries without finding such a meaning 
 attached to the word " yoke." Let us then be clear 
 that the true meaning of "yoke" is something to 
 pull a load with, and in the present day answers 
 to the collar on the horse's neck. 
 
 Speaking now for a moment as a physician, who 
 sees a great many nervous and broken-down people 
 of all sorts, I find that the greater number are not 
 only sick in their bodies, but also sick in their minds, 
 and what they mostly suffer from is a complaint 
 which I will call— sore neck. There is nothing these 
 sufferers feel so often — speaking in parables — as a 
 raw place, a sore on the neck. Let me illustrate this. 
 
 In London we have omnibus and carriage horses, 
 and we notice at once the difference between the two. 
 An omnibus horse has discarded every bit of har- 
 ness, except the headpiece, and the one essential 
 part, with which the load has to be drawn, which is 
 the yoke, or collar . 
 
 63 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Do we know in our hearts and souls that 
 we are so resting on Christ our Saviour that our 
 spiritual position may be well expressed by the 
 line " Safe in the arms of Jesus " ? Have we 
 any true sense of the everlasting arms under us 
 as we sit here, not rested in our bodies only, but 
 rested in our souls, absolutely rested, rested in our 
 consciences, with nothing ahead in the future to 
 cause us uneasiness, because all our sins have been 
 borne and all questions settled by the merits and 
 work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ? If we 
 have, we have accepted the first of Christ's two offers 
 here, and are enjoying what it brings to us — a perfect 
 rest of conscience. 
 
 But we may have this rest of conscience and yet 
 be very restless in the daily practical life ; and that 
 is why there is a second offer. I dwell on this, 
 because I am here rather to speak to those who well 
 know what it is to look to Christ as a true and perfect 
 Saviour, but who have not perhaps got at the inner 
 meaning of the last two verses with which the 
 eleventh chapter of Matthew closes — I will just 
 read them again : " Take My yoke upon you, and 
 learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is 
 easy and my burden is light." 
 
 These are indeed wonderful words, and it is 
 only as we consider them that we see how won- 
 derful they are. I was only looking on Sunday 
 at a very good commentary as to what " yoke " 
 is supposed to mean here, and I found it means 
 " fellowship, restraint, and subjection." No doubt 
 these are three minor uses of a yoke. There may 
 62 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Now, every device has been adopted to prevent 
 these collars causing sore necks. We have Inspec- 
 tors of the Royal Society for the Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Animals,who go about our streets, and 
 when they see a horse jibbing and restive and 
 backing and difficult to start they hold up the hand 
 and stop the omnibus, and they hft the collar, 
 and there, just where the strain of the load is felt 
 is the secret of the whole thing — a sore neck. 
 
 What, then, has made the neck sore ? It 
 is that the collar either does not fit or it has not been 
 properly padded. Ingenuity has been exhausted 
 by harness-makers to provide a perfectly fitting 
 pad for the lining of a horse's coUar. It has been 
 covered with all sorts of materials, and stuffed with 
 every conceivable thing, from hay upwards ; and it 
 has been inflated like an india-rubber tyre, so as to 
 be pneumatic. But this is found to heat the neck, 
 and I do not think authorities are even yet agreed 
 as to what is the best device for lining a horse's 
 collar so that it can pull a heavy load day after day 
 and never jib or kick and never have a sore neck : 
 in other words, for its collar to be easy, and its 
 burden (therefore) light. 
 
 And this is what Christians want. They have often 
 sore necks ; they become sick in body and mind. 
 Why ? They have been trying to pull the load of 
 life with a bad collar that does not fit. They have 
 no rest for their souls ; no wonder it makes them 
 miserable. That is why Christ here comes to us and 
 says, It is not enough for you to come to Me as weary 
 and heavy laden and find a rest for your conscience 
 in Myself ; you want some means of shielding your 
 64 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 heart from all the petty worries and troubles, the 
 great upsets and downsets, and all the contrarieties 
 and meaningless vexations of this world of sorrow. 
 How are we to go through it all with unruffled 
 spirits ? \Miat is the secret of living three-and- 
 thirty years or more in this world without being 
 overburdened with the cares and disappointments 
 of life ? How can it be done ? Christ bids us 
 consider Himself, and says in effect, " I have some 
 wonderful harness that I have used ; I have worn it 
 all Uy life— at home, in Nazareth, and in My public 
 life— and it fits Me perfectly. You shall have it ; 
 I will give you My own yoke, with which I have 
 drawn the load of ]\Iy Hfe, and you will find it will 
 fit you, and your load will then be Hght, the moment 
 the collar is easy. WTieu the yoke is easy, then the 
 burden is light." The one foUows the other ; it is 
 cause and effect. The cause is the easy yoke, the 
 effect is a light burden. And when the burden is 
 light from this cause wonderful things are seen. 
 
 You see a Christian mo\'ing on with a brave and 
 unfaltering step, and you know perfectly well the 
 heavy load of sorrow he is drawing through Hfe ; you 
 know all about the upsets, the cruel bereavements, 
 the false friends, the constant worries, the narrow 
 means, and the failing health, and yet you never see 
 him unhappy ; you perceive that the heavy burden is 
 really light, but you cannot see the real cause, which 
 is the collar on the neck with which he draws the load. 
 He has Christ's collar on, and the burden of life is 
 light. 
 
 Let me, however, give a word of caution here. 
 Nothing I have said or that tliis passage teaches 
 65 E 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 alters the fact that sorrow is sorrow and is meant 
 to be felt, that pain is pain and discipline is for 
 our good. Shattered nerves, anguished bodies 
 and overwrought minds are everywhere around us, 
 and our Lord's blessed yoke does not annul these : 
 still less is it His wish we should go through such 
 trials with a careless and unconscious heart. 
 
 On the contrary, our Lord, whose face was more 
 marred than any man's, felt every sorrow, every 
 grief, every contradiction of sinners against Him- 
 self. The question here is not a means for becoming 
 insensible to grief and trouble, but of finding a 
 rest for our souls, which is a far different thing. 
 
 Our burden, undoubtedly, of whatever distress 
 and anguish or weakness of body and mind it is 
 composed, is often increased and made heavier by 
 fretting against it from the injustice of man, or from 
 questioning the wisdom and love of God ; and it is 
 to prevent these two ills, that so add to the weight 
 of life's burden and destroy the rest of soul, that 
 this yoke is designed. His yoke is easy, because 
 it is properly padded. 
 
 What is it padded with ? Two materials. 
 And here we reach, on our Lord's authority, the 
 very inside secret of a Christian's happiness. This 
 is the real cause of the quiet serenity, the 
 even tenor of a good man's life. He has read St. 
 Matthew xi, he has come to Christ, he has taken 
 His yoke upon him, he has learnt of Him, and 
 the result is his burden is light, because his yoke is 
 easy. 
 
 What, then, is this yoke padded with ? That is 
 what we want to get at. The two materials raen- 
 66 
 
CAPERNAUM. OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 tioned are — meekness and lowliness of heart. Please 
 don't make any mistake. This is not meekness of 
 face. I do not know anything more exasperating 
 than to see a sanctimonious face ; it always makes 
 one feel antagonistic. You instinctively distrust 
 a person ostentatiously meek in face. But true 
 meekness is not of this character. Of course there 
 is a stamp on the face, but it is quite different from 
 what we despise ; it speaks of meekness, a lowliness 
 in heart. 
 
 Why we so often dislike a meek face is be- 
 cause in nine cases out of ten it goes with a proud 
 heart, and a meek expression is put on the face 
 because there is none in the heart. People detest 
 instinctively the fraud of a counterfeit of meekness 
 that puts such a look on the face while the heart 
 may be steeped in pride. 
 
 But what is the difference between meekness 
 and lowliness ? I take it, meekness is our attitude 
 to man, and lowliness is the attitude to God. You 
 will find them both exhibited in this chapter. Christ, 
 as it were, gives a grand display of the harness in 
 Matthew xi, and then, having shown its value, He 
 gives it to us to put it on at the close. 
 
 Look at the chapter. Here you see our Lord 
 quietly going through life just as you may see a 
 horse drawing a burden along a road. He never 
 says to us " Go " ; He says, " Come," He never 
 asks us to tread a path He has not trodden first, 
 and He pursues the same order here. 
 
 Turn for a moment to verse i6, and you will 
 find what things Christ had to endure. How 
 would you like to be told, at a time when devil- 
 6- 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 possession was the prevailing belief of the people, 
 that you were devil-possessed, and to be told 
 it in no joke, but in grim earnest ? How would 
 you like to be called a glutton and a drunkard ? 
 How would you like to be told that your friends 
 were the most abandoned people in London, that 
 you were always seen going about with the fast set, 
 or the low set, or the sinful set, or the depraved set ! 
 Not only going about with them, but that you 
 were as bad as they ; in fact, that you were possessed 
 absolutely by the devil. 
 
 Now try and imagine the Son of Man, who for 
 our sakes had taken upon Himself the form of 
 a man. being exposed to such language as insults 
 here. Imagine it if you can ! But He answered 
 not a word. All that He said was " Wisdom is 
 justified of all her children." " You can know 
 a tree by its fruits. I go where I like, and you 
 m:iy say what you will about me ; but see what 
 I do ; observe what I say ; mark the commence- 
 ment and the end of My life." 
 
 Beginning in Nazareth, as I pointed out in my 
 last address, for thirty years Christ had to endure 
 the contradiction of four men far older than 
 Llimself (his half-brothers, or cousins), who did 
 not believe in Him, and His sisters, who do 
 not seem ever to have been among His followers. 
 When He leaves His home and goes to the 
 S3'-nagogue He is hurled out of it, and is in danger 
 of His hfe. H3 then leaves His native town 
 and never enters it again. He dare not go into 
 Judea, but has to remain in Galilee, and He stays 
 bv the sea and spends all His strength and all His 
 6S 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 life upon these lake-side cities. He has then to 
 confess that He has Hved in vain ; He has spent His 
 strength, so far as they are concerned, for nought. 
 And these are the ones who turn round and call Him 
 every blasphemous name they could think of. He 
 replies nothing save— " Wisdom is justified of all 
 her children." That is meekness. 
 
 Do these revilings vex and perturb Him ? Dots 
 He go about with a chafed spirit ? No, ne\tr. 
 " Wisdom is justified of her children " is all the 
 reply He has to give to every abominable accusa- 
 tion. This is " meekness of heart." 
 
 Before turning to humility, I should like to call 
 attention for one moment to our Lord's remarks 
 about Tyre, Sidon, and the land of Sodom 
 (which includes Gomorrah). He began to upbraid 
 the cities wherein most of His mighty works were 
 done, because they repented not ! 
 
 " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! 
 for if the mighty works which were done in you hail been 
 done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago 
 in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be 
 more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment 
 than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted 
 unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell : for if the 
 mighty works which have been done in thee had been done 
 in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." 
 
 He never says, "Woe unto thee, Nazareth," 
 and yet Nazareth had turned Him out and Caper- 
 naum had not ; He never says, " Woe unto thee, 
 Nazareth," because Nazareth had never been evan- 
 gehzed by Him. Nazareth was a personal matter. 
 It was the result of His living there But He never 
 69 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 worked amongst them as He did in Capernaum. 
 He lived His life in utter seclusion in Nazareth. 
 
 Consider now carefuUy Christ's words here. 
 Jesus as God appears not only to know aU men's 
 hearts, what they were and are, but He appears 
 also to know what they would have been under 
 different circumstances. The statement here throws 
 no little additional light upon the fate of the heathen 
 as revealed in Romans ii. 
 
 I say ' additional light ' for what our Lord says 
 here — and we must take His words with deep solem- 
 nity — amounts to this : "If the gospel that you 
 have heard had been preached in Tyre or Sidon 
 or Sodom or Gomorrah " — the four, most wicked 
 cities in the world — " they would have repented." 
 Not they would have rejected it. He knew by 
 divine knowledge that if they had had the opportu- 
 nity they would have taken it. What a Hght this 
 throws upon the " more tolerable ! " 
 
 WTien Christ judges those cities in the day of 
 judgment and the people in them, He has to judge 
 them as four cities whose people He had Himself de- 
 clared would have repented if they had had the 
 chance. Now, that throws a flood of light upon 
 a most obscure subject. 
 
 This whole scene, I have said, occurred when 
 Jesus was in a Pharisee's house, and I think it was 
 a most wonderful thing that in that Pharisee's house 
 with cavillers aU around. He should point out that 
 the secret of an easy Ufe, the secret of a happy heart, 
 the secret of a Ught burden was a meek and lowly 
 spirit. 
 
 Observe the marked emphasis with which those 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 words were spoken. *' At that time Jesus answered 
 and said " ; "At that time " when all these cities 
 rejected Him, when His strength had been spent 
 for nothing, when He had been called every 
 opprobrious name that could be heaped upon a 
 defenceless man, He turned to God with true lowliness 
 of heart and said ; 
 
 " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, be- 
 cause Thou hast hid these things from the wise and pru- 
 dent, and hast revealed them unto babes." 
 
 But why, why had God done that ? 
 
 The curious and the unlowly, the wise in their 
 own conceit would have argued for an hour, would 
 have argued for days. Why should God hide 
 these things from the wise and prudent ? Is it 
 not wise to be wise ? Is it not well to be prudent ? 
 And we can imagine a heated debate going on for 
 hours as to the wisdom of God in doing this. What 
 did Christ answer ? Here we get the true humility, 
 the lowliness of heart towards God of the man 
 Christ Jesus. 
 
 The only reply that the eternal Son who was in 
 the bosom of the Father gave — making no assertion 
 of His knowledge of the secret counsels of God, 
 but simply taking the place of a dependent man 
 (the attitude that every one of us can take) was — 
 " Even so. Father, for so it seemed good in Thy 
 
 Now, that is true lowhness of heart, and with 
 such a spirit you will never get a sore neck. We 
 get the raw places on our spirits by chafing against 
 the providence of God. It is either fretting over the 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 contradiction of men or the providence of God that 
 gives us sores on our necks. You get the contradic- 
 tion of man in the early part of the chapter ; you 
 get the mysterious providence of God in the latter 
 part ; and at the end you get meekness and lowliness 
 to meet them. If you pad your collar with these 
 two things, meekness and lowliness, no load will 
 ever chafe you, and you will be able to pull the 
 heaviest burden through life with a light heart ; 
 you wiU know you have at last got the Christian's 
 secret. This is the secret ; to wear Christ's harness. 
 This is what He offers ; that is what He says 
 here. 
 
 You reply. How can I obtain it ? It is all 
 very easy to talk about it ; but it is hard to grasp, 
 and I don't seem to have got a hold of it ! Well, 
 you know there are seven " I wills," of Christ's 
 in the Bible, and these seven " I wills " of Christ's 
 are all waiting on one " I will " from you — " I 
 will arise and go to my Father." It is just the 
 movement of your heart that is wanted since the 
 living God has opened for you aU these storehouses 
 of blessing, waiting for your reception. 
 
 AU these blessings are for us, the moment we 
 touch God, and touching the hem of Christ's gar- 
 ment by faith is touching the Uving God. But, 
 you say, I am so proud, I am always questioning 
 God. This is only because you do not know Him. 
 There is this about Him, the moment we touch God 
 we have not to learn to be meek and lowly ; we 
 become it intuitively, we become so necessarily, be- 
 cause the moment we are in touch with Him He 
 makes us hke Himself. He produces that in our 
 72 
 
CAPERNAUM, OR THE WORK OF CHRIST 
 
 spirit which was never there before, but which was 
 in His on earth ; not by effort, not by attainment, 
 but by being in contact with the Hving God. This 
 is Christ's secret of the easy yoke and the light 
 burden ! 
 
 73 
 
FOURTH ADDRESS 
 
 Jerusalem, or the Death of Christ 
 
 TO-DAY we have to try and picture the last 
 scenes in the Hfe of our Lord — in fact, 
 one may say, the last week of His life. It is a 
 remarkable fact — I do not know whether you have 
 noticed it yourselves — that this part of our Lord's 
 life is told in such detail that it occupies one-third 
 of the whole of the Gospels. If the rest of His 
 public life were written at the same length, it would 
 take four Bibles to contain it, and if His whole 
 Hfe on earth were written in the same detail, it 
 would take forty Bibles as large as ours to record 
 the wonderful words and works. This fact comes 
 home to us as showing the enormous importance 
 of these closing days. Now, I only propose to try 
 and give a brief but vivid sketch of them as they 
 would appear if we had lived in Palestine at that 
 time. 
 
 Try and realize the scene. We commence with 
 Tuesday afternoon, March 28, in the year that our 
 Lord died. On that day our Lord, who had been 
 in Idumea, joined, we believe, the caravan of Pass- 
 over pilgrims that Wcis coming down from Nazareth 
 and Galilee. 
 
 You understand the Galileans were very pious 
 M 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 people, and always came up in hundreds, and 
 sometimes in thousands, to the Passover feast. 
 They would not, however, go through Samaria, 
 which is the direct route, because they ran the risk 
 of defilement, so they went through Gilead and 
 down the farther bank of the Jordan, although they 
 were in great danger from wandering bands of Arabs 
 and Bedouins, who would assault and rob them. 
 Nevertheless, they would rather risk losing their 
 lives by robbers than losing their souls by ceremonial 
 defilement, for in Samaria they were in constant 
 danger of eating some food or touching something 
 that had been defiled by a Samaritan. 
 
 On Tuesday, March 28, this simple band of 
 country folk would arrive at the Ford. There 
 would be long strings of camels laden with tents 
 and baggage, and asses for the women to ride, and 
 amongst the pilgrims, no doubt, the mother of our 
 Lord and a great many of His friends, who would 
 welcome Him with His disciples as they met on the 
 farther bank of the Jordan. 
 
 On Wednesday morning they would set forth to 
 cross Jordan at the Ford, a memorable spot to our 
 Lord. He would well remember the first time He stood 
 in its waters at this place, when the heavens were 
 opened upon Him and the testimony to the beloved 
 Son in whom God was well pleased, was heard 
 from heaven. He crossed with the band of pilgrims 
 through the shallow but rapid stream, then started 
 with them to walk the ten miles to Jericho. 
 
 As they were on their way He began to tell them 
 what was pressing deeply on His spirit, of His coming 
 sufferings and death, which should be followed by 
 75 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 His glorious resurrection. In the midst of this 
 He was suddenly interrupted by the mother of 
 Zebedee's children, absorbed in her own thoughts 
 as she rode along on an ass by His side while He 
 walked. She turned to Him, thinking He was, 
 after all, going to come into an earthly kindgom, 
 and tried to forestall the others by getting the first 
 two places for her own sons. 
 
 The peculiar selfishness of this lies in the fact 
 that with an Eastern king there were but two 
 chief posts of honour. The mother knew well 
 that Peter, James and John had ever been together, 
 and now she was seeking a pledge from Christ 
 that would shut out Peter altogether. But she 
 was not only selfish, this was perhaps natural. 
 She was callous as weU ; oblivious of Christ 
 and His sorrows, she thought only what advantages 
 she could secure for her sons. Our Lord replied 
 with Divine wisdom, and the disciples were filled 
 with anger, not because there was such a heart- 
 less disregard for Christ's sorrows, but indig- 
 nation at the low and mean attempt of this mother 
 to forestall their own places. The ten were just 
 as selfish as the two ; and such were the hearts 
 amongst which Christ had to travel on His last 
 journey along those ten miles to Jericho ! 
 
 When they got near they would enter that won- 
 derful belt of olives and date-palm trees that sur- 
 rounded the city. Jericho was then one of the most 
 beautiful cities of the whole land of Syria. It was 
 not the Jericho ot Joshua, the city of the curse, 
 nor was it the Jericho of modem times. It was 
 about six miles from the former and about three 
 76 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 from the latter — a city built by Herod the Greek, 
 and the favourite city of Cleopatra, full of heathen 
 temples, containing a college for students of the 
 Greek mythology, and baths, and theatres, and also 
 every form of Oriental vice. 
 
 You must picture this band of pilgrims passing 
 through the main street of Jericho and our Lord 
 walking with them ; you must see the women 
 riding on asses and holding palms in their hands ; 
 you must hear the whole multitudes chanting in 
 an irregular manner the closing Psalms of David ; 
 and you must picture the streets filled with a 
 curious crowd, much in the same manner as our 
 streets are filled when a procession passes. Our 
 Lord would walk on that occasion under the very 
 walls of the Temple of Jupiter, which was in the 
 main street that led up to Jerusalem. He never 
 stopped in a city of the Greeks, and He never stayed 
 a night, so far as we know, in a walled town ; so He 
 passed through to the western outskirts. 
 
 And here He was refreshed with two cups of cold 
 water for His thirsty spirit, provided by God ; for 
 His meat and His drink was ever to do His Father's 
 will. One was when the blind man cried, " Son of 
 David, have mercy upon me," and Christ rejoiced 
 as He touched his eyes and gave him his sight. 
 The other was found in a man, Zacchceus, who was 
 hiding in a tree. Christ called him down, and told 
 him that He would that day abide in his house, the 
 house of a man who was known to be a sinner. The 
 technical term " sinner " then meant a man who 
 did not subscribe to the oral liw of the Pharisees. 
 This sinner was very like the Saviour in this, and 
 77 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Christ spent the night under his roof to the no small 
 scandal of His own followers. This was on Wed- 
 nesday, March 29. 
 
 On Thursday morning they would rise fairly 
 early to pursue the toilsome journey to Jerusalem, 
 an ascent of no less than 4,000 feet, which is 
 a very toilsome climb when it is travelled on foot 
 along very dusty roads under the intense torrid 
 heat of a burning sun. Only part of the distance, 
 however, would be covered that day, for they rested 
 when halfway to Jerusalem, at what was known 
 as the " Desert Inn," the only khan between Jericho 
 and Jerusalem. 
 
 As they went there, the disciples had in their 
 minds the question of Christ's coming kingdom, 
 and no doubt they had been debating that 
 night as to who would have the best places and 
 whether James and John would get any advantage ; 
 and the debate continued the next morning. So 
 our Lord, hearing them talk, began to teU them the 
 parable of the ten pounds, showing that the coming 
 of the Kingdom of God and its glories would be 
 delayed, that a long time must lapse before any 
 one would get any place in the earthly kingdom. 
 And having said this, and doubtless tired of the 
 ambitious spirit that seemed to surround Him, He 
 walked on ahead in front of the caravan by Him- 
 self. He went on before them to this Desert Inn, 
 where they all spent the Thursday night. 
 
 At this khan I think we may pause for one moment 
 
 to remark that ever since the parable of our Lord its 
 
 name has been changed. It is no longer known as 
 
 the " Desert Inn," but the " Inn of the Good Samari- 
 
 78 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 tan," for this was the inn to which the wounded 
 traveller was brought by the Good Samaritan when 
 his wounds were bound up. 
 
 At this inn, when I stayed there — not the 
 identical place where Christ slept on that Thurs- 
 day night, which was just above us on the hill, 
 but the modem inn that takes its place close by 
 —I came across the " club " of the 23rd Psalm— 
 " Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me," liter- 
 ally, "Thy crook and Thy club, they comfort 
 me." The Psahn speaks of " the valley of the 
 shadow of death" ; but there is no ' death' in the text. 
 It is literally " Though I walk through the dark, 
 rocky gorge, I will fear no evil for . . . Thy 
 crook "—to puU me back—" and Thy club "—to kill 
 the wild beasts — " they comfort me." It is not a 
 time of sorrow ; it is a tune of danger— the sheep 
 fear evil. 
 
 I saw this shepherd's club, which in the Hebrew 
 is called " Shaphtar " ; it has a bulbous head 
 studded with nails, and is made of oak from 
 Bashan. When the shepherds became kings, as 
 they did in Egypt, they took this " Shaphtar " with 
 them on the throne, and the club has become the 
 " sceptre " of kings ever since. The word " sceptre " 
 doubtless comes from the word "shaphtar," and 
 when King Edward VII was crowned in Westminster 
 Abbey he was holding, to all intents and purposes, 
 the club of the 23rd Psalm. 
 
 On Friday morning, the last day of March, our 
 
 Lord went up with the caravan until He reached 
 
 the top of the steep ascent from Jericho. A mile 
 
 this side of Jerusalem one arrives at the foot of the 
 
 79 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Mount of Olives, and the road to Jerusalem winds 
 round the base of the Mount to the left ; but on the 
 side of the hill He was approaching stood the little 
 grey village of Bethany, with its back to Jerusalem 
 and its face towards Jericho. 
 
 Our Lord here took leave of His mother and 
 turned into the rugged lane that leads in a few 
 steps up to the village. There He went to the 
 house of Mary and ]\Iartha, which is the fourth or 
 fifth house up the road on the right-hand side. He 
 entered here and spent the Friday night quietly. 
 
 Now, Friday night, we must remember, is the 
 beginning of the Sabbath. The rest of the cara- 
 van would, therefore, have a very busy time. 
 They went round the foot of the Mount of Olives, 
 and then came in fuU view of Jerusalem, with its 
 glorious temple and its mighty grey waUs. They 
 would then turn along the Valley of Jehoshaphat 
 to the slopes of the Mount of Olives, where was 
 the encampment of the Galilee peasants. 
 
 Jerusalem has space outside the waUs for pil- 
 grims on all four sides. The north side was always 
 bare at Easter : that was the place where the Samari- 
 tans ought to have encamped ; and here our Lord 
 was crucihed. It was the only place outside the 
 city where He could be crucified at this feast, 
 without being in the middle of a vast throng of 
 tents, and caravans, and the general bustle of a 
 fair. The Galileans encamped on the east ; all 
 those who came from the Plain of Sharon and Joppa 
 on the west, and on the south of Jerusalem the 
 whole of those from Judah and the southern parts 
 of the land. None of them could go into the city ; 
 80 
 

JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 for it was already overflowing with people. On 
 the north, however, as I have said, there was 
 no encampment ; and there our Lord was to be 
 crucified. 
 
 The Galileans reached the Mount of Olives about 
 one or two o'clock, it may be, in the afternoon ; 
 and they had to get their tents pitched ; they had to 
 get all their shopping done for two days in Jerusalem, 
 and everything finished and clean and settled by 
 six o'clock that evening, when a hush would fall 
 upon the whole hillside as the Sabbath began. 
 
 That Sabbath was spent in seclusion by our Lord 
 at Bethany, in the house of Martha and Mary, until 
 the evening, when He accepted an invitation to go 
 to supper to the house of Simon the leper, one, 
 we presume, whom He had cleansed. This 
 house lay at the top of the village, a very few 
 steps, about 150 yards, from the house of Mary 
 and Martha. 
 
 You must picture our Lord reclining at supper 
 with His beloved friends in the house of the man 
 who had been a leper. As He was at supper, 
 Mary produced an alabaster box containing 
 ointment of great value, which was nothing less 
 than " nard " that had been brought all the way 
 from the Himalaya mountains, India. What really 
 made its great expense was its rarity, and there is no 
 doubt it came from the Far East. It was not the 
 ordinary nard, that might be a counterfeit, but it 
 was the pure, real genuine thing ; it was spikenard, 
 which was only to be got from that far-off district ; 
 and it was worth about £10. With this she anointed 
 our Lord's feet. Then the Judas Iscariot, who first 
 81 F 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 found fault with her — though the grumbling soon 
 spread to the others, so soon does evil run through a 
 crowd — suggested that the ointment might have been 
 sold and the money saved and given to the poor. 
 Shortly after, disgusted with the waste of such 
 money on Christ, he went away to arrange to sell 
 the Saviour for;^ 3 los. 8d., or one-third of the price of 
 the ointment which was being poured on Him by 
 the heart that loved Him. The traitor arranged to 
 sell his Master for the lowest price at which a 
 slave could be bought in the market, while Mary 
 was anointing that Master's sacred feet with the 
 most costly ointment. 
 
 We see Mary at the feet of Jesus three times, and 
 it is instructive to consider them ; once she is sitting, 
 once lying, once standing. She sits at His feet as 
 the disciple and learns wonderful things ; she lies 
 at His feet, prostrate with grief, craving for sympathy 
 and comfort ; "If Thou hadst been here my 
 brother had not died ; " and she stands at His feet 
 anointing them with ointment and waping them 
 with the hair of her head, in the deepest adoration. 
 But love is always fuU of instinctive wisdom when 
 it is intense, and her act was infinitely greater than 
 she knew. 
 
 So it is with our deepest acts, for which we 
 cannot always account. If we are in touch with 
 God we are sure to do the right thing at the right 
 time ; at any rate, there will surely be more in our 
 act than we have put into it, because God puts more 
 into it. So did God hallow Mary's devotion, that 
 the heart of Christ interpreted it to be a solemn 
 anointing against the day of His burial. 
 82 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 A crowd seems to have come in toward the end 
 of supper, it being noised about that Lazarus, who 
 was still a popular wonder in the village, was in the 
 house of Simon the leper, and several thus found 
 their way thither, in order that they might see this 
 risen man. 
 
 The result was that the next day, Sunday, 
 April 2, a day never to be forgotten, known by 
 us as Palm Sunday, when our Lord set out to 
 enter Jerusalem as king, great crowds were already 
 thronging the road because of Lazarus, who had 
 been raised from the dead. The greater number 
 had flocked to see Him, the Prophet who had raised 
 the man from the dead, with whom they had been 
 the previous night. These were joined by another 
 great crowd coming out of Jerusalem and bearing 
 palms, everywhere used at this season. Christ 
 cleansed the temple on the Sunday and went out in 
 the evening to Bethany. 
 
 On Monday, as he passed into Jerusalem a 
 second time He noticed the fig-tree, and He cursed 
 it because there were no figs at the time, an 
 emblem of His barren people Israel, and a marked 
 object-lesson, such as our Lord was always giving. 
 He then taught them in most wonderful words 
 in the temple courts on the Monday, and returned 
 in the evening to Bethany. 
 
 Tuesday is the day to which I wish to call your 
 attention. Tuesday, the 4th of April, was the 
 last day of Christ's mission to Israel, before the 
 door was shut for ever so far as His first coming 
 was concerned ; after which they never saw Him 
 again. He comes into the city; He foretells His 
 83 
 
WITH CHRIST IX PALESTINE 
 
 crucifixion again. He takes the penny and tells 
 those who try to enter after Him to render unto 
 Caesar the things that were Cassar's. He then utters 
 His solemn sevenfold woes upon the Scribes and 
 Pharisees ; and as He has finished pronouncing 
 this awful judgment, He lifts up His eyes and 
 sees the poor widow putting two pieces into the 
 treasury. All these things, and many more, are 
 crowded into our Lord's last day. 
 
 And then, as the rejected Messiah leaves the 
 temple — you can picture the scene — you see Him 
 pass into the valley through the " Beautiful Gate," 
 which has been closed ever since. The tradition 
 is that when the Messiah again passes through 
 that door the end of the world will come, and there- 
 fore it is carefully bricked up by the Turks, lest 
 any one should enter. 
 
 He went out from the doomed city as Messiah 
 for the last time, and turned His back upon 
 His own temple, never to enter it again. He 
 walked up the steep slopes of Olivet ; and then 
 he turned round, and with one last heart-broken 
 cry, exclaimed in agony : 
 
 " Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the pro- 
 phets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
 would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. 
 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say 
 unto you, ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say. 
 Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord I " 
 
 Unseen spiritual forces move about us still, eternal 
 destinies are being decided in like manner, and we 
 little know the issues of even apparently trivial and 
 84 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 common place actions. On this day the door was 
 closed on Israel for the last time ; but Jesus never 
 left His o\vn little band, He loved them unto the 
 end, and still had these chosen few to whom 
 He could speak after His mission to Israel was 
 closed. 
 
 So He gathered them around Him on Olivet, 
 and taught them in chapter after chapter the won- 
 derful things that would happen, and seemed loth 
 to return to Bethany. He must have stayed hours 
 over against the city, until at last, as the evening 
 fell. He passed back to Bethany, never to cross 
 Olivet again until He went forth to His death. 
 That is the Tuesday night, the 4th of April. 
 
 The Wednesday is also remarkable. On this- 
 day, the 5th of April, our Lord does not seem to 
 have spoken or done anything, or moved out of the 
 house ; He seems to have rested during these last 
 quiet hours on earth in the house of ]\Iary and 
 Martha, and spent the whole day there uneventfully 
 after the tremendous work of the three days before. 
 He stayed at Bethany, and the veil drops over Him 
 till the Thursday. We believe during that Wed- 
 nesday, that the Pharisees and Scribes were plotting 
 and making the final arrangements about these 
 thirty pieces of silver. But our Lord was perfectly 
 still : it was His last day of rest. 
 
 On Thursday morning, April 6th, the disciples 
 went before and prepared the Lord's last supper. 
 He did not return into Jerusalem, or into the 
 temple, He went up into Mount Zion, where the 
 last supper was held, and there, in an upper room, 
 He sat with His friends utterly unknowTi to the 
 85 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 people. Then after supper and a long farewell 
 talk, He passed down to Gethsemane, of the sorrows 
 of which I will say nothing now. There He was 
 taken by the band of soldiers and kissed by Judas, 
 who betrayed Him, not on His face, as the pictures 
 represent, but on His hand. And then He was 
 led from one tribunal to another, aU equally im- 
 potent, until the final scene closed upon Him. 
 
 I saw in a very old church in Jerusalem a bit of 
 a broken arch which there is reason to believe is 
 the very arch under which Christ was finally 
 led by Pilate, when he said to the raging crowd, 
 " Behold the Man." And, groping twenty feet 
 down close by, we come to the old pavement. We 
 saw where the Roman soldiers were playing dice to 
 while away the time while Jesus was tried for His 
 life. He was crowned with thorns just behind 
 that arch, the purple robe was put upon Him, and 
 He was led forth to His death. This was really on 
 Friday morning, the 7th of April. 
 
 Then He was taken to Calvary, a rounded bare 
 summit outside the gate of Damascus, like a skull 
 with two eyes in front of it ; the two sockets are 
 caves, one of them being an historical cave known 
 as the Cave of Zechariah, (for what reason I know 
 not), these make the hill look exactly like a skuU ; 
 and there, on Calvary, our Lord was crucified. 
 
 On Saturday, April 8, He lay aU the time in a 
 tomb, carefully sealed and guarded by the watch, 
 because warning had been given that He said He 
 would rise again — He had made no secret of that. 
 Every preparation was made therefore to prevent 
 people from being misled by any false report. 
 86 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 There was no question of any real resurrection in 
 their minds. 
 
 Then we come to Sunday, April 9, that never-to- 
 be-forgotten morning on which the real foundation- 
 stone of the Christian faith was laid, in the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, for " if Christ be not raised your 
 faith is vain ; ye are yet in your sins." The Apostle 
 does not separate death from the resurrection: to 
 deny the resurrection, is to have a faith that is vain, 
 and to leave people in their sins ; in fact, it is to 
 take away the Saviour. 
 
 Now we reach the subject about which I wish 
 to say a word or two, that is, our Lord and His 
 resurrection. Observe, in the first place, He has 
 rejoined " His own." When He rose He did not 
 rise, and go straight to heaven, as all others will. He 
 actually came back to a spot full of painful 
 memories, and He was seen standing in the Garden 
 by a woman, who is the first to see Him after 
 His resurrection. 
 
 Mary Magdalene was led by her heart, not by 
 her head. She thinks it is the gardener — evidently 
 a substantial form, no mere vision or myth — 
 and she asks Him where the Lord's body is laid. 
 And then our Lord Himself turns and calls her 
 — His own sheep — by name. " Mary ! " She recog- 
 nizes the voice and falls at His feet, saying, 
 " Rabboni, my Master." 
 
 But let us think at this moment, not of what the 
 Resurrection was to her, but what it was to 
 Christ. Consider now ; stand if you can with 
 Christ in that Garden. In front of you, half a mile 
 away, are the grey walls of the city that rejected 
 87 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Him, with the golden roof of the Temple rising 
 above all. 
 
 On those very walls the chief priests had 
 mocked Him when He was crucified on Calvary, 
 which stands on His left not a hundred yards 
 away. There is the rounded hill, like a skull, hard 
 by, where He was buried ; there, still standing, 
 is the cross on which He was crucified two days 
 before. The bodies of the two thieves had been 
 taken down because of the Sabbath day, but the 
 cross was doubtless left as a warning and as a 
 memorial. There He had offered Himself without 
 spot to God. Down between the Temple on the 
 right and Calvary on the left, down in the VaUey of 
 Jehoshaphat is Gethsemane, where He knelt in 
 deepest agony, praying that the cup might pass from 
 Him. 
 
 Try and get into your heart what was in Christ's 
 heart as He stood there. All is over ! The bitter 
 cup all drunk ! AU finished ; sorrow, death, 
 misery ; all behind His back : while joy, triumph, 
 resurrection, hfe, the heaven of heavens, and His 
 own beloved to share them with Him, were all 
 before Him. 
 
 You know perhaps what it is after tremendous 
 struggles to have got the right side of some 
 mighty trouble. Imagine our Lord standing in 
 that Garden on the right side of His great trouble, 
 to die no more ; the new Man in the old world. The 
 same old walls, the same old country, the same old 
 hatred, the same hardness of heart ; but Christ the 
 other side of it all, looking back on it all with His 
 wonderful resurrection eyes, cis on a strange picture. 
 88 
 
JERUSALEM-THE ARCH CALLED "ECCL lluMU, 1 ROM WHICH 
 
 PILATE IS SAID TO HAVE SHOWN THE LORD JESUS TO THE 
 
 PEOPLE. 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 Two days ago He was amongst those men, living 
 a purely human life : now He was living a resurrec- 
 tion life. What a difference to be the other side of 
 the cold water of death ! What a change to be on the 
 right side of everything, what a relief to have drunk 
 the cup, what a joy to have passed the sorrow, what 
 a peace to have borne the sins, what a triumph to 
 have died and to have now risen again ! Would we 
 had all such an experience ? What a feehng of 
 exhilaration even the picture gives ; it fills all the 
 heart and mind ^\ith wonderful thought. 
 
 " True, perfectly true," you say ? " but what about 
 the fact of the matter ? " Wise men now say, " We 
 have learnt better since we were at our mother's 
 knees than to beUeve such stories Hterally. We now 
 know it was a spiritual resurrection, and we know 
 that our Lord's body never really left the tomb, 
 but that His influence was felt afterwards. To the 
 simple disciples, of course, it was as if He had 
 appeared in bodily form, but no resurrection 
 happened on that day ; it was simply that Christ's 
 spirit remained with them." 
 
 There is one fact that I should like you to urge 
 with any who argue in that way — a fact I have never 
 heard brought forward, which to my mind is 
 stronger than any other proof. We are all familiar 
 with the testimonies to the resurrection in the 
 Bible. Of course those have the primary place ; 
 but apart from them, what is the strongest proof 
 that Christ rose from the dead ? Shall I tell you ? 
 The sacred day of the week to the Jews was 
 Saturday. Ever since they have been a nation it 
 has been so, and so far as we know that day was 
 89 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 consecrated because it was the last day of the week, 
 corresponding to the rest after the periods when 
 God worked in creation ; and therefore Saturday, or 
 the Sabbath, was the sacred and the holy day. 
 
 Now, nothing is more impossible than to change 
 a day that has been separated for special use for 
 thousands of years. The French Revolutionists 
 thought they could do the impossible, and they 
 tried to abolish the Sunday ; but they failed. You 
 cannot alter the rhythm of the week ; it is an 
 impossible thing to do. But when Christianity 
 came in. the impossible was accomplished, the change 
 was made. 
 
 There is no question but that the Lord died the 
 day before the Sabbath, tliat was the Friday. 
 It was a public event testified to by heathen 
 and Christian alike. Christ died on the Friday. 
 It was His wish. His dying wish, that His death 
 should be commemorated, that bread should be 
 taken to represent His body, that a cup of wine 
 should be used to represent His blood, and that His 
 flesh and blood should thus be taken in memory of 
 His death, hebdomadally. 
 
 But throughout the world this sacred day on 
 which this solemn command is universally obeyed 
 is Sunday. Whereas, had Christ not risen, Friday 
 would be the Christian Sunday. You must 
 remember one cannot commemorate a thing 
 except on the day it happened. Did you ever 
 hear of any thing being conunemorated on the 
 day upon which it did not happen ? Could one 
 have the Waterloo dinner on July i8 ? Every 
 one knew when our Lord's death happened, and 
 90 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 therefore every one would know when it should be 
 commemorated, and therefore all our sacred build- 
 ings should be used specially for worship on Friday, 
 on which day the Sacrament, or Lord's Supper, should 
 be taken. Are they ? 
 
 No, you say ; we go to Church and take the 
 Sacrament on Sunday. Why Sunday ? Nothing 
 happened on Sunday if Christ did not rise. Do 
 you not see the simple fact of Sunday being 
 our sacred day is an argument that no one can 
 gainsay ? Why Sunday ? There is no answer 
 but one. No one could have changed a week 
 and . put the Christian's holy day on the basis 
 of a doubtful legend, or because of anything to which 
 the smallest doubt could possibly ever attach ; 
 even if attempted it could not be done. 
 
 And there is an extraordinary thing about 
 Sunday : it is a most improper and unsuitable 
 day in the ordinary course of things. WTiy should 
 we commemorate our Lord's sacred death (if 
 Pie had died only) except on the day when it 
 happened ? Yet so we do. The wisdom of God 
 is wiser than men, and He has instituted in 
 a way that no one has ever been able to alter for 
 2,000 years since, that the death of our Lord 
 should be remembered, not on the day it hap- 
 pened, but on the morning of His resurrection. So 
 that the two things God has joined together no 
 human hand should ever be able to put asunder. 
 Christ rose on the Sunday, for if He did not the 
 sacred day could only be on Friday. 
 
 Now let me pass on to ask what have these things 
 to do with us ? First of all, the resurrection proves 
 91 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 Christ to be the Son of God with power. That at 
 once sweeps away not only old forms of teaching 
 which deny His Godhead while asserting His 
 humanity, but the more mystic forms which are 
 found floating all about London to-day ; which 
 give an exalted humanism to our Lord, but abso- 
 lutely deny the categorical assertion that He was 
 proclaimed to be the Son of God by His resurrection 
 from the dead. 
 
 The next point is that His resurrection proves 
 that the work He did two days before on Calvary had 
 been accepted by God. Let me put a case. A very 
 old illustration this, I know, but perhaps it is better 
 than a good many newer ones, so I venture to use 
 it. 
 
 Supposing a dear friend of mine, who shall be 
 the Christ in the application of the story, takes my 
 place in prison and says I will take your debt upon 
 me and remain in prison ; you can go out. I am 
 free ; but my debt is not paid, because if it were paid 
 nobody would need to be in prison at all. As long as 
 our Lord was in the prison-house of death there was 
 no security or proof that the debt was paid. Suppose 
 that when walking down a street, I met my friend, 
 who had been shut up in the debtors' prison, what 
 does that show me ? The moment I see him I know 
 that my debt is paid. 
 
 Taking the responsibility of my debt put him in 
 prison ; but he gets out of it by paying it in fuU ; 
 and when I see him free, I know that I am free 
 indeed. We are justified because Christ has risen, 
 not because He died. One cannot of course separate 
 the one event from the other. There is no doubt 
 92 
 
JERUSALEM, OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 that upon Christ our sins were laid, but the proof 
 that the sacrifice was sufficient with God is found, 
 not in the death, but in the resurrection of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 
 I shall never forget a fox-hunter in Ireland who 
 cared for none of these things, and whose dearly 
 beloved young wife died after two days' illness. His 
 heart was broken, he followed her to the grave, and 
 1st Corinthians xv. was read over her remains. For 
 six weeks that man, whether wet or fine, sat on her 
 grave meditating about her, and reading over the 
 last words of Scripture he had heard, which were 
 stamped upon his memory. He kept repeating them 
 and muttering them to himself, as he sat on the 
 grave for all that time. 
 
 At last one day as he was reading these words 
 over : " If Christ be not raised, your faith is 
 vain ; ye are yet in your sins." " Yes," he said, 
 " that's true, I know I'm in my sins." Then he 
 went on in his little Testament : " But now is 
 Christ risen," and as he read these words he jumped 
 up from the tomb and said, " Why, then I must be 
 out of my sins." 
 
 He thanked God that His Spirit had illuminated 
 his soul with the real meaning of that sentence, 
 showing him like a flash that if Christ had not been 
 raised he was in his sins, but if Christ were raised, 
 and he beheved it, he was out of his sins, and 
 from that day he became an earnest Christian man. 
 
 Now my last word is this, and I don't think we 
 have refejred to it yet : 
 
 " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things 
 which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of 
 93 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 God. Set your affections upon things above, not on things 
 on the earth, for ye £ire dead, and your life is hid with 
 Christ in God." 
 
 You see that garden with the opened tomb, you 
 see Calvary hard by, you see that Man standing 
 in that garden — do you know who He is ? It 
 is you yourself who are standing there. " If ye then 
 be risen with Christ," or, in other words, " since 
 ye then are risen with Christ," or if you Hke to 
 look at Ephesians ii. 5 : " When we were dead 
 in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." 
 
 If Christ stood in that garden, I stand there. I am 
 a man living in London, but I am also a Christian 
 man, and as such I am risen with Christ, or I am 
 not a Christian man at all. The only meaning of a 
 Christian is a man who is hving in the power of that 
 new resurrection life, standing, as Christ did, in that 
 garden, with all my sorrows, all my sins behind my 
 back, as they were behind Christ's back ; and aU my 
 joy and all my happiness and all my glorious future 
 before my face. 
 
 So that every step is a step into the shining 
 light that shineth m.ore and more — the older I 
 grow, the nearer I get to it — until the perfect day. 
 Christ was there, and there am I. You see our 
 fortunes are inseparably bound up together. If 
 Christ stood in the garden and looked out upon that 
 scene ; so do I. " Ye are risen," the Lord sa^-s, 
 and not only so, but goes on to say, and ye are 
 made to " sit together in heavenly places in Christ 
 Jesus ; that in the ages to come He might show 
 the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness 
 toward us through Christ Jesus." 
 94 
 
JERUSALEM. OR THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 Yes, I would rather dwell upon the positive than 
 the negative. I would rather meditate upon what 
 His resurrection life brings us into than upon what 
 it takes us out of ; I would rather emphasize the 
 wonderful new links with things Divine that 
 we get in the resurrection life, than the break- 
 ing of hnks that might injure or hurt this life 
 in things below ; because the attachment of the 
 heart is more than the detachment of the heart ; 
 the positive more than the negative. 
 
 And therefore I find finally in this resurrection 
 life, that I am brought into the enjoyment of a 
 new home with a new Father, with a new Saviour 
 and with a new family. Scripture says we are to 
 be " made to sit together " so that I am not an 
 isolated being, and I can chat and talk to other 
 members of the family who can understand the new 
 interest into which one is brought. 
 
 We have therefore a feeling of being at home 
 even now. That is what one wants to get. 
 Not to feel that one is wandering about, trying 
 to foUow the rules of a rather austere and some- 
 what distasteful religion ; not being cut off from 
 pleasant joys by regulations which seem not to have 
 much meaning in them ; not to have a Christianity 
 which consists in observances and ceremonies, all of 
 man's devising; not to be held in with bit and 
 bridle ; not to be shut up within stout high fences 
 such as I described in my first address, but able to 
 go without a collar and without a chain, with a 
 heart attached to a heavenly Father, with a feeling 
 hat wherever we arc in the busy, crowded streets of 
 London, on the lonely country side, tossing on the 
 ^5 
 
WITH CHRIST IN PALESTINE 
 
 ocean, or travelling amongst strangers, we are always 
 at home, never out of reach of our Father's care and 
 our Father's love. 
 
 I cannot always trace them, but I sometimes 
 turn round and see behind me, in the ways along 
 which I pass, the dim forms of His two messengers, 
 one is Goodness, and the other is Mercy. I need both, 
 and wherever I go they " shall follow me all the days 
 of my life," until " I dwell in the House of the Lord 
 for ever." Such is the prospect, and such is the 
 portion of the man who stands by Christ's side in 
 the garden of the Resurrection, and knows that he 
 is Hving the power of the resurrection Ufe with 
 Jesus Christ his Lord ; and who grasps in his soul 
 the purpose of it all— that he should spend this hfe 
 and its powers to the glory of God in His love 
 to man, and in relieving the sorrows and distresses 
 of the world around. 
 
 96 
 
BS2421 .S36 
 
 With Christ in Palestine : four 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
 ill 
 
 IBI