a journey through the holy land may reasonably be expected to be in some sort a sacramental event in a man’s life. spiritual things are always near us, and we feel that we have a heritage in them; yet they constantly elude us, and need help from the senses to make them real and commanding. such sacramental help must surely be given by anything that brings vividly to our realisation those scenes and that life in the midst of which the word was made flesh. the more clearly we can gain the impression of places and events in syria, the more reasonable and convincing will christian faith become.
everything which revives the long past has power to quicken the imagination, and site-hunters and relic-hunters in any field have much to say for themselves. now, apart altogether from the christian story, syria has the spell of a very ancient land. the mounds that break the level on the plain of esdraelon represent six hundred years of buried history for every thirty feet of their height. among the first objects pointed out to us in palestine was a perforated stone which serves now as ventilator for a christian meeting-house in lebanon, but which was formerly a section of zenobia’s{2} aqueduct. in syria the realisation of the past is continual, and the centuries mingle in a solemn confusion. its modern life seems of little account, and is in no way the rival of the ancient. in london, or even in rome, the new world jostles the old; in palestine the old is so supreme as to seem hardly conscious of the new.
all this reaches its keenest point in connection with men’s worship; and what a long succession of worshippers have left their traces here! the primitive rock-hewn altar, the jewish synagogue, the greek temple, the christian church, the mohammedan mosque—all have stood in their turn on the same site. his must be a dull soul surely who can feel no sympathy with the moslem, or even with the heathen worship. these religions too had human hearts beating in them, and wistful souls trying by their help to search eternity. to the wise these dead faiths are full of meaning. through all their clashing voices there sounds the cry of man to his god—a cry more often heard and answered than we in our self-complacency are sometimes apt to think.
the sacramental quality of the holy land is of course felt most by those who seek especially for memories and realisations of jesus christ. within the pale of christianity there are several different ways of regarding the land as holy, and most of them lead to disappointment. the greek and roman catholic churches vie with one another in their passion for sites and relics there, and seem to lose all sense of the distinction{3} between the sublime and the grotesque in their eagerness for identifications. a protestant counterpart to this mistaken zeal is that of the huntsmen of the fields of prophecy, who cannot see a bat fluttering about a ruin or a mole turning up the earth without turning ecstatically to hebrew prophetic books,—as if these were not the habits of bats and moles all the world over. apart from either of these, there are others less orthodox but equally superstitious who have some vague notion of occult and magic qualities which differentiate this from all other regions of the earth. benjamin disraeli and pierre loti are representatives of this point of view. the former is persuaded that the land “must be endowed with marvellous and peculiar qualities”; and the hero of his tancred seeks and finds there supernatural communications from the unseen world. the latter tells in his jérusalem how he went to palestine with the hope that some experience might be given him which would revive his lost faith in christianity. he returned, a disappointed sentimentalist. the saddening and yet fascinating narrative reaches its climax in gethsemane, where, beating his brow in the darkness against an olive tree, he waited (as he himself confesses) for he knows not what. his words are: “non, rien: personne ne me voit, personne ne m’écoute, personne ne me répond.”
the belief in miracle is always difficult: nowhere is it so difficult as on the traditional site. the earth is just earth there as elsewhere; and the sky seems almost farther above it. the rock is solid rock; the water,{4} air, trees, hills are uncompromising terrestrial realities. it is wiser to abandon the attempt at forcing the supernatural to reveal itself, and to turn to the human side of things as the surest way of ultimately arriving at the divine. when that has been deliberately done the reward is indeed magnificent. an unexpected and overwhelming sense of reality comes upon the sacred narrative. these places and the life that inhabited them are actualities, and not merely items in an ancient book or the poetic background of a religious experience. more particularly when you look upward to the hills, you find that your help still cometh from them. their great sky-lines are unchanged, and the long vistas and clear-cut edges which you see are the same which filled the eyes of prophets and apostles, and of jesus christ himself.
it is this, especially as it regards the saviour of mankind, that is the most precious gain of syrian travel. now and again it comes on one with overpowering force. sailing up the coast, this impression haunted the long hours. as we gazed on the mountains, and the image of them sank deeper and deeper, the thought grew clear in all its wonder that somewhere among these heights he had wandered with his disciples, and sat down by the sides of wells to rest. in camp at jericho we were confronted by an uncouth, blunt-topped mountain mass, thrusting itself aggressively up on the judean side, in itself a very rugged and memorable mountain-edge. not till the light was fading, and the bold outline struck blacker and blacker{5} against the sky, did the fact suddenly surprise us that this was quarantana, the mountain of temptation. then we understood that wilderness story in all its unprotected loneliness, and we almost saw the form of the son of man.
thus, as day after day he rides through the country, the traveller finds new meaning in the words, “i have glorified thee on the earth.” an inexpressible sense possesses him of the reality of jesus christ. these pathways were, indeed, once trodden by his feet; through these valleys he carried the lamp of life; under these stars he prayed; through this sunshine he lay in a rock-hewn grave. to a man’s dying day he will be nearer christ for this. the chief sorrow of the christian life for most of us is the difficulty of realisation. at times we have all had to flog up our imagination to the “realising sense” of christ. after this journey that necessity is gone. it is almost as if in long past years we had seen him there, and heard him speak. the divine mystery of christ is all the more commanding when the human fact of jesus has become almost a memory rather than a belief.
