The traveller to-day is often disappointed in the emotions he had expected at sacred sites. The belief in miracle is nowhere so difficult as on the spot, where every detail of the scene seems so uncompromisingly earthly. If, however, he will follow the example of the Psalmist, and 'lift up his eyes unto the hills,' he will find the realization of Christ an easier matter. The great sky-lines are for the most part unchanged, and the same edges and vistas are to be seen which filled the eyes of Jesus. This is not merely the result of the fact that local tradition and foolish ways of honouring sacred places have disfigured and stultified so "many spots of Palestine. It recalls the fact that Jesus came from the highlands of Galilee, and that He chose to associate many of the most outstanding events of His life with mountains. Froiii the hill above Nazareth He looked abroad on an endless field of mountain tops. Hermon dominated tlie landscape on the north-east, and Tabor thrust its irrelevant cone, con- spicuous and unique, over the undulating sky-line of the mountains between Nazareth and the hake — a gigantic in- truder which had reared its huge bead to look down into Nazareth from over the wall of mountains. It was there, with countless mountain summits of familiar name about Him, that the Youth first encountered those tremendous thoughts which finally led Him to the Jordan. Driven thence by the Spirit into the wilderness, He fought His long fight with rival schemes of greatness, in the tract which Jud<ea thrusts high into the air from the depth of the Jordan Valley, and holds balanced upon the edge of cliffs. Jericho looks up at that mountain of Quarantania, and sees its angular and tilted platform of a sunnuit as a black space cut out of the brilliance of a living, starry sky. From the edge He looked down on Jericho (Mt 4' etc.), and knew the power of worldliness as He saw the palace- life of Herod there, and the glimmer of festive lamps among the palm-groves that had been Cleopatra's. Mountains were the congenial places for His great utterances in which the Old Law changed to the New, and the freshness as well as the exaltation of these words remind us from beginning to end of them that they are a Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5i). Similarly, by a sure instinct, it was to the heights that He went to find by night the fullest sense of converse with His Father (Mt 1423 etc.). Probably it was on some of the slopes of Hermon that such a season of communion brightened to the wonder of Transfigura- tion (Mt 171 etc.). Hermon's summit is always white, and many a ' bright cloud overshadows ' it, until it shines upon the plain for miles around, in a wliite glory of frosted silver. It is not without significance that Matthew gives as the tryating-place between Jesus and His disciples ' a mountain of Galilee ' (Jit 28"'). There is a perceptible air of relief in the words, as if after all those stifiing days in Judaea— days of judgment-halls and shut doors in upper rooms, of clouded cross and sealed sepulchre — an irresistible longing had seized Him for the sunlight and the wind-swept heights of His happier early days. Nothing fosteretK, the patriotism of Israel so much as her mountains. From time innnemorial they had been her defences in war, and the plat- forms of her worship. In the story of Jesus they are seen in both these uses, and the feel of the heights is upon much that He has said.
Palestine is a little and compressed country, ^^ here not only seoKraphicaTTeatures, "BiTt the facts and associations MjmiicartTAis^oj-?/ are gathered, so close as to lorce themselves upon the attention at e\erv step. While travellinj? there, it is a constant source of wonder that so much could have liappened in so small a place. These continual reminders of the past history of tlie nation, whicli thrust tiiemselves upon Israelites everywhere, and kept patriotism vehemently alive, had their effect also upon Jesus. The heroes of the past were much in His thou<iht, and His journeys from place to place reminded Him of tliem continually. Elijah and Elisha, Solomon, David, and Isaiah, were figures not merely remembered from reading in the sacred books. Tiiey were the unseen inhabitants of the places where once they dwelt in the Hesli, peopling for Him tracts over M'hich He led His dis- ciples. His patriotism is evident continually (Lk lO'-* 13^*). It was a great thing in His eyes to be a son or a daughter of Abraham. Jerusalem, for Him as for the Psalmist, is the ' city of the great King' (Mt 5^'). The waysides are hallowed by the footsteps of the dead. The tombs of the prophets are conspicuous monuments to His imagination (Mt 23'^^). He lived among the dead, and they lived unto God and unto Him in the land where their bones had long crumbled to decay. He re- ceives and is taunted with the title ' King of Israel' (Jn I«, Mt 27"- etc.). The accusation on the Cross is 'Jesus, the King of the Jews' (Mt 27^' etc.).
Two aspects of the land, taken as a whole, mu.st be remembered, especially if we would understand what it meant to Jesus — Palest hie as an oasis, and Palestine as a focus.