IN THE MASTER'S STEPS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22086, 16 April 1935, Page 11

IN THE MASTER'S STEPS

FAREWELL TO JUDAEA _ ~j THE CALM OF GALILEE A SYMBOLIC JOURNEY BY H. V. MORTON (Copyright) No. VII. Galilee is one of the sweetest words I know. Even were it possible to dissociate it from the Ministry of Jesus, it would still be a lovely word whose three syllables suggest the sound of lake water lapping a shore. It is as soft as the word Judaea is hard, as gentle as Judaea is cruel. It is not necessary to visit the Holy Land to appreciate the rocky harshness of "Judaea" or to hear the water falling from the oars in "Galilee." As I went dojvn into Galilee, I knew that I had learnt something about the Gospels that I could never have known in any other way. Nazareth is a frontier post between the north and south. To go into Galilee to turn one's back on the arena of the Old Testament, and there is something in the formation of the land that gives a feeling of finalitjr to the act: one cannot possibly go into Galilee without the knowledge that one has definitely said farewell to Judaea. By going to Galilee Jesus performed a symbolic act. He turned His back on the world of the Old Testament, and from the moment of that turning away the Now Testament begins. So in the road that runs over a hill from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee a man detects the first promise of Christianity. Tiberias The little hotel in Tiberias stands near the lake. From my room I could see over the flat roofs of houses and, through the branches of eucalyptus trees, a strip of blue water backed by a range of hills as barren and as pink and mauve in colour as the Mountains of Moab at Jericho. From the flat roof I saw hundreds of white houses marching down a gentle hill-slope to stand in picturesque confusion on the lakeside. Little whits domes varied the rectangular uniformity of the white roofs. Here and there a minaret like a Georgian pepper pot stood up higher than domes or roofs. There was one dark, narrow main street from which hundreds of squalid little lanes radiated, and this street was congested with men, women,, children, camels and donkeys. The background was a high green mountain with a few houses dotted about its slopes. In front of me the Se;a of Galilee lay ruffled by a slight wind. It was not a uniform colour. There were patches of dark and light blue and also touches of pale green. I wondered with what lake I could compare it, and explored my memory in vain. The lake is heartshaped, with the narrowest part to the south. It is 13 miles long and at its widest part about seven miles across. Snow on Mount Hermon . Mountains rise all round the lake. On the western shore they are green mountains; on the eastern shore they are brown barren precipices of the desert, part of the rocky barrier that rises east of the Jordan and marches south with the river, past the Dead Sea down to the Gulf of Akaba. When I looked to the north I saw the sight that impresses itself upon the minds of all who live in Galilee: I saw a magnificient ridge of mountain covered with snow. It stood up like a screen to the north. The snow never melts in its deepest corries even in the height of summer. It was Mount Hermon, the Mountain of the Transfiguration. The Sea of Galilee, even in its desolation, breathes an exquisite peace and a beauty that surpass anything "in Palestine. The landscape has altered in detail since Jesus made His home in Capernaum, but the broad outline ha«i not changed. The hills are the hills He looked upon, the lights and shadows that turn the Gergesene heights to gold and purple, the little breezes that whip the lake into whitenesSj the blue water that fades to a mdky green where the Jordan enters at the north; none of these has changed. These are the things that Jesus looked upon and loved when He lived in Galilee. I went into the streets of Tiberias. It is a shabby, squalid little town and crouches like a beggar on the lake side. It is a town of rags and dark eyes and dark cellars, of little jumbled shops and narrow streets. The ruins of a fine crusading wall of black basalt, in whose bastions families live in • unspeakable poverty, rise from the water's edge. The Healing Spring The Herodian ruins lie a little way to the south of the modern town. Only a few rubble walls exist to speak of the town that Herod built to minister to his summer palace on the hill. Part of the three-mile wall can still be traced, but stretches of it have falen into the lake. The hill at the back is pitted and scarred with ruins. High up on its slopes are mounds, shattered pillars and old masonry, which mark the site of the palace of Antipas. From the side of this hill I picked out all kinds of Roman pottery and small fragments of iridescent glass. One relic of Roman times is still alive. From a hill near the lake gushes a stream of hot mineral water. This spring, which is claimed to give the same water as that of Carlsbad, and was mentioned by Pliny, was known and valued in the earliest times. No doubt Vespasian and Titus bathed in it when they carried the war into Galilee. And it is still healing the woes of humanity. I visited a largo bathing house to which patients come from all parts of Syria, Palestine and Trans-Jordan. In the time of Jesus these baths attracted the sick from every part of the country. One cannot help marvelling at the number of sick people who were brought to the lakeside to be cured by Jesus. At times they came to Him, not singly but in great companies. Now, Cai>ernaum was only ten. miles along the shore from the hot baths at Tiberias. One imagines that the presence of the most famous spa in the country, and the gathering there of many hundreds of invalids, must have been responsible for many of the crowds who sought our Lord's help in Capernaum.