I Know Not From What Class Of
Churchmen These Personages Are Chosen, For There Is A Mystery
Attending Their Origin And The Circumstance Of Their Being
Stationed In These Convents, Which Rome Does Not Suffer To Be
Penetrated.
I have heard it said that they are men of great note,
and, perhaps, of too high ambition in the Catholic Hierarchy, who
having fallen under the grave censure of the Church, are banished
for fixed periods to these distant monasteries.
I believe that the
term during which they are condemned to remain in the Holy Land is
from eight to twelve years. By the natives of the country, as well
as by the rest of the brethren, they are looked upon as superior
beings; and rightly too, for Nature seems to have crowned them in
her own true way.
The chief of the Jerusalem convent was a noble creature; his
worldly and spiritual authority seemed to have surrounded him, as
it were, with a kind of "court," and the manly gracefulness of his
bearing did honour to the throne which he filled. There were no
lords of the bedchamber, and no gold sticks and stones in waiting,
yet everybody who approached him looked as though he were being
"presented"; every interview which he granted wore the air of an
"audience"; the brethren as often as they came near bowed low and
kissed his hand; and if he went out, the Catholics of the place
that hovered about the convent would crowd around him with devout
affection, and almost scramble for the blessing which his touch
could give. He bore his honours all serenely, as though calmly
conscious of his power to "bind and to loose."
CHAPTER XI - GALILEE
Neither old "sacred" {25} himself, nor any of his helpers, knew the
road which I meant to take from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee and
from thence to Jerusalem, so I was forced to add another to my
party by hiring a guide. The associations of Nazareth, as well as
my kind feeling towards the hospitable monks, whose guest I had
been, inclined me to set at naught the advice which I had received
against employing Christians. I accordingly engaged a lithe,
active young Nazarene, who was recommended to me by the monks, and
who affected to be familiar with the line of country through which
I intended to pass. My disregard of the popular prejudices against
Christians was not justified in this particular instance by the
result of my choice. This you will see by-and-by.
I passed by Cana and the house in which the water had been turned
into wine; I came to the field in which our Saviour had rebuked the
Scotch Sabbath-keepers of that period, by suffering His disciples
to pluck corn on the Lord's day; I rode over the ground on which
the fainting multitude had been fed, and they showed me some
massive fragments - the relics, they said, of that wondrous banquet,
now turned into stone. The petrifaction was most complete.
I ascended the height on which our Lord was standing when He
wrought the miracle. The hill was lofty enough to show me the
fairness of the land on all sides, but I have an ancient love for
the mere features of a lake, and so forgetting all else when I
reached the summit, I looked away eagerly to the eastward. There
she lay, the Sea of Galilee. Less stern than Wast Water, less fair
than gentle Windermere, she had still the winning ways of an
English lake; she caught from the smiling heavens unceasing light
and changeful phases of beauty, and with all this brightness on her
face, she yet clung so fondly to the dull he-looking mountain at
her side, as though she would
"Soothe him with her finer fancies,
Touch him with her lighter thought." {26}
If one might judge of men's real thoughts by their writings, it
would seem that there are people who can visit an interesting
locality and follow up continuously the exact train of thought that
ought to be suggested by the historical associations of the place.
A person of this sort can go to Athens and think of nothing later
than the age of Pericles; can live with the Scipios as long as he
stays in Rome; can go up in a balloon, and think how resplendently
in former times the now vacant and desolate air was peopled with
angels, how prettily it was crossed at intervals by the rounds of
Jacob's ladder! I don't possess this power at all; it is only by
snatches, and for few moments together, that I can really associate
a place with its proper history.
"There at Tiberias, and along this western shore towards the north,
and upon the bosom too of the lake, our Saviour and His disciples -
" away flew those recollections, and my mind strained eastward,
because that that farthest shore was the end of the world that
belongs to man the dweller, the beginning of the other and veiled
world that is held by the strange race, whose life (like the
pastime of Satan) is a "going to and fro upon the face of the
earth." From those grey hills right away to the gates of Bagdad
stretched forth the mysterious "desert" - not a pale, void, sandy
tract, but a land abounding in rich pastures, a land without cities
or towns, without any "respectable" people or any "respectable"
things, yet yielding its eighty thousand cavalry to the beck of a
few old men. But once more - "Tiberias - the plain of Gennesareth -
the very earth on which I stood - that the deep low tones of the
Saviour's voice should have gone forth into eternity from out of
the midst of these hills and these valleys!" - Ay, ay, but yet again
the calm face of the lake was uplifted, and smiled upon my eyes
with such familiar gaze, that the "deep low tones" were hushed, the
listening multitudes all passed away, and instead there came to me
a dear old memory from over the seas in England, a memory sweeter
than Gospel to that poor wilful mortal, me.
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