, and taught
His disciples while they walked the narrow paths waist-deep in rustling
wheat, and spoke His messages of love from a little boat rocking on the
lake, and found His asylum of prayer high on the mountainside, and kept
His parting-hour with His friends in the moon-silvered quiet of the
garden of olives. That spirit of place, that soul of the Holy Land, is
what I fain would meet on my pilgrimage,--for the sake of Him who
interprets it in love. And I know well where to find it,--out-of-doors.

I will not sleep under a roof in Palestine, but nightly pitch my
wandering tent beside some fountain, in some grove or garden, on some
vacant threshing-floor, beneath the Syrian stars. I will not join myself
to any company of labelled tourists hurrying with much discussion on
their appointed itinerary, but take into fellowship three tried and
trusty comrades, that we may enjoy solitude together. I will not seek to
make any archaeological discovery, nor to prove any theological theory,
but simply to ride through the highlands of Judea, and the valley of
Jordan, and the mountains of Gilead, and the rich plains of Samaria, and
the grassy hills of Galilee, looking upon the faces and the ways of the
common folk, the labours of the husbandman in the field, the vigils of
the shepherd on the hillside, the games of the children in the
market-place, and reaping

"The harvest of a quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on his own heart."

Four things, I know, are unchanged amid all the changes that have passed
over the troubled and bewildered land. The cities have sunken into dust:
the trees of the forest have fallen: the nations have dissolved. But the
mountains keep their immutable outline: the liquid stars shine with the
same light, move on the same pathways: and between the mountains and the
stars, two other changeless things, frail and imperishable,--the flowers
that flood the earth in every springtide, and the human heart where
hopes and longings and affections and desires blossom immortally.
Chiefly of these things, and of Him who gave them a new meaning, I will
speak to you, reader, if you care to go with me out-of-doors in the Holy
Land.

II

MOVING PICTURES

Of the voyage, made with all the swiftness and directness of one who
seeks the shortest distance between two points, little remains in memory
except a few moving pictures, vivid and half-real, as in a
kinematograph.

First comes a long, swift ship, the _Deutsc