Earthly footsteps of the Man of Galilee, being four hundred original photographic views and descriptions of the places connected with the earthly life of our Lord and His apostles, traced with note book and camera ..

Front matter

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Introduction

HIS work is the final expression of a beautiful enterprise. The publishers, having conceived the idea of bringing out a book illustrating the earthly life of Christ and the Apostles, determined that it should be original from beginning to end. They could have secured from any general assortment of photographs in New York, Boston or Chicago the pictures necessary to make the plates for such a work, but this was not in line with their ideal. Their scheme contemplated fresh and first-hand views accompanied with descriptions from personal observation. Their plan made it necessary to actually invade Palestine and the regions related to it, not with fire and sword, after the style of the military captain, but with harmless, scientific instruments. They proposed to capture the countries about the

Mediterranean Sea and transport them to America without destroying their cities or disturbing their people. No bombardment was to be inaugurated,

except such as passed through the lens of the camera, and no missile was to be projected deadlier than the thought that passed through a pencil to

the pages of a note-book. The. writer of this carried the pencil and Mr. Robert E. M. Bain manipulated the camera. Mr. Bain’s capacity to plant a

camera before an object so as to take it to the best advantage, with proper accompanying sky-line and perspective, has been settled by the medals

he has received for his exquisite landscape work from conventions both in Europe and America. To the function of photographer he unites the genius of the artist.

We had prepared for our special purpose, by the Cramer Dry Plate people, in St. Louis, nine boxes of glass plates, weighing seventy pounds

each. These we carried with us all the way to the Holy Land and back. We were instructed to follow the footsteps of Christ and his Apostles and to

photograph the places and objects made sacred by their lives.

We traced the footprints of the Man of Galilee from Bethlehem, where he first appeared from Heaven through a manger; to Matariyeh, where

Mary and Joseph sojourned in Egypt; to Nazareth, where he was brought up; to the Jordan, where he was baptized; to the mountain over against

Pisgah, where he was tempted; to Hermon, where he was transfigured; to Jerusalem, where he was crucified, and to the Mount of Olives, from whence

he went to Heaven. We stood amid the scenes of his prayers, tears, sermons and wonderful works, and transferred them, with the blush and bloom of

Palestine, to the delicate, sensitive surface of our glass plates. We visited the countries where the Apostles preached and laid the foundations of Western

civilization. To St. Paul, more than to any other of the early followers of our Lord, is due the credit of continuing His work on earth. He repeated

he footsteps of the Man of Galilee in the territory of the Gentiles. We followed him from Damascus, where he was converted, through Asia Minor, where he was persecuted and beaten; to Mar’s Hill, where he outraged the learned Athenians with his doctrine of the Resurrection; to Corinth, where he preached to a dissolute and abandoned city the gospel of temperance and purity; to Puteoli, in sight of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to Rome, where he was beheaded.

We passed through the interior of Palestine with a caravan consisting of four tents, five mules, four horses and eight men, including dragoman,

cook and waiter. We carried letters of introduction from the Secretary of the Interior, from Dr. Wm. T. Boney Commissioner of Education, and from the

President of the United States. We had the best advantages that could be afforded by the courtesy of our Foreign Ministers. Through their influence

we had admission to shrines, sanctuaries and museums difficult of access. This was illustrated in the case of Brugsch Bey, who gave us the freedom of

the Egyptian Museum and permitted the mummy cases to be opened for us that we might get illustrations of the sojourn of Joseph and Mary with the

Infant Jesus in the land of the Pharaohs. We left St. Louis the last of March. The most of our baggage was so fragile that every mile of the fifteen

thousand in our contemplated journey was attended with peril. Yet we returned safely without the loss of a day from rain, without missing a single

railway or steamboat connection and without the loss of a single box of our plates. These boxes had been carried from place to place by rai way cars, by express wagons, by carriages, by steamboats, by row-boats, by porters. They had been in the holds of ships, they had been strapped on the backs of mules, they had been to the pyramids, they had been over the road traveled by our Savior and His Apostles, they had followed in the foots teps of St.

Paul in his missionary journeys, they had been to the city of Plato and Aristotle and the home of the Caesars. They brought back the accurate record

of our journey and were developed in the dark-room of the very factory where they were manufactured. In a few days after our return the National

Photographers’ Convention met in the City of St. Louis during the month of July, 1894. Mr. Bain entered a number of the first pictures developed and

for superior excellence was awarded a medal on them.

An opportunity is here given of making a delightful tour of Palestine and the countries adjacent to it without leaving home. You may see

Heliopolis, where Moses was educated, and where that petrified sunbeam, the rose-red granite obelisk, stands just as it stood four thousand years ago,

when Abraham came to Egypt from Ur of the Chaldees; and Memphis, where Ramases the Second lies in colossal lime-stone form prostrate on the ground,

the sole inhabitant of that once proud city. You may see the white and sandy shores of Syria rising over against the Mediterranean ‘Sea, furnishing boundaries to its outgoing waters; and the mountains of Moab, bending in sympathy along the farther side of the Jordan as if seeking to protect from its sacred waters the wild Bedouins beyond; and the waters of Lake Galilee, now sleeping in the mountains like a babe on its mother’s bosom, and now lashed into boundless rage and fury by the down-falling storm; and Nazareth, long provincial and unknown, but always lifted high enough on the shoulders of the ambitious hills to keep company with Tabor, Carmel tard Hermon. You may see Tyre, desolate and dismantled, sitting beside the sea, advertising in her half-broken columns the arrest of a commercial career that made her the wonder of the world; and Sidon, the companion of Tyre in disaster and her neighbor in irreparable ruin, piled in broken defeat beside the same sea, as if concealing in her Faleaunea marble some infinite story of misfortune and n sin; and Bethlehem, too little to go down in the catalogue with the thousands of Judah, but half conscious of the glory in reserve for her as the birthplace of the Savior of the world and content to rest on her hills, a perfect picture of undisturbed repose. You may see Jerusalem in her ups and downs of glory and shame, with forty feet of human history piled in blood and ashes and bones in the depths of her Tyropceon Valley; and Damascus, coming up out of the desert and gleaming from her gardens like a vision from Heaven.

Palestine glows with an unparalleled radiance when seen through the light of the Eastern sun coming up from over the mountains to the east or going down into the sea to the west. We witnessed a scene April 26th, 1894, we can never forget. We were standing on the shores of the Dead Sea. The sun was just coming up over the mountains of Moab. Nebo, where Moses stood, was in sight. The atmosphere traded with the light after a fashion indescribably beautiful. The serious and sombre rays were received and quenched, while the bright and gay notes were thrown into a symphony of color that beggars definition. The sun itself seemed to be the hub of a wheel with an infinite number of spokes. These radiated from the center and lengthened out every whither into an oriental circle as large as ha f the whole round sky. It was the song of the sun seemingly raised to celebrate his coming to that sacred land. The plains of Sodom and Gomorrah, the fringe of trees along the banks of down-coming Jordan and the rim of the surrounding mountains were literally baptized in the waves of the g orious music played by the rising day. The castles and domes and minarets standing along the Moab mountains were used by the sun as so many notes to provoke a response from the towering peaks crowning the Judaean mountains rising from the opposite edge of the wide plain. A vast circle of vapory fire, mixed with streaks of pink and orange, encompassed Nebo, and in a twinkling the battlements on the crest of the Mount of Temptation gathered about themselves the deep red glow of the same brilliant Eastern sun. - This was music*the ear did not hear. It was addressed to the eye. But such a display of gorgeous harmony we had never enjoyed before. The whole’ plain of Jericho, where Cleopatra reveled and where Herod died, was thrilled with the radiant pulses o luminous music. This you can never see exactly without standing in the same memorable place. But I think it will be found that our artist came as near getting the color and flavor and bloom of the lands of the Bible as any one who ever visited them with a camera. And all he brought back you may see without the expense and peril of a long and tedious journey to these historic countries.

It is to Palestine that the countries about the Mediterranean Sea owe their charm and interest; and Palestine stands for a country that grows in interest with the passing years. No great cities stand upon its coasts, no great rivers flow through its valleys, no great mountains lend sublimity to its topographical features. It has no commercial standing and never had any. It never had a navy and never any place as a maritime power. Among the nations it has been humble in position and small in extent. To the west of her stretched Egypt like a green ribbon for two thousand miles, raising enough wheat every year to feed half the world. Under the very shadow of her mountains lay Phoenicia, crowding with her ships every market under the sun. To the east of her spread Babylon, dazzling and corrupting the nations with her wealth. Somewhat further away Athens was seated on her throne of hills by the sea, a queen of beauty attracting the students of the world with her art and learning. More distant still, but washed by the same sea, whose waters left their labels of drift on her shores, was the great Roman Empire, embracing by her arms of war the peoples of the globe. Surrounded by nations strong, rich and imperious, all compe ing for dominion and wealth, little Palestine seemed to have but meager hope as a candidate for a career in the future. Egypt could rely upon her corn, Phoenicia upon her purple dye, Babylon upon her wealth, Athens upon her beauty, and Rome upon her legions ; but what had Palestine to offer as a reason for present existence or future renown?

With her patches of soil held by terraces to her hills, with her narrow valleys hardly sufficient to produce bread for her people, with no army, no power and no flag, how was Palestine to hold up her head and compete for a place in the history of men? While the nations around her were filling their granaries and increasing their dominions and whitening the seas with their ships of trade, and filling the world with the din of their battles; the people of Canaan were writing poetry, chronicling their hopes, uttering their prayers and reading from their inmost spirits the lettering which they accepted as coming straight from Heaven. Now, in this far off time, after the empires have passed, after the tumult of battle has ceased, after the temples have fallen and the columns have been buried; after the splendid forms in which material civilizations clothed themselves have vanished; we find alone remaining to bring us news of the countries long gone, like a forgotten dream, the prayers and chronicles and visions and dreams of a poor Hebrew people, who had the faith in their day to trust in God and to consecrate their lives to His service. If some Hebrew dreamers had not been taken captive to Babylon the very name of that empire had doubtless passed from the memories of men. Had not the Jews by the exigencies of fortune come into relations with Egypt, interest in that wonderful country would never have been revived. St. Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill has done more to conserve the beauty lying by its side than all other things put together. The great Apostle’s steps over the Appian Way have kept that queen of roads gleaming straight and rock-paved through the ages. The lives of saintly people gave to Palestine its title to immortality. Their prayers have preserved the perfume of her flowers and their sufferings have made her great.

INTRODUCTION.

HOLY LAND, with the regions immediately adjoining, constituting the most sacred of the Bible lands, does not lose its peculiar interest to the most advanced student of history, civilization, biography and human nature, in this last decade of the Nineteenth Century. News from Jerusalem, by cable or post, attracts the attention of both religious and non-religious readers. There was never a time when tourists flocked with more pleasure and curiosity to the haunts and homes of the principal Bible characters. There was never a time when pilgrimages, religious and scientific, were more popular. Again, within a few weeks,

he Palestine Exploration Fund of England has secured a permit from the Turkish Government to renew and extend its investigations of the soil underneath and about the Holy City. Within a short time the shrill whistle of the locomotive has echoed among the mountains and valleys of Judea, and but recently a steamboat was launched on the Dead Sea. The European powers keep watch of each other, while all keep ward over the Holy places. And this not merely because of rival religious organizations, which diligently seek advantage in their search for sacred sites or hidden treasures, or build shrines at which to bow in reverent worship, but also that they may guard well this whole region that lies between the North and the South, the Mediterranean highway on the west, and the approach to India on the east. If Christianity were effete, and simply an historic memory, there would be the same interest in Palestine that classic students now feel in the researches of Schliemann and others, in Western Asia Minor and in Greece; but Christianity is a living verity. Its founder declared that He would draw all men unto Himself, and commissioned his apostles to ‘‘ Go into all the world, and preach this gospel to every creature,”’ declaring: ‘‘I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” The Christianity of the age is vital. It has greater power among men than at its genesis. Its promises have been fulfilled through the centuries. The civilization of which it is the basis and directing force, is the dominating civilization of the world to-day.

The Book which records the marvels of His life, who ‘‘ spake as never man spake,’’ was never studied so critically, thoroughly and enthusiastically as now. Biblical research is the passion of the age. To it Philology, studies in Comparative Religion and Ethics, and Archeology—with spade and magnifying glass—pay constant tribute. The careful student of language, the Biblical exegete, the popular preacher, the Bible class teacher, the private unofficial Christian, turn eager eyes toward these sacred regions, to see every discovery that may shed further light on the Book of Books, and on the life of Him, who, as the ages go by, occupies a larger place in the civilization of our planet. War, pestilence, earthquake, and all the sources of devastation which, through the centuries, have swept over the eastern world, have removed many landmarks, and destroyed immense quantities of valuable material. But in the Far East, and especially in Palestine, the contour of the country remains. Jerusalem still stands on her high hills, with the valleys of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat round about; with Olivet to the east, and beyond Olivet the desolations of Judea, and below Judea the Ghér, and the salt waters of the Dead Sea, while beyond them rise in majesty the mountains of Moab, hat stretch out in vast tablelands towards the Euphrates. Ebal and Gerizim still stand in the center of Western Palestine; and there, too, is the Plain f Esdraelon, with Tabor and Gilboa, with Nazareth and Tiberias beyond. There, too, rise Hermon—the snow-crowned—and the lofty Lebanon, while at he base of Anti-libanus, amidst the flowing waters of Abana and Pharpar, stands the Pearl of the East, the mother of all cities—the ancient Damascus. The ages have not materially changed the climate of Palestine. Still the heavy dews fall, the early rain and the later rain come down in heir appointed seasons. The hot wind blows from the south and the north wind brings strength and gladness. The fields are still, in their season, white unto the harvest; and from the sea come mist and clouds, the rain, the hail and tempest. It is the old land, the same to-day as in the past yesterdays.

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The manners and customs of this Eastern country have not been changed. People dress and eat and sleep and live and labor as they did two thousand years ago. The scenes of the Bible are reproduced with startling fidelity to the old record. One may find feasting and funeral, seed-sowing and harvest, elders in the gate and veiled women, grass on the housetops, sparrows seeking their nests in holy places, the grass of the field that to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven. The old customs and costumes remain. The general scenic features of Palestine render it interpretative of Biblical events and shed light upon difficulties which, but for the perpetuity of its features, would have been unsolvable problems. Every traveler through Palestine discovers and makes report of these features and finds his faith ‘in the Book confirmed. It is this feature which renders so valuable the contribution of the present volume to the illustration of Biblical history. The perfection of photographic art is reached in the production of this book. The land is brought within the purview of every reader. Here, in the fine atmosphere of the Syrian skies, are presented hills, mountains, valleys, plains, water-courses, ruins, towns, cities, fountains, fields, mosques, churches, beasts of burden, flowers of the field, and whatsoever else the sun can copy on the sensitive plate hidden in the camera.

The student is invited to the turning of its pages as to a walk through picture galleries and museums, with the hope by its editors and publishers that the ‘Land of all Lands’’ and the ‘‘ Book of all Books’? may gain, through this pleasant ministry, a firmer hold on head and heart than ever before.

The journey made by Dr. James W. Lee and Mr. Robert E. M. Bain in the interest of this work in 1894, it was my pleasure to make twice, the first time in 1863 and again in 1887. The new and charming photographs furnished by the last pilgrimage of Dr. Lee and Mr. Bain give me the sense of having made a third journey to the Holy Land.

we Chautauqua, N. Y., 1894. Pthudi0tcec.t.

OUTLINE HARMONY oF THE GOSPELS AND CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.

By PERMISSION OF DR. SAMUEL J. ANDREWS, AUTHOR OF “ LIFE OF OUR LORD ON EARTH.”’