CHAPTER XXIII
ON THE SEA OF GALILEE
We are in a fisherman’s skiff on the Sea of Galilee. We have just left Tiberias, the ancient city of Herod near the southern end of the lake, and are on our way to Capernaum, that white spot which you can see on the shore at the north where Christ lived and preached. It seems strange that one can carry the whole Sea of Galilee in his eye. I have always thought of it as only a little less than an ocean, or at least as big as the largest of our great freshwater lakes. The truth is that compared to Lake Michigan it is only a puddle. It is about half as large as Lake Cayuga, at Ithaca, New York, and standing on any of the hills rising precipitously about it one can plainly see the whole body of water.
This so-called sea is only six miles wide at its widest part from east to west, and from where the Jordan flows in at the north to the place where it empties out at the south the distance is a scant thirteen miles. The sea lies in the depression of the Jordan Valley, the river forming a winding canal two hundred miles long which connects it with the Dead Sea at the south.
Lake Superior is a little more than six hundred feet above the level of the ocean. The Sea of Galilee is more than six hundred and eighty feet below that level and lies in a nest of beautiful mountains which slope up from the water in picturesque shapes.
Over there at the west the shores are bright green and are spotted with wild flowers. The grass makes a waving sheet of emerald velvet which seems almost to reach the fleecy white clouds of the blue sky above.
Farther to the south are the Galilean mountains, now gray in the morning sun, with masses of smoky clouds hanging over them. They are full of water; and as I look, lo! the rain comes. The sun is still shining and has painted a rainbow over that part of the lake covering the town of Magdala, which, as you remember, was Mary Magdalen’s home.
Looking through the rainbow you can catch sight of the Mount of the Beatitudes where our Saviour sat when He preached the Sermon on the Mount. On the sloping little hill at the left it is said He commanded the weary multitude to sit down on the grass and fed the five thousand.
Now look eastward to the lands on the opposite sides of the lake and the Jordan. They rise straight up from the water. The hills are so steep that it would be almost impossible to climb them, and they are ragged and rough. That is the land of the Gadarenes, where our Lord cast out the devils into the swine which ran violently down a steep place into the sea.
All about us are the most familiar scenes of the Scriptures. Every bit of these shores has been hallowed; and as we look the figures of the Old and New Testaments spring into life. It is impossible to read the Bible in the Holy Land and not feel that its people were real men and women. The apostles had the same feelings as ours; they lived in a world much the same; they breathed the same air; they loved and sorrowed as we do to-day.
