The population of the town is about eleven or twelve thousand, a quarter of them Mussulmans, and the rest Christians of various sects, including two or three hundred Protestants. The people used to have rather a bad reputation for turbulence; but we see no signs of it, either in the appearance of the city or in the demeanour of the inhabitants. The children and the townsfolk whom we meet in the streets, and
of whom we ask our way now and then, are civil and friendly. The man who comes to the camp to sell us antique coins and lovely vases of iridescent glass dug from the tombs of Tyre and Sidon, may be an inveterate humbug, but his manners are good and his prices are low. The soft-voiced women and lustrous-eyed girls who hang about the Lady's tent, persuading her to buy their small embroideries and lace-work and trinkets, are gentle and ingratiating, though persistent.
I am honestly of the opinion that Christian mission-schools and hospitals have done a great deal for Nazareth. We go this morning to visit the schools of the English Church Missionary Society, where Miss Newton is conducting an admirable and most successful work for the girls of Nazareth. She is away on a visit to some of her outlying stations; but the dark-eyed, happy-looking Syrian teacher shows us all the classes. There are five of them, and every room is full and bright and orderly.
On the Christian side, the older girls sing a hymn for us, in their high voices and quaint English accent, about Jesus stilling the storm on Galilee, and the intermediate
girls and the tiny co-educated boys and girls in the kindergarten go through various pretty performances. Then the teacher leads us across the street to the two Moslem classes, and we cannot tell the difference between them and the Christian children, except that now the singing of "Jesus loves me" and the recitation of "The Lord is my Shepherd" are in Arabic. There is one blind girl who recites most perfectly and eagerly. Another girl of about ten years carries her baby-brother in her arms. Two little laggards, (they were among the group at our camp early in the morning), arrive late, weeping out their excuses to the teacher. She hears them with a kind, humorous look on her face, gives them a soft rebuke and a task, and sends them to their seats, their tears suddenly transformed to smiles.
From the schools we go to the hospital of the British Medical Mission, a little higher up the hill. We find young Doctor Scrimgeour, who has lately come out from Edinburgh University, and his white-uniformed, cheerful, busy nurses, tasked to the limit of their strength by the pressure of their work,
but cordial and simple in their welcome. As I walk with the doctor on his rounds I see every ward full, and all kinds of calamity and suffering waiting for the relief and help of his kind, skilful knife. Here are hernia, and tuberculous glands, and cataract, and stone, and bone tuberculosis, and a score of other miseries; and there, on the table, with pale, dark face and mysterious eyes, lies a man whose knee has been shattered by a ball from a Martini rifle in an affray with robbers.
"Was he one of the robbers," I ask, "or one of the robbed?"
"I really don't know," says the doctor, "but in a few minutes I am going to do my best for him."
Is not this Christ's work that is still doing in Christ's town, this teaching of the children, this helping of the sick and wounded, for His sake, and in His name? Yet there are silly folk who say they do not believe in missions.