Evening: beautiful colours on the western hills,
and the new moon appearing—a thin silver streak in the roseate glow which remains in the heavens after sunset. The night very hot, and no air moving.
Friday, 18th.—After a night of mosquito-plague, we rose at the first daybreak, with a glorious spectacle of Mount Hermon and its snowy summit to the north. Such evenings and mornings as travellers and residents enjoy in Asian climes are beyond all estimation, and can never be forgotten.
We learned that there are Christians in this village of Tayibeh, as indeed there are some thinly scattered throughout the villages of Jebel ’Ajloon, i.e. from Jerash to near Tiberias; and in the corresponding villages on the western side of Jordan, as far as Nabloos.
I always feel deeply concerned for those “sheep without a shepherd,” dispersed among an overwhelming population of Mohammedans. They are indeed ignorant,—how can they be otherwise, while deprived of Christian fellowship, or opportunities of public worship, excepting when they carry their infants a long journey for baptism, or when the men repair occasionally to the towns of Nabloos or Nazareth for trading business; or, it may be, when rarely an itinerant priest pays them a visit?—still they are living representatives of the Gentile Church of the country in primitive days, down through continuous ages,—their families enduring martyrdom, and to this day persecution and oppression,
for the name of Christ, in spite of every worldly inducement to renounce it. While we Europeans are reciting the Nicene Creed in our churches, they are suffering for it. They are living witnesses for the “Light of light, and very God of very God;” and although with this they mingle sundry superstitions, they are a people who salute each other at Easter with the words, “Christ is risen,” and the invariable response, “He is risen indeed;” also in daily practice, when pronouncing the name of Jesus, they add the words, “Glory to His name.”
Besides all the above, they are in many things Protestants against Papal corruption. They have no Vicar of Christ, no transubstantiation, no immaculate conception, no involuntary confession, and no hindrance to a free use of the Bible among the laity. For my part, I feel happy in sympathising much with such a people, and cannot but believe that the Divine Head of the Church regards with some proportion of love even the humblest believer in Him, who touches but the hem of His garment.
In our conversation, before resuming the journey, I mentioned the numerous villages that were to be found about that neighbourhood, utterly broken up, but where the gardens of fig, vine, and olive trees still are growing around the ruins. The people pointed out to me the direction of other such, that were out of sight from our tents; and the Jew quoted a familiar proverb of the country
relating to that subject; also the Moslem shaikh, with his son, joined also in reciting it:—
“The children of Israel built up;
The Christians kept up;
The Moslems have destroyed.”