385. Our Sail On Lake Galilee

Our Sail On Lake Galilee

Mar_4:1 : ’93He entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land.’94

It is Monday morning in our Palestine experiences, and the sky is a blue Galilee above, as in the boat we sail the blue Galilee beneath. It is thirteen miles long and six miles wide, but the atmosphere is so clear it seems as if I could cast a stone from beach to beach. The lake looks as though it had been let down on silver pulleys from the heavens and were a section of the sea of glass that St. John describes as a part of the celestial landscape. Lake Galilee is a depression of six hundred feet, in which the river Jordan widens and tarries a little; for the river Jordan comes in at its north side and departs from its south side, so this lake has its cradle and its grave. Its white satin cradle is among the snows of Mount Hermon, where the Jordan starts; and its sepulchre is the Dead Sea, into which the Jordan empties. Lake Como of Italy, Lake Geneva of Switzerland, Lake Lomond of Scotland, Lake Winnipesaukee of America, are larger, but Lake Galilee is the greatest diamond that ever dropped from the finger of the cloud; and whether encamped on its banks, as we were yesterday, or worshiping at its crystal altar, or wading into its waves, which make an ordinary bath solemn as a baptism, or now putting out upon its sparkling surface in a boat, it is something to talk about and pray about and sing about until the lips with which we now describe it can neither talk nor pray nor sing.

The lake has many names. As sometimes a beautiful child in a neighborhood has a dozen pet names, as some of the neighbors call her by one name and others by another, so this pet lake of the planet has a profusion of names. Ask the Arab as he goes by what this sheet of water is and he will call it Tabari-yeh. Ask Moses of the Old Testament and he calls it Sea of Chinnereth. Ask Matthew and he calls it Sea of Galilee. Ask Luke and he calls it Sea of Gennesaret. Ask John and he calls it Sea of Tiberias. Ask Josephus and Eusebius and they have other names ready. But to me it appears a child of the sky, a star of the hills, a rhapsody of the mountains, the baptismal bowl of the world’92s temple, the smile of the great God. Many kinds of fish are found in this lake, and every kind of tree upon its bank from those that grow in the torrid zone to those in the frigid, from the palm to the cedar.

Of the two hundred and thirty warships Josephus manoeuvred on these waters’97for Josephus was a warrior as well as a historian’97there remains not one piece of a hulk, or one patch of a canvas, or one splinter of an oar. But return to America we never will until we have had a sail upon this inland sea. Not from a wharf, but from a beach covered with black and white pebbles we go on board a boat of about ten or twelve tons, to be propelled partly by sail and partly by oars. The mast leans so far forward that it seems about to fall, but we find it was purposely so built, and the rope through a pulley manages to hoist and let down the sail. It is a rough boat, and as far as possible removed from a Venetian gondola or a sportsman’92s yacht. With a common saw and hammer and ax many of you could make a better one. Four barefooted Arabs, instead of sitting down to their oars, stand as they always do in rowing, and pull away from shore. I insist on helping, for there is nothing more exhilarating to me than rowing, but I soon had enough of the clumsy oars and the awkward attempt at wielding them while in standing posture.

We put our overcoats and shawls on. A small deck is in the stern of the boat, the very kind of deck where Christ lay on a fisherman’92s coat when of old the tempest poured upon the fishing smack of the affrighted disciples. Ospreys and wild ducks and kingfishers fly overhead or dip their wings into the lake, mistaking it for a fragment of fallen sky. Can it be that those Bible stories about sudden storms on the lake are true? Is it possible that a sea of such placidity of temper could ever rise and rage at the heavens? It does not seem as if this happy family of elements could have ever had a falling out, and the water strike at the clouds and the clouds strike at the water.

Pull away, oarsmen! On our right hand are the hot sulphur baths, so hot they are scalding, and the waters must cool off a long while before hand or foot can endure their temperature. Volcanoes have been boiling these waters for centuries. Four springs roll their resources into great swimming reservoirs. King Herod here tried to bathe off the results of his excesses, and Pliny and Josephus describe the spurtings out of these volcanic heats, and Joshua and Moses knew about them, and this moment long lines of pilgrims from all parts of the earth are waiting for their turn to step into the steaming restoratives. Let the boat, as far as possible, and not run aground, hug the western shore of the lake that we may see the city of Tiberias, once a great capital, of the architecture of which a few mosaics, and fallen pillars, and pedestals, and here and there a broken and shattered frieze remain, mightily suggestive of the time when Herod Antipas had a palace here and reigned with an opulence and pomp and cruelty and abomination that paralyzes the fingers of the historian when he comes to describe it, and the fingers of the painter when he attempts to transfer it to canvas. I suppose he was one of the worst men that ever lived. And what a contrast of character comes at every moment to the thoughtful traveler in Palestine, whether he walks the beach of this lake or sails in a boat as we now do on these waters!

Side by side are the two great characters of this lake region: Jesus and Herod Antipas. And did any age produce any such antipodes, any such antitheses, any such opposites? Kindness and Cruelty, Holiness and Filth, Generosity and Meanness, Self-sacrifice and Selfishness, the Supernal and the Infernal, Mid-noon and Midnight. The father of this Herod Antipas was a genius of assassination. He could manufacture more reasons for putting people out of this life than any man in all history. He sends for Hyr-canus to come from Babylon to Jerusalem to be made High Priest and slays him. He has his brother-in-law while in bathing with him drowned by the king’92s attendants. He slays his wife and his wife’92s mother, and two of his sons and his uncle, and filled a volume of atrocities, the last chapter of which was the massacre of all the babes at Bethlehem. With such a father as Herod the Great, you are not surprised that this Herod Antipas, whose palace stood on the banks of this lake we now sail, was a combination of wolf, reptile and hyena. While the Christ who walked yonder banks and sailed these waters was so good that almost every rood of this scenery is associated with some wise word or some kindly deed, and all literature and all art and all earth and all heaven are put to the utmost effort in trying to express how grand and glorious and lovely he was and is and is to be. The Christly and Herodic characters as different as the two lakes we visit and not far apart, Galilee and the Dead Sea; the one flower-banked and the other bituminous and blasted; the one hovered over by the mercy of Christ, the other blasted by the wrath of God; the one full of finny tribes sporting in the clear depths, the other forever lifeless; the waters of the one sweet and pleasant to the taste, the other bitter and disgusting. Awful Dead Sea! Glorious Gennesaret!

We will not attempt to cross to the eastern side of this lake, as I had thought to do, for those regions are inhabited by a thieving and murderous race, and one must go thoroughly armed; and as I never shot any one and have no ambition to be shot, I said: ’93Let us stay by the western shore.’94 But we look over to the hills of Gadara, on the other side, down which two thousand swine, after being possessed by the devil, ran into the lake, and bringing down on Christ for permitting it the wrath of all the stock-raisers of that country, because of this ruining of the pork business. You see that Satan is a spirit of bad taste. Why did he not say: ’93Let me go into those birds, whole flocks of which fly over Galilee.’94 No; that would have been too high. ’93Why not let me go into the sheep which wander over these hills?’94 No; that would have been too gentle. ’93Rather let me go into these swine. I want to be with the denizens of the mire. I want to associate with the inhabitants of the filth. Great is mud! I prefer bristles to wings; I would rather root than fly; I like snout better than wing.’94

Infidelity scoffs at the idea that those swine should have run into the lake. But it was quite natural that tinder the heat and burning of that demoniac possession they would start for the water to get cooled off. Would that all the swine thus possessed had plunged to the same drowning, for to this day the descendants of some of those porcine creatures retain the demons; and as the devils were cast out of man into them, they now afflict the human race with the devils of scrofula that come from eating the unclean meat. The healthiest people on earth are the Israelites, because they follow the bill of fare which God in the Book of Leviticus gave to the human race’97and our splendid French doctor, Pasteur, and our glorious German doctor, Koch, may go on with their good work of killing parasites in the human system; but until the world corrects its diet, and goes back to the Divine regulation at the beginning, the human race will continue to be possessed of the devils of microbe and parasite. But I did not mean to cross over to the eastern side of Lake Galilee even in discussion.

Pull away, ye Arab oarsmen! And we come along the shore, near-by which stand great precipices of brown and red and gray limestone crowned by basalt, in the sides of which are vast caverns, sometimes the hiding-place of bandits, and sometimes the home of honest shepherds, and sometimes the dwelling-place of pigeons and vultures and eagles. During one of Herod’92s wars his enemies hid in these mountain caverns, and the sides were too steep for Herod’92s army to descend, and the attempt to climb in the face of armed men would have called down extermination. So Herod had great cages of wood, iron-bound, made and filled them with soldiers and let them down from the top of the precipices until they gave signal that they were level with the caverns, and then from these cages they stepped out to the mouth of the caverns; and having set enough grass and wood on fire to fill the caverns with smoke and suffocation, the hidden people would come forth to die; and if not coming forth voluntarily, Herod’92s men would pull them out with long iron hooks; and Josephus says that one father rather than submit to the attacking army, flung his wife and seven children down the precipice, and then leaped after them to his own death.

Now, ye Arab oarsmen, row on with swifter stroke, for we want before noon to land at Capernaum, the three-year home of Jesus. But before arrival there we are to have a new experience. The lake that had been a smooth surface begins to break up into roughness. The air which all the morning made our sail almost useless, suddenly takes hold of our boat with a grip astonishing, and our poor craft begins to roll and pitch and tumble, and in five minutes we pass from a calm to violence. The contour of this lake among the hills is an invitation to hurricanes. I used to wonder why it was that on so limited a sheet of water a bestormed boat in Christ’92s time did not put back to shore when a hurricane was coming. I wonder no more. On that lake an atmospheric fury gives no warning, and the change we saw in five minutes made me feel that the boat in which Christ sailed may have been skilfully managed when the tempest struck it, and the importunate cry went up: ’93Lord, save us or we perish!’94 I had all along that morning been reading from the New Testament the story of occurrences on and around that lake. But our Bible was closed now, and it was as much as we could do to hold fast, and wish for the land. If the winds and the waves continued to increase in violence the following fifteen minutes in the same ratio, as in the first five, and we had been still at their mercy, our bones would have been bleaching at the bottom of Lake Gennesaret instead of our being here to tell the story. But the same Power that rescued the fishermen of old, today safely landed our party. What a Christ for rough weather! All the sailor boys ought to fly to him as did those Galilean mariners. All you in the forecastle, and all you who run up and down the slippery ratlines, take to sea with you him who with a quiet word sent the winds back through the mountain gorges. Some of you Jack Tars to whom these words will come need to ’93tack ship’94 and change your course if you are going to get across this sea of life safely, and gain the heavenly harbor. Belay there. Ready about! Helm’92s a-lee! Mainsail haul! You have too valuable a cargo on board to run into the Goodwins or the Skerries.

Star of peace! beam o’92er the billow,

Bless the soul that sighs for thee;

Bless the sailor’92s lonely pillow,

Far, far at sea.

Here, at Capernaum, the Arabs having in their arms carried us ashore to the only place where our Lord ever had a pastorate, we stepped amid the ruins of the church where he preached again and again and again; the synagogue, whose rich sculpturing lay there, not as when others see it in spring-time covered with weeds and loathsome with reptiles, but in that December weather completely uncovered to our agitated and intense gaze. On one stone of that synagogue is the sculpturing of a pot of manna, an artistic commemoration of the time when the Israelites were fed by manna in the wilderness, and to which sculpturing, no doubt, Christ pointed upward, while he was preaching that sermon on this very spot, in which he said: ’93Not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever.’94 Wonderful Capernaum. Scene of more miracles than any place in all the earth! Blind eyes kindling with the morning. Withered arms made to pulsate. Lepers blooming into health. The dead girl reanimated.

These Arab tents which on this December day I find in Palestine, disappear and I see Capernaum as it was when Jesus was pastor of the church here. Look at that wealthy home’97the architecture, the marble front, the upholstery, the slaves in uniform at the doorway. It is the residence of a courtier of Herod, probably Chuza by name; his wife Joanna, a Christian disciple. But something is the matter. The slaves are in great excitement, and the courtier living there runs down the front steps and takes a horse and puts him at full run across the country. The boy of that nobleman is dying of typhoid fever. All the doctors have failed to give relief. But about five miles up the country, at Cana, there is a Divine Doctor, Jesus by name, and the agonized father has gone for him, and with what earnestness those can understand who have had a dying child in the house, this courtier cries to Christ: ’93Come down ere my child die!’94

While the father is absent, and at one o’92clock in the afternoon, the people watching the dying boy see a change in the countenance, and Joanna, the mother, on one side of his couch says: ’93Why, this darling is getting well; the fever has broken; see the perspiration on his forehead; did any of you give him any new kind of medicine?’94 ’93No,’94 is the answer. The boy turns on his pillow, his delirium gone, and asks for something to eat and says: ’93Where’92s father?’94 Oh, he has gone up to Cana to get a young Doctor of about thirty-one years of age. But no doctor is needed now in this house at Capernaum. The people look at the sun-dial to find what time of day it is, and see it is past noon, and nearly one o’92clock. Then they start out and meet the returning father, and as soon as they come within speaking distance they shout at the top of their voices: ’93Your boy is getting well.’94 ’93Is it possible?’94 says the father. ’93When did the change for the better take place? ’93One o’92clock’94 is the answer. ’93Why,’94 says the courtier, ’93that is just the hour that Jesus said to me ’91Thy son liveth.’92 One o’92clock!’94

As they gather at the evening meal what gladness on all the countenances in that home at Capernaum! The affectionate mother, Joanna, has not had sleep for many nights, and she now falls off into delightful slumber. The father, Chuza, the Herodian courtier, worn out with anxiety as well as by the rapid journey to and from Cana, is soon in restful unconsciousness. Joanna was a Christian before, but I warrant she was more of a Christian afterward. Did the father Chuza accept the Christ who had cured his boy? Is there in all the earth a parent so ungrateful for the convalescence or restoration of an imperiled child as not to go into a room and kneel down and make surrender to the Almighty love that came to the rescue?

Do not mix up this case with the angry discussions about Christian science, but accept the doctrine, as old as the Bible, that God does answer prayer for the sick. That Capernaum boy was not the only illustration of the fact that prayer is mightier than a typhoid fever. And there is not a doctor of large practice but has come into the sick-room of some hopeless case and, in a cheerful manner, if he were a Christian, or with a bewildered manner if he were a skeptic, said: ’93Well, what have you been doing with this patient? What have you been giving him? The pulse is better. The crisis is past. After all, I think he will get well.’94 Prayer will yet be acknowledged in the world’92s materia medica, and the cry is just as appropriate now as when Chuza, the courtier from Capernaum, uttered in Christ’92s hearing: ’93Come down ere my child die!’94 If the prayer be not answered in the way we wish, it is because God has something better for the child than earthly recovery; and there are thousands of men and women now alive in answer to fathers’92 and mothers’92 prayers’97myself one of the multitude. For I have heard my parents tell how, when at three years of age, scarlet fever seemed to have done its full work on me, and the physicians had said there was no more use of their coming, and they had left a few simple directions to make the remaining hours peaceful; and according to the custom in those times in country places, the neighbors had already come in and made the shroud, the forlorn case suddenly brightened and the prayer, ’93Come down ere my child die!’94 was answered in a recovery that has not been followed by a moment’92s sickness from that time to this.

The mightiest agency in the universe is prayer, and it turns even the Almighty. It decides the destinies of individuals, families and nations. During our sad Civil War a gentleman was a guest at the White House in Washington, and he gives this incident. He says: ’93I had been spending three weeks in the White House with Mr. Lincoln as his guest. One night’97it was just after the battle of Bull Run’97I was restless and could not sleep. I was rehearsing the part which I was to take in a public performance. The hour was past midnight. Indeed, it was coming near to the dawn when I heard low tones proceeding from a private room where the President slept. The door was partly open. I instinctively walked in, and there I saw a sight which I shall never forget. It was the President kneeling before an open Bible. The light was turned low in the room. His back was turned towards me; for a moment I was silent as I stood looking in amazement and wonder. Then he cried out in tones so pitiful and sorrowful: ’91Oh, thou God that heard Solomon in the night when he prayed for wisdom, hear me. I cannot lead this people; I cannot guide the affairs of this nation without thy help. I am poor and weak and sinful. O God, who didst hear Solomon when he cried for wisdom, hear me and save the nation.’92’93 You see we do not need to go back to Bible times for evidence that prayer is heard and answered.

But some one may say that Christ at Capernaum healed the courtier’92s child, yet he would not have done it for one in humble life. Why, in that very Capernaum, he did the same thing for a dying slave, belonging to the man who had made a present to the town of the synagogue, among whose ruins I leaped from fragment to fragment. This was the cure of a Roman soldier’92s slave, whose only acknowledged rights were the wishes of his owner. And none are now so enslaved or humble or sick or so sinful but the all-sympathetic Christ is ready to help them. Hear it: Pardon for all; mercy for all; help for all; comfort for all; heaven for all! Oh, this lake of Galilee! What a refreshment for Christ it must have been after sympathizing with the sick, and raising the dead, and preaching to the multitudes all day long, to come down on these banks in the night-time and feel the cool air of the sea on his hot face, and look up to the stars, the lighted lamps around the Heavenly Palaces from which he had descended.

All heaven and earth were still; from the high host

Of stars to the hilled lake and mountain coast;

All heaven and earth were still, though not in sleep,

But breathless as we grow when feeling most.

’93But,’94 says some one, ’93why was it that Christ, coming to save the world, should spend so much of his time on and around so solitary a place as Lake Galilee? There is only one city of any size on its beach, and both the western and eastern shores are a solitude, broken only by the sounds coming from the mud hovels of the degraded. Why did not Christ begin at Babylon the mighty, at Athens the learned, at Cairo the historic, at Thebes the hundred-gated, at Rome the triumphant? If Christ was going to save the world, why not go where the world’92s people dwell? Would a man, wishing to revolutionize for good the American continent, pass his time among the fishing-huts on the shores of Newfoundland?’94 My friends, Galilee was the hub of the wheel of civilization and art, and the centre of a population that staggers realization. On the shore of the lake we sail today stood nine great cities’97Scythopolis, Tarichae, Hippos, Gamala, Chorazin, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Magdala, Tiberias’97and many villages, the smallest of which had fifteen thousand inhabitants, according to Josephus, and reaching from the beach back into the country in all directions. Palaces, temples, coliseums, gymnasiums, amphitheatres, towers, gardens terraced on the hillsides, fountains bewildered with sunlight, baths upon whose mosaic floors kings trod; while this lake from where the Jordan enters it to where the Jordan leaves it was beautiful with all styles of shallop, or dreadful with all kinds of war galleon. Four thousand ships, history says, were at one time upon these waters. Battles were fought there which shocked all nations with their consequences.

Here mingling blood with pure and sparkling foam,

In her last throes Judea fought with Rome.

Upon these sea-fights looked Vespasian, and Titus, and Trajan, and whole empires. From one of these naval encounters so many of the dead floated to the beach that they could not soon enough be entombed, and a plague was threatened. Twelve hundred soldiers escaping from these vessels of war, were one day massacred in the amphitheatre at Tiberias. For three hundred years that almost continuous city encircling Lake Galilee was the metropolis of our planet. It was to the very heart of the world that Jesus came to soothe its sorrows, and pardon its sins, and heal its sick, and emancipate its enslaved, and reanimate its dead.

And let the Church and the world take the suggestion. While the solitary places are not to be neglected, we must strike for the great cities, if this world is ever to be taken for Christ. Evangelize all the earth except the cities, and in one year the cities would corrupt the earth. But bring the cities and all the world will come. Bring London, and England will come; bring Paris, and France will come; bring Berlin, and Germany will come; bring St. Petersburg, and Russia will come; bring Vienna, and Austria will come; bring Cairo, and Egypt will come; bring the near three million people in this cluster of cities on the Atlantic coast, and all America will soon see the salvation of God. Ministers of religion, let us intensify our evangelism. Editors and publishers, purify your printing-presses. Asylums of mercy, enlarge your plans of endeavor. And instead of this absurd and belittling and wicked rivalry among our cities as to which happens to have the most men and women and children, not realizing that the more useless and bad people a city has the worse it is off, and that a city which has ten thousand good people is more to be admired than a city with one hundred thousand bad people, let us take a moral census, and see how many good men and good women are leading forth; how large a generation of good children who will consecrate themselves and consecrate the round world to holiness and to God. Oh, thou blessed Christ, who didst come to the mighty cities encircling Lake Galilee, come in mercy to all our great cities of today! Thou who didst put thy hand on the white mane of the foaming billows of Gennesaret, and make them lie down at thy feet, hush all the raging passions of the world! Oh, thou blessed Christ, who, on the night when the disciples were trying to cross this lake, and ’93the wind was contrary’94 (after nine hours of rowing had made only three miles), didst come stepping on water that at the touch of thy foot hardened into crystal, meet all our shipping, whether on placid or stormy seas, and say to all thy people now by whatever style of tempest tossed or driven, as thou didst to the drenched disciples in the cyclone, ’93Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid.’94

Thank God that I have seen this lake of Christly memories, and can say with Robert McCheyne, the ascended minister of Scotland, who, seated on the banks of this lake, wrote in his last sick days, and just before he crossed the Jordan’97not the Jordan that empties into Galilee, but the Jordan that empties into the ’93sea of glass mingled with fire’94’97these sweet words, fit to be played by human fingers on tense strings of earthly lute or by angelic fingers on seraphic harps:

It is not that the wild gazelie

Comes down to drink thy tide,

But he that was pierced to save from hell,

Oft wandered by thy side.

Graceful around thee the mountains meet,

Thou calm reposing sea;

But, ah, far more’97the beautiful feet

Of Jesus walked o’92er thee.

O Saviour, gone to God’92s right hand,

Yet the same Saviour still,

Graved on thy heart is this lovely strand

And every fragrant hill.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage