Los Angeles herald., 1910-01-01

! l9 PSs whom there was no guile,
| IsA. EsgMl expressed the contempt of
g8sshE5Slll the Galileeans for this
| little village where Jesus spent
thirty of the thirty-three years of his
| life Nazareth was despised for its
| meanness, for the crude manners of its
people and for its lack of appreciation
of the Roman civilization of the age
of Augustus. In fact Nazareth was
! nineteen centuries ago what "Podunk
! is to American comic papers of today,
and Nazarene was country jay.
1t was in this village that Jesus grew
| from infancy to the age of thirty years
that period of his life of which
| nothing is known save the incident of
| his visit to the temple in Jerusalem
when he was twelve years old. Here
it was that he was subject unto Joseph
and Mary and Increased in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God
and man"
And to Nazareth he came after his
ministry was begun and taught the
people in the synagogue, but his own
hoWnsmen refused to receive him, and
upon their threats to east him from
the cliff he removed his home to Ca
pernaum. 1t was to his old playmate
and childhood companions that Jesus
said, "A prophet is not without honor,
save in his own country and in his
own house"
But Nazareth which was despised in
that ancient day, and which rejected ITS
prophet, and which gave its name to
the epithet written on the cross where
Jesus died, was saved to the honor and
sanctity of centuries by those very
events 1t is today perhaps about the
same size as it was in the time of
Jesus 1t has about 10000 population,
of whom 1000 are Mohammedans and
5000 are Christians, mostly of the Greek
Orthodox faith. Nazareth is visited
annually by about a half million devout
pilgrims and after Jerusalem and Beth
lehem it is the most sacred city In the
Christian world.
1t is remarkable that only Nazareth
of all the cities of Gallilee has retained
through nineteen centuries it's popula-
tion and Importance. In the time OF
Christ it was comparatively small
| town, resting in a valley high on the
side of the hills, not far from the great
highway which crossed the Plain of
Esdraelon. and which was a great ave-
nue. connecting the Greek city of Ptole-
mais, now Acre, with the prosperous
Roman cities on the sea of Galilee. This
country was then prosperous and popu-
lous, it was cut by paved highways and
dotted with bustling cities. But all the
glory of that civilization has departed
Acre is a dirty Turkish mud hole. the
cities of the sea of Galilee are reduced
to shapeless heaps of broken stone, and
only Nazareth survives.
The town is built on the slope of
one of fifteen rounded peaks which
inclOse a semi-circular valley. It's
white stone houses, its church towers
and it's minarets present most pic
turesque appearance to the approach
ing traveller and the whiteness of the
picture gives promise of perfect clean
liness. Once in the town, however,
tl,N delusion is dispelled and there is
the natural and normal dirt and filth
OF Syrian cities. But Nazareth, even
more than other cities of Palestine,
seems to suffer the ravages of oph-
thalmia. Almost everyone in the
! streets has at least one blind eye, and
the number of the totally blind is ap-
palling. The mothers refuse to brush
the flies from the eyes of the babies
because they fear that should the chill
drcn be too clean and attractive they
would attract the evil eye of a strang-
er. Thus the poor babies are con-
demned by superstition to lives of
darkness. The English Protestant
missions here are doing a great serv-
ice in combating these superstitiQns,
in promulgating sanitary knowledge
and in the care and treatment of those
whose eyes already are diseased.
When Jesus lived in Nazareth the
strict sanitary laws OF the Mosaic
code were in force, and it is not prob
able that the people were so dirty as
they are today, just as it is probable
that the Jewish Nazarenes were su-
perior in learning to the Syrian Naz-
arenes of today. At the same time
there is good reason to believe that
the ordinary, everyday life of the peo-
pie of Nazareth in 1909 does not differ
materially from that of the fellow
townsmen of Jesus nineteen hundred
years ago.
All Nazareth gets water from one
bountiful spring, which is now known
as the fountain of the Virgin. This
fountain was the source of water sup
ply in Jesus day, and there can be no