Nazareth, Palestinedetails

NAZARETH, PALESTINE—Few Oriental towns are so attractive to look upon as Nazareth, especially in March and April, for then the combination it presents of white-walled houses and bright green foliage is charming. Most of its inhabitants are prosperously engaged in farming, and their costumes are very showy and elaborate. On festal days the women wear gay, embroidered jackets, and have their foreheads and breasts almost covered with coins. The traveler can see in Nazareth the reputed sites of all the events recorded in the Bible as having taken place there. There, for example, is the Church of the Annunciation, supposed to contain the very localities where the angel stood while uttering to Mary his glad tidings, and there Mary herself stood during the Annunciation. Besides this, one may see the sight of the Virgin’s House; the Workshop of Joseph; the Synagogue in which Christ is said to have taught; and the “Table of Jesus,” which is a broad flat rock, on which Christ is said to have dined with his disciples after the resurrection.

Whatever may be thought of the authenticity of these places, there is one object just outside the town of whose antiquity there can be no question. It is a copious spring of water gushing from teh hillside, and Nazarene women may be constantly seen filling their pitchers with the precious liquid. As this is the only spring that Nazareth possesses, it is almost certain that Mary and the child Jesus must often have resorted thither in much the same way that Syrian mothers and their children visit the place to-day. Jerusalem is of course the supreme point of interest in teh Holy Land, but no Christian traveler will omit, if possible, this little town of Nazareth. where Jesus passed his childhood and early manhood, as “he increased in wiseom and stature and in favor with God and man.”