original account written by a European (had such an account been possible) would have been entirely free from the supernatural element. As, however, no such document exists, we must make the best use of the genuine material available, discounting, as far as possible, the idiosyncrasies of the writer, and striving to form some kind of idea of the actual facts which he relates. In concluding these introductory remarks it may be noted that there is nothing in the life which we are about to study which would appear extraordinary or impossible if the events were supposed to have happened in our own times, so long as the scene was laid, not in Europe, but in Asia. So unchangeable is the East, that the sentiments of the modern Oriental reproduce, almost unchanged, the ideas and motives of the Jew of nineteen centuries since. The loss of the feeling of reverence which characterises the civilisation of the West has never occurred in the native home of the monotheistic faiths. Were Rabbi Jeshua to be re-born in the England of to-day it would probably be his fate to be imprisoned as a vagabond and an impostor; but were he, on the other hand, to revisit his native land he would find but little change in the character of the peasantry whom he loved, and but little loss of the religious instinct which is still distinctive of the reverent and reverend East. J RABBI JESHUA. CHAPTER I. HEBREW HERMITS. The Jordan valley-Hanan of Bethania Monasticism Political AN open river valley carpeted with luxuriant herbage and gay with wild flowers. On either side a steep shapeless ridge of dark grey limestone scarred with winter torrent beds and stained with rusty patches of colour. In the distance are black precipices of basalt and white peaks of marl worn by the rain into fantastic forms. A snowy mountain dome closes the view, a sky of burning blue arches it over. In the middle of the flat valley runs the great trench a mile wide and a hundred feet deep, which has been worn by the river. Steep B |