"Lower Galilee included the great plain of Esdraelon, with its offshoots, which run down to the Jordan and the Lake of Tiberias, and the whole of the hill country adjoining it to the north, to the foot of the mountain range. It was one of the richest and most beautiful sections of Palestine. With the exception of a few rocky summits round Nazareth, the hills are all wooded, and sink down in graceful slopes to broad winding vales of the richest green. The outlines are varied, the colours soft, and the whole landscape is characterized by that picturesque luxuriance which one sees in parts of Tuscany. Upper Galilee embraced the whole mountain range lying between the Upper Jordan and Phoenicia. It is the region to which the name of Galilee of the Gentiles' was given in the Old and New Testaments.1 The summit of the range is tableland, part of which is beautifully wooded with dwarf-oak, intermingled with tangled shrubberies of hawthorn and arbutus. The whole is varied by fertile upland plains, green forest glades, and wild picturesque glens, breaking down to the east and the west."2

His parents were Zebedæus and Salome. Their home, if the interpretation of the name Bethsaida (house of fish) can be trusted, was close to the water's edge. A short distance to the north of the supposed site of Capernaum is a beautiful little bay, with a broad margin of pearly sand. There is every reason to believe that this is the site of Bethsaida. No site along the whole shore seems so admirably adapted for a fishing town. Here is a bay sheltered by hills behind and projecting cliffs on each side; and a smooth sandy beach, such as fishermen delight to ground their boats upon. On this beach the child John doubtless might often have been seen gathering the pebbles and shells, playing in the sand, or launching on some little pool, his mimic boat. As he grew, he would pass many a happy day sailing on the lake, or engaged in taking the fish with which it Isa. ix. 1; Matt. iv. 15.

2 Rev. Professor J. L. Porter's Handbook, pp. 427, 440.

3 On a comparison of Matt. xx. 20, xxvii. 56, Mark xv. 40, xvi. 1, Salome must be regarded as the wife of Zebedæus. Most of the ancient traditions make her the daughter of Joseph by a previous marriage; i.c., the step-daughter of Mary the mother of the Lord. But according to Wieseler (Studien und Kritiken, 1840, iii.), she was the sister of Mary, making John a cousin of Jesus. Cave, in his Antiquitates Apostolica, refers to the opinion of Jerome as to the nobility of the family from which St. John sprang, giving this as the reason why he was known to the high-priest, and could introduce St. Peter into his judgment-hall: "Propter generis nobilitatem notus erat Pontifici et Judæorum insidias non timebat." Ho also refers to Nicephorus, who gives as a reason why St. John was known to the high-priest, that he had lately sold the estate left by his father in Galilee to the high-priest. (Cave, ii., p. 260.)

4 Robinson's Bib. Res., iii., p. 358. Prof. J. L. Porter, in Kitto's Bib. Cyc., Art. Bethsaida.

C

abounded. Although boats and fishermen are now rarely seen on its surface or along its shores, it was once covered with them, and populous towns dotted the whole region around. It is about fourteen miles long, and at the widest point nine miles broad. As seen from

any of the surrounding heights, it is described as a fine sheet of water,-"a burnished mirror set in a framework of rounded hills and rugged mountains, which rise and roll backward and upward to where hoary Hermon hangs the picture against the blue vault of heaven." To see it from one of its overhanging promontories, as the day breaks along the eastern mountains, and, one by one, the stars begin to fade, and every moment the scene shifts, and changes from bright to brighter, from glory to glory, the eastern cliffs throwing down their dark shadows on the bosom of the lake; and when the note of the lark rings out suddenly, silvery and joyous, as if from the very midst of the fading stars, and bird after bird, in rapid succession, commence their early matins, until the whole vault of heaven seems vocal with the invisible choristers,-it may doubtless well be pronounced "the very perfection of this style of beauty." In the crowded population of Galilee in the days of John, where, in a country scarcely thirty miles square, Josephus could raise in a few days one hundred thousand volunteers for the war against the Romans, this inland sea was the centre of a busy life, which must greatly have enhanced its attractiveness and interest. Nowhere else in the whole land, except in Jerusalem, could Messiah have found such a sphere for

1 Thomson's Land and Book, ii., pp. 71-78. Even the humorist, Mark Twain (Mr. Clemens), who writes so contemptuously of certain descriptions of the Sea of Galilee, which he quotes, seems himself to have been most deeply impressed with the scene at night: "Night is the time to see Galilee. Gennesaret, under these lustrous stars, has nothing repulsive about it. Gennesaret, with the glittering reflections of the constellations flecking its surface, almost makes me regret that I ever saw the rude glare of the day upon it. Its history and its associations are its chiefest charm in any eyes, and the spells they weave are feeble in the searching light of the sun. Then, we scarcely feel the fetters. Our thoughts wander constantly to the practical concerns of life, and refuse to dwell upon things that seem vague and unreal. But when the day is done, even the most unimpressible must yield to the dreamy influences of this tranquil starlight. The old traditions of the place steal upon his memory and haunt his reveries, and then his fancy clothes all sights and sounds with the supernatural. In the lapping of the waves upon the beach he hears the dip of ghostly oars; in the secret noises of the night he hears spirit-voices; in the soft sweep of the breeze, the rush of invisible wings. Phantom ships are on the sea, the dead of twenty centuries come forth from the tombs, and in the dirges of the night-wind the songs of old forgotten ages find utterance again. In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a religion able to save the world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage, and proclaim its high decrees" (Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land in the steamer Quaker City, pp. 512, 513).

His teaching and His miracles, where He could draw around Him the multitudes "from Galilee, from Decapolis, from Judæa, and from beyond Jordan"; and where "His fame" could spread "throughout all Syria." The traveller obtains the first glimpse of its waters, in their deep basin, six hundred feet lower than the Mediterranean, from the top of Tabor; and they lie open wide before him from the Mount of Beatitudes. Christ's residence and ministry on its shores, and its being the native region of so considerable a number of His apostles, have rendered it the most sacred sheet of water on the face of the globe.

That John's father was a man of worldly substance is evident from the fact, to which the sacred record refers, that he was assisted by hired servants in the management of his boats and the mending of his nets. The mention of his ownership of a house, and of the fact of his being personally known to the high-priest Caiaphas, all go to establish the fact of the comfortable circumstances, and respectable position of the family to which he belonged. His mother was an ardent and pious woman, who ministered to the wants of Jesus, and united in the purchase of the spices for his body, and, as appears from the few incidents related of her, was evidently possessed of more than ordinary energy of character. The family, although usually classed with fishermen,3 according to ecclesiastical tradition was of noble origin. Possibly, Zebedæus and his sons pursued fishing more for pleasure and recreation, than as a means of livelihood. It was, however, a Hebrew custom for the sons of the most reputable families to be trained up to some useful calling or trade. So little mention being made of the father, the presumption is not unnatural that he died not long after his sons James and John became the followers of Jesus. This may be the reason why the mother is so much more prominent in the gospel history, and may serve to explain the somewhat anomalous designation, "the mother of Zebedee's children; " that is, of the deceased Zebedee. 4

1 Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, pp. 319, 320.

Mark i. 20, μeтà тŵv Molwтŵv, "with the hired servants." Meyer, after Grotius, says it was only proof Zebedæus was not without means, that his sons could leave him with servants to complete the work in which they were engaged. Tà idia, in John xix. 27, means one's own things, i.e., possessions, property. Spec. one's own house or home. See Robinson's Lex. of N. T.; Xen. Hist., x., 5. If John owned a house in Jerusalem, that fact may have brought him into contact with the highpriest, or afforded an opportunity of his continuing an acquaintance which we suppose, as will be seen on a subsequent page, may have begun in his early youth. John xviii. 15.

3 The Rev. Francis Trench, in his Life and Character of St. John, quotes Chrysostom as speaking of St. John as sprung from a poor fisherman: Tarpòs ȧλiéws TévηTOS (Hom. I. in Johan.).

* Matt. xx. 20; xxvii. 56. Some have supposed that Zebedee became a follower