Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/84

 high mountain in Galilee, and as Tabor answered perfectly to this very simple description, and was moreover interesting on many other accounts, both historical and natural, it was adopted for the transfiguration without any discussion whatever, among those on the spot. Still, to learned and diligent readers of the gospels, the inconsistences of such a belief have been so obvious, that many great theologians have decided, for the reasons here given, that the transfiguration must have taken place on some part of Mount Paneas, as it was called by the Greeks and Romans, known among the Jews, however, from the earliest times, by the far older name of Mount. On the determination of this point, more words have been expended than some may deem the matter to deserve; but among the various objects of the modern historian of Bible times, none is more important or interesting, than than that of settling the often disputed topography of the sacred narrative; and as the ground here taken differs so widely from the almost universally received opinion, the minute reasons were loudly called for, in justification of the author's boldness. The ancient blunders here detected, and shown to be based only upon a guess, is a very fair specimen of the way in which, in the moral as in the natural sciences, "they all copy from one another," without taking pains to look into the truth of small matters. And it seems to show, moreover, how, when men of patient and zealous accuracy, have taken the greatest pains to expose and correct so causeless an error, common readers and writers too, will carelessly and lazily slip back into the old blunder, thus making the counsels of the learned of no effect, and loving darkness rather than light, error rather than exactness, because they are too shiftless to find a good reason for what is laid down before them as truth. But so it is. It is, and always has been, and always will be, so much easier for men to swallow whole, or reject whole, the propositions made to them, that the vast majority had much rather believe on other people's testimony, than go through the harassing and tiresome task, of looking up the proofs for themselves. In this very instance, this important topographical blunder was fully exposed and corrected a century and a half ago, by Lightfoot, the greatest Hebrew scholar that ever lived; and we see how much wiser the world is for his pains.

Caesarea Philippi.—This city stood where all the common maps place it, in the farthest northern part of Palestine, just at the foot of the mountains, and near the fountain head of the Jordan. The name by which it is called in the gospels, is another instance, like Julias Bethsaida, of a compliment paid by the servile kings, of