Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/534

518 in the north. Nor was it in the neighborhood of His own city of Nazareth, nor equally diffused over the Galilæan provinces from east to west, but was almost confined, or most largely given, to the eastern district and the close neighborhood of the Galilæan sea. Here and hereabouts we have the principal specific narratives of the calling of the Apostles, to the number, apparently, of six. Here lay the chief scene of our Lord's active ministry: here was delivered the Sermon on the Mount. It was not only from the eastern or Galilæan side of this sea, but from Decapolis also He was followed by great multitudes; and of Decapolis Gadara and its district were an important, and were also the nearest, part. And the fact that our Saviour selected Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum for the denunciation of the woes, on account of the privileges that they had enjoyed, at once denotes the scenes of His habitual preaching, and bears appalling testimony to its rejection. Dr. Edersheim places a group of the miracles to the east of the sea of Galilee in "a semi-heathen population," lying much beyond Gadara. But he includes the eastern shores of the lake in the country which he describes as the principal seat of Jewish nationalism. This perhaps was "Galilee of the Gentiles. Nor did our Lord wholly avoid the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, Matt-xv, 21; Mark vii, 24. where there were Jews in considerable numbers: but the contrast between these towns and those before named proves the comparative rarity of His visits. If they were also rare in Decapolis," through the midst of the coasts of which " He came, we must recollect that this district, constituted under Greek authority, included Damascus and other Gentile cities. We know very well that Hebraic settlement and influence were not in our Lord's time confined to the western side of the Lake of Tiberias; for the town of Gamala on its eastern side (see Robinson's map) was sternly Jewish in the final struggle, which was also sustained by multitudes, so says Josephus, from Peræa as well as other parts of Palestine; Peræa being regularly reckoned as part of Palestine by the Rabbis.

We need not doubt that there was a variable Syrian infusion in the population of this country. But we have to bear in mind that Gadaris and all its neighborhood formed part of the old promised land, and that, accordingly, the law of Moses had been in force there from a date running back fifteen hundred years; except, perhaps, at the comparatively recent period at which it had been reckoned for a time as a Syrian city. The right general