distant harvest of the Gentile world, which, with each successive turn of the conversation, unfolded itself more and more distinctly before Him, as he sate absorbed in the opening prospect, silent amidst His silent and astonished disciples.

The natural growth of the discourse on the Bread of Life from the multiplied bread in the Desert is too obvious to need any explanation. The loud cry in the court of the Temple on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles,† must refer to the spring in the heart of the Temple rock, from which flows the living water into the two pools of Siloam, whence on that day the water was brought to the Temple service. The declaration, "I am the light of the world," has, with great probability, been referred to the lighting up the colossal candlestick in the same festival; the more remarkable in the profound darkness which then, as now, reigned through the night of an Oriental town. The "whited sepulchres," beautiful without, but within full of dead men's bones,§ are often supposed to be illustrated by the whitewashed domes, which in Egypt and Syria always mark the tombs of Mussulman saints. But these are all modern, and there can be little doubt that the real explanation must be sought in the ornaments, and possibly the paintings, now disappeared, of the vast array of sepulchres with which the hills and valleys about Jerusalem are perforated, and some of which, if the discourse was spoken in

the Temple, may have been visible at the moment in the Valley of the Kedron.

These are perhaps all the allusions that can be traced in the special scenes of the lesser discourses. But we naturally ask whether, in the greatest of all, the Sermon on the Mount, any such can be discovered, spoken as it was, if not on the very mountain now pointed out in the plain of Hattîn, yet certainly on one of the heights of the western shore of the lake, and therefore commanding a view in its essential features common to all of them, and well known to us now.

One of the most striking objects in the prospect from any of these hills, especially from the traditional Mount of the Beatitudes, is the city of Safed, placed high on a bold spur of the Galilean AntiLebanon. If any city or fortress existed on that site at the time of the Christian era, it is difficult to doubt the allusion to it, in "the city lying' on the mountain top.' The only other that could be embraced within the view of the speaker would be the village and fortress of Tabor, which would be distinctly visible from the Mount of the Beatitudes, though not from the hills on the lake side. Either or both of these would suggest the illustration, which would be more striking from the fact, that this situation of cities on the tops of hills is as rare in Galilee as it is common in Judæa.

The most remarkable appeal to nature which occurs in the whole of the New Testament, is found

* Matt. v. 14.

MOUNT TABOR.

in this discourse :-" Behold the fowls of the air," and "Consider the lilies of the field."* The flocks of birds in the neighbourhood of Gennesareth have been already observed. Their number, their beauty, their contrast with the busy stir of sowing and reaping, and putting into barns, visible in the plain below, must have always attracted observation. What the especial flower may be which we translate "lily," it is impossible precisely to determine. The only "lilies" which I saw in Palestine in the months of March and April were large yellow water-lilies, in a spring near the Lake of Merom. But if, as is probable, the name may include the numerous flowers of the tulip kind, which appear in the early summer, or the autumn of Palestine, the expression becomes more natural, the red and golden hue more fitly suggesting the comparison with the proverbial gorgeousness of the robes of Solomon. The brilliant flowers of Palestine are one of the most attractive features of its scenery, and the wide expanse which they cover at once places them on a level with the grass of the field," which might be cut down in a moment to feed the oven in a country where fuel was

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scarce.

The image with which, both in St. Matthew and St. Luke, the discourse concludes, is one familiar to all eastern and southern climates,-a torrent, suddenly formed by the mountain rains, and sweeping away all before it in its descent through what a few

*Matt. vi. 26, 28.