A ride of about fifty minutes brings us from Endor to NAIN. It is a small, poor village, standing on the shoulder of a hill, looking down on one arm of the Valley of Esdraelon. Not very far from Nazareth, and visible across the valley from the hill above the town, it is by no means improbable that our Lord may have known the young man and his widowed mother. If, as many suppose, He was Himself “the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,” a special reason for the miracle is at once discovered in His deep human sympathy with a case so like His own. A steep path leads up the hill side to a group of rock-hewn graves, marking the site of the ancient burial-place of the town. It was on this very path that our Lord saw the weeping mother and “had compassion, and said unto her, Weep not.” Turning to the bier, His word of pity became a word of power, and “He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him unto his mother.”[239] But a spot of yet deeper and more absorbing interest than any we have visited since we left Jerusalem draws us onward, and we hasten over the intervening space till we reach NAZARETH. Up among the hills to the north of the plain is a valley about a mile in length, and perhaps a quarter of a mile in breadth. Several smaller valleys run out from it, and at the junction of two or three of these it expands into a basin over which the hills rise to a height of four hundred or five hundred feet. “It seems,” says Dr. Richardson, rather fancifully, “as if fifteen mountains met to form an enclosure for this delightful spot: they rise round it like the edge of a shell to guard it from intrusion. It is a rich and beautiful field in the midst of barren mountains.” The bottom of the basin is bright with gardens and orchards, divided by hedges of prickly pear twelve or fourteen feet high. The town stands on the western side of the valley and rises a little way up the slope of the hill. It has a brighter, cleaner, and more prosperous look than any town we have seen since leaving Nablus. The population was estimated by Robinson at four thousand. It has increased since then, and is now probably about five thousand. Of these a large proportion are Christian in profession, though it is to be feared that their conduct is little in keeping with the pure and high morality of the gospel. Two large monasteries, one of the Greek, the other of the Latin rite, contain a large number of monks. A recently established Protestant mission seems to be efficient and successful.