A hasty and general survey of the site of Nazareth produces the impression that it contains no cliff down which Jesus could have been “cast headlong.” The town lying along the lower slope of the hill, no steep declivity is visible. But a more careful examination corrects the error and confirms the narrative of the evangelist. I found two or three precipitous walls of rock of thirty or forty feet in depth. One of them had a considerable accumulation of debris at the bottom which if cleared away would probably give twenty feet more. Dean Stanley’s remarks are well worth quoting. “‘They rose’ it is said of the infuriated inhabitants of the city, ‘and cast Him out of the city, and brought Him to a brow of the mountain on which the city was built, so as to cast Him down the cliff.’[241] Most readers probably imagine a town built on the summit of a mountain, from which summit the intended precipitation was to take place. This, as I have said, is not the situation of Nazareth, yet its position is in strict accordance with the narrative. It is built upon, that is on the side of ‘a mountain,’ but the brow is not beneath but over the town, and such a cliff as is here implied is to be found in the abrupt face of the limestone rock, about thirty or forty feet high, overhanging the Maronite convent at the south-west extremity of the town.” To gain a true idea of the scenes amidst which the first thirty years of our Lord’s earthly life were passed we must climb the hills which rise above the town. There is very little in the Nazareth of to-day to recall that of eighteen hundred years ago. Not a single building is now standing which was standing then. It is even doubtful whether the site remains unaltered: and we know that important changes have passed over the scenery of the neighbourhood. The soil has lain fallow and unproductive for centuries. A silent, unpeopled solitude stretches for miles around us. But in our Lord’s days Galilee was like a garden in its luxuriant fertility. The hills, now so bare and barren, were terraced and cultivated to their very summits. A numerous and thriving population occupied the soil. “The little hills rejoiced on every side; the pastures were clothed with flocks; the valleys also were covered over with corn.”[242] But amidst all these changes the great natural landmarks remain the same. As we stand on the ridge which rises just above the town, we know that we tread on the very spots where Jesus of Nazareth often walked, and that we look on the landscape which was beneath His eye. The hills, the valleys, the sea, the plains make up a scene of surpassing beauty, the main features of which are unaltered by the lapse of centuries. Below us lies the little town in the peaceful seclusion of its quiet valley—far from the busy crowd, aside from the thronged highways. On the west the sun is sinking down into the sea, leaving a broad line of light across the Mediterranean. Hermon, on the