But there is a sense in which this mournful silence and solitude are felt to be not inappropriate. There is nothing to distract our thoughts from that Divine Presence which here abode in human form. One great memory lingers undisturbed amongst these hills and valleys. The bustle of modern life and the squalid misery and degradation of the eastern peasantry would equally clash with the sacred, tender associations of the spot where “most of His mighty works were done,” most of His “gracious words” were spoken. The stage is empty, and there is nothing to prevent our peopling it with hallowed memories of Him who spake as “never man spake,” who was Himself “the way, the truth, and the life.” The contrast between the silence of Scripture as to our Lord’s life at Nazareth and the ample details which it gives of His life here is very striking. To mention them all would be to quote the larger part of the first three gospels and some of the most striking incidents of the fourth. He “dwelt in Capernaum” which was “His own city.”[249] On the shores of the lake He called Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Matthew to be His disciples.[250] In the villages and towns around it “most of His mighty works were done.”[251] In a mountain overlooking it, from a boat upon it, and in a town on its banks, He taught the people in His most memorable discourses.[252] Over its waters He often sailed, on them He walked, hushed its storm to a calm, and rescued His faint-hearted disciple who was sinking beneath them.[253] In a desert place on its shore he twice fed the assembled multitudes.[254] But space is wanting to enumerate all the mighty deeds and gracious words of which this hallowed spot was the scene, and which culminated in that affecting interview when He manifested Himself to His disciples after His resurrection and restored Peter to the place from which he had fallen in the apostolic band.[255] In the Old Testament the lake is known as the sea of Chinneroth, or Chinnereth, from a city which stood on its north-western shore.[256] Gennesareth is probably a Grecised form of the earlier name, though its etymology (_a garden of riches_) suggests a very suitable derivation. By this name or by that of the Sea of Galilee it is commonly known in the New Testament. John, writing after the city of Tiberias had risen to importance as the capital of Galilee, speaks of it as “the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias,”[257] a fact which is not without importance as fixing the date of his gospel.