To this succeeded discussions on the value of the local traditions in reference to the scenes latterly associated with so much superstition and deceit; and the possibility of identifying them with the help of local topography and the sacred narrative. “‘Where,’ he asked me, ‘would you locate the scene of the ascension? Was it, or could it have been, on the traditional spot at the Church of the Ascension on the summit of Olivet? If you adopt this tradition, then how,’ he asked, ‘do you explain the words of the evangelist: “He led them out as far as to Bethany”?’ My reply was, ‘I do not admit the reality of the traditional site.’ He said this impressed himself very deeply when he crossed over the Mount of Olives to Bethany. He felt convinced that the scene of that wonderful last interview with the disciples was some spot near the village. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘our Lord took the disciples to a retired place, not in view either of Jerusalem or of the village of Bethany. Then,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘was there not some analogy between this scene and that of the transfiguration on a high mountain apart? Would not the solitude impress the disciples more forcibly with the glory of the appearance of the angels, and of his own close and immediate intercourse with the hosts of heaven?’ The thoughtfulness and depth of many of Mr. Nelson’s remarks upon the events of the life and death of Jesus often struck me. His visit to Palestine was brief; but he grasped in a very short time the most interesting and important points, and he connected them, with a kind of intuitive readiness and accuracy, with the events of the sacred narrative. He spoke on several occasions of the noble and yet very peculiar site of the Holy City, different in many respects from his previous ideas; but the moment he saw it, more deeply fixing in his mind the truth of the Psalmist’s words: ‘Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion.’ The view from the top of Olivet, and that from the old road which winds round and along its side from Bethany, was, he told me, to him by far the most instructive. ‘I read,’ he said, ‘the words of Jesus, when he looked on and wept over the city, with a feeling of their reality and wonderful vividness such as I had never experienced before.’ Another thing he observed more than once: ‘I was disappointed in the scenery of Palestine. I did not see, and I could not fully understand, the glowing descriptions in some parts of Scripture of its fertility and beauty. When I thought of England and Scotland, and compared their fertile lowlands and magnificent highlands with the bare plains and rocky hills of Judah, I felt much difficulty in divesting my mind of the idea that even the sacred writers indulged in exaggeration. But,’ he added, ‘I suppose my Western ideas were entirely different from theirs as to what are the elements of richness and grandeur.’ I reminded him of the words of Scripture: ‘A land of corn and wine and oil olive.’