the spirit and a short voyage in
the body. If you find here impressions that are lighter, mingled with
those that are deeper, that is because life itself is really woven of
such contrasted threads. Even on a pilgrimage small adventures happen.
Of the elders of Israel on Sinai it is written, "They saw God and did
eat and drink"; and the Apostle Paul was not too much engrossed with his
mission to send for the cloak and books and parchments that he left
behind at Troas.

If what you read here makes you wish to go to the Holy Land, I shall be
glad; and if you go in the right way, you surely will not be
disappointed.

But there are two things in the book which I would not have you miss.

The first is the new conviction,--new at least to me,--that Christianity
is an out-of-doors religion. From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem
(where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in
the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city
wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the
discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words,
from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples,
were spoken in the open air. How shall we understand it unless we carry
it under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship of nature?

The second thing that I would have you find here is the deepened sense
that Jesus Himself is the great, the imperishable miracle. His words are
spirit and life. His character is the revelation of the Perfect Love.
This was the something new and wonderful and welcome that came to me in
Palestine: a simpler, clearer, surer view of the human life of God.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

Avalon,
June 10, 1908.

CONTENTS

I. _Travellers' Joy_ 1

II. _Going up to Jerusalem_ 23

III. _The Gates of Zion_ 45

IV. _Mizpah and the Mount of Olives_ 67

V. _An Excursion to Bethlehem and Hebron_ 83

VI. _The Temple and the Sepulchre_ 105

VII. _Jericho and Jordan_ 125

VIII. _A Journey to Jerash_ 151

IX. _The Mountains of Samaria_ 191

X. _Galilee and the Lake_ 217

XI. _The Springs of Jordan_ 259

XII. _The Road to Damascus_