THE VILLAGES OF THE BIBLE: DESCRIPTIVE, TRADITIONAL, AND MEMORABLE. Sabbath Ebening Lectures in Brightou. AUTHOR OF 66 BY REV. PAXTON HOOD, 'DARK SAYINGS ON A HARP," THE PEERAGE OF POVERTY," ETC., ETC. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, PATERNOSTER ROW. MDCCCLXXIV. BV 4253 H66 X HARVARD UNIVERSITY Petschek Watson and Hazell, Printers, London and Aylesbury, PREFACE. THESE Lectures are familiar conversations with my old congregation at Brighton on the Sabbath evenings of the winter of 1872. They are an attempt to realize, so far as the brief time permitted to a Sabbath evening service, and the superficial character of public speech would permit the realization,-of some of the village scenes of the Holy Land. One of the most luminous works on Sacred Geography is the production of a stay-at-home traveller; I may therefore plead a good example for my temerity in attempting to familiarize the minds of my hearers with scenes I have never witnessed, and it is most probable now, never shall witness,—I scarcely desire to do so! The nineteenth century dispels the illusions of the past; and perhaps I have a better idea of the country of Abraham and Jacob, of David and our Saviour, in the mere exercise of the imagination on the scenes described by the old travellers; than if I loitered along highways, whose romantic solitudes have now vanished before the spirit of the age, and its perpetually-renewed exodus of excursionists. |