Tradition, History and Fact

       Are the places that I see in Palestine and Syria and the Mediterranean isles the genuine places of Christly, patriarchal and apostolic association? Many of them are not, and many of them are. We have no sympathy with the bedwarfing of tradition. There are traditions contradicted by their absurdity, but if for several generations a sensible tradition goes on in regard to events connected with certain places, I am as certain of the localities as though pen and document had fixed them. Indeed, sometimes tradition is more to be depended on than written communication. A writer may, for bad purposes, misrepresent, misconstrue, misstate, but reasonable traditions concerning places connected with great events are apt to be true. I have no more doubt concerning the place on which Christ was crucified, or in which Christ was buried, than I have about the fact that our Lord was slain and entombed. But suppose traditions contradict each other? Then try them, test them, compare them as you do documents. It is no more difficult to separate traditions, true and false, than apocryphal books from inspired books. Do not use the word tradition as a synonym for delusion. There is a surplus of Christian infidels traveling the Holy Land who are from scalp to heel surcharged with unbeliefs. A tradition may be as much divinely inspired as a book. The scenery of Palestine is interjoined, intertwisted and interlocked with the Scriptural occurrences. The learned Ritter, who has never been charged with any weakness of incredulity, writes: "No one can trace without joy and wonder the verification which geography pays to the history of the Holy Land."

       When the brilliant Renan went to Palestine he was stuffed with enough incredulity to make a dozen Thomas Paines, and yet he gives the following experience: "The marvelous harmony of the evangelical picture with the country which serves as its frame, were to me a revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth gospel, mutilated but still legible; and ever afterwards, in the recitals of Matthew and Mark, instead of an abstract being that one would say had never existed, I saw a wonderful human figure live and move." So said an unbeliever. In this, my visit to Palestine, in the year of our Lord 1889-90, I also find the landscape a commentary. The rivers, the mountains, the valleys, the lakes, the rocks, the trees, the costumes of the Holy Land, agree with Matthew and Mark and Luke and John. The geography and topography are the background of the Gospel pictures. They carry a different part of the same song. Admit Palestine and you admit the New Testament. A distinguished man, years ago, came here and returned, and wrote: "I went to Palestine an infidel, and came home a Christian." My testimony will be, that I came to Palestine a firm believer in the Bible, and return a thousand-fold more confirmed in the Divinity of the Holy Scriptures.

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