at Rome and Ravenna, before Christian and Pagan Art were yet divided, the Jordan appears as a river-god, pouring his streams out of his urn. The first Christian Emperor had always hoped to receive his long-deferred baptism in the Jordan, up to the moment when the hand of death struck him at Nicomedia. The name of the river has, in Spain and Italy, by a natural association, been turned into a common Christian name for children at the hour of the baptism which served to connect them with it. Protestants, as well as Greeks and Latins, have delighted to carry off its waters for the same sacred purpose, to the remotest regions of the west. Of all the practices-superstitions, if we choose so to call them-of the Oriental Churches in Palestine, none is more innocent or natural than the ceremony repeated year by year at the Greek Easter-the bathing of the pilgrims in the Jordan. It has often been witnessed by European travellers. I venture to describe it from my own recollections, for the sake both of the general illustration which it furnishes of the present forms of Oriental Christianity, and also as presenting the nearest likeness that can now be seen in the same general scenery to the multitudinous baptisms of John.

Once a year-on the Monday in Passion Week -the desolation of the plain of Jericho is broken by the descent from the Judæan hills of five, six, or eight thousand pilgrims, who are now from all parts of the old Byzantine Empire, gathered within the walls of Jerusalem. The Turkish governor is

with them, an escort of Turkish soldiers accompanies them, to protect them down the deserthills, against the robbers who, from the days of the Good Samaritan downwards, have infested the solitary pass. It was for the purpose of defending the pilgrims down these passes that the nine knights banded together who formed the first nucleus of the Order of the Templars. On a bare space beside the tangled thickets of the modern Jericho, -distinguished by the square tower, now the castle of its chief and called by pilgrims the "House of Zacchæus," the vast encampment is spread out, recalling the image of the tents which Israel here first pitched by Gilgal. Two hours before dawn, the rude Eastern kettledrum rouses the sleeping multitudes. It is to move onwards to the Jordan, so as to accomplish the object before the great heat of the lower valley becomes intolerable. Over the intervening Desert, the wide crowd advances in almost perfect silence. Above is the bright Pascal Moon, before them moves a bright flare of torches, on each side huge watch-fires break the darkness of the night, and act as beacons for the successive descents of the road. The sun breaks over the eastern hills as the head of the cavalcade reaches the brink of the Jordan. Then it is, for the first time, that the European traveller sees the Sacred River, rushing through its thicket of tamarisk, poplar, willow, and agnus-castus, with rapid eddies, and of a turbid yellow colour, like the Tiber at Rome, and about as broad-sixty or eighty feet.

The chief features of the scene are the white

cliffs and green thickets on each bank, though at this spot they break away, on the western side, so as to leave an open space for the descent of the pilgrims. Beautiful as the scene is, it is impossible not to feel a momentary disappointment at the conviction, produced by the first glance, that it cannot be the spot either of the passage of Joshua, or of the baptism of John. The high eastern banks (not to mention the other considerations named before) preclude both events. But in a few moments the great body of the pilgrims, now distinctly visible in the breaking day, appear on the ridge of the last terrace. None, or hardly any, are on foot. Horse, mule, ass, and camel, in promiscuous confusion, bearing whole families on their backs-a father, mother, and three children, perhaps, on a single camel, occupy the vacant spaces between and above the jungle in all directions.

If the traveller expects a wild burst of enthusiasm, such as that of the Greeks when they caught the first glimpse of the sea, or the German armies at the sight of the Rhine, he will be disappointed. Nothing is more remarkable in the whole pilgrimage to the Jordan, from first to last, than the absence of any such displays. Nowhere is more clearly seen that deliberate business-like aspect of their devotion, so well described in Eothen, unrelieved by any expression of emotion, unless, perhaps, a slight tinge of merriment. They dismount, and set to work to perform their bathe; most on the open space, some further up amongst the thickets; some plunging in naked-most, however, with white

dresses, which they bring with them, and which, having been so used, are kept for their windingsheets. Most of the bathers keep within the shelter of the bank, where the water is about four feet in depth, though with a bottom of very deep mud. The Coptic pilgrims are curiously distinguished from the rest by the boldness with which they dart into the main current, striking the water after their fashion alternately with their two arms, and playing with the eddies, which hurry them down and across, as if they were in the Cataracts of their own Nile; crashing through the thick boughs of the jungle which, on the eastern bank of the stream, intercepts their progress, and then recrossing the river higher up, where they can wade, assisted by long poles which they have cut from the opposite thickets. It is remarkable, considering the mixed assemblage of men and women, in such a scene, that there is so little appearance of levity or indecorum. A primitive domestic character pervades in a singular form the whole transaction. The families which have come on their single mule or camel, now bathe together with the utmost gravity; the father receiving from the mother the infant, which has been brought to receive the one immersion which will suffice for the rest of its life, and thus, by a curious economy of resources, save it from the expense and danger of a future pilgrimage in after-years. In about two hours the shores are cleared; with the same quiet they remount their camels and horses, and before the noonday heat has set in, are again encamped on

the upper plain of Jericho.. Once more they may be seen. At the dead of night, the drum again wakes them for their homeward march. The torches again go before; behind follows the vast multitude, mounted, passing in profound silence over that silent plain-so silent that, but for the tinkling of the drum, its departure would hardly be perceptible. The troops stay on the ground to the end, to guard the rear, and when the last roll of the drum announces that the last soldier is gone, the whole plain returns again to its perfect solitude. A. P. Stanley.

XXIX.

ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S
NATIVITY.

THIS is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,

That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,

Wherewith He wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.