xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 349 



the chief priests and rulers of the city, and would 

 receive from them much attention and consideration. 

 He was in Jerusalem, when the most wonderful things 

 that had ever taken place in the world the life and 

 death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the 

 marvellous miracles that had been wrought by His 

 disciples were the common subjects of conversation, and 

 divided the community in opinion. But he left the 

 Holy City without any new insight into the faith which 

 he professed, without any enlargement of his spiritual 

 horizon. His mind was distracted and torn by doubts 

 and difficulties. Doubtless his curiosity was deeply 

 roused ; but he got no rest to his mind and heart. The 

 atmosphere of the Holy City at such a time especially 

 was unfavourable to the quiet meditation which clears 

 the inner eye, develops the spiritual life, and opens the 

 heart to receive the truth of God. Amid the noise 

 and confusion inseparable from the presence of such an 

 immense multitude, he could not gain sufficient calmness 

 and leisure to get the full good of the holy associations 

 by which he was surrounded, or a clear understanding 

 of the wonderful things that had lately happened and 

 were still happening in the city of his faith. But what 

 he could not obtain in the crowded city he found in the 

 lonely desert. Returning alone in his chariot, when he 

 reached the border of the Holy Land he sought to be- 

 guile the way by reading a scroll of the prophecies of 

 Isaiah. A spirit of inquiry had been stirred up within 

 him by his visit to Jerusalem ; and here, in the solitude 

 of the desert, with the great blue sky overhead, and the 



