by what human means He could have escaped from the hands of a people who had been 
infuriated to the degree of forcing Him to the edge of the precipice. “ He, passing through 
the midst of them, went his way,” seems the language of innate power. We hear of no 
argument or remonstrance from our Lord. He allows the popular rage to act, up to the 
precise moment when it appeared irresistible; and then convinces His enemies at once of His 
divine authority and of their crime, by calmly returning through them, now consciously 
unable to arrest His steps, and leaving them behind, in astonishment and awe. It is also 
observable, that the twofold clearance of the Temple, at the beginning and the close of our 
Lord’s ministry, is an example of silence on the subject of miracle, though both must have 
been acts of miraculous will; for what individual means could have driven out the whole 
multitude of money-changers, and the sturdy peasantry and cattle-dealers of Judea, from 
the court of the Temple? or what other rebuker would not have been trampled or slain by 
that furious multitude ? 
FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN, NAZARETH. 
As this is the only fountain in Nazareth, it is held in great respect by the Christians, 
not merely as important to the supply of water to the town, but in the belief that to this 
fountain the Mother of our Lord must constantly have come. 
“ The figures introduced were all drawn on the spot, and convey an accurate repre¬ 
sentation of the female costume of Nazareth. Round the face, and hanging down on each 
side, they wear rows of gold and silver coins, which relieved by their jet-black locks, have 
a remarkably graceful and novel appearance to the European eye. The younger women 
were in general remarkably beautiful; and as they pei’ceived in this instance that the 
strangers were Christians, they made no attempt to conceal their faces.” 1 
The source is under the Greek Church of the Assumption, eight or tens rods farther 
north; and thence the little stream is conducted by a rude aqueduct of stone, over which an 
arch is turned, where it pours its scanty waters into a sculptured marble trough, perhaps 
once a sarcophagus. The Church is built over the source; as the spot where, the Greeks 
say, the Virgin was saluted by the Angel Gabriel. The aqueduct seems to have existed in 
Pococke’s day. In the century before, travellers speak of a reservoir here, of which there 
•is now no trace. In summer the Fountain dries up, and water must be brought from a 
distance. 2 
; Roberts’s Journal. 
2 Biblical Researches, iii. 188. 
