One afternoon when we were driving about the busy semi-modern streets that lie outside the walls of Jerusalem we suggested to Jamil, our guide, that some afternoon we walk to Bethany. He answered briefly that it was too far and turned to call our attention to the well-equipped postoffice, the modern looking shops, the Italian hospital, the well-built hospices of the French, Italians and Russians which before the war were thronged at the feasts with devout pilgrims. There was an atmosphere of western life about the outer city. Signs over some of the shops looked amazingly like New York’s East Side. Books, pictures and maps, school supplies, men and boys’ clothing of every sort, girls and women on the streets dressed in European fashion, together with Cairo papers in French and English, helped us to see the trend of the new, growing city without the walls. The streets were wide and well kept. The church of St. George was an artistic, beautiful reminder of the reason why the word of the capture of the Holy City had been received with solemn joy in every English household. We passed the dignified Damascus Gate and the Sheep Gate before which camels knelt grunting and little groups of sheep huddled close each around its shepherd; lorries passed us on the road, then a motor taking General Storrs to confer with the High Commissioner on important business. We stopped to visit the British High School for girls, doing its work against great odds in a former German orphanage poorly equipped for school work. The girls of twelve nationalities with most excellent Ésprit de corps were studying there; the principal, a real educator, formerly head of the girls’ school at Beirut had wise, far-seeing plans for the future of the school and, through it, for the welfare of the city. As I listened to them I wished that my purse were well filled that I might make some of them possible now in the day of crisis when the whole future of Palestine is in the making. Surely there are new paths through old Palestine.

When we again entered the city through the Jaffa Gate it seemed centuries older than when we had left it, so great was the contrast between the air, sunshine, and breathing spaces outside the walls and the narrow, dark, and crowded little cobble-stoned alleys, shared by man and beast, where no full ray of sun ever shines. Only the flat roofs of the houses save the people within the city from life in a semi-dungeon. It was this plunge back into the city of age-old days and deeds that made us long the more to walk leisurely to Bethany and so, on Saturday night, we told Jamil we should not need him until Monday morning at nine.

We left the city just after noon on Sunday by St. Stephen’s Gate, stopping reverently for a few moments close by the steep hillside to think of the brave words of the young martyr as he looked into the hard faces of his accusers and his wonderful address, recalling to them each step of their history and the reason for each great defeat. We remembered the daring words: “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom you have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.” In fierce anger they ground their teeth and hissed their reproaches at him. But he did not even see them. Suddenly, looking up to heaven, they heard him saying, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man on the right hand of God.” It was enough. Seizing him, they rushed him through the narrow street and cast him out of the city. They laid their garments at the feet of a keen young man named Saul, who watched with approval as they hurled down upon their helpless, suffering victim the jagged stones of the hillside. But above the noise of their mutterings of revenge the young man Saul heard the words of prayer: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And again, “Lord, lay not their sin to their charge.” And Stephen died—but Saul never forgot.

From St. Stephen’s Gate the smooth, broad road makes a steep descent down to the valley of the brook Kedron, then it climbs again around the shoulder of Olivet, where we stopped to look back at the city with the dome of the mosque of Omar glistening in the sun. The air was clear and the hills, with the light, shifting clouds above them, changed color every moment. Jamil had told us that the hills about Jerusalem bore always “a luxuriant crop of stones” and his words seemed true indeed, a crop made even more abundant by the heavy shell-fire of the months past. Still, in little square patches between the ridges, men were plowing. One plowman had a thin, patient ox and a donkey together under what seemed a heavy yoke. Here and there thick vines leaned against sunny walls as in the days when Jesus used them for the text of His great sermon “I—the vine: ye—the branches. Without me, ye can do nothing.”

It was when we walked out a little from the main road to Bethany to look over into a deep valley that we saw a carpenter at work in his sunny yard, making yokes for the oxen. He worked deftly with his clumsy tools at his primitive bench. The court-yard was swept clean, save for the corner where the shavings fell. There were green things growing in a garden. After a moment a woman appeared in the doorway. She looked curiously at us but answered our smile. “Ing-leesh?” she queried. We shook our heads. “American,” we said very distinctly. The man at the bench turned quickly. A shower of words in the Hebrew tongue and a motion to wait answered us. The woman hurried into the house and was back in a moment with a photograph in her hand—a man, a woman, two children. The photograph was taken in New York! She pointed proudly to the word. As we were about to leave, being limited to conversation by means of nods, smiles and gestures only, a boy came from the rear of the house. He had great, dark, dreamy eyes, his head was a mass of thick curls, in his hands he had two irregular blocks of wood which he gave to his father. He smiled at us shyly, but turned to look again with frank interest and curiosity when his mother repeated the word American.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from this picture of the carpenter with his little son and the mother at the door, but there was no excuse for lingering. We could only hope that this young son of a carpenter might sometime know the story of that other Son, of whose early days in the village of Nazareth he served so forcibly to remind us.

It is not a long walk to Bethany, a little over four miles they told us, and we soon saw the low gray stone houses with their roofs of mud not far ahead. As we approached the village, a veritable host of children rushed to meet us, calling, with a score of accents, words supposed to be English. At first we covered our ears then motioned to one child to speak. We learned that they were offering their services as guides. The moment we appeared to understand, the babel began again. “Mary and Martha,” they called. “Simon-Lazarus, I will show.” When we spoke they listened, but only for a moment. “You cannot all be our guides,” I said. “If you all follow we will go back to Jerusalem and no one will have back-sheesh—not one. We shall not look at the house of Mary and Martha.” The tallest among them, a lad of fourteen, he told me afterward, evidently repeated our words and he emphasized them with a flourish of a stout cane which he carried. He showed us a soiled card with a name written upon it which he said was his. We chose him and one other guide, a little girl of six who had pointed to herself proudly, saying, “I know—I know, Mary—Martha—Lazarus.” At a word from a villager passing on his donkey the children scattered and it was a great relief.

Our young guide knew the method perfectly. Driving the dogs out of the way with his cane, he led us up a steep path to the house of a man who was a dwarf, badly crippled. He was to take us to the tomb of Lazarus which he did, when we had paid the piastres he asked. He insisted upon telling us the story before we went down the long winding stone steps worn smooth by the passing of men’s feet for centuries. He told it in very graphic fashion. We had only the dripping candles to light our way. Following him, we could hear his call at each turn, “Have care! Have care!” We decided not to make the entire descent of sixty steps but contented ourselves with looking down from the fortieth step into the black pit below. The air and sunshine were most welcome when we climbed back and, giving more piastres for the shepherds’ slings the old dwarf took from his pocket, we left him happy. We stood for a few moments at the entrance to the tomb, thinking of all that spot had meant in the centuries since it was recorded that, in warm human sympathy with the suffering sisters, “Jesus wept.”

We stood a long time on the wall of the ruins that covered the spot where the home of the three friends of Jesus had stood. It looked out over the valley on one side and toward Jerusalem on the other. Our guides, big and little, sat down on the stones and were silent. Nowhere in our journeys through Palestine did we trouble our souls over the arguments of men as to exact spots and identical places. If not to the place of this ruined wall, then to some spot near by Jesus came. Came to receive rest for His body and comfort for His soul. Came to forget for the moment Jerusalem with its noise and confusion, its need and its hate. Came to talk with one who seemed to understand and sympathize—and there were so few. What it would mean to us today if we could know the many things about which Jesus talked that have never been recorded for us! We remembered that it was from Bethany over the hills through which we had come that Jesus made his way to Jerusalem on the day when He found the colt and rode triumphantly through the streets to the temple, amidst the shouted hosannas and waving palms that filled the Pharisees with jealous anger. It was here that he may have spent the nights of that last crowded week until the night of the Supper when he sought the Garden. One could feel, standing there looking toward Jerusalem, something of the agonizing sorrow that swept over that household when they learned of the trial that was a mockery of justice and the condemnation of their beloved friend to death on a cross.

When we were ready to leave, the young guide asked if we would like to go into one of the houses and see the upper room where a guest may sleep. We hesitated to walk in this fashion into a home but he explained that we were sure of a welcome and a little back-sheesh would pay.

The upper room was a dean and quiet spot. There were small woven rugs, a cot with handmade covers spread over it. A bed roll stood in the corner. There was a heavy metal basin for washing and two lamps, ages old, filled with oil. The window was open toward the road that leads to Jericho. It was a place where one might rest his soul. “Many guests came to this room before the war,” said the boy, “the family is large. Some live far away in Damascus. They come for the feasts. But not since the war—there is not money and some have died.” The back-sheesh was accepted gratefully with many words of thanks by the two women below—one very young with a baby in her arms.

Our next stop was at the spot where once had stood the home of Simon the leper where a woman did the Great Teacher high honor as she broke her very precious box of alabaster and, in an abandonment of love and gratitude, poured the fragrant perfume over His head. We could hear the petulant voices of those who complained because the ointment had not been sold for a good price and the money given to the poor. But Jesus understood.

“This is all for Bethany,” said the guide of fourteen years. “It is not large and it is poor.” We did not need his words to make us realize it. The little girl who had called herself guide so proudly had not spoken a word, but, as she had climbed over the steep places, had waited patiently, had listened intently to the boy, and had given us at every turn a smile which we remembered for many a day, she had earned her fee. When she received it she ran madly toward a house near by and disappeared. The boy walked with us courteously to the edge of the village. In response to our query as to where he had learned English he said, “Off a merchant I worked for since I was six. He lives just outside the city.” The “off” with which he began his sentence sounded as though the merchant might at one time have lived in America.

At the outskirts of the village, where we had met them as we entered, were the children. They ran beside us shrieking “back-sheesh” and holding out their very dirty little hands. We shook our heads vehemently. It meant nothing. Then we stopped and reminded them that we had paid our two guides and all the people who had helped us, but that they had done nothing for us. “We are poor,” said a girl with a baby in her arms as though that were reason enough for her demand. I shall never forget the thin face, the piercing black eyes of a boy, perhaps ten. “America rich,” he said, “plendy, plendy, plendy money.” There was the deepest reproof in his voice.

“Some people are very poor,” I said, “the children cry for bread. In the winter they are very cold. There are many very poor people in America.”

“No,” said the boy stoutly, and I saw that he did not believe me, but he repeated what I had said to the others. It was very hard to refrain from giving them money, but we remembered the request that we should not help to train a new generation of beggars and steeled our hearts. When we started on again a few accompanied us but we paid no attention and one by one they dropped out, having followed us almost a mile. Some said good-bye cheerfully, others made gestures of disgust. One lone lad still walked patiently beside us. He had great hollows under his eyes and, now that we could see him separated from the others, we noticed how very thin and pale he was, how ragged and dirty. In his arms he carried a baby whose eyes were in a pitiable condition, one so swollen that it was entirely closed. He said faintly in a weak, tired voice, “back-sheesh—back-sheesh” over and over. He looked as though in dogged determination he would follow us back to the city gates. Unable to resist the pleading we yielded, gave him some coins, watched the light come into his eyes, saw him turn and make his way slowly back—one of these little ones who so easily perish while waiting for the coming of the kingdom of God—the kingdom that Jesus said was theirs. It may be that the school now being opened in the little village will help to bring them their rights.

When we told Jamil next day of the children he said, “Ah, that is why you should have me! The guide saves you. You should not go alone, and walking you cannot get away.”

“Where are the parents of these children,” we asked.

“Poor,” he said slowly, “very, very poor. Always poor and the war has made it very hard. It will be better now, but they have learned bad habits.”

A turn in the road and the village was entirely out of sight. We overtook a flock of sheep and for a time walked slowly behind them. The bleating of the lambs who seemed weary sounded like the voices of the children. The shepherd turned into a narrow path between the hills, called in clear, urging cadences, and the sheep followed him. We climbed up from the road and sat on the rocks under gnarled old trees. A tower on the mount of Olives stood out clear against the sky. We read aloud of the Holy City from the words of the prophets and the Psalms of David.

Night would soon steal down over the valleys, so reluctantly we moved on past a cluster of tiny stone houses, past the cemetery of the Hebrews, when, flying up the hill at reckless speed, shaking us rudely back from the past into the present, came a motor rushing toward Bethany. Bethany that seemed to be out of the world of motors! It was the doctor’s car from the hospital, they told us when we described it. Just before the road drops abruptly into the valley we stopped to look again at the City. There was always something strangely gripping in the sight. The words of Jesus wrung from Him as, in deep compassion that was agony, He looked at the City, feeling the weight of its sin, its pain, its need, came back to us—“O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” We hurried on through St. Stephen’s Gate.

On the hills it was light but in the narrow streets with their gateways and buttresses it was quite dark. We took out our faithful flashlights, and with our canes to help over the shadowed steps went rapidly up to the hotel that stood as a strong and sheltering friend in the faint glow that still lingered in the western sky.

“Not much in Bethany,” they said to us at the desk as they had said of Bethlehem. “Too far to walk for the few stone houses and the ruins.”

How could they know what we saw in Bethany? How could they know the overwhelming sympathy that surged in upon us as we stood on the walls of “the house of Mary and Martha,” looked upon the hills and valleys He saw in their purpling shadows, thought how much harder the friendship and fellowship of that home must have made it to remain true to the message that was to take Him to Jerusalem to die, thought of the short day of triumph, waving palms and lavish praise, thought of his youth and his glorious undaunted soul!

No, they did not know what we saw in Bethany.