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If faith in a God who is the Father and Lord of all mankind means anything it means this: equal care, equal justice, equal mercy for all the world. Gerasa has been forgotten of men, but God never forgot it. What, then, is the difference?
This statement was not very encouraging to me, but I had set my heart on reaching the Jordan by this route, so simply said, "Lead on." Several times I feared I had made a serious mistake, but having come thus far I could not go back. After we had passed through the old cemetery our ascent was gradual until we reached the modern village of Suf, three miles northwest of Gerasa.
It is possible, moreover, that Gergesa may have become Gerasa, a much more common name, and that the topographical impossibilities which this latter reading offered may have caused Gadara to be adopted. Cf. Orig., Comment. in Joann., vi. 24, x. 10; Eusebius and St.
Merrill gives six arguments in favor of his position, which, after my observations made in the place itself, I feel like accepting. If this were Ramoth-gilead, then how much of Bible story clusters about the spot! It was a "city of refuge"; and over these hills or up and down this valley rushed the accidental man-slayer to seek refuge within its gates from the blood-thirsty pursuer. Gerasa!
But at last, at half-past nine o'clock, after being in the saddle for nine hours, I am aroused from my stupor by a joyful exclamation from my dragoman. A few dim lights are seen, IT IS GERASA! My dragoman continued his exclamations of praise thus, "I thank my God for saving my life once more." I said faintly, "Why such words?"
Many accidents happened on the eastern side of the lake, on the spot where the swine belonging to the inhabitants of Gergesa cast themselves in, and also at Gergesa, Gerasa, and in the entire district of Chorazin. The mountain where the second multiplication of the loaves took place was shaken, and the stone upon which the miracle had been worked split in two.
I myself have drunk out of the fountain at Cibyra, and my brethren out of the other at Gerasa; and many testify the same thing of the river Nile in Egypt." Advers. Haeres, 1. 2, c. 130. Yet none of them have scrupled, we see, to pledge their faith for the truth, of facts which no man of sense can believe, and which their warmest admirers are forced to give up as fabulous.
What flash of wit amuses them, what nobly tragic word or action stirs them to applause? What problem of their own life, what reflection of their own heart, does the stage reveal to them? We shall never know. The play at Gerasa is ended. The lizard rested on the rock while I sat among the ruins; And the pride of man was like a vision of the night.
The reader must remember that in all this region there is not a road over which a carriage can be driven, save that quite recently a few trips have been made from Mezarib to Gerasa.
It is all unaccountable, unbelievable, the ghost of the dream of a dream, yet here it is, surrounded by the green hills, flooded with the frank light of noon, neighboured by a dirty, noisy little village of Arabs and Circassians on the east bank of the stream, and with real goats and lean, black cattle grazing between the carved columns and under the broken architraves of Gerasa the Golden.
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