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A Series of Lessons in Mystic Christianity976
The Wilderness toward which Jesus diverted His steps, lay afar off from
the river in which the rites of Baptism had been performed. Leaving behind
him the fertile banks, and acres, of cultivated land, He approached the
terrible Wilderness which even the natives of that part of the country
regarded with superstitious horror. It was one of the weirdest and dreariest
spots in even that weird and dreary portion of the country. The Jews called
it “The Abode of Horror”; “The Desolate Place of Terror”; “The Appalling
Region”; and other names suggestive of the superstitious dread which it
inspired in their hearts. The Mystery of the Desert Places hung heavy over
this place, and none but the stoutest hearts ventured within its precincts.
Though akin to the desert, the place abounded in dreary and forbidding
hills, crags, ridges and canyons. Those of our readers who have ever traveled
across the American continent and have seen some of the desolate places of
the American Desert, and who have read of the terrors of Death Valley, or
the Alkali Lands, may form an idea of the nature of this Wilderness toward
which the Master was traveling.
All normal vegetation gradually disappeared as He pressed further
and further into this terrible place, until naught remained but the scraggy
vegetation peculiar to these waste places—those forms of plant life that in
their struggle for existence had managed to survive under such adverse
conditions as to give the naturalist the impression that the very laws of
natural plant life have been defied and overcome.
Little by little the teeming animal life of the lower lands disappeared,
until at last no signs of such life remained, other than the soaring vultures
overhead and the occasional serpent and crawling things under foot. The
silence of the waste places was upon the traveler, brooding heavily over
Him and all around the places upon which He set His foot, descending more
heavily upon Him each moment of His advance.
Then came a momentary break in the frightful scene. He passed through
the last inhabited spot in the approach to the heart of the Wilderness—the
tiny village of Engedi, where were located the ancient limestone reservoirs of