The Holy Land

From the invasion of warlike Rome we turn to that “Peace and her huge invasion” which came to the Holy Land during the later days of the Roman Empire. Before the time of Constan...

THE shadow of death is always haunted. A strong and pure faith peoples it with angels, and is accompanied through its darkness by that Good Shepherd whose rod and staff comfort...

Nothing could better illustrate the completeness of the change through which Israel passed when she exchanged a nomadic for a settled life than the great importance which the id...

Mohammedanism is the religion which is everywhere in evidence in the East to-day. From the smart Turkish officer who drops in to smoke a cigarette with you in the tent after din...

Environment counts for much in national life. A country knows itself, and asserts itself, as in contrast with what is immediately over its border; or it retains connection with...

Nothing strikes one more than the contrast in Palestine between the vanishing of Hebrew buildings and the permanence of Roman ones. You have come here to a land which you know t...

To tell even in barest outline the long story of the Crusades would be a task as impossible as it would be thankless. The magic of Sir Walter Scott’s _Talisman_ is happily not y...

We now turn sharply to the other side of things, and it must be apparent to every one that we are passing from the smaller to the vastly greater element in the spirit of Syria....

Keeping in mind our view of Palestine as an oasis, we naturally turn at once to the thought of the waters that have retrieved it from the desert. By far the most conspicuous of...

Every writer about Palestine speaks of the smallness and concentration of the land, yet these take the best informed by surprise. It is “the least of all lands” indeed, when one...

One easily forgets, among the many sorrows of the Holy Land, that there is any lighter side to the picture there. Yet such a side there is, and always has been. Nature is not al...

Every land has a scheme of colour of its own, and while form and outline are the first, they are not the most permanent nor the deepest impressions which a region makes upon its...

It is a sad view of the spirit of Syria which the last chapters have offered, yet it is but too true. We must linger yet a little longer listening to “the sob of the land” befor...

In regard to the future of Palestine the outlook of different writers varies perhaps as much as upon any similar question that could be named. Every one is familiar with the Uto...

Every traveller is impressed by the very meagre remains of a material kind which Israel has left for curious eyes. In a museum at Jerusalem many of these have been gathered--fra...

A journey through the Holy Land may reasonably be expected to be in some sort a sacramental event in a man’s life. Spiritual things are always near us, and we feel that we have...

In the first and second parts of this book we have been collecting impressions of the Land and its Invaders. It remains for us in the third part to gather these together into so...

Since the days of the ancient Canaanites Palestine has been often invaded. The composite life of the towns we have already noted. The history of Palestine shows how composite th...