speakable shame and misery from the hands of brutal
enemies, to be stripped, bound, and marched away, for hundreds of
miles across the deserts, into the cold and dreary mountains of the
north of Assyria, there to live and die as slaves, and never again
to see their native land. And such a land as it was, and is still:
or rather might be still, if there were men in it worthy the name of
men. For of all countries in the world, that land of Israel is one
of the most rich and beautiful. The climate and the soil there is
such, that two crops can often be grown in the year, of almost any
kind which man may need; there are rich valleys well watered, where
not only wheat and every grain-crop, but the olive, and the fig, and
the vine, flourish in perfection; rich park-like uplands, where
sheep and cattle without number may find pasture; great forests of
timber, fit for every use; and all kept cool and fruitful, even
beneath that burning eastern sun, by the clear streams which flow
for ever down from Hermon. the great snow-mountain ten thousand feet
high, which overlooks that pleasant land. There is hardly,
travellers say, a lovelier or richer country upon earth, than the
land of Israel, from Hebron on the south to Hermon on the north; nor
a country which might have been stronger, and safer, and more
prosperous, if these Jews had been but wise.

It is, so to speak, one great castle, rising most of it two thousand
feet high, and walled in by God in a way as is seen hardly in any
other land. On the west lies the sea; on the south and on the east
vast wildernesses of sandy desert; and on the north, the mighty
mountains of Hermon and Lebanon, which no invading army could have
crossed, if the Jews had had courage to keep them out. And that,
the noble and divine Law of Moses would have given them. It would
have made them one free, brave, God-fearing people, at unity with
itself; and the promise of Moses would have been fulfilled--that one
of them should chase a thousand, and no man or nation be able to
stand against them. In David's time, and in Solomon's time also,
that promise came true; and that small people of the Jews became a
very powerful nation, respected and feared by all the kingdoms
round.

But when they fell into idolatry, and forsook the true God, and his
law: all was changed. Idolatry brought sin, and sin brought bad
passions, hatred, division, weakness, ruin.

The first beginning was, the breaking up of the