indeed ignorant,--how can they be otherwise, while deprived of Christian
fellowship, or opportunities of public worship, excepting when they carry
their infants a long journey for baptism, or when the men repair
occasionally to the towns of Nabloos or Nazareth for trading business;
or, it may be, when rarely an itinerant priest pays them a visit?--still
they are living representatives of the Gentile Church of the country in
primitive days, down through continuous ages,--their families enduring
martyrdom, and to this day persecution and oppression, for the name of
Christ, in spite of every worldly inducement to renounce it. While we
Europeans are reciting the Nicene Creed in our churches, they are
suffering for it. They are living witnesses for the "Light of light, and
very God of very God;" and although with this they mingle sundry
superstitions, they are a people who salute each other at Easter with the
words, "Christ is risen," and the invariable response, "He is risen
indeed;" also in daily practice, when pronouncing the name of Jesus, they
add the words, "Glory to His name."

Besides all the above, they are in many things Protestants against Papal
corruption. They have no Vicar of Christ, no transubstantiation, no
immaculate conception, no involuntary confession, and no hindrance to a
free use of the Bible among the laity. For my part, I feel happy in
sympathising much with such a people, and cannot but believe that the
Divine Head of the Church regards with some proportion of love even the
humblest believer in Him, who touches but the hem of His garment.

In our conversation, before resuming the journey, I mentioned the
numerous villages that were to be found about that neighbourhood, utterly
broken up, but where the gardens of fig, vine, and olive trees still are
growing around the ruins. The people pointed out to me the direction of
other such, that were out of sight from our tents; and the Jew quoted a
familiar proverb of the country relating to that subject; also the Moslem
shaikh, with his son, joined also in reciting it:--

"The children of Israel built up;
The Christians kept up;
The Moslems have destroyed."

In saying this, however, by the second line they refer to the crusading
period; and by the last line they denote the bad government of the Turks,
under which the wild Bedaween are encroaching upon civilisation, and
devastating the recompense of honest industry from the fertile soil.