a little village on a swell of
rising ground, built for their farm hands by the rich Greeks who have
bought the land and brought it under cultivation,--an air so pure and
soft that it is like a caress,--all seems to speak a language of peace
and promise, as if one of the old prophets were telling of the day when
Jehovah shall have compassion on His people Israel and restore them.
"They that dwell under His shadow shall return; they shall revive as
the grain, and blossom as the vine: the scent thereof shall be as the
wine of Lebanon."

It is, indeed, not impossible that wise methods of colonization, better
agriculture and gardening, the development of fruit-orchards and
vineyards, and above all, more rational government and equitable
taxation may one day give back to Palestine something of her old
prosperity and population. If the Jews really want it no doubt they can
have it. Their rich men have the money and the influence; and there are
enough of their poorer folk scattered through Europe to make any land
blossom like the rose, if they have the will and the patience for the
slow toil of the husbandman and the vine-dresser and the shepherd and
the herdsman.

But the proud kingdom of David and Solomon will never be restored; not
even the tributary kingdom of Herod. For the land will never again stand
at the crossroads, the four-corners of the civilized world. The Suez
Canal to the south, and the railways through the Lebanon and Asia Minor
to the north, have settled that. They have left Palestine in a corner,
off the main-travelled roads. The best that she can hope for is a
restoration to quiet fruitfulness, to placid and humble industry, to
olive-crowned and vine-girdled felicity, never again to power.

And if that lowly re-coronation comes to her, it will not be on the
stony heights around Jerusalem: it will be in the Plain of Sharon, in
the outgoings of Mount Ephraim, in the green pastures of Gilead, in the
lovely region of "Galilee of the Gentiles." It will not be by the sword
of Gideon nor by the sceptre of Solomon, but by the sign of peace on
earth and good-will among men.

With thoughts like these we make our way across the verdurous inland sea
of Esdraelon, out of the Old Testament into the New. Landmarks of the
country of the Gospel begin to appear: the wooded dome of Mount Tabor,
the little village of Nain where Jesus restored the widow's only son.
(Luke vii: 11-16.) But these lie far to our right. The beaco