from Israel and Canaan the principles of our religion. Palestine
has been the mother-land of the religion of civilised man.

The geographical position of Palestine had much to do with this result.
It was the outpost of western Asia on the side of the Mediterranean, as
England is the outpost of Europe on the side of the Atlantic; and just
as the Atlantic is the highroad of commerce and trade for us of to-day,
so the Mediterranean was the seat of maritime enterprise and the source
of maritime wealth for the generations of the past. Palestine, moreover,
was the meeting-place of Asia and Africa. Not only was the way open for
its merchants by sea to the harbours and products of Europe, but the
desert which formed its southern boundary sloped away to the frontiers
of Egypt, while to the north and east it was in touch with the great
kingdoms of western Asia, with Babylonia and Assyria, Mesopotamia and
the Hittites of the north. In days of which we are just beginning to
have a glimpse it had been a province of the Babylonian empire, and when
Egypt threw off the yoke of its Asiatic conquerors and prepared to win
an empire for itself, Canaan was the earliest of its spoils. In a later
age Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians again contended for the
mastery on the plains of Palestine; the possession of Jerusalem allowed
the Assyrian king to march unopposed into Egypt, and the battle of
Megiddo placed all Asia west of the Euphrates at the feet of the
Egyptian Pharaoh.

Palestine is thus a centre of ancient Oriental history. Its occupation
by Babylonians or Egyptians marks the shifting of the balance of power
between Asia and Africa. The fortunes of the great empires of the
eastern world are to a large extent reflected in its history. The rise
of the one meant the loss of Palestine to the other.

The people, too, were fitted by nature and circumstances for the part
they were destined to play. They were Semites with the inborn religious
spirit which is characteristic of the Semite, and they were also a mixed
race. The highlands of Canaan had been peopled by the Amorites, a tall
fair race, akin probably to the Berbers of northern Africa and the Kelts
of our own islands; the lowlands were in the hands of the Canaanites, a
people of Semitic blood and speech, who devoted themselves to the
pursuit of trade. Here and there were settlements of other tribes or
races, notably the Hittites, who had descended from the mountain-ranges
of the