Page:Domestic Life in Palestine.pdf/19

12 to the "rest prepared for the people of God," thy cities and mountains shall be dearer to the Christian than his native land or the home of his childhood.

The struggle raging to-day between rationalism and Evangelism imparts additional interest to the old geographical center of historic Christianity. He who represents the New Testament records as mere myths is confronted by the stubborn denial of the land itself, as it stands to-day, a monument and testimony to the literal accuracy of the Holy Book. Sacred names cling to the ruins that crown every hill-top. Caves, tombs, temples, mosques, fountains, pools, and roads, are burened with sacred associations. The land singularly retains its geographical conformation, its primitive and Scriptural modes of architecture, dress, labor, and social habits. It might easily have been utterly desolated and depopulated, and its remains scattered to the four winds. It might have been richly cultivated, and under the full flowing tide of civilization its traces of earlier times might have been completely covered up and rendered unrecognizable. But God has kept the land. Over the hills of Gibeon and the vale of Aijalon has the sun of progress stood still, and, while the rest of the world has been moving onward, Palestine yet lingers among the earlier centuries, and amidst its sacred and venerable scenes we feel the presence of an ancient dominion. The mummy wrappings of Mohammedan domination have providentially preserved it till this age of skepticism, that it may testify to the reality of a Divine revelation. It is a memorial land, seamed and scarred with the rough handling of centuries, but bearing still the legible imprint of the Divine finger. Its terraced hills yield a vintage of sacred memories. Its valleys