Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/50

36 subdue the children of the desert, and make their roving-ground as safe from robbers as the sea is from pirates — it must be by the pressure of something stronger than Egyptian or Turkish power. This is a matter which concerns, not England alone, but all commercial nations as well, which have communication with the far East, and which, coming and going, have to traverse these desolate plains, that have been given up hitherto, in more senses than one, to the spirit of destruction.

And perhaps it would not be impertinent to inquire just at this time, whether Christendom has any rights in the East which Moslems are bound to respect? It is not a pleasant thing for the English or American traveller to find the land which was the cradle of his religion under the dominion of the Turk; to have the burial-place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob covered by a mosque, which no Christian may enter; to see the Mosque of Omar standing on the ancient site of the Temple of Solomon; and to find even the spots connected with the life and death of our Saviour — the place of His birth in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and of His burial in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem — guarded by those who despise the very name of Christ.

Now we do not propose to preach a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; but we may be permitted to rejoice when, in the course of events, an end can be put to the humiliations of centuries. This can only be by a manifestation of superiority so great as to compel Arab and Turk to treat Christian powers and Christian peoples with common decency and respect. For we may as well understand first as last, that however much may be said of Oriental hospitality, yet to all true Mussulmans, in their hearts the foreigner, the Giaour, is an object of hatred, whom it would be doing God service to destroy. The