t coveted corner of the earth, contending for its possession:
and the fury of their fighting has swept the fields as with fire.
Temples and palaces have vanished like tents from the hillside. The
ploughshare of havoc has been driven through the gardens of luxury.
Cities have risen and crumbled upon the ruins of older cities. Crust
after crust of pious legend has formed over the deep valleys; and
tradition has set up its altars "upon every high hill and under every
green tree." The rival claims of sacred places are fiercely disputed by
churchmen and scholars. It is a poor prophet that has but one birthplace
and one tomb.

And now, to complete the confusion, the hurried, nervous, comfort-loving
spirit of modern curiosity has broken into Palestine, with railways from
Jaffa to Jerusalem, from Mount Carmel to the Sea of Galilee, from Beirut
to Damascus,--with macadamized roads to Shechem and Nazareth and
Tiberias,--with hotels at all the "principal points of interest,"--and
with every facility for doing Palestine in ten days, without getting
away from the market-reports, the gossip of the _table d'hote_, and all
that queer little complex of distracting habits which we call
civilization.

But the Holy Land which I desire to see can be found only by escaping
from these things. I want to get away from them; to return into the long
past, which is also the hidden present, and to lose myself a little
there, to the end that I may find myself again. I want to make
acquaintance with the soul of that land where so much that is strange
and memorable and for ever beautiful has come to pass: to walk quietly
and humbly, without much disputation or talk, in fellowship with the
spirit that haunts those hills and vales, under the influence of that
deep and lucent sky. I want to feel that ineffable charm which breathes
from its mountains, meadows and streams: that charm which made the
children of Israel in the desert long for it as a land flowing with milk
and honey; and the great Prince Joseph in Egypt require an oath of his
brethren that they would lay his bones in the quiet vale of Shechem
where he had fed his father's sheep; and the daughters of Jacob beside
the rivers of Babylon mingle tears with their music when they remembered
Zion.

There was something in that land, surely, some personal and indefinable
spirit of place, which was known and loved by prophet and psalmist, and
most of all by Him who spread His table on the green grass