untain-shoulders, falling steeply away to the west, clad in the
emerald robe of early spring; this immense gulf at our feet, four
thousand feet below us, a huge trough of gray and yellow, through which
the dark-green ribbon of the Jordan jungle, touched with a few silvery
gleams of water, winds to the blue basin of the Dead Sea; those scarred
and wrinkled hills rising on the other side, the knotted brow of
Quarantana, the sharp cone of Sartoba, the distant peak of Mizpeh, the
long line of Judean, Samarian, and Galilean summits, Olivet, and Ebal,
and Gerizim, and Gilboa, and Tabor, rolling away to the northward,
growing ever fairer with the promise of fertile valleys between them and
rich plains beyond them, and fading at last into the azure vagueness of
the highlands round the Lake of Galilee.

Why does that country toward which we are looking and travelling seem to
us so much more familiar and real, so much more a part of the actual
world, than this region of forgotten Greek and Roman glory, from which
we are returning like those who awake from sleep? The ruined splendours
of Jerash fade behind us like a dream. Samaria and Galilee, crowded with
memories and associations which have been woven into our minds by the
wonderful Bible story, draw us to them with the convincing touch of
reality. Yet even while we recognise this strange difference between
our feelings toward the Holy Land and those toward other parts of the
ancient world, we know that it is not altogether true.

Gerasa was as really a part of God's big world as Shechem or Jezreel or
Sychar. It stood in His sight, and He must have regarded the human souls
that lived there. He must have cared for them, and watched over them,
and judged them equitably, dividing the just from the unjust, the
children of love from the children of hate, even as He did with men on
the other side of the Jordan, even as He does with all men everywhere
to-day. If faith in a God who is the Father and Lord of all mankind
means anything it means this: equal care, equal justice, equal mercy for
all the world. Gerasa has been forgotten of men, but God never forgot
it.

What, then, is the difference? Just this: in the little land between the
Jordan and the sea, things came to pass which have a more enduring
significance than the wars and splendours, the wealth and culture of the
Decapolis. Conflicts were fought there in which the eternal issues of
good and evil were clearly manifest. Ideas