It is a book that deals with man as an immortal soul; making known the beginnings of the race; going back of the beginning to God, who is from "everlasting to everlasting," and who "in the beginning created the heaven and the earth"; revealing the creative purpose and loving grace of God; tracing the fall and deterioration of man, the divine interposition in human history, the preparation of a family, a race, a nation, and a world at large, for the coming of the Redeemer; revealing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; showing how the Christ came, what he did, what he said, what he resisted, what he endured, what he suffered, what he achieved; telling in simple way the story of the early church, from the little meeting of the bereaved disciples in the upper room to the magnificent consummation of Christ's coming, as seen in the prophetic visions of St. John on the Isle of Patmos.
It is a book full of history, of geography, of archæology, of prophecy, of poetry, of doctrine, of "exceeding great and precious promises."
In an important sense the foundations of this book are laid in human history and geography. However high toward the heavens it may reach in doctrine and promise, its foundations lay hold of the earth. If the children of Israel did not live in Egypt and Canaan and the far East, if the statements of their history as recorded in the book be not facts, if the story of Jesus Christ be false,—everything fails us. With the sweeping away of fact, we must also bid farewell to the words of doctrine and of promise here recorded; to the divine words of assurance which now give comfort to the penitent, hope to the despairing, strength to the feeble, and immortal life to the dying.
As we sit down on this side of the sea, it is well that we are able to look beyond the sea to the lands which gave to the world the book in our hands. And it is well, that, as we look, we are able to connect the book of to-day with those same lands as they now lie among the rivers and by the seaside, from the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates to the mouths of the Nile, from the palaces of Babylon to the dock at Puteoli and the prison at Rome. And it is well that the lands as they are found to-day correspond to the records of the Book as they were made centuries and centuries ago. The Book, on its human historic, geographical and archæological side, is true to the facts as in the nineteenth century they are presented to us in the lands of the East.
There are those who believe with firm faith, that, for these days of skepticism and of merciless and conscienceless historic criticism, the lands have been kept almost in their original condition, that the testimony of the modern skeptical traveler might (though unintentionally on his part, but necessarily) corroborate the teachings of the Bible. Have the mummy wrappings of Mohammedan domination held the far East unchanged through the centuries, that in these days of doubt the hills of Canaan, the plains of Egypt and the ruins of Mesopotamia might lift their voice in solemn attestation to the divine truthfulness of the sacred historians?
These lands are memorial lands. They are now what the Book says they once were. Although the sweeping away of ancient governments and the reign of anarchy have modified the face of the country, the evidences still remain that the most glowing descriptions of their prosperity were not exaggerated. Infidels have doubted, for example, whether Palestine could contain the immense populations which, in its prosperous days, according to the statements of the Book, were resident there. But scientists show that the soil of Canaan, under cultivation, is one of the richest and most fertile in the world. The broken terraces that may still be traced on the hill-sides, the walls of cities and other ruins that fill the land, sustain the account of the prosperous days and the immense populations of Bible times.
So little have the conditions of social life been modified, that one may live the old life over again in Canaan. Soil and scenery, the seasons of the year, Jacob's well and the Jordan, Ebal and Gerizim, the plain, the wilderness and the city, all give witness to the words of the Book.
The names of olden time still linger. One lands at Yafa, the "Joppa" of old; Jerusalem is now el Khuds,—"the Holy"; Bahr-lut—"the Sea of Lot"—is the Dead Sea in the Valley of Sodom and Gomorrah; Bir es Seba is the Beersheba of the olden time; el Azariyeh is Bethany, the home of Lazarus; Beit-lahm is still Bethlehem; and el Khalil—"the Friend"—is the name of Hebron, the home of Abram, "the Friend of God."
In the customs and costumes, in the habits of speech and the manners of the people, you read the same lesson. In the spring of 1863 I was permitted to spend forty days and forty nights in Palestine. I saw Abraham at his tent-door; Rebekah vailing herself at the approach of the stranger; the long caravan of camels and Midianites on their way toward the South. I saw the wailing mourners at the house of death; the roof that might easily have been broken up; the wedding procession; the grass on the house-tops; the sparrow making a nest for her young in the synagogues of Jerusalem. I saw the elders in the gates; David the shepherd, with his sheep, on the hill-side; the Jewish mother teaching Timothy the words of the old Book in the old city on the hill. Verily, it is the old land; it is the old life; it is the memorial presentation in concrete form of what the Book says was true there thousands of years ago.
As I stood on Safed, overlooking the Sea of Galilee and the lovely land about it, I turned and looked toward the north, and saw snow-sheathed Hermon, probably the Mount of Transfiguration, as it stood out that day against the blue sky of Syria. I thought of Ruskin's words: "These pure white hills, near to the heavens and sources of all good to the earth, are the memorials of the light of his mercy that fell snow-like on the Mount of Transfiguration."