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PALESTINE

The houses of the common people of Greece and Rome were full of statues of deities; there was not one in a Jewish house in Palestine. That there is a God, that he is one God, that he is a righteous God, and that he rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, these beliefs were more than a part of the Jewish creed; they were the part of the very fiber of the Jewish character. It is from the land thus educated, through the long discipline of centuries, that have gone forth the influences which have made all other lands theistic, which have successfully banished the idols from the churches and the homes, the licentious gods and goddesses from the imagination, and godless philosophy from the intellect. The Grecian has given the world art, the Roman law, the Anglo-Saxon commerce, the Jew religion. Greece is sacred to the artist, Rome to the statesman, England to the worker, Palestine to man. Its hills and valleys, its lakes and rivers and sea-coast, are indissolubly connected with the history which has exercised a more powerful influence on the destinies of the race than any other province of equal size.—Lyman Abbott.

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— April, 1883 —