It is a sad view of the spirit of Syria which the last chapters have offered, yet it is but too true. We must linger yet a little longer listening to “the sob of the land” before we turn to that which is at once the explanation and the hope of relief for its long sorrow. Apart altogether from the ghostly elements in this land of ruins, the mere melancholy is persistent and depressing as one moves from place to place. The gloom is so ominous, as to be at times suggestive of a supernatural curse that broods upon everything with its depressing weight. The khans outside of villages are in ruins; so are the bridges over streams, and the castles on the hills. Amid such scenery it is natural to remember the defeats rather than the glories of the past, and the national history seems to be one long record of misfortune. In the modern conditions of life in Palestine the long story of tears and blood seems to be continued in the haggard desolation of its present.{227}

Two things especially must send this impression home even to the most casual observer, viz. the heartlessness of toil and the prevalence of disease. In every country much must always depend on the spirit in which men labour. Where the walls of its cities rise to music, as the old glad legends told of Troy and Thebes, there is hope and promise; but here there is no song to help men’s toil. It is hard and joyless, with little promise and less hope. With the death of these self-respect also dies; and work, without incentives to anything which might tempt ambition, remains merely as a hard necessity and a curse.

Next to its heartless toil the uncured sickness of the land contributes to the deep sadness of its spirit. Disease seems to stare you everywhere in the face. Superstition and fatalism combined have blocked all progress in medical science. The people are naturally healthy; and their strong constitutions, kept firm by plain living, yield to medical treatment in a marvellous way. But when any serious accident has happened, or any dangerous disease infected them, they are utterly helpless, and things take their course. The medicinal springs form an exception to this rule, and seem to be the one real healing agency in the country. Their bluish waters bubble with sulphuretted hydrogen, and smell abominably, but they cure sicknesses of some kinds. For{228} other diseases there is no native cure. Those which are most in evidence are ulcers and inflammatory diseases of the eyes. The natives appear to be immune so far as malaria is concerned; but a peculiar kind of decline is not uncommon, in which the emaciation is so great as to reduce the patient to the appearance of a skeleton, with great lustrous eyes. It need hardly be said that the characteristic disease of Syria is leprosy. The first object which attracts the eye after you arrive at the railway station of Jerusalem is an immense leper hospital. In a case which created some sensation lately in the south of England, it turned out that a fraudulent Syrian had been raising money for a non-existent hospital at Tirzah, which was to accommodate eleven thousand lepers. Of course the figure was a monstrous one, but the fact that it was invented shews how terrible a scourge this is. It is a curious circumstance that the inhabitants of towns do not contract leprosy. It appears in villages, and the sufferers are at once driven out, to wander to the larger towns, outside of which they settle in communities or beg by the wayside. The view of the north-east end of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives shews a roadside which is always dotted with these pitiable folk. For many travellers this is the road of their first journey from the city, leading over Olivet to Bethany, and they are{229} not likely to forget that ride. Lepers, in all stages of hideous decay, line the roadside; real or sham paralytics sprawl and shake in the middle of the path, so that the horses have actually to pick their way among the bodies of them. The epileptics appear to be frauds. Their faces are covered, but they see what is going on well enough to stop shaking when the horses have passed. The leprosy is all too real. Arms covered with putrid sores, hands from which the fingers have one after another fallen off, and husky voices begging from throats already half eaten out—these cannot be imitated.

As to the causes of Syrian disease, and leprosy in particular, there seems to be much obscurity. Perhaps the word that comes nearest to an explanation is uncleanness, and the promise of “a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness” may have a physical as well as a spiritual significance. The land is incredibly contaminated with filth, as the following quotation shews: “Sir Charles Warren tells us that the soil in which he made some of his excavations was so saturated with disease germs that his workmen were often attacked with fever, especially if they had any sore or scratch on their hands.”[59] It would be hard to find words more significant than these.

For this state of matters, and for its continuance from generation to generation, many reasons may be given. The usual explanation of the whole is the{230} government, with its soldiers and its taxation. The wild notes of Turkish bugle-calls answering each other across Jerusalem sound harsh, and as it were blasphemous, and further travel deepens the resentment rather than removes it. When, behind all the present evils, one remembers the past, with its massacres and all its other iniquities, one’s heart grows hot. One Syrian, after narrating a specially aggravated case of oppression, asked us if we knew “the story of the prophets Ananias and Sapphira.” We said we had heard it; and he added, “Ah, in those days God punished at once; now, God waits!” Dr. Thomson somewhere quotes a proverb to the effect that, “Wherever the hoof of a Turkish horse rests it leaves barrenness behind it”; and all that is seen in Syria tends to prove that saying but too true. Every possible experiment in misgovernment seems to have been made here. Frequent change of governors, underpayment of officials, conscription of the most ruinous sort, bribery, cruelty, fanaticism, laziness, sensuality, and stupidity—all are to be seen open and without pretence at concealment.

Yet in the interest of truth it ought to be remembered that there is another side to the story. The incident of the horse at Banias[60] made one understand how a Turk might answer his critics, with some show of reason, that this was the only sort of government these people could understand. Of course it might be again replied that it was oppression that had brought this about. Yet it{231} is perfectly clear that Syrian character is very far from that of martyred innocence. From whatever causes it has come about, the fact is certain that in many respects the moral sense of Palestine is as depraved as that of her oppressors. Her worst enemy is her own wickedness.

Thus many elements enter into the desolation of the Holy Land, and make it a place of decaying body and of shiftless spirit, but of all these elements the ethical is supreme. The very look of the country suggests this. It is not merely stony; as has been cleverly said, it seems to have been stoned—stoned to death for its sins. The loose boulders of Judea, and the scattered ruins of old vineyard terraces and village walls, present all the appearance of flung missiles. This view of the case is acknowledged freely by the inhabitants themselves, in whose thoughts judgment has a prominent place. The buried cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are favourite subjects of reflection with disciples of all the creeds. A somewhat similar story is told of the Lake of Phiala, a volcanic mountain lake south of Hermon. Tradition tells of a village submerged below its waters “to punish the inhabitants for their inhospitable treatment of travellers,” and there are many other stories of judgment in the country. Yet the judgment always falls upon some one else than the narrator of the story, who would not insult your intelligence by supposing that you thought him in need of judgment. Even in the familiar quotations from the litany chanted by the Jews at their Wailing-Place, the confession of sin is conspicuous by its absence. There is{232} sore mourning over the departed glories of the land, but the only sins confessed are those of priests and kings long dead. To all creeds alike the essential element in religion seems to be ritual performance, and the ideal life is accordingly not one of ethical character but of formal correctness. And yet in the midst of all this self-righteous complacency, any one can see that every part of the land is being judged and is bearing the punishment of sin. Jericho, squatting sordidly amid the ruins of its ancient Hellenism, looked down upon by the severe and barren mountain where Jesus hungered, is a monument of the reality of ethical distinctions as hard and practical facts. They may be ignored, but they must be reckoned with in the end.

Of the ethical significance of the fate of Palestine there cannot be a moment’s doubt. It is here that the love and care of God have been met and foiled by the sin and carelessness of man. In regard to its whole moral and social life, there is one overmastering conviction which grows upon the traveller from day to day. That conviction is, that it is a land which requires and demands righteousness. Nature and man are in close touch, and each depends upon the other. It is not a desert, where no amount of labour can produce result; nor is it a luxuriant tropical country whose fruits fall ripe and untoiled for into man’s hand. It demands labour, but it answers to it. The lea............