IN BIBLE LANDS.

Hokitika Guardian, 28 November 1917, Page 4

IN BIBLE LANDS.

(Otago Daily Times.)

It lias repeatedly’ been affirmed with an emphatic note of surprise, that the majority of people do not display a deep or very lucid interest in the war operations in Palestine and other regions associated with the Biblical narratives. We are not able to estimate the degree of truth contained in this assertion, though we surmise that it might easily be exaggerated. It might be pertinent to ask what proportion of our community take a really intelligent interest —an interest according to geographical aud historical knowledge—in the proceedings on the European ironts and, whatever the reason may be, the geographical ideas of most people regarding Oriental countries are undefined and cloudy', despite the acknowledged attraction of the Biblical literature.

"We have occupied Askelon.” The average man, asked for his views on Askelon, might be inspired to declaim the passage from David’s lament over Saul and Jonathan — “ Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the .streets of Askelon, lest the daughtersof the Philistines rejoice,” —but probably he would not find much else to say. “ Beersheba ” is a name of interest, and our average man would certainly murmur, “ From Dan even unto Beersheba,” j though he might have to think twice before committing himself to a dogmatic decision as to which of the two places was the northern and which the southern limit. It was at Beersheba, “ the well of the oath,” that Abraham made covenant with King AbinfelecK“wherefore lie called that place Beersheba, because there they sware, both of them . . i and Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there upon i the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.” It was in the wilderness I of Beersheba that Hagar, turned i adrift by Sarah’s cruel jealousy", i wandered with her boy Ismael. i The cables have been busy with : Gaza and Hebron, and we find the' i two names joined in the account of 1 one of Samson’s most famous ex- 1 ploits.” “ And Samson arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city (Gaza), aud the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all. and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.” At Hebron, or close by, . was the field which Abraliam bought of the children of Heth “ for a possession of a burying place,”— “the same is “ Hebron in the land of Canaan,” —where Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebekah were buried, and whither Jacob, dying in Egypt, charged his sons that they should convey his bones. These spots, and others that have been mentioned in the war news, have legendary' and historic interest, however little of their pristine conditions may remain ; but it may go without saying that no place in “that silent sacred land, of sun and arid stone, and crumbling wall and sultry sand,” can vie in interest—the profound interest of the world’s holiest associations—with Jerusalem : Ariel, the Lion of God, the city' where David dwelt, and just outside tlie wall of which the Lord Christ was crucified. 1 . We opine that now that General Allenby' is reported to be rapidly j advancing on Jerusalem it will no longer be possible to complain of popular indifference in respect to ; the progress and circumstances of j the campaign in Palestine. Already' ; we have been told (though the I source of the statement may not be : entirely 7 unexceptionable) that the permanent population of Jerusalem, : sick of the equally' intolerable y'okes of Germany' and Turkey', is antici- ' pating the arrival of the array of deliverance with friendly' eagerness. Sti’ongely arresting, almost bizarre in the vivid contrasts it presents, is the thought of the emancipating- i enterprise in which General Allenby’s 'forces are engaged in Palestine. Even the cablegrams, to which the • reader’s mind usually has to lend its * own complementary embroidery, as- j same here and there unwonted colour ! and pictiiresqneness as they tell of I the army’s arrival at this or that spot appealing to the historic imagination, or hint at local conditions and characteristics half-familiar in literature or legend. “ Thy coasts, O Palestine,” have known many and diverse experiences of invasion and warfare and conqnest but none that I is ' readily comparable with the spectacle of a curiously' composite British force from east and west and south and north, marching and fighting, with British disinterestedness, along ways where Samson and David fought against the Philistines, where the horsemen of Assyria and Babylon ! rode to rapine, where at a later j period the Roman ’ legions thundered I past, and where in Christian times the Crusaders prosecuted their forlornly heroic qnest. Recognisable analogies are suggested by 7 the mention of the Crusaders, and in point of disinterested- j ness the resemblance is not inaccurate ; 1 but, truth to say, the story of the j mediaeval crusades carries a taint of fancifnlness and impracticability— 1 the sentiment attaching to localities, rather than the desire to liberate oppressed peoples, supplied the central motive, —whereas the crusade of the j present hour is controlled by the spirit ’ of reasoned justice and substantial ! humanitarianism. The marching i chants of the British soldiers may j not be as the songs of Zion, and it might be easy for cynicism to prate of incongruities, but we may be hold to say that the task and the aim of the British army’ in Palestine to-day' i are in complete harmony with the 1 most sacred associations of the worl d’s most sacred region. • S

“I, for one, believe,” declared Gladstone in the House cf Commons, forty years ago, “that the knell of Turkish tyranny has sounded. It will be destroyed, perhaps not in the way or by the means we wish ; bnt, come the boon from whatever bands it may, it will be x-eceived with -joy by' Christendom and by the world.” The knell had not indeed sounded, or it had only sounded in ghostly premonition of a distant doom; but we may be sure that if Gladstone were alive at this hour no feature of the present gigantic crusade against public crime and “ spiritual wickedness in high places,” would have engaged bis interest more intensely than t-lie endeavour to rid the Holy 7 Land of the curse of Turkish domination. Whatever may be the nature of the filial settlement,—whether, as Mr Balfour was recently' said to have suggested, Jews from all parts of the world take autonomous re-possession of their country of ancient promise, or whether the plan of occupation be based on lines of racial and religions diversity,—it is devoutly to be hoped that the primary' achievement will be the “ bag and baggage ” expulsion of the Turk from a region where his presence is a pollution and his regime an infamy'. "