Unbelievers realize the force of this argument and have sought, but in vain, to charge the inspired penmen with inaccuracy, and thus throw distrust upon their history; but they have found to their consternation, both by personal observation and the testimony of travelers, that the Bible is the most reliable handbook of Palestine extant.
During one of my visits to Jerusalem I chanced to meet a venerable English barrister who had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to write a book against the Bible founded on the supposed discrepancies between the Land and the Book; and I subsequently met him at Beyroot, after his _fruitless_ journey from “Dan to Beersheba.” While at Mosul, opposite ancient Nineveh, I met George Smith, sent forth by a London journalist to explore the Assyrian ruins, and who, as archæologist and philologist, ranks with Layard and Rassam. He went out an unbeliever, but such is the agreement between the record of the ruins and the record of the Book, that Mr. Smith returned to London a believer, and lectured before the Society of Biblical Archæology on the marvelous synchronisms of the Assyrian tablets and the sacred historians.
_From Dan to Beersheba_ was written to verify these references. It has the advantage of having been written on the scene of the recorded event, in notes taken for future elaboration of all that had transpired thereon, whether in sacred or profane history. It was my custom, from which I seldom deviated, to read on the spot every reference in the Bible to each locality I visited, and to record my observations and impressions while my mind was aglow with the recollections of the hallowed associations of the place and impressed with the extraordinary agreement between the inspired narration and the present aspect of the scene where the grand events had transpired; so that the traveler of to-day, with this book in hand, will have his memory refreshed and his mind inspired by a picture of what once occurred on the accredited historic site.
Through all the turbulent centuries since Christ ascended, Palestine has been a “changeless land,” whose social customs, mechanic arts, commercial and manufactural methods have suffered little from contact with Western civilization, and it should be the ambition of Christendom to preserve it _intact_ to the last generation of mankind. Providence calls us to preserve this monumental land. The changeful influence of the mighty West is seen to-day on lower Egypt, on Asia Minor, on Grecia and Rome in Europe, but Palestine abides the same forever; as Christ and his apostles left it we now see it, and so should it be seen by all future ages. Impelled by sectarian zeal or for political purposes, the nations of Europe have sought supremacy there, and the Promised Land is the larger factor in the Eastern Question, but neither France, nor Russia, nor England should take possession, but rather a syndicate, representing all nations and all creeds, should hold it in fee simple by purchase from the Sultan subject to such rights of property as may vest in the present inhabitants.