xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 347 



monasteries of this country ; and the occupation of the 

 land by our victorious army lately introduced to our 

 notice the unique example of a people, savage and yet 

 Christian, possessing among gross superstitions and vile 

 social practices many of the religious customs and 

 modes of worship of the early Christian Church. The 

 superiority in religious faith and in all the arts of life 

 which the Abyssinians enjoy over all the benighted 

 children of the sun may be attributed in the first 

 instance to the work of the Ethiopian eunuch. We may 

 well believe therefore that it was not without adequate 

 reason, even from the human point of view, that Philip 

 was asked to abandon his populous and hopeful field of 

 usefulness at Samaria and go down " unto Gaza, which 

 is desert." And just as afterwards the conversion of 

 Lydia, who was compelled by a Divine impulse to leave 

 her native place and go to Philippi, and who, after her 

 conversion, returned to Thyatira, and founded, in all 

 likelihood, the Christian Church there a Church which 

 afterwards formed that of Lyons, whose martyrs, during 

 a terrible persecution, were the noblest in the annals of 

 Christianity ; just as this wonderful event was brought 

 about through St. Paul being obliged to abandon his 

 large and important field of labour in Asia, and, at the 

 instigation of the heavenly vision of the man of Mace- 

 donia, to go over into Europe, which seemed to him, in 

 comparison, a desert place, so the conversion of the 

 Ethiopian eunuch in Palestine, who, on his return to his 

 native country, founded in all likelihood the Christian 

 Church there, was brought about through Philip being 



