THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF PALESTINE. 183 



uninsti'uctive as the scattered fragments of a broken statue " 

 (Mebuhr, Kleine Schaften, p. 92). 



In thinking over early days, two leading ideas are dominant. 

 The people who lived in those days, whether followers of God 

 or of Baal, lived more in the presence of God than we do in 

 Europe at the present day ; God, or God's substitute, was 

 everywhere and in everything. The second idea is that the 

 high value set upon human life amongst European Christians of 

 to-day is entirely a value set up in recent times owing to 

 abnormal security in life and property, and does not exist now 

 in the East; and was unknown in early days, or even, in a 

 measure, a hundred years ago ; and at the present time, under 

 stress of circumstances, it is rapidly dwindling away. 



At the present day in China we may meet with a Chinaman 

 who for £10 will substitute himself for a felon condemned to 

 death, ruling that his life is a fair sacrifice for the welfare of his 

 family, to whom the £10 will be handed over. 



It is less than a hundred years ago that our countrymen in 

 England were hanged for offences which are now treated much 

 more leniently. Unless the value set on life is reduced in due 

 proportion to that of honour and duty, it is impossible to read 

 the sentences passed on the inhabitants of Canaan without some 

 kind of shock to our feelings. The utter extermination of 

 every creature that breathed in Canaan, men, women, children, 

 cattle and herds, cannot fail to strike us as a very difficult task 

 to be allotted to a God-fearing people. With our views of to- 

 day it would seem that it could only be carried out effectually 

 by a people nearly perfect, or else by a people in the same 

 condition as the Canaanites themselves. In those days the god 

 of each tribe was part of the tribe, and local to the land ; so that, 

 short of joining with tliem in their idolatry, their extermination 

 was a necessity, yet as the bulk of Israel could see very little 

 difference between the two religions, there could be no real 

 enthusiasm in exterminating the people so completely. 



There was one matter, however, in which the Israelites mu.st 

 have noticed a marked difference between the two religions, and 

 which probably influenced them greatly. 



During their Personal guidance they were brought to realize 

 that their God punished them for disobedience as severely as 

 He punished the heathen. This must have given Jehovah, in 

 their eyes, a distinct position, as apart from the position of the 

 gods of the surrounding nations, who were assumed to wink at 

 the transgressions of their followers. 



The man found picking up sticks on the Sabbath day was 



