You may
thank God that you do not. That you do not know the horrors of war,
and the misery of a conquered country, in old times.
To lose all they had ever earned; all that makes life worth having.
To have their homes burnt over their heads, their crops carried off
their fields. To see their women dishonoured, their old men and
children murdered--to be insulted, beaten, and tortured to make them
tell where their money was hidden; and after they and theirs had
suffered every unspeakable shame and misery from the hands of brutal
enemies, to be stripped, bound, and marched away, for hundreds of
miles across the deserts, into the cold and dreary mountains of the
north of Assyria, there to live and die as slaves, and never again
to see their native land. And such a land as it was, and is still:
or rather might be still, if there were men in it worthy the name of
men. For of all countries in the world, that land of Israel is one
of the most rich and beautiful. The climate and the soil there is
such, that two crops can often be grown in the year, of almost any
kind which man may need; there are rich valleys well watered, where
not only wheat and every grain-crop, but the olive, and the fig, and
the vine, flourish in perfection; rich park-like uplands, where
sheep and cattle without number may find pasture; great forests of
timber, fit for every use; and all kept cool and fruitful, even
beneath that burning eastern sun, by the clear streams which flow
for ever down from Hermon.
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