the great snow-mountain ten thousand feet
high, which overlooks that pleasant land. There is hardly,
travellers say, a lovelier or richer country upon earth, than the
land of Israel, from Hebron on the south to Hermon on the north; nor
a country which might have been stronger, and safer, and more
prosperous, if these Jews had been but wise.
It is, so to speak, one great castle, rising most of it two thousand
feet high, and walled in by God in a way as is seen hardly in any
other land. On the west lies the sea; on the south and on the east
vast wildernesses of sandy desert; and on the north, the mighty
mountains of Hermon and Lebanon, which no invading army could have
crossed, if the Jews had had courage to keep them out. And that,
the noble and divine Law of Moses would have given them. It would
have made them one free, brave, God-fearing people, at unity with
itself; and the promise of Moses would have been fulfilled--that one
of them should chase a thousand, and no man or nation be able to
stand against them. In David's time, and in Solomon's time also,
that promise came true; and that small people of the Jews became a
very powerful nation, respected and feared by all the kingdoms
round.
But when they fell into idolatry, and forsook the true God, and his
law: all was changed.
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