Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, or still more in the plain of Esdraelon (which our Savior often looked upon from Nazareth) as it extends from Tabor and Jezreel to Mt. Carmel, the varied colors of the soil make the picture like that of a vast carpet into which every hue and tint have been marvelously interwoven.

Who would not prefer the healthy, open-air life of the patriarchal encampment to the pent-up quarters and pestilential streets of ancient walled cities?

Yet social freedom is more precious than any physical environment. The Arab tent-dwellers issued in our seventh century from Arabia to become world conquerors and to found great capitals in Damascus, Bagdad, Cairo, Seville and Cordova. But from the farthest east to the farthest west of their vast empires they never forgot the tent. No one unacquainted with the great Arabic litera

ture can form any conception of the wealth of poetic imagery and of the varied associations which cluster round every mention of the free life of the tent, that old, original dwelling-place of the race. A whole body of traditions concurred to make the very name of the tent sacred-a synonym for safety and protection.

One of these traditions particularly fostered the sentiment of personal honor. A true Arab would die rather than give up either the fugitive who had fled to his tent, or anything which belonged to him. Arabic poets praise a sheik named Samoel, himself a famous poet, who was threatened by the King of Damascus (named Aretas in the New Testament) with the death of his son, whom the king held captive, unless Samoel would give up suits of costly armor which had been committed to his safe-keeping. Samoel's

chivalrous answer was: "Kill your captive, but I will always be a man!"

The tent in time embodied the whole ideal of the family. Once admitted to it, the stranger ceased to be a stranger and was regarded as a born brother, fully entitled to rank with the rest of the household. This fact should be taken into account when interpreting one of the most ancient prophecies in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 9:26, 27). The words, "Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem," foretell that God would be Shem's distinctive portion in history, while Japheth's would be "enlargement.' But the words, "Let him [Japheth] dwell in the tents of Shem," do not mean that Japheth will overcome Shem and occupy his territory. No tentdweller would think of such an interpretation. They mean that Japheth would be adopted into Shem's family and become partaker of Shem's peculiar privileges.

How much history is comprest into these few words! At present Shem's descendants, the Hebrews and the Arabs, form a small fraction of mankind. Yet it is the God of Shem which the vast world of Christendom worships, and it is the God of Shem which the wide-spread races of Islam reverence from Tartary to Tangier. Nor can European or American worship any other than the God of Shem. Every attempt to adore a creation of philosophy or of human conception ends either in empty pantheism or equally empty negation.

Along with the ideal of brotherhood was naturally linked that of hospitality. An incident in the life of Abraham picturesquely illustrates this trait, as referred to in our first chapter, page 29.

Of the many references in Arabic literature to the hospitality always expected at the tent I would mention the story of

Hatem, the sheik of the tribe of Tai. He owned a mare the fame of which for beauty as well as for high lineage reached the King of Persia, who sent an embassy to Hatem to negotiate her purchase. When the embassy arrived the tribe of Tai was suffering from a famine. All the same the Persians were invited in to dine, only to find that the flesh of this priceless mare was being served up to them.

We come now to the spiritual side of our picture. It is not in vain that the gracious note for man in Messianic prophecy never varies through all the subsequent centuries. Twelve hundred years after Abraham was promised that in him should all the nations and families of the earth be-not conquered, but blest, the prophet Micah (Micah 41-4) foretold that in the last days men everywhere should "beat their swords into plowshares, and