credit by having such men to represent her in the Holy Land is another thing.

The course pursued by the Greek communities is wiser. The Greek father makes himself at home in his convent and in the country. He lives there, he means to die there. If the language is not native to him, he learns to speak it. If the Arabs are unfriendly to him he tries to win them over by service. He trains himself to mix potions, to dress wounds, to choose seed and grain, to graft trees, and to preserve dates and olives. Having to dwell among a Moslem people, he feels that it will not do to treat them altogether like dogs. In a thousand ways he learns how he can befriend them and gain credit with them; while carefully eschewing such controversies as might offend their pride of faith. He employs their labour when they are idle; he advances them money (on interest as is right); he gives them bandages and physic when they are sick; until the poor Arabs, though they may hear their benefactor called a giouar, admit in their hearts that the Greek father is a very good man. A convent like Mar Saba, instead of being a barren refuge and lodging-house like Carmel and Ramleh, is a centre of ideas, charities, and improvements for the whole country side. The peasants look up to. it; the wandering Bedaween respect it. Every nook of the wilderness in which a plant will bloom, is the richer and greener for Mar Saba. Of course, in the present Arab temper, there can be no direct religious teaching; nor is such labour of the tongue either needful or desirable just now. Christianity is

a life to be lived, not a word to be professed. The best of all sermons is a noble deed, and in worthy doing, the circumstances under which the Greek of Palestine lives enables him to appear to some advantage when compared against a Frank.

The chief thought of a Latin monk is how he can guard his chest and larder, his robe and lamp. To this great end of self-defence, his wall is built high and thick, his door-way is made small and strong. A convent being wholly unarmed in the midst of warlike, predatory tribes, every man of whom owns a firelock, bolts and chains have to do duty for sword and lance. The door is plated with iron. A tower overlooks the entrance, and when a man is to be admitted within the gates, as many precautions are used as would be taken in a city under siege. A lamp is kept burning through the night, and a watch is maintained by the monks in

turn.

In spite of much care, the convents of Palestine are sometimes forced and robbed; but this is a case extremely rare, even with the Greek convents, which are known to be rich in silver and gold, and which have no Zouaves and fire-ships to avenge their wrongs. In truth, a monk of Mar Saba, of Mar Elias, of the Holy Cross, has come to be regarded as one of the Arab's best friends.

Should a Frank regret and oppose this mastery of the Greek church in Syria? I cannot think it would be wise to do so. The old fear of our finding a Muscovite in every Greek is at an end; and in Palestine the Czar has no hotter adversaries than

those dwelling in the Greek religious houses. Have we not judged our brethren a little too much in the spirit of sect? Of course, a Greek of the Levant is somewhat under-taught; but he is apt and shrewd; and in Palestine, at least, he seems to be laying the foundation of his empire in the only way in which a solid foundation can be laid by gaining a property in the soil, and an influence over the native tribes. Our brother may have many faults; he may believe in the holy fire, and in numberless legends of the saints; he may wear a different garb, and follow another rubric; yet he is still our brother. Why should we resist his progress? He is an Oriental, addressing himself to Orientals. And is not every patch of earth that he reclaims, every Arab whom he wins, every olive that he plants, a gain for that Church which represents peace on earth and good-will to men?

CHAPTER XXX.

Lydda.

On our way down from the hill country into the plain, by the way of Beth-horon (Saïd with the baggage in advance; Ishmael, of many piastres, a youth who will one day be a banker and perhaps a pasha, at his side; Yakoub slightly in the rear), a single horseman dashes past us; a man in long boots, a tall hat, a furred cloak, a yellow face; not an Oriental, it would seem, and certainly not a pure Frank. In the stony desert of Beit Ur we overtake, salute, and pass him. He is badly mounted and a vicious rider. Left behind on the road, he is soon forgotten; the more so that a long ride and a fiery sun have made us sick for food, and strain after shade and water; but so soon as the mat is spread by Yakoub, the bunch of sticks fired by Ishmael, the bread and chickens unpacked by Saïd, the stranger trots up, throws himself from his horse, draws near to the carpet, and whispers to Yakoub that he hopes to be invited to share our meal.

Now, welcome to strangers is a habit of the country older than its recorded annals; a habit which has known no interruption save during that reign of the Oral Law when everything went wrong; for among an Arab people the act of breaking bread with a stranger is not only an act of charity, but a

bond of peace. Bread is life. Before eating with a man, you are an alien, maybe an enemy; after eating, you are a friend, a brother, a guest. To beg for bread is therefore, in a certain sense, to ask for peace. If you should be engaged in a sacred office -visiting the sick, praying for the dead, preaching to the poor you may fairly claim food and drink at the nearest house or tent. There is no discredit in being hungry and fatigued; and no hajjee, whether Moslem, or Christian, is ashamed to beg meat and shade. Yet a Saxon and a Gaul never do so; and the intruder upon our meal soon shows that he is a Muscovite and a Greek. No Frank would have the boldness to attempt what he has done.

He was a farmer in the Ukraine; a breeder of horses and kine; busy with his labours, when the thought came upon him that he should recite a prayer over the Virgin's fountain and the Saviour's tomb. With a few copecs in his belt and a sack of meal on his pony, he rode to Odessa, where he sold his beast and bought a passage to Beyrout. From the Lebanon to Nazareth, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, he trudged on foot; now joining caravans, now going on alone; always cheery and hungry; one night sleeping under an olive, the next niglit in a convent; never too proud to beg, or to help himself freely from the roadside grapes and figs. He made his journey and relieved his soul. When about to return, a Greek pope lent him the poor mare, which he is to leave with the Russian consul in Jaffa; from whom he expects to get a deck passage in some Russian boat going home to the Black