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ascended the Mount of Olives to near its summit, – all seemed like familiar ground.

Though it was in the dusk of evening, one hardly felt the need of a guide. I could easily imagine that I had been there before. In my boyish days Canaan had been to me as a fairy land. I used to think, as I read the Bible, that though Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and the Mount of Olives, might once have been upon earth, surely they could not now be found if one would search for them, he must go to the Mount Zion above. As a result of the study of after years, however, I had come to form, as I now found, tolerably accurate ideas of the general features of the scenery, especially around Jerusalem. The Mount of Olives, and the neighboring valleys, were in most respects as I expected to find them.

And it is this fact which, in my apprehension, gives the chief interest to a visit in Palestine.

All is in such perfect correspondence with the details of Scripture. One knows, as he wanders about Jordan, and Samaria, and Galilee, that he is in the home of the Bible that the sacred writers

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were familiar with these mountains, and these valleys, and the names of these villages. He finds every where the most abundant testimony to their accuracy, even in their minute geographical statements ;

and this in circumstances which preclude the possibility of deception. Monkish traditions have no influence in this matter, Superstition finds here no appropriate aliment wherewith to nourish her delusions. It is not a question about the place where the cross stood, or the locality of the manger, or the sepulchre. On these points the Bible gives us no precise information,

It is the simple testimony of the country itself, in its general features, and in the perpetuity of names often comparatively unimportant, to the scrupulous exactness of the sacred historians.

I find the following observations on the same subject in my notes of a second visit to Palestine in 1843. I was going up from the ancient Joppa, and had reached by nightfall the base of the mountains and hills, among which Jerusalem is situated. We had yet twenty miles before us, but the moon, which was a little past the full, gave us abundant light.

"Those were delightful but solemn hours which we passed that night, as we pursued our way among the mountains of the tribe of Benjamin, with the same moon over our heads which had so often enlightened, in the same regions, the path of the 'Man of Sorrows.' I have little anxiety about the precise spot of ground where the cross stood, or the

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