So little have the conditions of social life been modified, that one may live the old life over again in Canaan. Soil and scenery, the seasons of the year, Jacob's well and the Jordan, Ebal and Gerizim, the plain, the wilderness and the city, all give witness to the words of the Book. The names of olden time still linger. One lands at _Yafa_, the "Joppa" of old; Jerusalem is now _el Khuds_,--"the Holy"; _Bahr-lut_--"the Sea of Lot"--is the Dead Sea in the Valley of Sodom and Gomorrah; _Bir es Seba_ is the Beersheba of the olden time; _el Azariyeh_ is Bethany, the home of Lazarus; _Beit-lahm_ is still Bethlehem; and _el Khalil_--"the Friend"--is the name of Hebron, the home of Abram, "the Friend of God." In the customs and costumes, in the habits of speech and the manners of the people, you read the same lesson. In the spring of 1863 I was permitted to spend forty days and forty nights in Palestine. I saw Abraham at his tent-door; Rebekah vailing herself at the approach of the stranger; the long caravan of camels and Midianites on their way toward the South. I saw the wailing mourners at the house of death; the roof that might easily have been broken up; the wedding procession; the grass on the house-tops; the sparrow making a nest for her young in the synagogues of Jerusalem. I saw the elders in the gates; David the shepherd, with his sheep, on the hill-side; the Jewish mother teaching Timothy the words of the old Book in the old city on the hill. Verily, it is the old land; it is the old life; it is the memorial presentation in concrete form of what the Book says was true there thousands of years ago. As I stood on Safed, overlooking the Sea of Galilee and the lovely land about it, I turned and looked toward the north, and saw snow-sheathed Hermon, probably the Mount of Transfiguration, as it stood out that day against the blue sky of Syria. I thought of Ruskin's words: "These pure white hills, near to the heavens and sources of all good to the earth, are the memorials of the light of his mercy that fell snow-like on the Mount of Transfiguration."