When we take the unfinishedness of the land along with the revelation and consider them together, we can hardly fail to gain a lesson of far-reaching meaning. The great incompleteness of Syria--the thing in which her life has been most lamentably unfinished--was her response to the revelation of her God. She never was at pains to understand it; she never fully opened her heart to its new progress, nor felt her high destiny as the bearer of good tidings to the world. She never seriously set herself to obey its plainest ethical demands. The wreckage is her price paid for the neglect. No man nor nation can finish any task to perfection, who has not done justice to such revelation of God as his heart and conscience have received. It is truth to the inward light that keeps us from losing heart and enables us to feel that energy and patience to the end are worth our while. Right dealing with revelation is the secret of all efficient performance. The combination in Palestine of such revelation and such defect in strenuous action shows us a land that has just missed the most amazing destiny on earth. It is in the remembrance of these thoughts that the chapters of this part should be read. The Shadow of Death has fallen because these men could not escape their knowledge of some greatness in death, more moving than anything life had to show. The spectral is but a degenerate and perverse form of their sense of God. The Cross gives its ethical significance to the burden and sorrow of the land. Resurrection shows signs even now that God has not yet done with Syria. But first, before we treat these aspects of her spirit, let us look at it on its brighter side--the smile and song of the land. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DOME OF THE ROCK (MOSQUE OF OMAR), FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] CHAPTER I THE LIGHTER SIDE OF THINGS