Yet somehow it is impossible to believe that He has gone from the land of His earthly home for ever. An incident which occurred to us in Damascus dwells in our memory with prophetic significance. We had visited the Great Mosque, which rose upon the ruins of an ancient Christian church. The original walls were not entirely demolished, and among the parts built into the new structure was a beautiful gate on whose lintel may still be deciphered the Greek inscription, “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.” To see this inscription we climbed a ladder in the Jewellers’ Bazaar. At the height of some fifteen feet we stepped upon a ledge of rather precarious masonry, and after a short scramble along this came to the lintel, half concealed by a rubble wall running diagonally across it. A stranger was with us, a devout Christian from a town far south of Damascus. In the whole city nothing moved him so deeply as this stone, and he exclaimed, “It was the Christians’ fault--they were so rough, so rude, so ignorant--it was done by the wish of God--_but He will have it again_.” And He _will_ have it again, sooner or later! When Omar heard that Mohammed was dead he would not believe it, but proclaimed in the Mosque of Medina, “The Prophet has only swooned away!” But Mohammed had died, and it is his dead hand that has held the land these thirteen centuries. Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; and the future of the land lies with Christ. To the Western world He has fulfilled His tremendous claim, “I am the resurrection and the life,” not only in the hope of immortality, but in the spring and impulse which His faith has given to national ideals. It is impossible not to hope for a fulfilment of the promise to the land where it was first spoken. Looking down from Tabor upon the hill of Dûhy, one has sight of Endor to the east, while Shunem lies just round the western slope, and between them is the village of Nain. It is as if that hill were a sanctuary from Death, where the grave could not hold its own. Palestine holds in trust for the world those empty graves, and one grave above all others from which He Himself came forth. Surely she, too, will rise, by His grace, in a faith and character purer than those which she has lost.