This idea of smallness and compression, however, is by no means the only possible view which may be taken. All depends on what it is with which one compares Palestine. Thinking of it as a field of history, one inevitably has other fields in mind. If we think of Britain, Palestine is but the size of Wales; if of France and Germany, it is the equivalent of Alsace. But a more primitive point of view is gained when you regard it as a reclaimed tract of the desert. Just as Egypt is a huge river-meadow, and Venice a glorified harbour in the sea, so Syria is the largest oasis in the world. Its whole geographical character is that of desert, more or less modified by water. The sculptured hills are here, the rock and the shingle and the sand. Dry up its rivers and arrest its rainfall, and you will have a continuation of the peninsula of Sinai, except that instead of granite it will be of limestone. It is this, as we have seen, that has led its inhabitants to regard it with a rare appreciation, an extraordinary sense of its preciousness, and a tendency to exaggerate both its beauty and its fertility. Nothing illustrates this loving appreciation of their land better than the play of imagination which has created the place-names of Palestine. Hebrews, Arabs, and Crusaders vie with each other in the poetic beauty of their nomenclature. It is a little land, but there is much witchery in it. For its inhabitants it _lives_ personified, and its masses of mountain scenery are often named from parts of the human body. There are “the shoulder,” “the side,” “the thigh,” “the rib,” “the back.” The “head” of Pisgah looks down upon the “face” of the wilderness.[5] There is a “hollow hearth”--homeliest of names to a Semite. In other names poetry has reached its utmost of epigrammatic beauty--“the dance of the whirls,” “the star of the wind,” “the diamond of the desert.” Yet sacred and beautiful as its scenery was to Israel, she had a dearer bond with her land than that. She was kept from nature-worship by a spiritual faith which created such names as “Bethel” (the house of God), and many others of similar significance. These claim the land in all its length and breadth for the God of Israel. Every green spot was for the Semites the dwelling-place of some divinity; this whole oasis of hers was for Israel the house of her God of peace and blessing. To the ancient Greek “God was the view”; to the Hebrew, God was the inhabitant of the view--He Himself was Righteousness. And because the land was His--rescued by Him from the desert with His waters, and given to the people in His love--it was tenfold more dear to them. Down every vista which shewed them a land that was very far off, their eyes caught sight also of some vision of the King in His beauty; every high hill was a veritable mountain of the Lord’s house.