Some one has said that the ancient Israelites called God a "shelter" and a "refuge," and not a "home," because for the most part the Syrians lived out of doors. All the habitation an Israelite needed was a shelter from the storm and a refuge from the enemy. Hence the prayer of the Psalmist: "For thou hast been a shelter for me, and a strong tower from the enemy,"[1] and the prophecy of Isaiah, the fourth chapter and the sixth verse, according to the Revised Version: "And there shall be a pavilion for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain." The assertion that the Syrian, both ancient and modern, lives for the most part out of doors is substantially correct. The long and rainless summers, the almost exclusively agricultural {242} and pastoral life of the people, outside the few large cities, and the primitive modes of travel, enable the Syrian to live his life out in the open. His one-story house, consisting of one or two rooms very simply furnished, conveys the impression that it is only an emergency shelter. Yet that artless structure and the living "close to nature" have proved so agreeable and so satisfactory to the people of the East as to defy the forces of evolution. Certainly the continuance of that simple environment, "from age to age the same," indicates that in the universal scheme of things evolution is not altogether compulsory. Man can, if he chooses, stand still, and live somewhat comfortably by simply repeating the past. To the Oriental life is neither an evolution nor an achievement, but an inheritance. To his passive yet poetical mind the ancient landmarks possess enchanting sentimental value. The thought of the same modes of life linking fifty centuries together appeals powerfully to his imagination. It spells security, and establishes {243} confidence in the laws of being, at least to old age.