REMINISCENCES FROM LEBANON.
By H. P. H.
As OUR ship neared Beirût, and a glorious panorama of Lebanon for more than forty miles spread out before us, my mind ran back about three thousand years to the time when these mountains and valleys echoed with the axes and chisels of Solomon’s eighty thousand workmen, as they were preparing cedars and stones for the temple. 1 Kings 5. Those were the days of Israel’s glory. But how changed their state to-day! And all this because they rejected the instruction and mercy of the Lord. The promise to Solomon was that his throne should stand forever; and had Israel submitted to God’s righteousness instead of trying to establish their own, that throne would never have been temporarily overthrown, but its glory would have remained and increased till the whole earth would have been resplendent with its excellency. But because of Israel’s repeated transgression, that throne has been temporarily overturned, “until He come whose right it is.” “And shalt call His name Jesus. . . . And the Lord shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” Eze. 21:27; Luke 1:32-34. And when Jesus comes to establish His everlasting kingdom, there will again be a glorious temple, of which Solomon’s was but a faint shadow; for then the New Jerusalem, with the temple of God, will descend “from God out of heaven” and be the saints’ everlasting rest and joy. Revelation 21. How welcome and soul-cheering are the rapidly fulfilling prophetic tokens that this glad event is near at hand! The cedars of Lebanon, so oft the theme of the inspired psalmist, have been wasted by the ruthless hand of man. A small patch of less than ten acres is all that remains of the abundance which supplied royal builders of nations round about, near and far, for centuries. Surely, the earth is waxing “old like a garment;” and the time of its renewal is at hand. Not only is Lebanon stripped of its cedars, but it is infested by fourteen or fifteen different classes of religionists, among them being several of the worst sects that ever assumed the name Christian. But the sound of the everlasting Gospel, which shall in power be proclaimed in all the world as a forerunner of the soon-coming kingdom, is already heard among the foot-hills of Lebanon; and may its increasing glory soon reach the highest summits, and dispel the confusion and fog arising from decaying creeds. When the temple of Solomon was building, the contract of Hiram, king of Tyre, ran thus: “We will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need; and we will bring it to thee in flotes by sea to Joppa.” How different the scenes along these coasts to-day! The pomp, and wealth, and splendor of Sidon and Tyre, are shriveled up to heaps of ruins. No more rafts of the great cedars of Lebanon are towed along the coast; but instead, modern steamers are daily plying to and fro. Across Lebanon, from Beirût to Damascus, a railway is now in operation. Daily trains make the transit in nine hours. A French company has built a splendid harbor at Beirût, another company supplies the city with gas, and an English company has installed water works, supplying the city with fresh water from a mountain stream six miles distant. The ice company of the city is of the old style, being composed of Arabs, who bring snow down from Lebanon with donkeys and camels. The old civilization and the new here work side by side. It is the hope of the new to entirely supersede the old; and it is the dream of many that the ancient glory of these regions will be restored by the magic wand of modern civilization. But the Lord has something infinitely better in store, and soon His creative breath will renew “the face of the earth.” And while many, ignoring the Word of the Lord, are making the futile effort to restore these regions by the works of their own hands, let every one who believes the Word of the Lord and reads the SIGNS OF THE TIMES, be diligent in proclaiming everywhere the near approach of the glad day when, under the renewing touch of the Creator, even “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose,” when “it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing;” and when “the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon;” and when “they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” Isaiah 35. H. P. H.