It is impossible to describe one's feelings on falling on your knees (you do so involuntarily) on the stone of unction. You feel as if you were in the immediate presence of the great Saviour of mankind. You do not stop to think whether the localities pointed out to you, are really the places where the events described took place. It was foretold of Jerusalem, that she should be a city of heaps, and it is literally fulfilled. Immense heaps of rubbish meet you everywhere. The church of England people, when laying the foundation of their church, had to dig through a heap of rubbish fifty feet in depth before they came to the rock. It is peculiarly a city of heaps. Suppose you enter a large town and go into one house and find nobody there, then into another, and another, and so on, finding all empty. You go to the markets, to the halls, to the churches, and find them quite deserted, nobody to be seen. Will you not be astonished? There is a town in Syria, with its houses, theatre, columns, and gate-ways all there, but without a single inhabitant. That town is the wonderful Petra, the capital of Edom. The town is built at the foot of a hill, on a slope rising up from the valley. It was foretold of Edom that she should be made bare, and that no man should live in her. Can the fulfillment of this be all fiction? Can it be mere chance? We come now to a point still more striking. Where Jericho once stood, the wild Bedouin encamps. It is an excellent site for a town for business, for commerce, for agriculture, and nobody lives there. You have read of the cluster of grapes which the spies which Joshua sent forth, brought from the brook of Eshcol. You talk of your grapes. Why, you would not call them grapes at all in Syria; we would not give them even to pigs! Our grapes are as large as walnuts, very juicy, and grow in great abundance. I remember my brother John and myself bringing home a bunch one day, on our way from school, which was so large that we were obliged to carry it home on a stick between us. Thousands of pilgrims visit Jericho every year, and it would therefore be an excellent place for a hotel. If a large hotel were built, other houses would necessarily follow, and a town would soon rise up, but notwithstanding this, and all the natural advantages of the place, no hotel is built. Two American farmers went to Syria some years ago to settle. They went over the whole country, and visited Jericho, but finally settled, one of them at Etam, and the other at Jaffa. I asked them why they did not settle in Jericho. They said they did not know. I asked them if it were not a good place for business, if they could not have made money there. O yes, they said, plenty of money could be made there,—excellent stand for business. I asked them again, why they did not settle there. Their answer was, “Sir, we cannot tell you why we did not settle there.” But I can tell you, friends. The Lord says, “Cursed is the man that re-builds Jericho,” and no man dares to re-build it. Let us now come to the people of Syria. They are still more interesting than the country itself. There ought to be three races of people in Syria—the Canaanites, the Hebrews, and the Ishmaelites. Now, I am a native of Syria, but I cannot tell you to what race I belong. Our country has been overrun, over, and over, and over again. It has been re-re-re-conquered, and each successive band of invaders has settled down in the country, and has intermarried with its inhabitants. One of our most remarkable races is the Bedouins or Ishmaelites. They will rob you wherever they meet you, but still will indignantly repel the charge of being robbers. They consider that they are merely taking back the share in the property of Abraham, of which their father Ishmael, as they think, was unjustly deprived by his brother Isaac. Still, with all his faults, the Bedouin is an4honorable man. If you put your hand on the pole of his tent he will do everything in his power to serve you. If you have eaten bread and salt with him, (their term for taking a meal with you,) he will fight for you, and if need be, die for you.