ambition, or pleasure, or for the gratification of pride of opinion, blood, or character, or to exalt one party and depress 'another. We do not attribute to this simplicity, this singleness of intention, omniscience or infallibility, for the soundest eye can see only in the light, and the vision will be dim when the light is feeble. But we do affirm that it is an obligatory virtue and the necessary condition of using aright the light given; that to the single eye God reveals duty and also his own uncreated beauty and glory. Unless we are in this moral state, we cannot claim to be accepted by the Searcher of all hearts, though we believe that creed we confess, and obey the dictates of our conscience. A true estimate of the innocence or guilt of Saul may be formed by comparing two verses in the same chapter (1 Tim. i, 13, 16) which assign different, but not inconsistent, reasons for the special mercy he received, "But I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." "Howbeit, for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting." Did Saul utter blasphemies against one whom he knew to be the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, crucified out of love for a guilty world? Did he know that he was wasting the elect of God, the Church, which is Christ's bride? Not of that wickedness was he capable, or he would have been past hope of conversion, past mercy. God had pity on the blinded sinner. But he was not like Simeon, who waited to see the salvation of God. Jesus could not have said of him as of Nathanael, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" He had not the love of truth and righteousness which led John and James, Peter and Andrew, to be first disciples of the Baptist and then of Jesus. It was mercy, great mercy, that bore with his unbelief, and gave him a special revelation of the Son of God that he might be convinced and saved. His is a monumental case of the long-suffering and grace of Jesus Christ.

'ART. III. THE REGENERATION OF PALESTINE.

PALESTINE has been for many years a land of ruins; and ever since its chosen people were banished, as a nation, from its confines, members of the race have indulged in spasmodic efforts to regain its fertile plains, beautiful valleys, and crowning city, as their own. But these efforts have not been national, not even general, and, as a rule, have been little more than vain and enthusiastic plans plaguing the brains and torturing the hearts of a few of the faithful who have hoped to see Jerusalem regained and Israel re-established in his ancient home.

Within the last few years the Jews of some of the European capitals-London and Paris especially-have made some concerted trials to effect organization, and to proceed in a regular manner to possess the land and make it their own. The wealth and influence of Montefiore and the Rothschilds, in combination with the labors of the "Alliance Israelite" of Paris, have succeeded at least in calling the attention of the world to the fact that the Jews are again active in the matter of regenerating the Promised Land, and fitting it for the advent of their long-looked-for Messiah; and occasional announcements of their enthusiasm and success have led to the popular belief that they are quite likely to be successful in their endeavors. We have been told that their promised inheritance is rapidly becoming their own, and that a remarkable change is taking place through them in the Holy Land. It is stated that the scepter is even now virtually in the hands of that stanch Israelite, Baron Rothschild, who, for the loan of two hundred millions of francs to the Sultan, has a mortgage on the entire land, and may possess it any moment he pleases. According to these floating stories, great improvements are going on among the Jews of Jerusalem and the whole country; they are building up a new city in and around Jerusalem; are founding schools, hospitals, and newspapers; and a body of Venetian Jews is sustaining an agricultural school with a view to train up a community of their brethren to be tillers of the soil. The number of Hebrew residents has doubled, according to these statements, in the last ten years, and every thing is on the high road of modern improvement, even to a railroad, etc.

Now, it is clear that these things are set afloat by interested parties and circulated by ignorant ones, and they are gladly believed because it would be gratifying to the world at large to see this land of ruins regenerated, and at least fitted for the abode of men if not for the coming of the Messiah, either of the Jews or the Gentiles. But in the main these accounts are not true, and they have become of late so rife and mischievous that there appeared in a late issue of the New York Christian Advocate the following rejoinder to them all, from an authority well-known to our Church and the nation, and which, we need hardly say, puts a very different face on the matter:

JEWS RETURNING TO ZION.

We have just clipped from a religious journal the following article on the return of the Jews to the land of their fathers, and the improved condition of Palestine, which contains so many statements calculated to mislead the public, I deem a correction necessary:

Meanwhile, a railroad stretches over a part of the Holy Land; the scream of the iron horse echoes among the hills and valleys where the old prophet long ago uttered his prediction of a chariot that in the great preparation day of the Lord would run like lightning. There are also two hundred and fifty Protestant Churches worshiping among the sacred hills; and seven hundred and sixty children in the Sunday-schools of Palestine ring out the very hymns and songs that our children know and sing here in America. Baron Rothschild, at the time of the last loan of two hundred million francs made to Turkey, accepted a mortgage on the whole of Palestine. Owing to the Jewish immigration, the population of Palestine has more than doubled during the last ten years."

"The

The facts are: There is not a railroad in all Palestine. scream of the iron horse" has never broken the deathly silence that pervades the land. There is not an American missionary in the Holy Land, nor a Sunday-school; but one Protestant Church in Jerusalem, another outside the walls, and one at Nazareth. The Jewish population has increased during the last few years, but the population of the country has more rapidly decreased. The Jews have no intention of re-occupying the land. They go there to die, not to live. No Jew around Jerusalem owns or cultivates an acre of ground. Baron Rothschild has no mortgage on Palestine. He could easily purchase the country if he wanted it, but he does not covet it. The Jews of Europe and America will never return to Palestine unless forced back at the point of the bayonet. F. S. DE HASS,

Late U. S. Consul at Jerusalem.

Now, harsh as these assertions may seem, they are corroborated by other authorities that we might quote, and by frequent correspondence from the Holy Land on the part of intelligent and disinterested observers. And it may now be well to consider the present condition of the country, and obtain a candid view of the real efforts that are being made by various parties to improve the condition of things in Palestine; for there are many eyes turned thitherward in holy zeal and with a hope, almost forlorn, to be able by degrees to regenerate the land. But we need hardly say that the day has gone by, if it ever existed, when men of sound mind went thither as ordinary emigrants, in the hope of bettering their condition and making a fortune. When Canaan was the fertile land of milk and honey we can comprehend why foreign nations regarded it with longing eyes and desired to pitch their tents and guard their flocks on its plains. But at present the soil will not, certainly does not, support one tenth of the population that then lived in plenty. The mountains are at present without forests, and, being scorched by the sun, are poor in running streams. Their sides were once made fruitful by terraces of rich earth, which long ago by neglect were allowed to be washed down by the rains into the water-courses, so that one sees every-where little else than bald and barren precipices. The fig, the olive, and the grape, once the glory and support of the land, are now so meager and so poor as to have lost much of their value and fame.

The country possesses three large and fertile plains, which might be made the sources of great wealth. But the valley of the Jordan lies fallow because of the inertness of the gov ernment in superintending its irrigation, and what little is now produced is quite likely to become the spoil of the nomadic and thieving Bedouins. The plain of Esdraelon and the plain skirting the sea are still valuable, even with their primitive mode of cultivation; with a generously renewed soil and a modern style of culture they might be made mines of wealth. The natives, however, will make no effort to improve the condition of the land and introduce new methods, and strangers can hardly live there on account of the deadly fever. The Mennonites, who leave Russia in large numbers to escape military duty, and who are just now coming to us, for awhile tried the plain of Sharon along the sea, but in the course of a

year so many of them died of the fever that the rest gathered up their effects, sacrificed what money they had invested, and came away.

The cultivation of the land by the native peasants-the socalled fellahs-amounts to merely enough to keep them from starving. If they produce a bushel of grain more than they need for their direct wants, it is taken from them by the Turkish taxgatherers, who are experts in extortion. The extreme poverty of the poor natives is their only protection, and so the land lies neglected year after year. In the line of industry there is not any more encouragement: there is no market for their products, neither in the back country nor on the coast, for there are no ports for convenient export. All the ancient artificial harbors are in ruins, with one exception, that of Jaffa, which, though sufficient for the small sailing craft of ancient days, cannot accommodate the steamers of the period; these sometimes, therefore, lie for days before Jaffa in a storm, waiting to land passengers, or they carry them past to other ports to be taken back to Jaffa by some returning vessel that may have better weather and consequently better success.

There is only one passable road in the country-that which leads from Jaffa to Jerusalem-and it is going to decay. It was made some nine years ago, and has been neglected ever since. For a time there was some talk of a railroad on this route from the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem; but the French company that proposed it did so as a matter of speculation, and as soon as it was seen that it could not be made to pay, the project was abandoned. No enterprise, indeed, can be carried on that needs fuel, for there is but little to be had; and therefore manufactures that depend on it for steam power, as well as railroads, can have no success. Consequently camels are still the main means of transport for what little merchandise there is, which, indeed, scarcely extends beyond the olive-wood wares from Jerusalem and the mother-of-pearl work from Bethlehem. Even these industries are far from lucrative because of the active competition caused by the excessively narrow sphere for industrial labor.

These are clearly no very attractive conditions, and one is, therefore, surprised that men are ever inclined to go thither as emigrants, to better their material condition; and, indeed, none have done so except a few visionary enthusiasts, like the