“How could such a people be better framed than by… settlement on a land both near to, and aloof from, the main streams of human life, where they could be at once spectators of history and yet not its victims, where they could enjoy personal communion with God and yet have some idea also of His providence of the whole world; where they could gather up the experience of the ancient world, and break with this into the modern?
“There is no land which is at once so much a sanctuary and an observatory as Palestine: no land which, till its office was fulfilled, was so swept by the great forces of history; and was yet so capable of preserving one tribe in national continuity and growth: one tribe learning and suffering … till upon the opportunity afforded by the last of [these forces (the Romans)] she launched with her results upon the world. It is the privilege of the students of the historical geography of Palestine to follow all this process of development in detail” (George Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 109,110).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One