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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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They had not proceeded far inward from the sea , in the direction of the river Besor , when they reached the confines of Juda ; they stood at the foot of its hills , and the land of the Heathen lay behind them . Helon seemed to feel for the first time what
home and native country mean . In Egypt , where he had been born and bred ; he had been conscious of no such feeling ; for he had been taught to regard himself as only a sojourner there . Into this unknown , untrodden
native country he vyas about to enter , and before he set his foot upon it , at the first sight of it , the breeze seemed to waft him from its hills a welcome to his home . * Land of my fathers , ' he exclaimed , * land of promise ,
promised to me also from my earliest years ! and quickened his steps to reach it . He felt the truth of the saying , that Israel is Israel onl y in the Holy Land . * Here / said Elisama , * is the boundary of Juda / Helon , unable to speak , threw himself on the sacred earth , kissed it and watered it
> vith his tears , and SaUa , letting go the bridle of the camels , did the same . Elisama stpod beside them , and as he stretched his arms over them , and in the name of the God of Abraham , of Isaac and of Jacob , blessed their going out and their coming in , his eyes too overflowed with tears , and his heart
seemed to warm again as with the renewal of a youthful love . They proceeded slowl y on their way ; Helon gazed around him 6 n every side , and thought he had never seen so lovely a Spring . The latter rains had ceased , and had given a quickening freshness to the breezes from the hills , such as he had never known in the Delta .
The narcissus and the hyacinth , the blossoms of the apricot ana the peach , shed their fragrance around . The . groves of terebinth , the oliveyards and vineyards stood before them in their living green : the corn , swollen
by the rain , was ripening fast for the harvest , and the fields ot barley were already yellow . The wide meadows covered with grass for the cattle , the alternation of hill and valley , the rocks hewn out in terraces , and filled with
earth and p lanted , offered a constant variety of delightful views . You might see that this was a land , the dew of Which Jehovah had blessed , in which the prayer of Isaae oier Jacob had
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been fulfilled , when the patriarch said , * God mre thee of the dew * of Heaven , and of the fatness of the earth , and plenty of oil and wine / He drank of the pure , clear mountain stream , whose sparkling reflexion seemed to
him like a smile from a parent's eyes -on a returning wanderer , and thought the sweet water of the Nile , so praised by the Egyptians , could bear no comparison with i $ . Elisama reminded him of the words of the Psalm ( lxv . ) :
* Thou lookest down upon our land and waterest it , And raakest it full of sheaves . The river of God is full of water . Thou preparest corn and tillest the land .
Thou waterest Us furrows and softenest its clods ; Thou moistenest it with showers , thou blessest its springing , Thou crownest the year with Thy
blessing , And Thy footsteps drop fatness . They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness , And the hills are encompassed with re-* *
joicing : The pastures are clothed with flocks , And the fields are covered with corn ; All shout for joy and sing / " Helon replied to him from another Psalm ( civ . ) :
The springs arise among * the valleys , They run among the hills . Here the thirsty wild beast cools itself , The wild ass quenches his thirst . The fowls of Heaven dwell beside them , And sing among the branches . 'He watereth the hills from his clouds
above ; The fruit of his works satisfieth the eart h * He maketh grass to grow for cattle And herb for dip service of man ,
Preparing brea < J from the earth And wine that maketh glad man ' s heart ; The fragrance of the oil for ointment And bread that giveth strength . The cedars of Lebanon , tall as Heaven , He has planted , he watereth them . !*"
They reach Hebron in the evening , and are hospitably entertained by Elisama ' s friend . On the following morning , they set forth again for Jerusalejn .
•• At the first erowipg of the cock , all was in motion ; their host was making the last arrangements for Mb departure ; the neighbours ente * e <| to tuinotince that the inarcb was about
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14 " Helon ' s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem , " by M . Strauss .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1823, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1780/page/14/
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