Author's Notes "Ainzebalta on the slope of the Syrian When the little train has crawled up the rack and pinion railway which zigzags from Beyrout and its expanse of sea over the snowtopped Lebanons toward Damascus, one of the small stations at which it halts among the heights is Ain Sofar. The traveler will there notice a carriage road running southward. That road would soon lead to a spot where a flat-roofed village some ten miles from Ain Sofar could be seen across a mountain valley. That is Ainzehalta. An excellent water-color drawing of this village, with the best description of scenery and life thereabout known to me, may be found in the first ten chapters of Inchbold's Under The Syrian Sun. he Sovg Qbf Our. “You of the Western world, not Syrian Guest knowing these things as they are, often misunderstand what is written." - Page 15. an One of many misconceptions of this sort may serve to illustrate. Only a western viewpoint could have made the words “laid him in a manger" lead Christendom into its long thought of a stable as Christ's birthplace. In Palestine one sees, as I have sought to show in No Room in the Inn, that a lowly home rather than a stable is indicated understanding which does not do violence to age-long customs of the land, and also is far happier in its suggestion. Since that little book was published I have had the satisfaction of hitting upon the following: "It is my impression that the birth [of Jesus] actually took place in an ordinary house of some common peasant, and that the babe was laid in one of the mangers such as are still found in the dwellings of farmers in this region." (Thomson's The Land and the Book, v. 2, p. 503.) On page 98 of the same volume this author tells how his own children were once thus accommodated. "There is the shepherd psalm; I find that this is taken among you as having two parts," etc.- Page 16. lof-OurSyrian Guest Even reading men are often unaware that authoritative writers have seen a shepherd unity throughout this psalm for centuries. The great eye of Augustine, fifteen hundred years ago, saw an essential, onward movement which carries the shepherd thought on to the table prepared in the presence of enemies a spiritual deepening in that the shepherd's goodness widens with the need, providing care not alone in pleasant places but also where the way becomes hard and perilous. Here are his words: "Now after the rod by which I was brought up while a little one and having life among the flock in the pastures, after that rod when I began to be under the staff, thou hast prepared a table in my sight that I should Inot now be fed with milk as a little one, but should take food as a larger one, having been established against them that trouble me." This view can be traced in eminent writings (see notes below) down to our own time. No less a modern scholar than George Adam Smith (Four Psalms, 1896) says that "the last two |