As a consequence, the chief object of an historical pilgrimage is to discover some place where the old conditions have not been improved away.  The religious pilgrim does not expect to find the old prophets, but he has a pious hope of finding the abuses which the prophets denounced.

I have in mind a clergyman who, in his own home, is progressive to a fault.  He is impatient of any delay.  He is all the time seeking out the very latest inventions in social and economic reforms.  But several years ago he made a journey to the Holy Land, and when he came back he delivered a lecture on his experiences.  A more reactionary attitude could not be imagined.  Not a word did he say about the progress of education or civil-service reform in Palestine.  There was not a sympathetic reference to sanitation or good roads.  The rights of women were not mentioned.  Representative government seemed to be an abomination to him.  All his enthusiasm was for the other side.  He was for Oriental conservatism in all its forms.  He was for preserving every survival of ancient custom.  He told of the delight with which he watched the laborious efforts of the peasants ploughing with a forked stick.  He believed that there had not been a single improvement in agriculture since the days of Abraham.

The economic condition of the people had not changed for the better since patriarchal times, and one could still have a good idea of a famine such as sent the brothers of Joseph down into Egypt.  Turkish misgovernment furnished him with a much clearer idea of the publicans, and the hatred they aroused in the minds of the people, than he had ever hoped to obtain.  In fact, one could hardly appreciate the term “publicans and sinners” without seeing the Oriental tax-gatherers.  He was very fortunate in being able to visit several villages which had been impoverished by their exactions.  The rate of wages throws much light on the Sunday-School lessons.  A penny a day does not seem such an insufficient minimum wage to a traveler, as it does to a stay-at-home person.  On going down from Jerusalem to Jericho he fell among thieves, or at least among a group of thievish-looking Bedouins who gave him a new appreciation of the parable of the Samaritan.  It was a wonderful experience.  And he found that the animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans had not abated.  To be sure, there are very few Samaritans left, and those few are thoroughly despised.

The good-roads movement has not yet invaded Palestine, and we can still experience all the discomforts of the earlier times.  Many a time when he took his life in his hands and wandered across the Judaean hills, my friend repeated to himself the text, “In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the people walked through by-ways.”

To most people Shamgar is a mere name.  But after you have walked for hours over those rocky by-ways, never knowing at what moment you may be attacked by a treacherous robber, you know how Shamgar felt.  He becomes a real person.  You are carried back into the days when “there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”