Im Hanna is fixing the lamp.  It is a little earthen saucer having a lip on one side, with the wick hanging over.  The wick just began to smoke and she poured in more olive oil, and it burns brightly again.  Do you remember what the prophet Isaiah (42:3) said, “a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.”  This is quoted in Matt. 12 of our Lord Jesus.  The word flax means wick.  It is “fetileh” in Arabic, and this is just what Im Hanna has been doing.  She saw the wick smoking and flickering, and instead of blowing it out and quenching it, she brought the oil flask, and gently poured in the clear olive oil and you saw how quickly the flame revived.  So our Lord would have us learn from Him.  When the flame of our faith and love is almost dead and nothing remains but the smoking flickering wick, He does not quench it, and deal harshly with us, but he comes in all gentleness and love and pours in the oil of His grace, and then our faith revives and we live again.

PART III.

Here come some little Bedawin gypsy children.  One is laughing at my hat.  He never saw one before and he calls me “Abu Suttle,” the “father of a Pail,” and wonders why I carry a pail on my head.  The people love to use the word Abu, [father] or Im, [mother].  They call a musquito Abu Fas, the father of an axe.  The centipede is “Im Arba wa Arb-ain; “The mother of forty-four legs.”  The Arabic poet Hariri calls a table the “father of assembling;” bread, the “father of pleasantness;” a pie, “the mother of joyfulness,” salt, “the father of help,” soap the “father of softness;” Death is called by the Arab poets, “Father of the Living,” because all the living are subject to him.

After breakfast we will start for Safita.  You see that snow-white dome on the hill-top! and another on the next hill under that huge oak tree, and then another and another.  These are called Nebi or Ziarat or Wely.  Each one contains one or more tombs of Nusairy saints or sheikhs, and the poor women visit them and burn lamps and make vows to the saints who they think live in them.  They know nothing of Christ, and when they feel sad and troubled and want comfort they enter the little room under the white dome, and there they call, “O Jafar et Tiyyar hear me!  O Sheikh Hassan hear me!”

This is just as the old Canaanite women used to go up and worship on every high hill, and under every green tree, thousands of years ago, and these poor Nusairiyeh are thought to be the descendants of the old Canaanites.

Here come men on horseback to visit that “ziyara.”  Up they go to the little room with the white dome, and all dismount.  The old sheikh who has charge, comes out to meet them.  They are pilgrims and have to make vows and bring offerings.  One had a sick son and he once vowed that if his son got well he would bring a sheep and a bushel of wheat as an offering to this shrine.  So there is the sheep on one of the horses, and that mule is bringing the wheat.  If the old sheikh has many such visitors he will grow rich.  Some of them do.  And yet the people laugh at these holy places, and tell some strange stories about them.  One of the stories is as follows:—­