Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1878-07-31

was century in advance Of Europe
We cannot overestimate the importance of
this Congress to the Israelites of the Old
World. They have, for the first time since
it became the European policy to treat
them as an inferior race and class, demanded
and obtained their rights as citizens and
subjects of land hostile to liberty. It is
not liberation, but equality that has been ac-
corded them in the Danubian Principalties,
which only recently taxed their ingenuity
to devise legal and social tortures for their
Jewish residents.
OF Disraelis achievement in Asiatic Tur-
key, the Messenger says awe can only say
that it involves, as a logical result, progress
whose possibilities the brilliant imagination
of the great statesman pictured in story
nearly forty years ago. Rarely is it given
to prophet TO realize his dreams so COM
pletely as has been the fortune of Benjamin
Disraeli. The glorious imagery which de-
! lighted in oriental scenes in the grandeur of
the destiny reserved for the Jewish race, in
vested with more than ordinary Significance
the thoughts aud schemes of the Young writer,
the clever philosopher, the spirited states
man, who had the courage of his convictions.
the independence of superior mind. Dis
raeli has accomplished for his native land
what no previous minister, save Pitt, had
achieved The responsibility of the Asiatic
| protectorateis none too great-the supremacy
,nff l.,
but competing states may enjoy a friendly
rivalry-Englands conquests are in the in.
terest of peace"
Whatever concerns these lands of Eastern
Europe and Western Asia has the greater
interest for the Christian world from the
fact that they are the early Christian lands.
Here Christianity made her first attacks and
gained her first triumphs. Clear biblical
associations cluster in them all. Especially
is this true of Cyprus 1t is one of the
| Bible lands, and the key to the Asiatic
Bible lands as you approach them from
the West
Cyprus is by our best biblical critics held
to be the Chittim of the Old Testament.
Certainly far back in the very twilight of
history its name is found as that of cele-
brated mart. The Phnnicians knew of it,
understood its resources and worked its
copper mines to advantage The Greeks,
the Persians, the Romans followed and
proved it rich possession. The crusaders
wrenched it from the hand of the decayng
J l.,
Them came the Venetians, and after the
Turks, who captured it in 1871 and have
held it till the present time. Its experience
under Turkish dominion does not differ
from that of other Ottoman possessions. 1t
comes TO England with its industries en-
feebled, its mineral wealth neglected, its
harbSrs choked by shoals, and its govern.
ment greatly demoralized. But il is the He
brew history and Bible associations that
cluster in Cyprus that give it the greatest
interest. 1t was the home of a Jewish pop
ulation in the third century before Christ,
or as early as the term of Alexander the
Great. Herod the Great farmed its rich
copper minds and added to the Jewish ele-
ment of the island 1t is especially noted
for its Jewish character in apostolic history.
Barnabas the Levite, and his sister Mary, of
Jerusalem whose house was a social sanctu-
airy amidst the trials of the first persecution,
were Cypriote Jews. From Silucia, the
port of Antioch, and lying at the mouth of
the Orontes, Paul and Barnabas sailed to
Cyprus upon their missionary tour. On a
clear day the island may be seen from the
shore which it commands. 1t was, as the
Presbyterian in a well-considered article on
this subject says, the steppng-stone to the
spiritual conquest of Asia Minor on the
north, and of the European lands skirtng
the Egean 10 the west 1t was therefore
something more than the love of native
land in the heart of Barnabas that made
Cyprus the first point of attack in this move
ment of the gospel upon the Mediterranean
territories The keen Jewish intellect that
has discerned, in this year of our Lord, the
commanding political position of Cyprus
upon Southern Europe and the Orient, saw
no more clearly than did that master mind
OF Israel which controlled the missionary
operations of primitive Christianity. St.
Paul must have looked upon Cyprus as the
gate of the Orient, just as Disraeli does
to-day. In Pauls time the island was held
by the Romans under the Proconsul Sergus
Paulus, but its political destiny has for the
most part been allied with Asia and Africa
AS we stand now under the blended cross
Of St. George and st. Andrew, that float over
Cyprus, and gaze from British war-shif
eastward and northward, what is the outlook
for EhrinIiaritxr z Xnulnr li1.u L.. L..