was destined by nature to be a land of commerce and trade.

And yet while thus forming a highway from the civilization of the
Euphrates to that of the Nile, Palestine was too narrow a strip of
country to become itself a formidable kingdom. The empire of David
scarcely lasted for more than a single generation, and was due to the
weakness at the same time of both Egypt and Assyria. With the Arabian
desert on the one side and the Mediterranean on the other, it was
impossible for Canaan to develop into a great state. Its rocks and
mountains might produce a race of hardy warriors and energetic thinkers,
but they could not create a rich and populous community. The Phoenicians
on the coast were driven towards the sea, and had to seek in maritime
enterprise the food and wealth which their own land refused to grant.
Palestine was essentially formed to be the appropriator and carrier of
the ideas and culture of others, not to be itself their origin and
creator.

But when the ideas had once been brought to it they were modified and
combined, improved and generalized in a way that made them capable of
universal acceptance. Phoenician art is in no way original; its elements
have been drawn partly from Babylonia, partly from Egypt; but their
combination was the work of the Phoenicians, and it was just this
combination which became the heritage of civilized man. The religion of
Israel came from the wilderness, from the heights of Sinai, and the
palm-grove of Kadesh, but it was in Palestine that it took shape and
developed, until in the fullness of time the Messiah was born. Out of
Canaan have come the Prophets and the Gospel, but the Law which lay
behind them was brought from elsewhere.