the Jews fleeing from Russia can settle with safety in the land of their ancestors, then they will contribute thousands, I may well say, hundreds of thousands of pounds to promote this great object." Oliphant had by this point become something of a celebrity among Jews in Eastern Europe. He was spoken of as "another Cyrus" and a "saviour". His settlement plans were published by the early Zionist newspaper Hamagid, written up by Peretz Smolenskin in Ha-Shaḥar, and Moses Lilienblum expressed the hope that Oliphant would be "the Messiah for Israel." According to historian Nathan Michael Gelber, "you could find in the houses of poor Jews a picture of Oliphant. It would be hung right next to the pictures of the great philanthropists Moses Montefiore and Baron Hirsch." Despite the fact that the Sublime Porte had given no permission for the building of Jewish agricultural settlements, in May 1882 the Oliphants began a journey to Palestine, traveling through Budapest to Moldave, where they paused to meet Rabbi Avrohom Yaakov Friedman whom Oliphant understood to be "the leader of world Jewry", hoping to persuade him to raise sufficient funds to purchase Palestine from the Ottoman Emperor. The Oliphants settled in Palestine, dividing their time between a house in the German Colony in Haifa, and another in the Druze village of Daliyat al-Karmel on Mount Carmel. Oliphant's secretary Naftali Herz Imber, author of the Israeli national anthem, Hatikva, lived with them.<ref>"Streetwise: Rehov Oliphant, Haifa" Jerusalem Post</ref> In the Holy Land, they were in touch with the Jewish pioneers of the First Aliyah, donating 1,000 roubles to the founding settlers of Yesud HaMa'ala. He is regarded as having been "central" to "the establishment and survival" of Rosh Pinna and Zikhron Ya'akov. Esoteric writings Laurence and his wife Alice collaborated on a work of esoteric Christianity, which was published in 1885 as Sympneumata, or Evolutionary Forces Now Active in Man. Influenced by the American mystic Thomas Lake Harris as well as spiritualists Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland, Sympneumata is founded on an interpretation of the Fall whereby the human soul was originally androgynous but became divided into male and female counterparts upon being encased in physical bodies. In Sympneumata the Oliphants emphasise the need to locate ones physical and spiritual counterparts through a breathing practice, with the aim of unlocking the androgyne within through 'vibratory' motion. In December 1885, Alice became ill and died