l that it it might fairly
be called a hole, in which many have seen, and I think truly,
a symbol of some idea of humility. It is also said that the wall
was pierced in this way to prevent the appearance of a camel
during divine service, but even that explanation would only repeat
the same suggestion through the parable of the needle's eye.
Personally I should guess that, in so far as the purpose was practical,
it was meant to keep out much more dangerous animals than camels,
as, for instance, Turks. For the whole church has clearly been
turned into a fortress, windows are bricked up and walls thickened
in some or all of its thousand years of religious war. In the blank
spaces above the little doorway hung in old times that strange
mosaic of the Magi which once saved the holy place from destruction,
in the strange interlude between the decline of Rome and the rise
of Mahomet. For when the Persians who had destroyed Jerusalem rode
out in triumph to the village of Bethlehem, they looked up and saw
above the door a picture in coloured stone, a picture of themselves.
They were following a strange star and worshipping an unknown child.
For a Christian artist, following some ancient Eastern tradition
containing an eternal truth, had drawn the three wise men with
the long robes and high head-dresses of Persia. The worshippers
of the sun had come westward for the worship of the star.
But whether that part of the church were bare and bald as it is
now or coloured with the gold and purple images of the Persians,
the inside of the church would always be by comparison abruptly dark.
As familiarity turns the darkness to twilight, and the twilight
to a grey daylight, the first impression is that of two rows
of towering pillars. They are of a dark red stone having much
of the appearance of a dark red marble; and they are crowned
with the acanthus in the manner of the Corinthian school.
They were carved and set up at the command of Constantine;
and beyond them, at the other end of the church beside the attar,
is the dark stairway that descends under the canopies of rock
to the stable where Christ was born.

Of all the things I have seen the most convincing, and as it
were crushing, were these red columns of Constantine.
In explanation of the sentiment there are a thousand things that want
saying and cannot be said. Never have I felt so vividly the great
fact of our history; that the Christian religion is like a huge
bridge acr