ified in case any one should suppose that He was beheaded.' He could
see that the 'Christianity of Jerusalem, after a thousand years of
Turkish tyranny, survived even in the sense of dying daily'; fascinating
as Chesterton found Jerusalem, much as he insists that the 'sights' of
the city must be seen in their right perspective, yet he has sympathy
with the man who only 'sees in the distance Jerusalem sitting on the
hill and keeping that vision' lest going further he might understand the
city and weep over it.

* * * * *

Chesterton devotes a long and careful chapter to the question of the
Jews, of whom Christ was the chief; but, notwithstanding, thousands of
His so-called followers quite forget this, and scarcely will admit that
the Jew has a right to live. The reason is, no doubt, that the Fourth
Gospel uses the word [Greek: ioudaios] in the sense of those who were
hostile, consequently many entirely orthodox Christians are
anti-Jewists, quite oblivious of the very reasonable request of St. Paul
that in Christ are neither Jew nor Gentile. This is, in brief, the
theological side of the vexed question of Zionism. Chesterton makes it
quite clear that he thinks it desirable that 'Jews should be represented
by Jews, should live in a society of Jews, should be judged by Jews and
ruled by Jews,' which is of course to say that the Jews should be a
nation. But the fact remains, do they wish to be so, and, if they do, is
it necessary to them, or even congenial, that it shall be in Palestine?
It is no way the province of this book to go into this question; it has
been enough to say that it is perfectly evident that Chesterton desires
for the Jew the dignity of being a separate nation.

* * * * *

Is there any particular characteristic in this record of Chesterton's
visit to Jerusalem? Is it anything more than an impression of a
wonderful experience, when a great writer left his home in
Buckinghamshire and passed over the sea and the desert to the city that
is older than history and is now new? I do not think that the book can
be called more than a Chestertonian impression of Jerusalem, with an
appreciation of the vexed history of that strange city which is Holy. It
does not forget the problems in connection with Palestine, but it has no
particular claim to having said very much that was new about the New
Jerusalem. Yet it has avoided the obvious: it is