out an embracing arm to each.

We have a broad division of the earth into East and West. The
differences between the two, in civilization, mode of thought, religion,
language, and so on, are so radical as to make it seem that there was no
point of contact. At least this has been emphasized much by western
writers on the East. We are disturbed just now here in the far West over
the Oriental, Chinese Japanese and Indian crossing the _far_ boundary
line between Orient and Occident and coming into the United States and
Canada.

Yet East and West have always overlapped at the _middle_ boundary line.
There is a great mixture of races in the strip where the eastern edge of
the West and the western edge of the East come together. It is the strip
running roughly north and south where Russia's western border and
Turkey's touch Germany and Austria and Greece, including the
never-at-rest Balkan Peninsula. Constantinople sits on the dividing line
between East and West, with the worst of both civilizations within her
confines. Here the hemispheres touch and their life currents intermingle
and flow together.

Scientific research seems to find good evidence that all our European
civilization, which of course means American too, may have been brought
over by Eastern immigrants from central Asia long ages ago, Asia coming
into Europe. Perhaps we Westerners would not despise the Easterners so
contemptuously and patronizingly if we knew how much we are probably
indebted to them for our civilization as well as for our Hebrew and
Christian faith, our Bible, and the Christian restraining bulwarks of
our common life.

The old common point of contact between Orient and Occident was the
strip of land forming the western edge of the Orient at the eastern end
of the Mediterranean. Palestine has been for centuries the common
roadway of all nations, East and West. No bit of earth has been so
tramped and trampled by the feet of all nations and races. This has been
the battlefield of the nations through long centuries. The ends of the
earth have met here. It is interesting that the waters that wash its
western shore are called the Mediterranean Sea, that is, the
_middle-of-the-earth_ sea.

Here then is the centre of the map. It is the centre of all things in
the Bible. And it has proven to be at the centre of human action through
history, attested by the very name given to the chief body of water
there.

Jerusalem, the capital city of this Pa