The New Jerusalem eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 322 pages of information about The New Jerusalem.
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The New Jerusalem eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 322 pages of information about The New Jerusalem.

We can no more subject the world to the English compromise than to the English climate; and both are things of incalculable cloud and twilight.  We have grown used to a habit of calling things by the wrong names and supporting them by the wrong arguments; and even doing the right thing for the wrong cause.  We have party governments which consist of people who pretend to agree when they really disagree.  We have party debates which consist of people who pretend to disagree when they really agree.  We have whole parties named after things they no longer support, or things they would never dream of proposing.  We have a mass of meaningless parliamentary ceremonials that are no longer even symbolic; the rule by which a parliamentarian possesses a constituency but not a surname; or the rule by which he becomes a minister in order to cease to be a member.  All this would seem the most superstitious and idolatrous mummery to the simple worshippers in the shrines of Jerusalem.  You may think what they say fantastic, or what they mean fanatical, but they do not say one thing and mean another.  The Greek may or may not have a right to say he is Orthodox, but he means that he is Orthodox; in a very different sense from that in which a man supporting a new Home Rule Bill means that he is Unionist.  A Moslem would stop the sale of strong drink because he is a Moslem.  But he is not quite so muddleheaded as to profess to stop it because he is a Liberal, and a particular supporter of the party of liberty.  Even in England indeed it will generally be found that there is something more clear and rational about the terms of theology than those of politics and popular science.  A man has at least a more logical notion of what he means when he calls himself an Anglo-Catholic than when he calls himself an Anglo-Saxon.  But the old Jew with the drooping ringlets, shuffling in and out of the little black booths of Jerusalem, would not condescend to say he is a child of anything like the Anglo-Saxon race.  He does not say he is a child of the Aramaico-Semitic race.  He says he is a child of the Chosen Race, brought with thunder and with miracles and with mighty battles out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.  In other words, he says something that means something, and something that he really means.  One of the white Dominicans or brown Franciscans, from the great monasteries of the Holy City, may or may not be right in maintaining that a Papacy is necessary to the unity of Christendom.  But he does not pass his life in proving that the Papacy is not a Papacy, as many of our liberal constitutionalists pass it in proving that the Monarchy is not a Monarchy.  The Greek priests spend an hour on what seems to the sceptic mere meaningless formalities of the preparation of the Mass.  But they would not spend a minute if they were themselves sceptics and thought them meaningless formalities, as most modern people do think of the formalities about Black Rod or the Bar of the House. 

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The New Jerusalem from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.