In this chapter we have sought to gather the most obvious survivals of that old Christian invasion of Palestine which followed next after the Roman. Almost inevitably we find ourselves quarrelling with the legendary lore that has stultified so many venerable buildings and associations. Yet in its legends too the early Church survives, and some of them embody eternal truths in forms of rare beauty. Take three of the legends of the Holy Sepulchre by way of example. They show the spot where the one-eyed soldier Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ, received back the lost eyesight at the touch of a drop of the blood. There, too, is the cleft in the rock through which blood flowed from the Cross down into the tomb of Adam, whose corpse came to life at once. And there, on Easter Eve, the sham miracle of the “Holy Fire” has been enacted annually for at least a thousand years. Who can miss the underlying truth beneath these legends? They are, for all but the ignorant and the gross, symbols of the eternal healing and quickening power that the love and sacrifice of Christ exert on humanity and even on His enemies. The torch-bearers, who kindle their fires at the blaze on Easter Eve, and speed thence to Bethlehem and other towns to light from it the candles waiting on many altars, tell their own exhilarating lesson. Two other legends may be mentioned, which the Western world owes to the Syrian Church--those of St. George and St. Christopher. St. George, who was a Roman soldier under Diocletian, was martyred in A.D. 303. His memory, mixed up with the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda, and with Crusader stories of Richard Cœur de Lion, stands for the victory of faith over paganism. St. Christopher would only follow the strongest, and finding that his master the devil was afraid of Christ, renounced his service and set out to seek Him who was strongest of all. The point of the story is that, after seeking Christ far and wide, he found Him while he was performing the humble task of carrying passengers across a river. It is characteristic of the pilgrim point of view that legend has fixed this scene not by some homely German stream but at the fords of Jordan, where he is said to have carried the infant Christ across upon his shoulder. Even of such legends no wise man will speak with scorn. They, too, are monuments of that conquest of Christ which gives its meaning and its glory to the Christian invasion. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF EL AKSA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.] CHAPTER IV MOSLEM