The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
I have heard that there is a low doorway at the entrance to a famous
shrine which is called the Gate of Humility; but indeed in this sense
all gates are gates of humility, and especially gates of this kind.
Any one who has ever looked at a landscape under an archway
will know what I mean, when I say that it sharpens a pleasure
with a strange sentiment of privilege. It adds to the grace
of distance something that makes it not only a grace but a gift.
Such are the visions of remote places that appear in the low gateways
of a Gothic town; as if each gateway led into a separate world;
and almost as if each dome of sky were a different chamber.
But he who walks round the walls of this city in this spirit will come
suddenly upon an exception which will surprise him like an earthquake.
It looks indeed rather like something done by an earthquake;
an earthquake with a half-witted sense of humour. Immediately at
the side of one of these humble and human gateways there is a great gap
in the wall, with a wide road running through it. There is something
of unreason in the sight which affects the eye as well as the reason.
It recalls some crazy tale about the great works of the Wise Men
of Gotham. It suggests the old joke about the man who made
a small hole for the kitten as well as a large hole for the cat.
Everybody has read about it by this time; but the immediate impression
of it is not merely an effect of reading or even of reasoning.
It looks lop-sided; like something done by a one-eyed giant.
But it was done by the last prince of the great Prussian imperial system,
in what was probably the proudest moment in all his life of pride.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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