The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
of women, but should rather call the Christian view of women.
This is the sort of dignity which must of necessity come from
some vague memory of chivalry. The woman may or may not be,
as the legend says, a lineal descendant of a Crusader.
But whether or no she is his daughter, she is certainly his heiress.
She may be put last among the local figures I have here described,
for the special reason that her case has this rather deeper significance.
For it is not possible to remain content with the fact that the crowd
offers such varied shapes and colours to the eye, when it also offers
much deeper divisions and even dilemmas to the intelligence.
The black dress of the Moslem woman and the white dress of the
Christian woman are in sober truth as different as black and white.
They stand for real principles in a real opposition; and the black and
white will not easily disappear in the dull grey of our own compromises.
The one tradition will defend what it regards as modesty, and the other
what it regards as dignity, with passions far deeper than most of our
paltry political appetites. Nor do I see how we can deny such a right
of defence, even in the case we consider the less enlightened.
It is made all the more difficult by the fact that those who consider
themselves the pioneers of enlightenment generally also consider
themselves the protectors of native races and aboriginal rights.
Whatever view we take of the Moslem Arab, we must at least admit
that the greater includes the less. It is manifestly absurd to say
we have no right to interfere in his country, but have a right
to interfere in his home.
It is the intense interest of Jerusalem that there can thus be
two universes in the same street. Indeed there are ten rather
than two; and it is a proverb that the fight is not only between
Christian and Moslem, but between Christian and Christian.
At this moment, it must be admitted, it is almost entirely a fight
of Christian and Moslem allied against Jew. But of that I shall have
to speak later; the point for the moment is that the varied colours
of the streets are a true symbol of the varied colours of the souls.
It is perhaps the only modern place where the war waged between ideas
has such a visible and vivid heraldry.
And that fact alone may well leave the spectator with one
final reflection; for it is a matter in which the modern world
may well have to learn something from the motley rabble of this
remote Eastern town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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