The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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