r more like the cloudy and mythological war
in the desert than like the dry radiance of theism or monism.
I have said nothing here of my own faith, or of that name on which,
I am well persuaded, the world will be most wise to call.
But I do believe that the tradition founded in that far tribal battle,
in that far Eastern land, did indeed justify itself by leading
up to a lasting truth; and that it will once again be justified
of all its children. What has survived through an age of atheism
as the most indestructible would survive through an age of polytheism
as the most indispensable. If among many gods it could not presently
be proved to be the strongest, some would still know it was the best.
Its central presence would endure through times of cloud and confusion,
in which it was judged only as a myth among myths or a man among men.
Even the old heathen test of humanity and the apparition of the body,
touching which I have quoted the verse about the pagan polytheist
as sung by the neo-pagan poet, is a test which that incarnate
mystery will abide the best. And however much or little our
spiritual inquirers may lift the veil from their invisible kings,
they will not find a vision more vivid than a man walking unveiled
upon the mountains, seen of men and seeing; a visible god.

CHAPTER IX

THE BATTLE WITH THE DRAGON

Lydda or Ludd has already been noted as the legendary birthplace
of St. George, and as the camp on the edge of the desert from which,
as it happened, I caught the first glimpse of the coloured
fields of Palestine that looked like the fields of Paradise.
Being an encampment of soldiers, it seems an appropriate place for
St. George; and indeed it may be said that all that red and empty land
has resounded with his name like a shield of copper or of bronze.
The name was not even confined to the cries of the Christians;
a curious imaginative hospitality in the Moslem mind, a certain innocent
and imitative enthusiasm, made the Moslems also half-accept a sort
of Christian mythology, and make an abstract hero of St. George.
It is said that Coeur de Lion on these very sands first invoked
the soldier saint to bless the English battle-line, and blazon his cross
on the English banners. But the name occurs not only in the stories
of the victory of Richard, but in the enemy stories that led up
to the great victory of Saladin. In that obscure and violent quarrel
which let loose the disaster of Hattin, when the