Grand Master
of the Templars, Gerard the Englishman from Bideford in Devon,
drove with demented heroism his few lances against a host, there fell
among those radiant fanatics one Christian warrior, who had made
with his single sword such a circle of the slain, that the victorious
Moslems treated even his dead body as something supernatural;
and bore it away with them with honour, saying it was the body
of St. George.

But if the purpose of the camp be appropriate to the story of St. George,
the position of the camp might be considered appropriate to the more
fantastic story of St. George and the Dragon. The symbolic struggle
between man and monster might very well take place somewhere where
the green culture of the fields meets the red desolation of the desert.
As a matter of fact, I dare say, legend locates the duel itself
somewhere else, but I am only making use of the legend as a legend,
or even as a convenient figure of speech. I would only use it
here to make a kind of picture which may clarify a kind of paradox,
very vital to our present attitude towards all Palestinian traditions,
including those that are more sacred even than St. George. This paradox
has already been touched on in the last chapter about polytheistic
spirits or superstitions such as surrounded the Old Testament,
but it is yet more true of the criticisms and apologetics surrounding
the New Testament. And the paradox is this; that we never find
our own religion so right as when we find we are wrong about it.
I mean that we are finally convinced not by the sort of evidence we
are looking for, but by the sort of evidence we are not looking for.
We are convinced when we come on a ratification that is almost as abrupt
as a refutation. That is the point about the wireless telegraphy
or wordless telepathy of the Bedouins. A supernatural trick in a dingy
tribe wandering in dry places is not the sort of supernaturalism
we should expect to find; it is only the sort that we do find.
These rocks of the desert, like the bones of a buried giant,
do not seem to stick out where they ought to, but they stick out,
and we fall over them.

Whatever we think of St. George, most people would see a mere
fairy-tale in St. George and the Dragon. I dare say they are right;
and I only use it here as a figure for the sake of argument.
But suppose, for the sake of argument, that a man has come to
the conclusion that there probably was such a person as St. George,
i