earth, or do you still think God forsook you,
and did you, too, die an unbeliever? The crucifixion will never be
understood until men know that its worst agony consisted in the
disbelief which first of all doubts God and then must, by all reason,
doubt itself. The resurrection comes when we discover that we are God
and He is us.

[Page Heading: ETCHMIADZIN]

_21 January._--To-day, I drove out to Etchmiadzin with Mr. Lazarienne,
an Armenian, to see that curious little place. It is the ecclesiastical
city of Armenia--its little Rome, where the Catholicus lives. He was
ill, but a charming Bishop--Wardepett by name--with a flowing brown
beard and long black silk hood, made us welcome and gave us lunch, and
then showed us the hospital--which had no open windows, and smelt
horrible--and the lovely little third-century "temple." Then he took us
round the strange, quiet little place, with its peaceful park and its
three old brown churches, which mark what must once have been a great
city and the first seat of a national Christianity. Now there are
perhaps 300 inhabitants, but Mount Ararat dominates it, and Mount Ararat
is not a hill. It is a great white jewel set up against a sheet of
dazzling blue.

Hills and ships always seem to me to be alive, and I think they have a
personality of their own. Ararat stands for the unassailable. It is like
some great fact, such as that what is beautiful must be true. It is
grand and pure and lovely, and when the sun sets it is more than this,
for then its top is one sheet of rose, and it melts into a mystic hill,
and one knows that whatever else may "go to Heaven" Ararat goes there
every night.

We visited the old Persian palace built on the river's cliff, and looked
out over the gardens to the hills beyond, and saw the mosque, with its
blue roof against the blue sky, and its wonderful covering of old tiles,
which drop like leaves and are left to crumble.

_Tiflis. 24 January._--I left Erivan on Sunday, January 23rd. It was
cold and sharp, and the train was crowded. People were standing all down
the corridors, as usual. Nothing goes quicker than eight miles an hour,
nothing is punctual, nothing arrives. The stations are filthy, and the
food is quite uneatable. I often despair of this country, and if the
Russians were not our Allies I should feel inclined to say that nothing
would do them so much good as a year or two of German conquest. No one,
after the first six months, has been enth