f such a thing happened it might make him write
a book on the 'Superstition of Non-Divorce.'

_Chapter Ten_

'THE NEW JERUSALEM'

There are four ways of going to Jerusalem--the one is to go as a pilgrim
would go to Mecca; another is to go as a tourist in much the way that an
American staying in Russell Square might start for a trip round London.
Again, it is possible to go to Jerusalem for yet a third reason, that of
wishing quite humbly to be in some way a modern Crusader. There is yet a
fourth way, which is to be made to go for reasons that are called
military and are really political.

'The New Jerusalem' is, above all, a massive book. It is the record of a
tour, and it is something more, it is an appreciation of the Sacred City
on a Hill. It is, in a limited sense, a philosophy of the Holy Land; it
deals in a masterly way with problems connected with the Jews; it is so
unscholarly as to insist that the scholars who refuse to call the Mosque
of Omar that at all are pedantic; it has a fine chapter on Zionism; it
describes Jerusalem, not so much as a city, but as an impression that
fastened itself on the mind of Mr. Chesterton.

There are some very fine passages in the book that deal with the curious
question of Demonology, that peculiar belief which finds a place in the
New Testament in the story of the Gadarene swine, and who, Chesterton
felt, might still be found at the bottom of the Dead Sea--'sea swine or
four-legged fishes swollen over with evil eyes, grown over with sea
grass for bristles, the ghosts of Gadara.'

One of the most interesting chapters of this book is that which is
entitled 'The Philosophy of Sightseeing.' There is, of course, a
philosophy of everything, of boiling eggs, of race-horses, of the
relations of space and time--in fact, Philosophy is a sort of Harrods,
that sums up anything from a Rolls Royce to a packet of pins.

To some people there must be almost something incongruous in the idea of
sightseeing in the Holy Land, yet it is probable that of the crowds
round the foot of the Cross, on which was enacted the world's greatest
blessing, a great part were idle sightseers who, twenty centuries later,
might have been a bank holiday crowd on Hampstead Heath. Chesterton
found that there was a philosophy in sightseeing; he had been warned
that he would find Jerusalem disappointing, but he did not. He could be
interested in the guide who 'made it very clear that Jesus Christ was
cruc