At this season, we remember particularly those who have "recovered" the little land which embraces holy places of three great faiths and the most holy places of two of these. First among these recoverers, of course, is he who has delivered the land itself from the hand of the Turk and his usually oppressive, often cruel and always unenlightened rule-General Allenby, whose name should be written in fame's list along with those early recoverers, Joshua and Deborah and David. He would not allow himself to be called a Crusader, though his achievement deserves more even than is written in epic praise of the early Crusaders in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.

But Lord Allenby's recovery of the land is, after all, as is true of every discovery, of value only if it be put to some higher human uses. It will not be enough that the few hundred thousand people who live there about as many as there are in Cleveland, Ohio, or in Baltimore, Maryland, or in St. Louis, Missouri -shall live in greater freedom, comfort and happiness. It will not be enough that the desert parts again blossom as the rose, and become as fruitful as gardens of Solomon. It would not be a satisfying recovery even if the quiet cities should be developed into industrial centers by the western sons of Tubal Cain (the ancient "forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron”), with their smoking chimneys and mills whose noise would be heard above the sound of the grinding of millstones.

The land will be fully recovered only if its spiritual values be exploited for all nations and peoples. If every man, woman and child, whose religion traces its origin from or its way through that land, were to become a stockholder in the "glorious company of the apostles", and purchase even an infinitesimal material interest in that land, it would quicken their spiritual interest in that which has come out of it. If they could recover the glory which enhaloed the land in childhood, like the light of the Shechinah, for millions of them it would make the place "where the Child was" a real sanctuary again for the broken world. For the world must go all the way back to religion for its own recovery. We must, as Amiel said, continue to adore that which dwells beyond the seeing and hearing even of science, for when adoration ceases and the desire of the mind fails, the life of the

world shrinks to the visible, the audible and the palpable, whose walls become a tomb. Only faith finds a satisfying end for the journey of man, begun when he first saw a Star in the East and knelt in worship. A few days ago, there was uncovered in a village just across the plain of Jezreel from Nazareth-less than thirty miles away-the marble sarcophagus of a cousin of Herod the Great, who was no doubt alive when the Child was born Whom Herod sought to destroy. This is said to be the only contemporary record so far found of that eventful day. It is the tomb of one who, if he did not join in the slaughter of the innocents, did not go to worship at Bethlehem, with the Wise Men and the Shepherds.

The Western Wise Men of science need to take their occidental gifts back to the same place to which the Wise Men came from the East. The adoration of these Western Magi would be the worshipful offering by the chemist, the biologist, the physicist, of their discoveries for the recovery and advancement of that doctrine and practice of human brotherhood announced on one of the hills of Galilee.

I passed that hill in the dawn of a day immediately after the Battle of Armageddon in the autumn of 1918. The land was as the house in the parable from which the unclean spirit had been driven forth. I thought, as I then wrote, that it was the beginning of the thousand years of peace. The house has since been swept and garnished, but if it be not filled with the spirit that breathed in the Sermon on the Mount, the unclean spirit will find its way back, bringing its seven companions with it. And the last state of that house will be worse than the first. Lest that fate come upon this little land, whatever may befall the rest of Western Asia that seems about to come again under the unrestrained rule of the Turk, the people of the nations of Christendom should unite to keep it a holy place, into which nothing that defileth or maketh a lie or worketh an abomination shall enter a place into which the nations shall bring their glory and honor, a spiritual home not for any one people or race. or nation, but for all whose faith looks toward Bethlehem, or whose windows open toward Jerusalem, or whose pilgrim thoughts find their way to the Dome of the Rock.

There is need of a new Crusade, not of Christian against Jew or Moslem for the recovery of the Holy Land, but of Christian, Jew and Moslem united against the material forces that would make man forget the spiritual ends of existence, for the recovery of faith-of that for which this land is a symbol.

In our Western civilization, we have daily traveled farther from the East, like the Youth of Wordsworth's ode journeying into Manhood; but in so doing we have again reached the East, the place where the Star was seen, that came and stood over "where the Young Child was". It is now a time for recovering the vision splendid, which for so many seems to be dying away into the light of common day.

JOHN H. FINLEY.

THE PRIEST AND PAN

BY MARY-LAPSLEY CAUGHEY

(The scene is a quiet valley, Arcadian and softly green. A grey haze hangs over it, save where in the distance mountains appear, shining with a far-off light. Pan is singing. A Priest stands listening to him.)

PAN

O Youth! Youth! Youth! Deliciousness that knows

Nothing of weariness, which like a rose

Is sweet and vivid, living happily.

O Youth! Youth! Youth! What is eternity?

In these soft hours the memories of love.
The earth, the air, the trees that wave above
My head, whisper of languor, ease and rest,

Of a white nymph who flees with sun-warmed breast.

THE PRIEST (chanting)

Lord, have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep Thy law.
PAN (singing uneasily)

PAN (stopping his song)

What song is that? I do not like its sound.

THE PRIEST

Pan, child of God, listen while I propound
The will of God, how He would save mankind.
He would not let you stray in darkness, blind
To His Divinity—

PAN (breaking in)

Divinity! That is the Youth in me.

Ah, I am young and I am glad to be

Free of the hills and meadows, to touch flowers,
To live in idleness for endless hours.

Divinity is Youth, Song, gracious Ease;
A perfect trinity these three, and these
I worship, worship laughingly,

Singing

Divinity, Youth, Ease-Divinity!

THE PRIEST

Stop, Pan! O Pan, Pan, you have played too long.