As I went down that sloping wall or shoulder of the world from the Holy City on the mountain to the buried Cities of the Plain, I seemed to see more and more clearly all this Western evolution of Eastern mystery, and how on this one high place, as on a pivot, the whole purpose of mankind had swerved.  I took up again the train of thought which I had trailed through the desert, as described in the last chapter, about the gods of Asia and of the ancient dispensation, and I found it led me along these hills to a sort of vista or vision of the new dispensation and of Christendom.  Considered objectively, and from the outside, the story is something such as has already been loosely outlined; the emergence in this immemorial and mysterious land of what was undoubtedly, when thus considered, one tribe among many tribes worshipping one god among many gods, but it is quite as much an evident external fact that the god has become God.  Still stated objectively, the story is that the tribe having this religion produced a new prophet, claiming to be more than a prophet.  The old religion killed the new prophet; but the new prophet killed the old religion.  He died to destroy it, and it died in destroying him.  Now it may be reaffirmed equally realistically that there was nothing normal about the case or its consequences.  The things that took part in that tragedy have never been the same since, and have never been like anything else in the world.  The Church is not like other religions; its very crimes were unique.  The Jews are not like other races; they remain as unique to everybody else as they are to themselves.  The Roman Empire did not pass like other empires; it did not perish like Babylon and Assyria.  It went through a most extraordinary remorse amounting to madness and resuscitation into sanity, which is equally strange in history whether it seems as ghastly as a galvanised corpse or as glorious as a god risen from the dead.  The very land and city are not like other lands and cities.  The concentration and conflict in Jerusalem to-day, whether we regard them as a reconquest by Christendom or a conspiracy of Jews or a part of the lingering quarrel with Moslems, are alike the effect of forces gathered and loosened in that one mysterious moment in the history of the city.  They equally proclaim the paradox of its insignificance and its importance.

But above all the prophet was not and is not like other prophets; and the proof of it is to be found not primarily among those who believe in him, but among those who do not.  He is not dead, even where he is denied.  What is the use of a modern man saying that Christ is only a thing like Atys or Mithras, when the next moment he is reproaching Christianity for not following Christ?  He does not suddenly lose his temper and talk about our most unmithraic conduct, as he does (very justly as a rule) about our most unchristian conduct.  We do not find a group of ardent young agnostics, in the middle of