The Armenians are hated.  I wonder Christ doesn’t do more for them considering they were the first nation in the world to embrace Christianity; but then, one wonders about so many things during this war.  Oh, if we could stamp out the madness that seems to accompany religion, and just live sober, kind, sensible lives, how good it would be; but the Turks must burn women and children, alive, because, poor souls, they think one thing and the Turks think another!  And men and women are hating and killing each other because Christ, says one, had a nature both human and divine, and, says another, the two were merged in one.  And a third says that Christ was equal to the Father, while a whole Church separated itself on the question of Sabellianism, or “The Procession of the Son.”

Poor Christ, once crucified, and now dismembered by your own disciples, are you glad you came to 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.