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Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936

"The New Jerusalem"


The truth becomes strangely luminous in this wilderness between
two worlds, where the rocks stand out stark like the very bones
of the Dragon.
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.


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