Morning journal and courier., 1888-11-19
---------------------- THE HOLY LAND.
To Be Invaded by She ShrIekinE Loco.
 mnEIYa.

To Re Invaded by she ShrIekIng Loco.
 motive. To Christendom at large the port of Jeru- salem stands in this matter for the Holy City itself, and the European will welcome a railway extension, which brings Jerusalem sensibly nearer to the traveller from the West. It is true, says the London Telegraph, the distance to be spanned by the railway is but 30 or 40 miles, but that, when neces- sary to be traverssd on horseback, adds a day to journey already sufficiently long for the tastes of many travellers, beside the fact that such a mode of looomotion is to some unsuitable and to others impossible. When Jaffa, which is three days from BriHdisi, itself the same time distance from London, has been brought within couple of hours by railway from the Holy City, it will be possible for an Englishman who has spent one Sunday in Westminster Abbey to pass the next on the site of the Temple. It is only because marvels become familiar by repetition that this wonder of a sudden transit from the modern to the ancient, this recreation in six days of 6 world which, in one sense, has as utterly passed away as in another it is imperishable, have so little to say to the careless modern mind. Yet, it is, perhaps, rather on the nearer view
 
 brought out The railway which will here- after carry its daily freight of restless life from the Syrian seaport to the sacred city eternal in @ far truer sense than Rome-is an object of more interest on its spiritual side, that is to say as an embodiment of human thought, than as a mere material symbol of human power. It is not that man has gained so much since the days when a voice preached in the streets of Jerusalem
 which was to echo round the world, but that, having won so much, having advanced so far, having gained so many victories over nature and tanned so many of her forces, he remains still so essentially the same. Com pared with one of those ''strangers within the gates" of that city who might have lis- tened to that divine voice before taking his departure by slow stages for the sea coast, the modern visitor to Jerusalem may seem to himself vastly more developed specimen of the race to which he belongs. He has matured faculties of which the ancient so- iourner at Jerusalem possessed only the germ: he commands forces which had in those days no existence; he has the common pass key to whole treasuries of knowledge which were looked against the profoundest sages of that earlier time. Beyond the lim- it's, however, of that narrow circle in which all vaunted civilization moves, wherein is he wiser-we need hardly ask wherein he is happier-thsn one who mounted his mule at the gates of Jerusalem 2000 years ago for his tourney to the sea? Is he even nearer to what the wise king of old described az the beginning of wisdoms Is s'understand- ingn of the only kind which Solomon recog- nized as worthy of the name more easily with l in his reaehs
 Were it only for it's fertility in the sugges. ton of thoughts and inquiries like these, the new project of which we hear would be full of interest. All such enterprises are and must be practical from the nature of the I case; and we are glad that the modern l taste has outgrown that sickly dilettante 1 ism which caused them te be otherwise re. parded. It is true, no doubt, that railway l line is not as rule an #sthically beautiful | obieet It may be thrust into places and among scenes in which it's presence cannot possibly be otherwise than an offence to ths l most rudimentary artistic sensibilities. II l, some cases it may violate solitudes whose l loneliness is their chief or only magic; ane l in all such instances, of course, it is only 1 human nature to resent the intrusion. How | far the Jaffa-J Jerusalem railway may be likely i to offend in either of these particulars ", 1 do not undertake to say. As blot on the 1 landscape, or as @ disturbing intruder on it ancient peace, it may, for aught we know excite 8 certain amount of reasonable, or ct any rate, of natural disfayor in man. l mind; but, considered merely as an intensel. modem product brought into sharp oontras l with changeless antiquity, we are glad, WI repeat, to think that the "super6ne" scru pies which would once have protested agains 1t have gone out of fashion. In truth, the, had never any root of reality in them
 Those who generation ago delighted t advertise the supposed romance and poetr
 of their natures by objecting to the intrusio
 of the modern upon the ancient world were
 for the most part, but insincere smatterer
 in the arts in whose name they professed l speak They resented, or pretended to Fl
 sent, the contact of the things of to-da !. with the more venerable relics of the age , because they had failed either to feel tf