The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-12-12
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

| In all the war nothing that has nap pened has touched the imagination ike the mere statement that Jerusalem is in the hands of the English.
 l Three cities are great centers of re- ligious life and power-Jerusalem, Rome and Moscow; but of these three Jeru-
 salem Is incomparably the greatest Other cities belong to empires and King doms, Jerusalem belongs to the worid' | It Is said other cities belong to certain races, Jerusalem belongs to the human race. Other cities have shrines for cer- tain faiths, Jerusalem is the Holy city for all The Jew loves it, sings ms homesick songs about it in exile:
 How shall we sing the Loro sons III a strange land? l If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. | If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof Of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy"
 The Mohammedan often spends all his means and strength and gives his i1e Ill | his effort to make long pilgrimages to behold it's sacred scenes and Worshlp ae l it's shrines. To the followers of the prophet it comes next to Medina, after Mecca. The Armenians, Abyssinians ana Copts count it the greatest joy of their lives to pass beyond its walls. The Cath- olics, both Greek and Roman, have so adored it that they bow down in wor- ship to it's eemblems and objects. Far and wide the hearts of Protestant Chris tians have brought them here to sit upon the ashes of it's former glory and call up before them visions of things dear to their soul
 Jerusalem is a city set on a hill, ana as we approach 1t for the first time we understand what the psalmist means py ascribing t.the strength of the hills" to Jehovah; and a new light comes into the song:
 "As the mountains are round about Je- rusalern,
 So Jehovah is round about his people" l Dr. vanDyke noted that the natura! walls and terraces of gray limestone
 had the air of antique Qualifications and
 watchtowers of the border. They are truly munitions of rocks
 1 Jerusalen1 was small of necessity, and,
 as the pilgrim in the one hundred and twenty-second Psalm says: "A city that is compact together" The deep valleys on the three sides, the Notifications on the fourth shut it up within a small compass. and. compelled compactness. Says Canon Liddon: Possibly this pill grim had seen Damascus, struggling out amid the beautiful oasis which sur rounds 1t in the plain of the Abana; or he had seen Memphis, a long string Of buildings, thiclSly populated. extending | for some 12 or fl miles, along the west bank of the Nile. Compared with these Jerusalem had the compact beauty of highland fortress, it's buildings as seen from below standing out against the clear Syrian sky, and conveying an l impression of grace and strength that would long finger in the memory"
  | We know that typographical peculiar l ities mark the location of great cities. | The presence of rivers and bay say as clearly regarding New York as if God had spoken with an audible voice: Let | there here be a city" Jerusalem is on the central tableland of Judea; it is on 1 the watershed between the Mediterra-
  mean and the Jordan. It is IS miles west of the Jordan and 30 miles east of the I Mediterranean. There are here none of the natural conditions of a great city,, l says Dr. Adam Smith, the great author l ity on the Holy Land. Yet" says he, 'it was here that she arose who, more than Athens and more than Rome, l taught the nations civic justice. Her builder was not nature nor the wisdom l Of man, but on that secluded and bar lren spot, the Word of God, by her proph- cts. laid her eternal foundations in righteousness, and reared her walls in her peoples faith in God"
 I It is mighty hard to grasp the fact that Jerusalem is little city in tiny country. Jerusalem looms so large in the worlds thought that it is hard for | us to realize that Birmingham is very much larger than 1t is in regards both to population and area. The population of Jerusalem is probably under 100000 and the area of the real historic city within the ancient walls Is only about 210 acres, or less than one-third of a square mile. A recent traveller says that if the Holy City were laid over lower l New York, it would extend northward I from the Battery hardly as far as Full
 ton street. For a still more startling comparison, the whole walled city of Je-
 rusalem is exactly, to an acre, one quar- I ter as big as Central park. The entire length of the city, from the Damascus l Gate at the north to the Zion Gate at
 the south, is barely two-thirds of a mile,
 and, in spite that the streets are mar
 row and crowded, you can walk from | one end of Jerusalem to the other in
 eight or ten minutes. The journey
 around the outside walls may be
 made in an hour. ct is true that of late years the city has been spreading outside the gates, especially to the northwest, where there are numerous colonies of Americans and European Jews, besides buildings belonging to various Catholic land Protestant missionary establish ments)
 To fasten more fully on your mind that IJerusalem as we'll as her gates are not