idol of the Jebusites, on that day when David's javelin-men
scaled the citadel and carried through it, in darkness behind his
coloured curtains, the god whose image had never been made by man.
Here was waged that endless war between the graven gods of the plain
and the invisible god of the mountain; from here the hosts carrying
the sacred fish of the Philistines were driven back to the sea
from which their worship came. Those who worshipped on this hill
had come out of bondage in Egypt and went into bondage in Babylon;
small as was their country, there passed before them almost the whole
pageant of the old pagan world. All its strange shapes and strong
almost cruel colours remain in the records of their prophets;
whose lightest phrase seems heavier than the pyramids of Egypt;
and whose very words are like winged bulls walking. All this historic or
pre-historic interest may be touched on in its turn; but I am not dealing
here with the historic secrets unearthed by the study of the place,
but with the historic associations aroused by the sight of it.
The traveller is in the position of that famous fantastic who tied
his horse to a wayside cross in the snow, and afterward saw it
dangling from the church-spire of what had been a buried city.
But here the cross does not stand as it does on the top of a spire;
but as it does on the top of an Egyptian obelisk in Rome,--
where the priests have put a cross on the top of the heathen monument;
for fear it should walk. I entirely sympathise with their sentiment;
and I shall try to suggest later why I think that symbol
the logical culmination of heathen as well as Christian things.
The traveller in the traveller's tale looked up at last and saw,
from the streets far below, the spire and cross dominating a Gothic city.
If I looked up in a vision and saw it dominating a Babylonian city,
that blocked the heavens with monstrous palaces and temples,
I should still think it natural that it should dominate.