JERUSALEM'S FUTURE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 57, 23 February 1918, Page 13

JERUSALEM'S FUTURE.

A MORAL CENTRE FOR THE WORLD.

FOCUS OF THREE RELIGIONS. Jerusalem as a new Light of the World, shining out upon all men and upon all nations, and bidding them,' when the war is over and peace once more restored, take up their lives again with hope reawakened and faith renewed. This, writes a representative of - the London "Observer,"' is one of the impressions 1 brought away from an interview with Lieut.-Col- Sir Mark Sykes, now a world-famous authority on all Eastern questions. The unique forces which may well make Jerusalem a moral centre greater than was ever dreamed of for The Hague were indicated, and its future foreshadowed not only from the Zionist point of view, but also as a centre for all three monotheistic religions—Jew, Moslem, and Christian.

"Let us," Sir Mark began by saying, "just conceive the war to be over. When that day eo_ss there will be found, let us presume, some civilised regime in Palestine, for I cannot imagine even the Central Powers declaring that there can be no peace unless the Turk returns to Jerusalem. The war, then, we will conceive, is over, and Jerusalem out of the devastating hands of the Turk.

"What has happened in Jerusalem? The Turk had established himself there since the dvrs of Selim the Grim, and consequently there had been at work forces which had uaed Jerusalem for the purposes of fomenting discord in Christendom, of holding Jewry at arm's length, and promoting war and ill-will among men. And all this, remember, on the traditional site of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not difficult to set people by the ears where passion runs high, fervour is intense, and memories are long and sometimes bitter, and it must b e said that the Turk took full advantage of the occasion. A CHANGE IN ISLAM. "Now, what of the future? We need not question who is going to be in Jerusalem. It is sufficient to know that the Turk has gone, and that Jerusalem is, therefore, minus a strong positive force for ill. And in this future that we are conceiving, the world is at peace, and also, we presume, the Zionist movement is having an immense influence. That is one thing.

"Another is tiiat after this war, which I cannot imagine ending without the German-pseUdo-Turk clique receiving a great setback throughout Islam, in which case we may well see a spiritual revival in Islam of a nature totally different from anything we have seen before, the uniirtellectual Turk will play a lesser role. The intellectual, speculative, and spiritual Arab and Indian will play a great role. Consequently we may see a tendency among Moslems to think more of the Word and the Book than of Dominion and the Sword.

"And now I come to the most important consideration of all, namely, that of Christendom. You hear a great deal of talk of what is going on in Christendom. 'What has Christendom done for anybody?' is a question that is* sometimes asked. 'If it was not that Christendom was wrong there wonld not have been a war like this,' they say. But this form of argument will never, I think, take a very deep hold, because it is obvious that you cannot blame

Christianity for bringing about a war which was caused by: people-: whxv disobey in practice every "Christian p'rebept. !i "'

"My impression is that when the trench population becomes re-absorbed in all countries into the non-trench population, you will find that the women who have watched and prayed and the men whose eyes and souls have been opened will hold religion in a different light from that in which they had seen it before. I believe that there will be a real, persona!, and collective sense of Christendom innate"' in man and woman which we have not seen perhaps since the' twelfth' century. RUSSLA AND RELIGION. /Again, what has happened in Russia? The tide of revolution has swept away the Romanoffs, apparently, whether to return or not I know not, but it has also swept away the Saint Synod, a collection of bureaucratic laymen who ran the orthodox church as a department of the State, and made it appear merely a vehicle for graft, bullying, persecution, and the wreaking of petty and personal vengeance upon classes and individuals. The clergy of the Orthodox Churcn and the Orthodox Church itself had nothing to do with Saint Synod. The Saint Synod was a piece of Government machinery for holding the Orthodox Church in complete subjection.

"There is now a Fatri; rch once more in Russia, and. whatever happens to property and the ordinarily established order of things, Russia will still remain Christian. Fervour below and mysticism above constantly make and produce great religious movements. And here we have the seeds—-Jew. Moslem, and Christian —of a trinity of impulses which all tend Jerusalemwards.

"I can conceive that it is possible that we may pee such a pilgrimage the -world over as will astonish people. I can see Jews going in their thousands, their tens of thousands, and tbeir hundreds of thousands, not as colonists, but in order to see where the little seed of Zionism is being planted. I can see Russia-is, in pre-war days 80.000. rising,perhaps to two hundred or three hundred thousand. I can imagine even that the Pope himself might call his children to a Pilgrimage of Repentance, and untold numbers responding to the call. I can imagine in their own way the followers of post-Reformation creeds also going Jernsalemwards. And I can see Islam itself participating in such a pilgrimage. Whether this bo so or not. in fact, there in Jerusalem is the lode-star whiim affects al! these peoples, and makes it always a potential event. THE PEACE OF THE WORLD. "That is one factor. And the other is this, that there is in the world today a deep-rooted desire for peace. In saying that I do not mean an ending of this war out of its due time, but a desire that this war sliall be the last war. There must be, if there are to be no more wars in the future, some force which nations. "People talk also of the Hague Conference, and yet we know that hitherto these conferences have been, and maybe again in the future, just Tiypocritical conversations between lawyers, diplomatists, and soldiers preparing the ground for fresh hostility. Moral force and physical force must be at tbe disposal of whatsoever authority mankind desires to set up over his head to shield him from war. Tlie physical force of a League of Nations must be at the call of a moral force higher than the Hague, which must provoke a smile in the face of any honest man.

"But if you look at Jerusalem, are there not moral forces, vaguely and dimly outlined, there stronger than any man could imagine—the moral force of Calvary and Sacrifice, the moral force of Zion and eternal hope, the moral force of Islam and obedience?"