JERUSALEM as a City covers to-day more ground than it ever did before in history. Not even in her palmiest days under David and Solomon, or in Herod’s day, did the Holy City extend west and south as it does now. And it continues to grow. Districts are springing up; Garden Cities are being planned and their sites covered with houses; well-planned roads with avenues of stately trees give an air of prosperity and peace. Those who knew Palestine half-a-century ago see an altogether new Jerusalem. The older parts within its ancient walls are being preserved. There exists a “Central Town Planning Commission,” whose duties are to guard and preserve ancient buildings. No alterations can be effected without their sanction. The advantage is obvious; those who visit the Holy Land now will be able to see the old city with its narrow streets, picturesque houses and native bazaars just as they must have been centuries ago. Only one change for the better will be noticeable everywhere. The smells have gone and the refuse in the streets exist no longer. British rule has made the difference.
Outside the ancient walls the modern city is rising in sharpest contrast to the one the visitor has just left. Stately houses and beautiful gardens may be seen everywhere. Public buildings abound, hospitals, schools, churches, synagogues, and mosques; and as though with the object of destroying the illusion that you may have been carried away to a city in Italy or Spain, you rub shoulders with a swarthy Bedouin, or a Siloam woman carrying her produce on her head and her baby slung in a hammock on her back. But you are overwhelmed with the medley of camels and donkeys, taxicabs and costly motor cars, whose hooting does not disturb the stately “ship of the desert”; and the varieties of costumes, the Babel of tongues—you cannot get away from the fact, you are not in Europe, you are in Jerusalem.
And the Jews predominate everywhere. The leading shops are theirs, commerce and trade are very largely in their hands; they drive most of the taxis, they take their full share as labourers; while in art and intellectual pursuits they are supreme.
Some things we come against give us a great shock. A flaring notice informs us that an Opera will be performed in the Jerusalem Theatre. There will be Jewish actresses and a Jewish orchestra, and perhaps it may be an Italian opera sung in Hebrew! There are cinemas in Jerusalem, the hotels advertise dances—all this in Jerusalem! Surely, a profanity, a sacrilege. We want to break forth and sing “O pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love Thee.” Isaiah saw the city as “a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.” The world rules in the city, some day it will be called “Holiness unto the LORD.” Oh, for that day to come when the KING returns and the city becomes indeed a city of peace!
Several Societies and Missions are at work there, as well as in other parts of the Holy Land, all doing good service for the King, but one realises that the solution of the Jewish problem is not Palestine now, but Poland. Fifty per cent. of the Jews returning to the land of Israel come from Poland. The Jewish Missionary cause in East Europe is no mere Polish question, but a Palestine, and a world problem. We are only beginning to learn the lesson, may the Lord give us grace to carry it through.—”Immanuel’s Witness.”