A New Crusade to the Holy Land
A NEW crusade to the Holy Land is proposed by Mr. Arthur S. Green, who writes on the subject in the June number of Everybody’s Magazine. His proposition, however, is not to take Palestine from the Turk by force of arms, but to buy it with money. He thinks Christians should be willing to raise the cash for the sake of delivering the Holy Land from “the control of a cunning, superstitious, and barbarous nation.” This was very much as Knight Godfrey and his fellow warriors viewed the matter in the days of Peter the Hermit, only they called the Turk an infidel instead of a barbarian. The use of money in the place of the sword does not make this twentieth-century project any more Christian than was Godfrey’s plan of delivering the Holy Land by cutting off the Turks’ heads. Money is the moving power in the world to-day, as the sword was in the days of the Crusades. Mr. Green thinks there are good chances of success for his plan, because Turkey is poor, while Christendom is fabulously rich. Its aim will be “to restore Palestine to its former greatness and prosperity.” But if Mr. Green has read the history of Palestine, he must know that it was not lack of money, nor change of ownership, which brought that country to its present low condition. The cause of Palestine’s desolation is plainly set forth in the Bible, and the situation cannot be materially altered by the use of any amount of money. The best use of money is that which will hasten the return of him who is the King of the Jews, and under whose coming reign Palestine will be again glorious and Jerusalem the capital city of the earth. This new crusade is not likely to be carried far, but it constitutes an addition to the other fanciful schemes and ideas which men of this day, in their ignorance of the Word and of the purposes of God, entertain concerning the future of this historic land.