Jerusalem the Huly. By Edmund Sherman Wallace, late United States
Consul for Palestine. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, Edinburgh. 7s. 6d.)—Mr. Wallace has represented his nation in Jerusalem for five years. He has used the advantages of his residence and official position to make a thorough study of the present state of the country and its political prospects, of con- temporary excavations and other researches into its ancient history, and of much of the voluminous literature which, from the earliest to the most recent times, has grown up round the most sacred and interesting of all lands. The result is a well- informed, careful, and lucid history of Jerusalem, with an account of the modern city and the aspects of its life. Travellers will find it of interest, and will profit by it if they will keep in mind that in all the chapters relating to the past it is the work, not of an expert or critic, but of an intelligent and reverent amateur- Even on the obviously exaggerated numbers of the Book of Chronicles, Mr. Wallace makes only the commonplace remark :— " It is much easier to raise a doubt than to prove an in- accuracy." He does not grapple with really serious ques- tions,—not even with one of the most important, the question of the dimensions of the city in David's time, which he does not allude to in recounting David's reign, and later on merely states in its barest form. He is sanely critical of the value of tradition as to the Holy Sites, and prefers to find those of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, as proposed by Corder and Merrill, to the north of the present city wall. The chapter in which he discusses this is one of the strongest in the book. But Mr. Wallace is at his best in the chapters in which he describes the present population of Jerusalem, their social and their religious habits. These chapters are very valuable as the work of a man whose office gave him unusual opportunity for getting at facts, and brought him into friendly contact with the heads of all the many communities that combine to make modern Jerusalem at once so interesting and so confusing. The Jews of the Holy City number forty-two thousand five hundred, or one-half of all the Jews in Palestine.— ite. Walraee-describes their organisa- tion and means of support, their leading personages, and the ex. tremely filthy conditionlof large numbers of the poor among them. He gives an interesting account of a settlement of Yemenite Jews who recently arrived in Jerusalem from South Arabia, in obeffienoe to a belief in the speedy return of the Messiah to the Holy City "They are worthy people" who have demonstrated their inthistry and thrift. "Some of them are now well-to-do, and own their little, well-kept homes." It would have been still more interesting if Mr. Wallace could have told us how the forty families of them made their long journey to Jerusalem. The Christians number eight thousand six hundred and thirty, of whom nearly half are Greeks, and three thousand two hundred Latin Catholics. Appre- ciative of missions, Mr. Wallace records the just judgment that the Holy City is " over-missionised." The Moslem population is between seven and eight thousand. In his last chapter Mr. Wallace predicts a great future for Palestine in the hands of a Jewish nation, but his confidence is based upon the very questionable belief that the fulfil- ment of the prophecies of Scripture is to be looked for not in the past, but in times still to come.
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