Always One Can Travel Far At Christmas By Reading

Radio Record, 9 December 1938, Page 30

Always One Can Travel Far At Christmas By Reading

; a 3 in the Holy Land with H. ¥. Morton . . « through Europe together with Bruce | Lockhart . . . in Czechoslovakia with Lie utenant-Commander Young . . . one may wander far abroad this holiday season in the magic company of books.

"WHILE 1 was travelling in the Holy Land, gathering material for my last two books, the desire grew on me to make @ Christian pilgrimage from the Euphrates to the Nile, and into Sinai, and to tell the story of the Christian life on the Near Hast. This book is the result of my journey." HUS, modestly, H. V. Morton introduces | us to his latest brilliant work, ‘‘Through Lands of the Bible,’? which follows his two classic studies, ‘‘In the Steps of the Master’? and ‘‘In the Steps of St. Paul.’ In this, the last of the trilogy, we traverse with the author. the early history of Christianity, treading with him the steps of Aposties, Saints and Martyrs. He staris at Alexandretta, in Syria, and in the subsequent journey from the Euphrates to the Nile ("we described a graceful curve eutwards on the Wile, missing one of the rocks by a yard, and... exploded northwards with great repidity...!") and from. the Nile . 4 erase

to the Tiber, he guides us, as usual, not over the tracks of the interminable "surface" travellers, but into hidden corners where History itself lies cradled undisturbed, and where The Past and Time seem to have compromised to stand perpetually still. It is idle to refer casually to these H. V. Morton works as mere "travel books." The author does more than travel; he takes history in his stride, and never more interestingly than in "Through Lands of the Bible," in which is revealed an astonishing amount of intense researeh, and in which Mr. Morton advances several new and arresting theories that cannot be ignored by students of Biblical and theological records. Morton | Touch The Morton genius for perfect description shows itself from beginning to end of this book. He draws, near the start, a lovely picture of the mountains of Syria seen from the Gulf of Iskanderum (the north-eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea). And we can see, in ancient Palmyra, the Street of Columns, when he describes them so effectively as "a ruin picked

clean by Time and bleached by the sunlight of centuries. .. ." Monasteries and naturally occupy a large portion of the narrative. In the beginning, Mr. Morton visits the Church of St Simeon Stylites, sacred to the name of the first of the pillar hermits. Born in 238 A.D. this holy man sat, ne. his monastery in chained to a high pillar with a heavy iron collar round his neck. He remained there until death took him down at the age of 72, and he bequeathed to Syria a perfect forest of pillar 5 hermits! In Old Babylon You may linger with the author in Bagdad, then Babylon, and explore the Ur of the Chaldees, where you "walk the streets of the city where Abraham was born." On, then, to Old Cairo, which our guide finds "infinitely preferable to the Cairo of the big banks, the cinema, and the cabaret." He proceeds to lay before us, not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, but the lesser-known Egypt of St. Mark. He spends much time visiting Coptic ~churches, and deseribes at length Coptic liturgy and ceremonial.

rie. goes to a Voptic hmunnhery, where the nuns take neither veil nor vows and where, during tea and conversation with the Mother Supericr, he "felt we were getting along so well that I ventured to offer ner a cigarette. She said that she never smoked as a rule, but that on this occasion she would break the rule. ." And so to Rome-a Rome crowded and filled with the awe and excitement of Holy Week. A tour of the catacombs and, in sheer contrast, a view from a privileged position in magnificent St. Peter’s of the pomn and ceremony attendant upon the creation by the Pope of three new saints with a solemn Mass of Canonisation. (A delightful little intrusion here is the story of two simple village priests who, by mistake, found themselves in two of the best seats reserved for the Sacred College of Cardinals.) Those of us-and we-are legionwho, on his previous travels, were Mr. Morton’s companions, had much to be grateful for. Our debt is inereased a thousandfold by "Through Lands of the Bible."-A.R.M. Through Lands of the Bible, by H. Vv. Morton. With 25 illustrations. Methven & Co., Ltd., London. Our copy from the publishers. _-