The broad moon lingers on the summit of Mount Olivet, but its beam has
long left the garden of Gethsemane and the tomb of Absalom, the waters
of Kedron and the dark abyss of Jehoshaphat. Full falls its splendor,
however, on the opposite city, vivid and defined in its silver blaze.
A lofty wall, with turrets and towers, and frequent gates, undulates
with the unequal ground which it covers, as it encircles the lost
capital of Jehovah. It is a city of hills far more famous than those
of Rome: for all Europe has heard of Zion and of Calvary, while the
Arab and the Assyrian, and the tribes and nations beyond, are as
ignorant of the Capitoline and Aventine mounts as they are of the
Malvern or the Chiltern hills.
[Footnote 12: From "Tancred."]
The broad steep of Zion crowned with the tower of David; nearer
still, Mount Moriah, with the gorgeous temple of the God of Abraham,
but, built, alas! by the child of Hagar, and not by Sarah's chosen
one; close to its cedars and its cypresses, its lofty spires and airy
arches, the moonlight falls upon Bethesda's pool; further on, entered
by the gate of St. Stephen, the eye, tho 'tis the noon of night,
traces with ease the Street of Grief, a long winding ascent to a vast
cupolaed pile that now covers Calvary--called the Street of Grief,
because there the most illustrious of the human, as well as of the
Hebrew race, the descendant of King David, and the divine son of the
most favored of women, twice sank under that burden of suffering and
shame which is now throughout all Christendom the emblem of triumph
and of honor; passing over groups and masses of houses built of stone,
with terraced roofs, or surmounted with small domes, we reach the hill
of Salem, where Melchisedek built his mystic citadel; and still
remains the hill of Scopas, where Titus gazed upon Jerusalem on the
eve of his final assault. Titus destroyed the temple. The religion of
Judea has in turn subverted the fanes which were raised to his father
and to himself in their imperial capital; and the God of Abraham, of
Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshiped before every altar in Rome.
Jerusalem by moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its
indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour
softens the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline,
however harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its
sublimity, removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and
unrivaled scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and
rising in the center of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally
offering, through their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and
richer land!
The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the
darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The
all-prevailing stillness is broken by a breeze, that seems to have
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the
tombs, and sighs among the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as
it passes, as if it were a spirit of wo. Is it the breeze that has
traveled over the plain of Sharon from the sea?
Or is it the haunting voices of prophets mourning over the city that
they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land
where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending
fate Omnipotence had shed human tears. From this Mount! Who can but
believe that, at the midnight hour, from the summit of the Ascension,
the great departed of Israel assembled to gaze upon the battlements of
their mystic city! There might be counted heroes and sages, who need
shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other
lands; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs, whose laws are
still obeyed; the monarch, whose reign has ceased for three thousand
years, but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth; the
teacher, whose doctrines have modeled civilized Europe--the greatest
of legislators, the greatest of administrators, and the greatest of
reformers--what race, extinct or living, can produce three such men
as these!
The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany. The wailing
breeze has become a moaning wind; a white film spreads over the purple
sky; the stars are veiled, the stars are hid; all becomes as dark as
the waters of Kedron and valley of Jehoshaphat. The tower of David
merges into obscurity; no longer glitter the minarets of the mosque of
Omar; Bethesda's angelic waters, the gate of Stephen, the street of
sacred sorrow, the hill of Salem, and the heights of Scopas can no
longer be discerned. Alone in the increasing darkness, while the very
line of the walls gradually eludes the eye, the church of the Holy
Sepulcher is a beacon-light.
And why is the church of the Holy Sepulcher a beacon-light? Why, when
it is already past the noon of darkness, when every soul slumbers in
Jerusalem, and not a sound disturbs the deep repose except the howl of
the wild dog crying to the wilder wind--why is the cupola of the
sanctuary illumined, tho the hour has long since been numbered, when
pilgrims there kneel and monks pray?
An armed Turkish guard are bivouacked in the court of the church;
within the church itself, two brethren of the convent of Terra Santa
keep holy watch and ward; while, at the tomb beneath, there kneels a
solitary youth, who prostrated himself at sunset, and who will there
pass unmoved the whole of the sacred night.
Yet the pilgrim is not in communion with the Latin Church; neither is
he of the Church Armenian, or the Church Greek; Maronite Coptic, or
Abyssinian--these also are Christian churches which can not call him
child.
He comes from a distant and a northern isle to bow before the tomb of
a descendant of the kings of Israel, because he, in common with all
the people of that isle, recognizes in that sublime Hebrew incarnation
the presence of a divine Redeemer. Then why does he come alone? It is
not that he has availed himself of the inventions of modern science,
to repair first to a spot, which all his countrymen may equally desire
to visit, and thus anticipate their hurrying arrival. Before the
inventions of modern science, all his countrymen used to flock hither.
Then why do they not now? Is the Holy Land no longer hallowed? Is it
not the land of sacred and mysterious truths? The land of heavenly
messages and earthly miracles? The land of prophets and apostles? Is
it not the land upon whose mountains the Creator of the Universe
parleyed with man, and the flesh of whose anointed race He mystically
assumed, when He struck the last blow at the powers of evil? Is it to
be believed that there are no peculiar and eternal qualities in a land
thus visited, which distinguish it from all others--that Palestine is
like Normandy or Yorkshire, or even Attica or Rome?
There may be some who maintain this; there have been some, and those,
too, among the wisest and the wittiest of the northern and western
races, who, touched by a presumptuous jealousy of the long
predominance of that Oriental intellect to which they owed their
civilization, would have persuaded themselves and the world that the
traditions of Sinai and Calvary were fables. Half a century ago,
Europe made a violent and apparently successful effort to disembarrass
itself of its Asian faith. The most powerful and the most civilized of
its kingdoms, about to conquer the rest, shut up its churches,
desecrated its altars, massacred and persecuted their sacred servants,
and announced that the Hebrew creeds which Simon Peter brought from
Palestine, and which his successors revealed to Clovis, were a mockery
and a fiction. What has been the result? In every city, town, village,
and hamlet of that great kingdom, the divine image of the most
illustrious of Hebrews has been again raised amid the homage of
kneeling millions; while, in the heart of its bright and witty
capital, the nation has erected the most gorgeous of modern temples,
and consecrated its marble and golden walls to the name, and memory,
and celestial efficacy of a Hebrew woman.