supposed holy places or sacred events--the Church of the Tomb of the
Virgin, the Latin Chapel of the Agony, the Greek Church of St. Mary
Magdalen. On top of the ridge are the Russian Buildings, with the Chapel
of the Ascension, and the Latin Buildings, with the Church of the Creed,
the Church of the Paternoster, and a Carmelite Nunnery. Among the walls
of these inclosures we wound our way, and at last tied our horses
outside of the Russian garden. We climbed the two hundred and fourteen
steps of the lofty Belvidere Tower, and found ourselves in possession of
one of the great views of the world. There is Jerusalem, across the
Kidron, spread out like a raised map below us. The mountains of Judah
roll away north and south and east and west--the clean-cut pinnacle of
Mizpah, the lofty plain of Rephaim, the dark hills toward Hebron, the
rounded top of Scopus where Titus camped with his Roman legions, the
flattened peak of Frank Mountain. Bethlehem is not visible; but there is
the tiny village of Bethphage, and the first roof of Bethany peeping
over the ridge, and the Inn of the Good Samaritan in a red cut of the
long serpentine road to Jericho. The dark range of Gilead and Moab seems
like a huge wall of lapis-lazuli beyond the furrowed, wrinkled,
yellowish clay-hills and the wide gray trench of the Jordan Valley,
wherein the river marks its crooked path with a line of deep green. The
hundreds of ridges that slope steeply down to that immense depression
are touched with a thousand hues of amethystine light, and the ravines
between them filled with a thousand tones of azure shadow. At the end
of the valley glitter the blue waters of the Dead Sea, fifteen miles
away, four thousand feet below us, yet seeming so near that we almost
expect to hear the sound of its waves on the rocky shores of the
Wilderness of Tekoa.
On this mount Jesus of Nazareth often walked with His disciples. On this
widespread landscape His eyes rested as He spoke divinely of the
invisible kingdom of peace and love and joy that shall never pass away.
Over this walled city, sleeping in the sunshine, full of earthly dreams
and disappointments, battlemented hearts and whited sepulchres of the
spirit, He wept, and cried: "O Jerusalem, how often would I have
gathered thy children together even as a hen gathereth her own brood
under her wings, and ye would not!"
III
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
Come down, now, from the mount of vision to the grove of olive-trees,
the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus used to take refuge with His
friends. It lies on the eastern slope of Olivet, not far above the
Valley of Kidron, over against that city-gate which was called the
Beautiful, or the Golden, but which is now walled up.
The grove probably belonged to some friend of Jesus or of one of His
disciples, who permitted them to make use of it for their quiet
meetings. At that time, no doubt, the whole hillside was covered with
olive-trees, but most of these have now disappeared. The eight aged
trees that still cling to life in Gethsemane have been inclosed with a
low wall and an iron railing, and the little garden that blooms around
them is cared for by Franciscan monks from Italy.
The gentle, friendly Fra Giovanni, in bare sandaled feet, coarse brown
robe, and broad-brimmed straw hat, is walking among the flowers. He
opens the gate for us and courteously invites us in, telling us in
broken French that we may pick what flowers we like. Presently I fall
into discourse with him in broken Italian, telling him of my visit years
ago to the cradle of his Order at Assisi, and to its most beautiful
shrine at La Verna, high above the Val d'Arno. His old eyes soften into
youthful brightness as he speaks of Italy. It was most beautiful, he
said, _bellisima!_ But he is happier here, caring for this garden, it is
most holy, _santissima!_
The bronzed Mohammedan gardener, silent, patient, absorbed in his task,
moves with his watering-pot among the beds, quietly refreshing the
thirsty blossoms. There are wall-flowers, stocks, pansies, baby's
breath, pinks, anemones of all colours, rosemary, rue, poppies--all
sorts of sweet old-fashioned flowers. Among them stand the scattered
venerable trees, with enormous trunks, wrinkled and contorted, eaten
away by age, patched and built up with stones, protected and tended with
pious care, as if they were very old people whose life must be tenderly
nursed and sheltered. Their boles hardly seem to be of wood; so dark, so
twisted, so furrowed are they, of an aspect so enduring that they
appear to be cast in bronze or carved out of black granite. Above each
of them spreads a crown of fresh foliage, delicate, abundant, shimmering
softly in the sunlight and the breeze, with silken turnings of the under
side of the innumerable leaves. In the centre of the garden is a kind of
open flower house with a fountain of flowing water, erected in memory of
a young American girl. At each corner a pair of slender cypresses lift
their black-green spires against the blanched azure of the sky.
It is a place of refuge, of ineffable tranquillity, of unforgetful
tenderness. The inclosure does not offend. How else could this sacred
shrine of the out-of-doors be preserved? And what more fitting guardian
for it than the Order of that loving Saint Francis, who called the sun
and the moon his brother and his sister and preached to a joyous
congregation of birds as his "little brothers of the air"? The flowers
do not offend. Their antique fragrance, gracious order, familiar looks,
are a symbol of what faithful memory does with the sorrows and
sufferings of those who have loved us best--she treasures and
transmutes them into something beautiful, she grows her sweetest flowers
in the ground that tears have made holy.
It is here, in this quaint and carefully tended garden, this precious
place which has been saved alike from the oblivious trampling of the
crowd and from the needless imprisonment of four walls and a roof, it is
here in the open air, in the calm glow of the afternoon, under the
shadow of Mount Zion, that we find for the first time that which we have
come so far to seek,--the soul of the Holy Land, the inward sense of the
real presence of Jesus.
It is as clear and vivid as any outward experience. Why should I not
speak of it as simply and candidly? Nothing that we have yet seen in
Palestine, no vision of wide-spread landscape, no sight of ancient ruin
or famous building or treasured relic, comes as close to our hearts as
this little garden sleeping in the sun. Nothing that we have read from
our Bibles in the new light of this journey has been for us so suddenly
illumined, so deeply and tenderly brought home to us, as the story of
Gethsemane.
Here, indeed, in the moonlit shadow of these olives--if not of these
very branches, yet of others sprung from the same immemorial stems--was
endured the deepest suffering ever borne for man, the most profound
sorrow of the greatest Soul that loved all human souls. It was not in
the temptation in the wilderness, as Milton imagined, that the crisis of
the Divine life was enacted and Paradise was regained. It was in the
agony in the garden.
Here the love of life wrestled in the heart of Jesus with the purpose of
sacrifice, and the anguish of that wrestling wrung the drops of blood
from Him like sweat. Here, for the only time, He found the cup of sorrow
and shame too bitter, and prayed the Father to take it from His lips if
it were possible--possible without breaking faith, without surrendering
love. For that He would not do, though His soul was exceeding sorrowful,
even unto death. Here He learned the frailty of human friendship, the
narrowness and dulness and coldness of the very hearts for whom He had
done and suffered most, who could not even watch with Him one hour.
What infinite sense of the poverty and feebleness of mankind, the
inveteracy of selfishness, the uncertainty of human impulses and
aspirations and promises; what poignant questioning of the necessity,
the utility of self-immolation must have tortured the soul of Jesus in
that hour! It was His black hour. None can imagine the depth of that
darkness but those who have themselves passed through some of its outer
shadows, in the times when love seems vain, and sacrifice futile, and
friendship meaningless, and life a failure, and death intolerable.
Jesus met the spirit of despair in the Garden of Gethsemane; and after
that meeting, the cross had no terrors for Him, because He had already
endured them; the grave no fear, because He had already conquered it.
How calm and gentle was the voice with which He wakened His disciples,
how firm the step with which He went to meet Judas! The bitterness of
death was behind Him in the shadow of the olive-trees. The peace of
Heaven shone above Him in the silent stars.
_A PSALM OF SURRENDER_
_Mine enemies have prevailed against me, O God:
Thou hast led me deep into their ambush._
_They surround me with a hedge of spears:
And the sword in my hand is broken._
_My friends also have forsaken my side:
From a safe place they look upon me with pity._
_My heart is like water poured upon the ground:
I have come alone to the place of surrender._
_To thee, to thee only will I give up my sword:
The sword which was broken in thy service._
_Thou hast required me to suffer for thy cause:
By my defeat thy will is victorious._
_O my King show me thy face shining in the dark:
While I drink the loving-cup of death to thy glory._
V
AN EXCURSION TO BETHLEHEM AND HEBRON
I
BETHLEHEM
A sparkling morning followed a showery night, and all the little red and
white and yellow flowers were lifting glad faces to the sun as we took
the highroad to Bethlehem. Leaving the Jaffa Gate on the left, we
crossed the head of the deep Valley of Hinnom, below the dirty Pool of
the Sultan, and rode up the hill on the opposite side of the vale.
There was much rubbish and filth around us, and the sight of the
Ophthalmic Hospital of the English Knights of Saint John, standing in
the beauty of cleanness and order beside the road, did our eyes good.
Blindness is one of the common afflictions of the people of Palestine.
Neglect and ignorance and dirt and the plague of crawling flies spread
the germs of disease from eye to eye, and the people submit to it with
pathetic and irritating fatalism. It is hard to persuade these poor
souls that the will of Allah or Jehovah in this matter ought not to be
accepted until after it has been questioned. But the light of true and
humane religion is spreading a little. We rejoiced to see the
reception-room of the hospital filled with all sorts and conditions of
men, women and children waiting for the good physicians who save and
restore sight in the name of Jesus.
To the right, a little below us, lay the ugly railway station; before
us, rising gently southward, extended the elevated Plain of Rephaim
where David smote the host of the Philistines after he had heard "the
sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees." The red soil was
cultivated in little farms and gardens. The almond-trees were in leaf;
the hawthorn in blossom; the fig-trees were putting forth their tender
green.
[Illustration: A Street in Bethlehem.]
A slowly ascending road brought us to the hill of Mar Elyas, and the
so-called Well of the Magi. Here the legend says the Wise Men halted
after they had left Jerusalem, and the star reappeared to guide them on
to Bethlehem. Certain it is that they must have taken this road; and
certain it is that both Bethlehem and Jerusalem, hidden from each other
by the rising ground, are clearly visible to one who stands in the
saddle of this hill.
There were fine views down the valleys to the east, with blue glimpses
of the Dead Sea at the end of them. The supposed tomb of Rachel, a dingy
little building with a white dome, interested us less than the broad
lake of olive-orchards around the distant village of Beit Jala, and the
green fields, pastures and gardens encircling the double hill of
Bethlehem, the ancient "House of Bread." There was an aspect of
fertility and friendliness about the place that seemed in harmony with
its name and its poetic memories.
In a walled kitchen-garden at the entrance of the town was David's Well.
We felt no assurance, of course, as we looked down into it, that this
was the veritable place. But at all events it served to bring back to us
one of the prettiest bits of romance in the Old Testament. When the bold
son of Jesse had become a chieftain of outlaws and was besieged by the
Philistines in the stronghold of Adullam, his heart grew thirsty for a
draught from his father's well, whose sweetness he had known as a boy.
And when his three mighty men went up secretly at the risk of their
lives, and broke through the host of their enemies, and brought their
captain a vessel of this water, "he would not drink thereof, but poured
it out unto Jehovah."
There was a division of opinion in our party in regard to this act. "It
was sheer foolishness," said the Patriarch, "to waste anything that had
cost so much to get. What must the three mighty men have thought when
they saw that for which they had risked their lives poured out upon the
ground?" "Ah, no," said the Lady. "It was the highest gratitude, because
it was touched with poetry. It was the best compliment that David could
have given to his friends. Some gifts are too precious to be received in
any other way than this." And in my heart I knew that she was right.
Riding through the narrow streets of the town, which is inhabited almost
entirely by Christians, we noted the tranquil good looks of the women, a
distinct type, rather short of stature, round-faced, placid and kind of
aspect. Not a few of them had blue eyes. They wore dark-blue skirts,
dark-red jackets, and a white veil over their heads, but not over their
faces. Under the veil the married women wore a peculiar cap of stiff,
embroidered black cloth, about six inches high, and across the front of
this cap was strung their dowry of gold or silver coins. Such a dress,
no doubt, was worn by the Virgin Mary, and such tranquil, friendly
looks, I think, were hers, but touched with a rarer light of beauty
shining from a secret source within.
A crowd of little boys and girls just released from school for their
recess shouted and laughed and chased one another, pausing for a moment
in round-eyed wonder when I pointed my camera at them. Donkeys and
camels and sheep made our passage through the town slow, and gave us
occasion to look to our horses' footing. At one corner a great white sow
ran out of an alley-way, followed by a twinkling litter of pink pigs. In
the market-place we left our horses in the shadow of the monastery wall
and entered, by a low door, the lofty, bare Church of the Nativity.
The long rows of immense marble pillars had some faded remains of
painting on them. There were a few battered fragments of mosaic in the
clerestory, dimly glittering. But the general effect of the whitewashed
walls, the ancient brown beams and rafters of the roof, the large, empty
space, was one of extreme simplicity.
When we came into the choir and apse we found ourselves in the midst of
complexity. The ownership of the different altars with their gilt
ornaments, of the swinging lamps, of the separate doorways of the Greeks
and the Armenians and the Latins, was bewildering. Dark, winding steps,
slippery with the drippings from many candles, led us down into the
Grotto of the Nativity. It was a cavern perhaps forty feet long and ten
feet wide, lit by thirty pendent lamps (Greek, Armenian and Latin):
marble floor and walls hung with draperies; a silver star in the
pavement before the altar to mark the spot where Christ was born; a
marble manger in the corner to mark the cradle in which Christ was laid;
a never-ceasing stream of poor pilgrims, who come kneeling, and kissing
the star and the stones and the altar for Christ's sake.
[Illustration: The Market-place, Bethlehem.]
We paused for a while, after we had come up, to ask ourselves whether
what we had seen was in any way credible. Yes, credible, but not
convincing. No doubt the ancient Khan of Bethlehem must have been
somewhere near this spot, in the vicinity of the market-place of the
town. No doubt it was the custom, when there were natural hollows or
artificial grottos in the rock near such an inn, to use them as shelters
and stalls for the cattle. It is quite possible, it is even probable,
that this may have been one of the shallow caverns used for such a
purpose. If so, there is no reason to deny that this may be the place of
the wondrous birth, where, as the old French _Noel_ has it:
"_Dieu parmy les pastoreaux,
Sous la creche des toreaux,
Dans les champs a voulu naistre;
Et non parmy les arroys
Des grands princes et des roys,--
Lui des plus grands roys le maistre._"
But to the eye, at least, there is no reminder of the scene of the
Nativity in this close and stifling chapel, hung with costly silks and
embroideries, glittering with rich lamps, filled with the smoke of
incense and waxen tapers. And to the heart there is little suggestion
of the lonely night when Joseph found a humble refuge here for his young
bride to wait in darkness, pain and hope for her hour to come.
In the church above, the Latins and Armenians and Greeks guard their
privileges and prerogatives jealously. There have been fights here about
the driving of a nail, the hanging of a picture, the sweeping of a bit
of the floor. The Crimean War began in a quarrel between the Greeks and
the Latins, and a mob-struggle in the Church of the Nativity. Underneath
the floor, to the north of the Grotto of the Nativity, is the cave in
which Saint Jerome lived peaceably for many years, translating the Bible
into Latin. That was better than fighting.
II
ON THE ROAD TO HEBRON
We ate our lunch at Bethlehem in a curiosity-shop. The table was spread
at the back of the room by the open window. All around us were hanging
innumerable chaplets and rosaries of mother-of-pearl, of carnelian, of
carved olive-stones, of glass beads; trinkets and souvenirs of all
imaginable kinds, tiny sheep-bells and inlaid boxes and carved fans
filled the cases and cabinets. Through the window came the noise of
people busy at Bethlehem's chief industry, the cutting and polishing of
mother-of-pearl for mementoes. The jingling bells of our pack-train,
passing the open door, reminded us that our camp was to be pitched miles
away on the road to Hebron.
We called for the horses and rode on through the town. Very beautiful
and peaceful was the view from the southern hill, looking down upon the
pastures of Bethlehem where "shepherds watched their flocks by night,"
and the field of Boaz where Ruth followed the reapers among the corn.
Down dale and up hill we journeyed; bright green of almond-trees, dark
green of carob-trees, snowy blossoms of apricot-trees, rosy blossoms of
peach-trees, argent verdure of olive-trees, adorning the valleys. Then
out over the wilder, rockier heights; and past the great empty Pools of
Solomon, lying at the head of the Wadi Artas, watched by a square ruined
castle; and up the winding road and along the lofty flower-sprinkled
ridges; and at last we came to our tents, pitched in the wide, green
Wadi el-'Arrub, beside the bridge.
Springs gushed out of the hillside here and ran down in a little
laughing brook through lawns full of tiny pink and white daisies, and
broad fields of tangled weeds and flowers, red anemones, blue iris,
purple mallows, scarlet adonis, with here and there a strip of
cultivated ground shimmering with silky leeks or dotted with young
cucumbers. There was a broken aqueduct cut in the rock at the side of
the valley, and the brook slipped by a large ruined reservoir.
"George," said I to the Bethlehemite, as he sat meditating on the edge
of the dry pool, "what do you think of this valley?"
"I think," said George, "that if I had a few thousand dollars to buy the
land, with all this runaway water I could make it blossom like a
peach-tree."
The cold, green sunset behind the western hills darkened into night. The
air grew chilly, dropping nearly to the point of frost. We missed the
blazing camp-fire of the Canadian forests, and went to bed early,
tucking in the hot-water bags at our feet and piling on the blankets and
rugs. All through the night we could hear the passers-by shouting and
singing along the Hebron road. There was one unknown traveller whose
high-pitched, quavering Arab song rose far away, and grew louder as he
approached, and passed us in a whirlwind of lugubrious music, and
tapered slowly off into distance and silence--a chant a mile long.
The morning broke through flying clouds, with a bitter, wet, west wind
rasping the bleak highlands. There were spiteful showers with intervals
of mocking sunshine; it was a mischievous and prankish bit of weather,
no day for riding. But the Lady was indomitable, so we left the
Patriarch in his tent, wrapped ourselves in garments of mackintosh and
took the road again.
The country, at first, was wild and barren, a wilderness of rocks and
thorn bushes and stunted scrub oaks. Now and then a Greek partridge, in
its beautiful plumage of fawn-gray, marked with red and black about the
head, clucked like a hen on the stony hillside, or whirred away in low,
straight flight over the bushes. Flocks of black and brown goats, with
pendulous ears, skipped up and down the steep ridges, standing up on
their hind legs to browse the foliage of the little oak shrubs, or
showing themselves off in a butting-match on top of a big rock. Marching
on the highroad they seemed sedate, despondent, pattering along soberly
with flapping ears. In the midst of one flock I saw a fierce-looking
tattered pastor tenderly carrying a little black kid in his bosom--as
tenderly as if it were a lamb. It seemed like an illustration of a
picture that I saw long ago in the Catacombs, in which the infant church
of Christ silently expressed the richness of her love, the breadth of
her hope:
"On those walls subterranean, where she hid
Her head 'mid ignominy, death and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew--
And on His shoulders, not a lamb, a kid."
As we drew nearer to Hebron the region appeared more fertile, and the
landscape smiled a little under the gleams of wintry sunshine. There
were many vineyards; in most of them the vines trailed along the ground,
but in some they were propped up on sticks, like old men leaning on
crutches. Almond and apricot-trees flourished. The mulberries, the
olives, the sycamores were abundant. Peasants were ploughing the fields
with their crooked sticks shod with a long iron point. When a man puts
his hand to such a plough he dares not look back, else it will surely go
aside. It makes a scratch, not a furrow. (I saw a man in the hospital at
Nazareth who had his thigh pierced clear through by one of these
dagger-like iron plough points.)
Children were gathering roots and thorn branches for firewood. Women
were carrying huge bundles on their heads. Donkey-boys were urging their
heavy-laden animals along the road, and cameleers led their deliberate
strings of ungainly beasts by a rope or a light chain reaching from one
nodding head to another.
A camel's load never looks as large as a donkey's, but no doubt he often
finds it heavy, and he always looks displeased with it. There is
something about the droop of a camel's lower lip which seems to express
unalterable disgust with the universe. But the rest of the world around
Hebron appeared to be reasonably happy. In spite of weather and poverty
and hard work the ploughmen sang in the fields, the children skipped and
whistled at their tasks, the passers-by on the road shouted greetings to
the labourers in the gardens and vineyards. Somewhere round about here
is supposed to lie the Valley of Eshcol from which the Hebrew spies
brought back the monstrous bunch of grapes, a cluster that reached from
the height of a man's shoulder to the ground.
III
THE TENTING-GROUND OF ABRAHAM
Hebron lies three thousand feet above the sea, and is one of the ancient
market-places and shrines of the world. From time immemorial it has been
a holy town, a busy town, and a turbulent town. The Hittites and the
Amorites dwelt here, and Abraham, a nomadic shepherd whose tents
followed his flocks over the land of Canaan, bought here his only piece
of real estate, the field and cave of Machpelah. He bought it for a
tomb,--even a nomad wishes to rest quietly in death,--and here he and
his wife Sarah, and his children Isaac and Rebekah, and his
grandchildren Jacob and Leah were buried.