Mohammedans of a fanatical temper, and is incredibly dirty. We passed
the muddy pool by which King David, when he was reigning here, hanged
the murderers of Ishbosheth. We climbed the crooked streets to the
Mosque which covers the supposed site of the cave of Machpelah. But we
did not see the tomb of Abraham, for no "infidel" is allowed to pass
beyond the seventh step in the flight of stairs which leads up to the
doorway.
As we went down through the narrow, dark, crowded Bazaar a violent storm
of hail broke over the city, pelting into the little open shops and
covering the streets half an inch deep with snowy sand and pebbles of
ice. The tempest was a rude joke, which seemed to surprise the surly
crowd into a good humour. We laughed with the Moslems as we took shelter
together from our common misery under a stone archway.
After the storm had passed we ate our midday meal on a housetop, which
a friend of the dragoman put at our disposal, and rode out in the
afternoon to the Oak of Abraham on the hill of Mamre. The tree is an
immense, battered veteran, with a trunk ten feet in diameter, and
wide-flung, knotted arms which still bear a few leaves and acorns. It
has been inclosed with a railing, patched up with masonry, partially
protected by a roof. The Russian monks who live near by have given it
pious care, yet its inevitable end is surely near.
The death of a great sheltering tree has a kind of dumb pathos. It seems
like the passing away of something beneficent and helpless, something
that was able to shield others but not itself.
On this hill, under the oaks of Mamre, Abraham's tents were pitched many
a year, and here he entertained the three angels unawares, and Sarah
made pancakes for them, and listened behind the tent-flap while they
were talking with her husband, and laughed at what they said. This may
not be the very tree that flung its shadow over the tent, but no doubt
it is a son or a grandson of that tree, and the acorns that still fall
from it may be the seeds of other oaks to shelter future generations of
pilgrims; and so throughout the world, the ancient covenant of
friendship is unbroken, and man remains a grateful lover of the big,
kind trees.
We got home to our camp in the green meadow of the springs late in the
afternoon, and on the third day we rode back to Jerusalem, and pitched
the tents in a new place, on a hill opposite the Jaffa Gate, with a
splendid view of the Valley of Hinnom, the Tower of David, and the
western wall of the city.
_A PSALM OF FRIENDLY TREES_
_I will sing of the bounty of the big trees,
They are the green tents of the Almighty,
He hath set them up for comfort and for shelter._
_Their cords hath he knotted in the earth,
He hath driven their stakes securely,
Their roots take hold of the rocks like iron._
_He sendeth into their bodies the sap of life,
They lift themselves lightly towards the heavens.
They rejoice in the broadening of their branches._
_Their leaves drink in the sunlight and the air,
They talk softly together when the breeze bloweth,
Their shadow in the noonday is full of coolness._
_The tall palm-trees of the plain are rich in fruit,
While the fruit ripeneth the flower unfoldeth,
The beauty of their crown is renewed on high forever._
_The cedars of Lebanon are fed by the snow,
Afar on the mountain they grow like giants,
In their layers of shade a thousand years are sighing._
_How fair are the trees that befriend the home of man,
The oak, and the terebinth, and the sycamore,
The fruitful fig-tree and the silvery olive._
_In them the Lord is loving to his little birds,--
The linnets and the finches and the nightingales,--
They people his pavilions with nests and with music._
_The cattle are very glad of a great tree,
They chew the cud beneath it while the sun is burning,
There also the panting sheep lie down around their shepherd._
_He that planteth a tree is a servant of God,
He provideth a kindness for many generations,
And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him._
_Lord, when my spirit shall return to thee,
At the foot of a friendly tree let my body be buried,
That this dust may rise and rejoice among the branches._
VI
THE TEMPLE AND THE SEPULCHRE
I
THE DOME OF THE ROCK
There is an upward impulse in man that draws him to a hilltop for his
place of devotion and sanctuary of ascending thoughts. The purer air,
the wider outlook, the sense of freedom and elevation, help to release
his spirit from the weight that bends his forehead to the dust. A
traveller in Palestine, if he had wings, could easily pass through the
whole land by short flights from the summit of one holy hill to another,
and look down from a series of mountain-altars upon the wrinkled map of
sacred history without once descending into the valley or toiling over
the plain. But since there are no wings provided in the human outfit,
our journey from shrine to shrine must follow the common way of
men,--which is also a symbol,--the path of up-and-down, and many
windings, and weary steps.
The oldest of the shrines of Jerusalem is the threshing-floor of Araunah
the Jebusite, which David bought from him in order that it might be
made the site of the Temple of Jehovah. No doubt the King knew of the
traditions which connected the place with ancient and famous rites of
worship. But I think he was moved also by the commanding beauty of the
situation, on the very summit of Mount Moriah, looking down into the
deep Valley of the Kidron.
Our way to this venerable and sacred hill leads through the crooked
duskiness of David Street, and across the half-filled depression of the
Tyropoeon Valley which divides the city, and up through the dim,
deserted Bazaar of the Cotton Merchants, and so through the central
western gate of the Haram-esh-Sherif, "the Noble Sanctuary."
This is a great inclosure, clean, spacious, airy, a place of refuge from
the foul confusion of the city streets. The wall that shuts us in is
almost a mile long, and within this open space, which makes an immediate
effect of breadth and tranquil order, are some of the most sacred
buildings of Islam and some of the most significant landmarks of
Christianity.
Slender and graceful arcades are outlined against the clear, blue sky:
little domes are poised over praying-places and fountains of ablution:
wide and easy flights of steps lead from one level to another, in this
park of prayer.
At the southern end, beyond the tall cypresses and the plashing fountain
fed from Solomon's Pools, stands the long Mosque el-Aksa: to
Mohammedans, the place to which Allah brought their prophet from Mecca
in one night; to Christians, the Basilica which the Emperor Justinian
erected in honor of the Virgin Mary. At the northern end rises the
ancient wall of the Castle of Antonia, from whose steps Saint Paul,
protected by the Roman captain, spoke his defence to the Jerusalem mob.
The steps, hewn partly in the solid rock, are still visible; but the
site of the castle is occupied by the Turkish barracks, beside which the
tallest minaret of the Haram lifts its covered gallery high above the
corner of the great wall.
Yonder to the east is the Golden Gate, above the steep Valley of
Jehoshaphat. It is closed with great stones; because the Moslem
tradition says that some Friday a Christian conqueror will enter
Jerusalem by that gate. Not far away we see the column in the wall from
which the Mohammedans believe a slender rope, or perhaps a naked sword,
will be stretched, in the judgment day, to the Mount of Olives opposite.
This, according to them, will be the bridge over which all human souls
must walk, while Christ sits at one end, Mohammed at the other, watching
and judging. The righteous, upheld by angels, will pass safely; the
wicked, heavy with unbalanced sins, will fall.
Dominating all these wide-spread relics and shrines, in the centre of
the inclosure, on a raised platform approached through delicate arcades,
stands the great Dome of the Rock, built by Abd-el-Melik in 688 A.D., on
the site of the Jewish Temple. The exterior of the vast octagon, with
its lower half cased in marble and its upper half incrusted with Persian
tiles of blue and green, its broad, round lantern and swelling black
dome surmounted by a glittering crescent, is bathed in full sunlight;
serene, proud, eloquent of a certain splendid simplicity. Within, the
light filters dimly through windows of stained glass and falls on marble
columns, bronzed beams, mosaic walls, screens of wrought iron and carved
wood. We walk as if through an interlaced forest and undergrowth of
rich entangled colours. It all seems visionary, unreal, fantastic, until
we climb the bench by the end of the inner screen and look upon the Rock
over which the Dome is built.
This is the real thing,--a plain gray limestone rock, level and fairly
smooth, the unchanged summit of Mount Moriah. Here the priest-king
Melchizedek offered sacrifice. Here Abraham, in the cruel fervour of his
faith, was about to slay his only son Isaac because he thought it would
please Jehovah. Here Araunah the Jebusite threshed his corn on the
smooth rock and winnowed it in the winds of the hilltop, until King
David stepped over from Mount Zion, and bought the threshing-floor and
the oxen of him for fifty shekels of silver, and built in this place an
altar to the Lord. Here Solomon erected his splendid Temple and the
Chaldeans burned it. Here Zerubbabel built the second Temple after the
return of the Jews from exile, and Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated it,
and Herod burned part of it and pulled down the rest. Here Herod built
the third Temple, larger and more magnificent than the first, and the
soldiers of the Emperor Titus burned it. Here the Emperor Hadrian built
a temple to Jupiter and himself, and some one, perhaps the Christians,
burned it. Here Mohammed came to pray, declaring that one prayer here
was worth a thousand elsewhere. Here the Caliph Omar built a little
wooden mosque, and the Caliph Abd-el-Melik replaced it with this great
one of marble, and the Crusaders changed it into a Christian temple, and
Saladin changed it back again into a mosque.
This Haram-esh-Sherif is the second holiest place in the Moslem world.
Hither come the Mohammedan pilgrims by thousands, for the sake of
Mohammed. Hither come the Christian pilgrims by thousands, for the sake
of Him who said: "Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall ye
worship the Father." Hither the Jewish pilgrims never come, for fear
their feet may unwittingly tread upon "the Holy of Holies," and defile
it; but they creep outside of the great inclosure, in the gloomy trench
beside the foundation stones of the wall, mourning and lamenting for the
majesty that is departed and the Temple that is ground to powder.
But amid all these changes and perturbations, here stands the good old
limestone rock, the threshing-floor of Araunah, the capstone of the
hill, waiting for the sun to shine and the dews to fall on it once more,
as they did when the foundations of the earth were laid.
The legend says that you can hear the waters of the flood roaring in an
abyss underneath the rock. I laid my ear against the rugged stone and
listened. What sound? Was it the voice of turbulent centuries and the
lapsing tides of men?
II
GOLGOTHA
"We ought to go again to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre," said the
Lady in a voice of dutiful reminder, "we have not half seen it." So we
went down to the heart of Jerusalem and entered the labyrinthine shrine.
The motley crowd in the paved quadrangle in front of the double-arched
doorway were buying and selling, bickering and chaffering and chattering
as usual. Within the portal, on a slightly raised platform to the left,
the Turkish guardians of the holy places and keepers of the peace
between Christians were seated among their rugs and cushions, impassive,
indolent, dignified, drinking their coffee or smoking their tobacco,
conversing gravely or counting the amber beads of their comboloios. The
Sultan owns the Holy Sepulchre; but he is a liberal host and permits all
factions of Christendom to visit it and celebrate their rites in turn,
provided only they do not beat or kill one another in their devotions.
We saw his silent sentinels of tolerance scattered in every part of the
vast, confused edifice.
The interior was dim and shadowy. Opposite the entrance was the Stone of
Unction, a marble slab on which it is said the body of Christ was
anointed when it was taken down from the cross. Pilgrim after pilgrim
came kneeling to this stone, and bending to kiss it, beneath the Latin,
Greek, Armenian and Coptic lamps which hang above it by silver chains.
The Chapel of the Crucifixion was on our right, above us, in the second
story of the church. We climbed the steep flight of stairs and stood in
a little room, close, obscure, crowded with lamps and icons and
candelabra, incrusted with ornaments of gold and silver, full of strange
odours and glimmerings of mystic light. There, they told us, in front of
that rich altar was the silver star which marked the place in the rock
where the Holy Cross stood. And on either side of it were the sockets
which received the crosses of the two thieves. And a few feet away,
covered by a brass slide, was the cleft in the rock which was made by
the earthquake. It was lined with slabs of reddish marble and looked
nearly a foot deep.
Priests in black robes and tall, cylindrical hats, and others with brown
robes, rope girdles and tonsured heads, were coming and going around us.
Pilgrims were climbing and descending the stairs, kneeling and murmuring
unintelligible devotions, kissing the star and the cleft in the rock and
the icons. Underneath us, though we were supposed to stand on the hill
called Golgotha, were the offices of the Greek clergy and the Chapel of
Adam.
We went around from chapel to chapel; into the opulent Greek cathedral
where they show the "Centre of the World"; into the bare little Chapel
of the Syrians where they show the tombs of Nicodemus and Joseph of
Arimathaea; into the Chapel of the Apparition where the Franciscans say
that Christ appeared to His mother after the resurrection. There was
sweet singing in this chapel and a fragrant smell of incense. We went
into the Chapel of Saint Helena, underground, which belongs to the
Greeks; into the Chapel of the Parting of the Raiment which belongs to
the Armenians. We were impartial in our visitation, but we did not have
time to see the Abyssinian Chapel, the Coptic Chapel of Saint Michael,
nor the Church of Abraham where the Anglicans are allowed to celebrate
the eucharist twice a month.
The centre of all this maze of creeds, ceremonies and devotions is the
Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, a little edifice of precious marbles,
carved and gilded, standing beneath the great dome of the church, in the
middle of a rotunda surrounded by marble pillars. We bought and lighted
our waxen tapers and waited for a lull in the stream of pilgrims to
enter the shrine. First we stood in the vestibule with its tall
candelabra; then in the Angels' Chapel, with its fifteen swinging lamps,
making darkness visible; then, stooping through a low doorway, we came
into the tiny chamber, six feet square, which is said to contain the
rock-hewn tomb in which the Saviour of the World was buried.
Mass is celebrated here daily by different Christian sects. Pilgrims,
rich and poor, come hither from all parts of the habitable globe. They
kneel beneath the three-and-forty pendent lamps of gold and silver. They
kiss the worn slab of marble which covers the tombstone, some of them
smiling with joy, some of them weeping bitterly, some of them with
quiet, business-like devotion as if they were performing a duty. The
priest of their faith blesses them, sprinkles the relics which they lay
on the altar with holy water, and one by one the pilgrims retire
backward through the low portal.
I saw a Russian peasant, sad-eyed, wrinkled, bent with many sorrows, lay
his cheek silently on the tombstone with a look on his face as if he
were a child leaning against his mother's breast. I saw a little
barefoot boy of Jerusalem, with big, serious eyes, come quickly in, and
try to kiss the stone; but it was too high for him, so he kissed his
hand and laid it upon the altar. I saw a young nun, hardly more than a
girl, slender, pale, dark-eyed, with a noble Italian face, shaken with
sobs, the tears running down her cheeks, as she bent to touch her lips
to the resting-place of the Friend of Sinners.
This, then, is the way in which the craving for penitence, for
reverence, for devotion, for some utterance of the nameless thirst and
passion of the soul leads these pilgrims. This is the form in which the
divine mystery of sacrificial sorrow and death appeals to them, speaks
to their hearts and comforts them.
Could any Christian of whatever creed, could any son of woman with a
heart to feel the trouble and longing of humanity, turn his back upon
that altar? Must I not go away from that mysterious little room as the
others had gone, with my face toward the stone of remembrance, stooping
through the lowly door?
And yet--and yet in my deepest heart I was thirsty for the open air,
the blue sky, the pure sunlight, the tranquillity of large and silent
spaces.
The Lady went with me across the crowded quadrangle into the cool,
clean, quiet German Church of the Redeemer. We climbed to the top of the
lofty bell tower.
Jerusalem lay at our feet, with its network of streets and lanes,
archways and convent walls, domes small and great--the black Dome of the
Rock in the centre of its wide inclosure, the red dome and the green
dome of the Jewish synagogues on Mount Zion, the seven gilded domes of
the Russian Church of Saint Mary Magdalen, a hundred tiny domes of
dwelling-houses, and right in front of us the yellow dome of the Greek
"Centre of the World" and the black dome of the Holy Sepulchre.
The quadrangle was still full of people buying and selling, but the
murmur of their voices was faint and far away, less loud than the
twittering of the thousands of swallows that soared and circled, with
glistening of innumerable blue-black wings and soft sheen of white
breasts, in the tender light of sunset above the facade of the gray
old church.
Westward the long ridge of Olivet was bathed in the rays of the
declining sun.
Northward, beyond the city-gate, the light fell softly on a little rocky
hill, shaped like a skull, the ancient place of stoning for those whom
the cruel city had despised and rejected and cast out. At the foot of
that eminence there is a quiet garden and a tomb hewn in the rock.
Rosemary and rue grow there, roses and lilies; birds sing among the
trees. Is not that little rounded hill, still touched with the free
light of heaven, still commanding a clear outlook over the city to the
Mount of Olives--is not that the true Golgotha, where Christ was lifted
up?
As we were thinking of this we saw a man come out on the roof of the
Greek "Centre of the World," and climb by a ladder up the side of the
huge dome. He went slowly and carefully, yet with confidence, as if the
task were familiar. He carried a lantern in one hand. He was going to
the top of the dome to light up the great cross for the night. We spoke
no word, but each knew the thought that was in the other's heart.
Wherever the crucifixion took place, it was surely in the open air,
beneath the wide sky, and the cross that stood on Golgotha has become
the light at the centre of the world's night.
_A PSALM OF THE UNSEEN ALTAR_
_Man the maker of cities is also a builder of altars:
Among his habitations he setteth tables for his god._
_He bringeth the beauty of the rocks to enrich them:
Marble and alabaster, porphyry, jasper and jade._
_He cometh with costly gifts to offer an oblation:
He would buy favour with the fairest of his flock._
_Around the many altars I hear strange music arising:
Loud lamentations and shouting and singing and sighs._
_I perceive also the pain and terror of their sacrifices:
I see the white marble wet with tears and with blood._
_Then I said, These are the altars of ignorance:
Yet they are built by thy children, O God, who know thee not._
_Surely thou wilt have pity upon them and lead them:
Hast thou not prepared for them a table of peace?_
_Then the Lord mercifully sent his angel forth to lead me:
He led me through the temples, the holy place that is hidden._
_Lo, there are multitudes kneeling in the silence of the spirit:
They are kneeling at the unseen altar of the lowly heart._
_Here is plentiful forgiveness for the souls that are forgiving:
And the joy of life is given unto all who long to give._
_Here a Father's hand upholdeth all who bear each other's burdens:
And the benediction falleth upon all who pray in love._
_Surely this is the altar where the penitent find pardon:
And the priest who hath blessed it forever is the Holy One of God._
VII
JERICHO AND JORDAN
I
"GOING DOWN TO JERICHO"
In the memory of every visitor to Jerusalem the excursion to Jericho is
a vivid point. For this is the one trip which everybody makes, and it is
a convention of the route to regard it as a perilous and exciting
adventure. Perhaps it is partly this flavour of a not-too-dangerous
danger, this shivering charm of a hazard to be taken without too much
risk, that attracts the average tourist, prudently romantic, to make the
journey to the lowest inhabited town in the world.
Jericho has always had an ill name. Weak walls, weak hearts, weak morals
were its early marks. Sweltering on the rich plain of the lower Jordan,
eight hundred feet below the sea, at the entrance of the two chief
passes into the Judean highlands, it was too indolent or cowardly to
maintain its own importance. Stanley called it "the key of Palestine";
but it was only a latch which any bold invader could lift. The people
of Jericho were famous for light fingers and lively feet, great robbers
and runners-away. Joshua blotted the city out with a curse; five
centuries later Hiel the Bethelite rebuilt it with the bloody sacrifice
of his two sons. Antony gave it to Cleopatra, and Herod bought it from
her for a winter palace, where he died. Nothing fine or brave, so far as
I can remember, is written of any of its inhabitants, except the good
deed of Rahab, a harlot, and the honest conduct of Zacchaeus, a publican.
To this day, at the _tables d'hote_ of Jerusalem the name of Jericho
stirs up a little whirlwind of bad stories and warnings.
Last night we were dining with friends at one of the hotels, and the
usual topic came up for discussion. Imagine what followed.
"That Jericho road is positively frightful," says a British female
tourist in lace cap, lilac ribbons and a maroon poplin dress, "the heat
is most extr'ordinary!"
"No food fit to eat at the hotel," grumbles her husband, a rosy,
bald-headed man in plaid knickerbockers, "no bottled beer; beastly
little hole!"
"A voyage of the most fatiguing, of the most perilous, I assure you,"
says a little Frenchman with a forked beard. "But I rejoice myself of
the adventure, of the romance accomplished."
"I want to know," piped a lady in a green shirt-waist from Andover,
Mass., "is there really and truly any danger?"
"I guess not for us," answers the dominating voice of the conductor of
her party. "There's always a bunch of robbers on that road, but I have
hired the biggest man of the bunch to take care of us. Just wait till
you see that dandy Sheikh in his best clothes; he looks like a museum of
old weapons."
"Have you heard," interposed a lady-like clergyman on the other side of
the table, with gold-rimmed spectacles gleaming above his high, black
waistcoat, "what happened on the Jericho road, week before last? An
English gentleman, of very good family, imprudently taking a short cut,
became separated from his companions. The Bedouins fell upon him, beat
him quite painfully, deprived him of his watch and several necessary
garments, and left him prostrate upon the earth, in an embarrassingly
denuded condition. Just fancy! Was it not perfectly shocking?" (The
clergyman's voice was full of delicious horror.) "But, after all," he
resumed with a beaming smile, "it was most scriptural, you know, quite
like a Providential confirmation of Holy Writ!"
"Most unpleasant for the Englishman," growls the man in knickerbockers.
"But what can you expect under this rotten Turkish government?"