large and it is poor.” We did not need his words to make us realize it.
The little girl who had called herself _guide_ so proudly had not spoken
a word, but, as she had climbed over the steep places, had waited
patiently, had listened intently to the boy, and had given us at every
turn a smile which we remembered for many a day, she had earned her fee.
When she received it she ran madly toward a house near by and
disappeared. The boy walked with us courteously to the edge of the
village. In response to our query as to where he had learned English he
said, “Off a merchant I worked for since I was six. He lives just
outside the city.” The “off” with which he began his sentence sounded as
though the merchant might at one time have lived in America.
At the outskirts of the village, where we had met them as we entered,
were the children. They ran beside us shrieking “_back-sheesh_” and
holding out their very dirty little hands. We shook our heads
vehemently. It meant nothing. Then we stopped and reminded them that we
had paid our two guides and all the people who had helped us, but that
they had done nothing for us. “We are poor,” said a girl with a baby in
her arms as though that were reason enough for her demand. I shall never
forget the thin face, the piercing black eyes of a boy, perhaps ten.
“America rich,” he said, “plendy, plendy, _plendy_ money.” There was the
deepest reproof in his voice.
“Some people are _very_ poor,” I said, “the children cry for bread. In
the winter they are very cold. There are many very poor people in
America.”
“No,” said the boy stoutly, and I saw that he did not believe me, but he
repeated what I had said to the others. It was very hard to refrain from
giving them money, but we remembered the request that we should not help
to train a new generation of beggars and steeled our hearts. When we
started on again a few accompanied us but we paid no attention and one
by one they dropped out, having followed us almost a mile. Some said
good-bye cheerfully, others made gestures of disgust. One lone lad still
walked patiently beside us. He had great hollows under his eyes and, now
that we could see him separated from the others, we noticed how very
thin and pale he was, how ragged and dirty. In his arms he carried a
baby whose eyes were in a pitiable condition, one so swollen that it was
entirely closed. He said faintly in a weak, tired voice,
“_back-sheesh—back-sheesh_” over and over. He looked as though in dogged
determination he would follow us back to the city gates. Unable to
resist the pleading we yielded, gave him some coins, watched the light
come into his eyes, saw him turn and make his way slowly back—one of
these little ones who so easily perish while waiting for the coming of
the kingdom of God—the kingdom that Jesus said was _theirs_. It may be
that the school now being opened in the little village will help to
bring them their rights.
When we told Jamil next day of the children he said, “Ah, that is why
you should have me! The guide saves you. You should not go alone, and
walking you cannot get away.”
“Where are the parents of these children,” we asked.
“Poor,” he said slowly, “very, very poor. Always poor and the war has
made it very hard. It will be better now, but they have learned bad
habits.”
A turn in the road and the village was entirely out of sight. We
overtook a flock of sheep and for a time walked slowly behind them. The
bleating of the lambs who seemed weary sounded like the voices of the
children. The shepherd turned into a narrow path between the hills,
called in clear, urging cadences, and the sheep followed him. We climbed
up from the road and sat on the rocks under gnarled old trees. A tower
on the mount of Olives stood out clear against the sky. We read aloud of
the Holy City from the words of the prophets and the Psalms of David.
Night would soon steal down over the valleys, so reluctantly we moved on
past a cluster of tiny stone houses, past the cemetery of the Hebrews,
when, flying up the hill at reckless speed, shaking us rudely back from
the past into the present, came a motor rushing toward Bethany. Bethany
that seemed to be out of the world of motors! It was the doctor’s car
from the hospital, they told us when we described it. Just before the
road drops abruptly into the valley we stopped to look again at the
City. There was always something strangely gripping in the sight. The
words of Jesus wrung from Him as, in deep compassion that was agony, He
looked at the City, feeling the weight of its sin, its pain, its need,
came back to us—“O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets and
stoneth them that are sent unto her! how often would I have gathered thy
children together even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings,
and ye would not!” We hurried on through St. Stephen’s Gate.
On the hills it was light but in the narrow streets with their gateways
and buttresses it was quite dark. We took out our faithful flashlights,
and with our canes to help over the shadowed steps went rapidly up to
the hotel that stood as a strong and sheltering friend in the faint glow
that still lingered in the western sky.
“Not much in Bethany,” they said to us at the desk as they had said of
Bethlehem. “Too far to walk for the few stone houses and the ruins.”
How could they know what we saw in Bethany? How could they know the
overwhelming sympathy that surged in upon us as we stood on the walls of
“the house of Mary and Martha,” looked upon the hills and valleys He saw
in their purpling shadows, thought how much harder the friendship and
fellowship of that home must have made it to remain true to the message
that was to take Him to Jerusalem to die, thought of the short day of
triumph, waving palms and lavish praise, thought of his youth and his
glorious undaunted soul!
No, they did not know what we saw in Bethany.
I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
_He turneth a wilderness into a pool of water,
And a dry land into watersprings
And there he maketh the hungry to dwell,
That they may prepare a city for habitation,
And sow fields and plant vineyards._
_Instead of the thorn shall come up the figtree; and instead of the
briar shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to Jehovah for
a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off._
_The latter glory of this place shall be greater than the former,
and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah._
—_The Bible._
I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
Before we met our carriage at the Damascus Gate to ride out to the
farthest point on the Mount of Olives we walked through David Street to
the Wailing Place of the Jews. Every book we had studied warned us of
the unspeakable condition of the narrow filthy streets in this Jewish
quarter of Jerusalem the Golden. But they were all written before
British arms had captured the Holy City and, even in these short months,
made it in so many ways a new Jerusalem. In the windows of the shops we
had seen the quaint pictures of the water-carrier with his leather bag,
but not one had we seen in the streets of the city. The menace of the
water bag with its myriad germs is already a thing of the past. For the
first time in all its long history, under rulers of many great faiths
and names, the City has water, plenty of water, fresh, clear, safe. What
that simple statement means can be appreciated only by those who know by
experience what a priceless boon water is to cities that have little.
One could change the whole record and history of Oriental cities with
water systems!
When the history of Palestine in the war is fully recorded, one of the
most thrilling chapters will be written about the lead pipes now
standing boldly in the city streets two feet above the ground, capped by
very modern shining faucets. The girls and women who come to them with
their water jars beamed with joy as they watched the silver stream
pouring out in the sun. For four hundred years the Turks ruled in
Jerusalem and in all that time no attempt was made to establish a water
system although more than once the inhabitants were taxed with the
promise of water that was some day to come. In a little over two months
the British engineers had brought running water into every street of the
city. New paths are so rapidly making their way through old Palestine!
For its water Jerusalem had depended upon winter rains to fill its great
cisterns. The houses had underground reservoirs, some of which had not
been cleaned in more than twenty years. At the Mosque of Omar was a
large reservoir where the water from the springs about Solomon’s Pools
flowed down through a great aqueduct built by the Romans when Herod
ruled over the Jews. The searching engineers had found springs in the
hills with fresh, pure water running to waste and, at the rate of
fourteen thousand gallons an hour, it is now pumped up to the top of a
high hill, run by gravity down through a long pipe-line to a great
reservoir that has been built and carefully protected on the outskirts
of the city. Direct lines take this pure water to the hospitals and into
the city streets. Despite the shrinking of the population, caused by the
evacuation of the Turk, more than ten times as much water has been used
as in previous years, which silences the oft-repeated statement that the
people would not appreciate the water if they had it. We were interested
to learn that some of the pipes had been sent to Egypt to be forwarded
for use in Palestine by the American Red Cross Commission after we
entered the war. But the Commission found that the need for water which
we had anticipated had been practically answered by the Royal Engineers.
One is deeply impressed by the change in the record of contagious
diseases. The reduction in cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus is
remarkable. Even under the sound of booming guns, children’s welfare
bureaus were organized, lessons in health given, nurses trained and
kitchens opened to provide food for the babies, the sick and the old.
The workers of the American Red Cross deserve and receive full gratitude
for their enthusiastic and intelligent work in and about the City in
those days immediately following its surrender.
The people on David Street seemed to have lost something of the fear
that writers of the past saw in their haunted faces. It may be the fact
that now they are free. The old-time pressure and petty persecution by
corrupt officials is past. The Turkish prison no longer yawns
threateningly. A trader may go unmolested about his work. The heavy
taxation demanded in the past by a succession of officers, from the
least to the greatest, has disappeared. Contentment not known for untold
generations reigns in humble homes.
[Illustration:
From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under
white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”]
It may be for this reason that on both occasions of our visit to the
Wailing Place there were but few present and they were old men, old
women, and some very young children. Young manhood was not there, it was
hard at work. Many of the older boys and girls were in school. The
leader of the group chanting the Lamentations that morning was an old
white-haired patriarch with eyes of fire. He was the only one of the
group that did not interrupt his wailing to look at us. One tall,
strong, impressive specimen of womanhood moved along the line to quiet
some women whose wailing had become a piercing shriek or to straighten
out a child who irreverently chased a playmate up and down the path. The
guide said that her name was Miriam and that she had a son with much
money in England. Erect and fine, forceful and devout, she reminded us
of that other Miriam who led her people to victory. Here and there one
saw women’s strong faces stained with tears and marked with suffering.
They leaned against the foundation stones of the old Temple area in an
abandonment of emotion and sorrow. Near the end of the line was a very
old man leaning tremblingly upon his staff. Jamil said that he was
repeating one phrase over and over. “O God, the heathen are come into
thine inheritance!” His voice was bitter and full of anguish. A great
wave of pity swept over us for these and all they have suffered, and yet
survived. Against those massive walls of the past, Babylonian, Assyrian,
and Egyptian had hurled their hosts and battered them to earth. They had
risen again only to meet the Roman and the Saracen, the brave Crusader
and the unspeakable Turk until in very truth they lay “in heaps.” Piled
one above another, the various cities lie waiting until the hammer and
spade of the excavator shall open up all their secrets for us. Buried
deep down in the earth is that early city of the Jebusites, over it the
glorious city of Solomon, the city heroically brought again into being
by Nehemiah, the city of Herod which Titus hammered into ruins and
Hadrian rebuilt, above it the city of the Saracens built after their
wave of conquest, the city of the Crusaders, and now the city of the
Turks, standing boldly above the ruins of the long past. It stands, the
protected property of a new conqueror who loves it, whose army chose the
hardest road to victory to save it from the marks of war, whose people
have come into it with knowledge that they may overcome its ignorance, a
conqueror who bears no malice, who is tolerant of the Jew and the
Mohammedan though he worships at the Cross which they hate.
As if reading our thoughts, the guide said quietly, “Some day it will be
only the wall for the wailing that we shall see. There will be no more
need for wailing, and the children will forget. So the young prophets
among the Jews say in the markets. We shall see.”
We walked through a section of the Temple area and out past the Austrian
Hospice through the Damascus Gate where, according to agreement, the
carriage waited.
The road out to the spot where the Mount of Olives drops abruptly to the
plain has been repaired, stray shell holes filled in and a large section
of new road built since that wonderful day when the last line of Turks
were driven from the position they thought secure. The air was as clear
as an October day at home and the shining city “compact together” seemed
substantial and strong. It was along the high ridge of Olivet that, in
the pressure of the days when relief workers toiled twelve and fifteen
hours without respite, they came to renew their strength. In the home of
the Greek Patriarch more than one strong soul, overcome for the moment
by the ceaseless stream of dirty, hopeless, despairing human things that
he must strive to save from the wreckage of war, found, in the white
moonlight sifting down over the hill, in the kindly stars, in the
silence and in sacred memories, courage to attempt again tasks that had
been called impossible.
We had been gazing so steadily at the city that when the driver suddenly
stopped we turned in surprise. There on a gently sloping stretch of
ground, close to the road at the left, stood row after row of crosses
over the resting places of Scot and Londoner, Welshman and Irishman,
Indian and Anzac who had paid for the Holy City with his life. On some
of the crosses fresh green garlands were hanging, and on one a wreath
with English holly.
We got down from our carriage and walked slowly along, looking now at
the crosses and now at the place where in agony of soul Christ had
prayed for the strength to meet the test of Calvary that has made the
Cross forever the symbol which shall mark the spots on earth most sacred
to us. These lying out on the hillside had also been to Calvary.
A little farther on in the road we passed men in the British uniform.
They had survived the terrible test of those wind-swept hills with the
rain falling in torrents, the benumbing cold, the soft, thick, gray mud,
the night in the open with no shelter save a little wall of stones built
up with care only to be blown over by a sudden vicious blast, with
little food and only the ammunition that could reach them on the backs
of the pack donkeys. It was through this they had won that peaceful city
lying contentedly there in the sun, even the shining dome of its
Mohammedan Mosque unharmed.
The German hospice, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, lies out on this road. It
is exceedingly well built and untouched by shell fire. Although the Turk
utterly demolished the mosque of Nebi Samwill and shot away its stately
minaret, he turned no gun on this that was German property. Even when
his airmen, flying over Olivet, knew that an enemy signal station had
been set up in the garden of the hospice no shot fell upon it. “This
house,” said Jamil, “is like a German castle on the inside. The tower
was built higher than any tower on the Mount, the trees set out with
care. The picture of the Saviour is painted in the chapel and the
pictures of the Kaiser and the Kaiserin are on the long wall. It was
common talk at the beginning of the war that the Crown Prince should
live here when he became King in Palestine. Now it is the Headquarters
for the British Army.... It is the Will of God!” he added solemnly after
a moment. We took a picture of the hospice with two British Tommies
standing at the gate.
We had to leave our carriage and walk to the point where the Greek
Church tower looks down over the stretch of rugged upland crossed by
many a wadi, over the walled-in level spaces where green things were
growing, over the plains of the Jordan and the Dead Sea so blue in the
distance, away to the far mountains of Moab. It was a wonderful picture
at which one could look for long hours and come back to enjoy again and
again. It was from this point of vantage that the relief workers watched
the taking of Jericho. In the grove we found the “husks that swine did
eat,” lying about on the ground. Jamil picked one of the long brown pods
from the tree and under the pressure of his urging we tasted it. It was
sweeter than sugar cane, nauseatingly sweet. It took no imagination to
understand why one would accept it as food only as a last resort. In
this grove we found the hyssop which the women at the hospice use both
as medicine and for the whitening of their clothes. In a sunny sheltered
spot we found violets, although we were wearing our warmest wraps.
Jamil sat down on a stone to talk with a workman while we, wandering
about on the slopes of the hill, found a warm sheltered spot looking
toward Mount Moriah. In all the days that we were in Jerusalem we could
not fully sense the fact that the Christian was now free to visit all
the sacred places, that the Temple area was open to him, that he might
enter the sacred Mosque of Omar which once it had been death to enter.
_The Turk had gone!_ We took out the Book and read the old instructions
for the building of the Tabernacle, read the orders for the building of
Solomon’s temple and the majestic words of its dedication when at last
the building was finished:—“and Solomon stood before the Altar and
said—‘O Jehovah, God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven
above or on the earth beneath; who keepest covenants in loving kindness
with thy servants that walk before thee with all their hearts.... But
will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold the heaven and the
heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I
have builded!... When thy people Israel are smitten down before the
enemy because they have sinned against thee; if they turn again to thee
and confess thy name and pray and make supplication unto thee in this
house then hear thou in heaven and forgive thy people Israel and bring
them again unto the land which thou gavest to their fathers.’” Of
Solomon’s Temple scarce a vestige remains, yet Israel again is returning
to the land of its fathers. We read of the visits of Jesus to the new
temple which, great as it was, had so little of the glory of the old.
How it must have thrilled Him, a little country boy from the village of
Nazareth, when He saw it for the first time at the great feast. He seems
to have had no fear, as with all simplicity He pressed near to the great
doctors of learning, listening eagerly and asking keen questions, the
keenest questions that can be asked—those that leap from the alert and
hungry mind of a boy of twelve.
And we read of that other day when He heard the quarrelings and
cursings, saw the gross wickedness of the bargainings of the
money-changers and those who bought and sold the sacrifices, and cried
aloud in words of burning denunciation, “My house shall be called of all
nations the house of prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves!”
Little wonder that the scribes and Pharisees looked aghast at the crowds
that pressed to hear as He taught daily in the temple, or that they
demanded by whose authority He did these things and asked each other
helplessly what they could do, since “the people were very attentive to
Him,” and “the whole world had gone after Him.” In the temple courts how
keen were His answers to their clever questioning designed to condemn
Him, so keen that after awhile none dared ask Him any more questions.
Yet when the teaching was over and, leaving the half-hostile,
half-admiring crowd, He went out to the Mount of Olives to pray—then He
knew that He must die.
It all seemed very real as we sat looking down upon the City. So real
that we dreaded to read of the days before Him, of the hard way that the
rulers of the synagogue, because of their jealous conservatism, the
desire to make their own places secure, the fear lest the people should
follow Him as prophet and leave them as priests, had already in their
hearts condemned Him to go. So we closed the Book.
Leaving the carriage again at the Damascus Gate we wandered back past
the convents, through Christian Street. The city was becoming a very
live thing to us. The children smiled at us as we passed through the
narrow arcade to our hotel. Oranges and dainty soft spring flowers from
the valley were in our room.
“I have lived thousands of years today,” said my friend. “I have been
fighting all the battles from the days of King David to the days of King
George and I am weary.” I smiled in sympathy, for one does not live in
days or years in Palestine but in centuries. The march of events over
broken cobblestones, past walls crumbling with age, catches one in its
onward sweep and leaves him breathless as he hurries on from what has
been to what is, and from what is to what is to be.
We took up our American mail. The steady tread of history’s myriad
marchers halted for a moment. The clippings from the papers told us of
the wedding of a girl whom we love. Across the top of the clipping was
written in the girl’s own hand, “Unspeakable happiness. The greatest day
of my life!” Names of guests, the most minute details as to flowers and
gowns followed. In another clipping we read of the divorce of a girl we
had known in school. She had been married twenty years. I remembered the
account of her wedding. In the hall we heard laughter. Marie was
listening to the extravagant compliments of Alphonse. A letter from a
boy of eleven asked for stamps from Egypt and Palestine. “I want them
more than anything in the world,” he wrote. The next letter brought a
clipping making passing reference in six short lines to a critical
misunderstanding in the Far East. While we were reading it, a woman came
to tell us a story of great sorrow and desperate need. The wild storm of
human wrath and revenge that swept over Russia had left her, who had
never known anything but love, happiness and plenty, stranded, utterly
alone, with not even a ruble of her vast estates.
It is a confusing world. Great events and small jostle each other along
its highways. Wrapped securely about with affairs of self, old and young
fail to see the momentous hours of human destiny as they pass—pass so
swiftly, to leave them on some future day dumb with surprise, aghast at
the significance of the things which, having eyes, they saw not and,
having ears, they heard not. It is a most confusing and perplexing
world, but alas for him who does not love it, pity for him who does not
believe in it, shame upon him who will not share the task of saving it.
Tomorrow would be Sunday and we would go to the Garden.
I GO TO THE GARDEN
_Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?
Who talks of scheme and plan?
The Lord is God! He needeth not
The poor device of man._
_I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The Love and Power of God._
_Ye praise His Justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a King; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam._
_Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord’s Beatitudes
His prayer upon the Cross._
—_John G. Whittier._
I GO TO THE GARDEN