Egyptians, and his son dropped back into the evil practices of his
fathers. Nebuchadnezzar came then, and in one raid after another utterly
destroyed Jerusalem, including the Temple and the Ark, and carried the
inhabitants, to the last man, into a captivity which lasted seventy
years. Then Nehemiah was allowed to return with a large following and
rebuild the city. But its prosperity was never permanent. The Jews were
never a governing nation. Discontented and factional, they invited
conquest. Alexander came, and, later, Rome. Herod the Great renewed and
beautified the city, and to court favor with the Jews rebuilt the Temple
on a splendid scale. This was Jerusalem in its final glory. Seventy
years later the Jews rebelled, and Titus destroyed the city so
completely that it is said to have remained a barren waste without a
single inhabitant for fifty years.
To-day the city is divided into "quarters"--Christian, Jewish,
Mohammedan, and Armenian. All worships are permitted, and the sacred
relics--most of them--of whatever faith, are accessible to all. Such in
scanty outline is the story of the Holy City. It has been besieged and
burned and pulled down no less than sixteen times--totally destroyed and
rebuilt at least eight times, and the very topography of its site has
been changed by the accumulation of rubbish. Hillsides have disappeared.
Where once were hollows are now mere depressions or flats. Most of the
streets that Jesus and the prophets trod lie from thirty to a hundred
feet below the present surface, and bear little relation even in
direction to those of the present day. Yet certain sites and landmarks
have been identified, while others are interesting for later reasons.
Hence, both to sceptic and believer, Jerusalem is still a shrine.
XXXII
THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
We lost no time. Though it was twilight when we reached our hotel, we
set out at once to visit the spot which for centuries was the most
sacred in all Christendom--that holiest of holies which during two
hundred years summoned to its rescue tide after tide of knightly
crusaders, depleted the chivalry and changed the map of Europe--the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This, at least, would be genuine in so far as it was the spot toward
which the flower of knighthood marched--Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard of
the Lion Heart, Ivanhoe, and all the rest--under the banner of the
Cross, with the cry "God wills it" on their lips. We are eager to see
that precious landmark.
It was only a little way--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and we walked. We
left the narrow street in front of the hotel and entered some still
narrower ones where there were tiny booths of the Oriental kind, and
flickering lights, and curious, bent figures, and donkeys; also steps
that we went up or down, generally down, which seemed strange when we
were going to Calvary, because we had always thought Calvary a hill.
It was impressive, though. We were in Jerusalem, and if these were not
the very streets that Jesus trod, surely they were not unlike them, for
the people have not changed, nor their habits, nor their
architecture--at least, not greatly--nor their needs. Whatever was their
cry for baksheesh then, He must often have heard it, and their blind
eyes and their withered limbs were such as He once paused to heal.
I think we continued to descend gradually to the very door of the
church. It did not seem quite like the entrance to a church, and, in
reality, it is not altogether that; it is more a repository, a
collection of sacred relics, a museum of scriptural history.
We paused a little outside while the guide--his name was something that
meant St. George--told us briefly the story. Constantine's mother, the
Empress Helena, he said, through a dream had located the site of the
crucifixion and burial of the Saviour, whereupon Constantine, in 335
A.D., had erected some buildings to mark the place. The Persians
destroyed these buildings by-and-by, but they were rebuilt. Then the
Moslems set fire to the place; but again some chapels were set up, and
these the conquering crusaders enclosed under one great roof. This was
about the beginning of the twelfth century, and portions of the
buildings still remain, though as late as 1808 there came a great fire
which necessitated a general rebuilding, with several enlargements
since, as the relics to be surrounded have increased.
We went inside then. The place is dimly lit--it is always lit, I
believe, for it can never be very light in there--and everywhere there
seemed to be flitting processions of tapers, and of chanting,
dark-robed priests. Just beyond the entrance we came to the first great
relic--the Stone of Unction--the slab upon which the body of Christ was
laid when it was taken down from the Cross. It is red, or looked red in
that light, like a piece of Tennessee marble, and, though it is not
smoothly cut, it is polished with the kisses of devout pilgrims who come
far to pay this tribute, and to measure it, that their winding-sheets
may be made the same size. Above it hang a number of lamps and
candelabra, and with the worshippers kneeling and kissing and measuring,
the spectacle was sufficiently impressive. Then, as we were about to go,
our guide remembered that this was not the true Stone of Unction, but
one like it, the real stone having been buried somewhere beneath it. The
pilgrims did not know the difference, he said, and they used up a stone
after a while, kissing and measuring it so much. Near to the stone is
the Station of Mary, where she stood while the body of Jesus was being
anointed, or perhaps where she stood watching the tomb--it is not
certain which. At all events, it has been revealed by a vision that she
stood there, and the place is marked and enclosed with a railing.
We followed our guide deeper into the twinkling darkness, where the
chanting processions were flickering to and fro, and presently stood
directly beneath a dome, facing an ornate marble or alabaster structure,
flanked and surrounded by elaborately wrought lamps and
candlesticks--the Holy Sepulchre itself.
But I had to be told. I should never have guessed this to be the shrine
of shrines, the receptacle of the gentle Nazarene who taught the
doctrine of humility to mankind. And it is the same within. If a
rock-hewn tomb is there, it is overlaid now with costly marbles;
polished with kisses; bedewed with tears.
We did not remain in the tomb long, Laura and I. Perhaps they would not
have let us; but, in any case, we did not wish to linger. At Damascus,
Laura had gone so far as to criticise the house of Judas, because it had
been whitewashed since St. Paul lodged there. So it was not likely that
a tomb which was not a tomb, but merely a fancy marble memorial, would
inspire much enthusiasm. To us it contained no suggestion of the gentle
Prince of Peace.
But at the entrance of the Sepulchre, facing us as we came out, there
was a genuine thing. It was a woman kneeling, a peasant woman--of
Russia, I suppose, from her dress. And she was not looking at us at all,
but beyond us, through us, into that little glowing interior which to
her was shining with the very light of the Lamb. I have never seen
another face with an expression like that. It was fairly luminous with
rapt adoration. Yes, she at least was genuine--an absolute embodiment of
the worship that had led her along footsore and weary miles to kneel at
last at the shrine of her faith.
I am not going to weary the reader with detailed description of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is a vast place, and contains most of
the sacred relics and many of the sacred sites that have been identified
since the zealous Queen Helena set the fashion of seeing visions and
dreaming dreams. We made the tour of a number of the chapels of
different religious denominations. They are not on good terms with one
another, by-the-way, and require Mohammedan guards to keep them from
fighting around the very Sepulchre itself. Then we descended some stairs
to the Chapel of St. Helena, where there is an altar to the penitent
thief, and another to Queen Helena, though I did not learn that she ever
repented, or even reformed.
They showed us where the Queen sat when, pursuing one of her visions,
they were digging for the true Cross and found all three of them; and
they told us how they identified the holy one by sending all three to
the bedside of a noble lady who lay at the point of death. The first
shown her made her a maniac; the second threw her into spasms; the third
cured her instantly. The commemoration of this event is called in the
calendar "The Invention of the Cross," which seems to convey the idea. I
think it was in the Chapel of the Finding of the Cross that I bought a
wax candle, and a prayer went with it, though whether it was for my soul
or Queen Helena's I am not certain. It does not matter. I am willing
Helena should have it, if she needs it, and I think she does.
We went on wandering around, and by-and-by we came to a chapel where the
Crown of Thorns was made, and presently to a short column marking the
Centre of the Earth, the spot from which the dust was taken that was
used in making Adam. You see, it is necessary to double up on some of
the landmarks or enlarge the church again.
You can climb a flight of stairs in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and
be told that you are on Calvary, and you are allowed to put your hand
through the floor into the sockets where the crosses stood. We did not
do it, however. We climbed the stairs, but a collection of priests were
holding some kind of ceremony with candles and chanting, and we were not
sufficiently impressed to wait.
We did pause, as we came away, to note in the vestibule of the Holy
Sepulchre the two holes through which on Easter Eve the Holy Fire is
distributed to Christian pilgrims who assemble from all parts of the
world. On this occasion the Fire Bishop enters the Sepulchre, and fire
from heaven lights the candles on the altar. Then the Bishop, who is all
alone in the Sepulchre, passes the Holy Fire out through these holes, in
the form of a bundle of burning tapers, to priests. The pilgrims with
unlighted tapers then rush and jam and scramble toward these dispensers
of the sacred flame and pay any price demanded to have their candles
speedily lighted. Usually a riot takes place, and the Mohammedan guards
are required to prevent bloodshed.
In 1834 there occurred a riot over the Holy Fire which piled the dead
five feet deep around the Sepulchre. Four or five hundred were killed,
and corpses lay thick even on the Stone of Unction. It seems a useless
sacrifice, when one thinks of it, but then the blood of five hundred is
only a drop as compared with what the centuries have contributed to this
revered shrine.
I want to be quite serious for a moment about the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre--here in Jerusalem--now, while I am in the spirit of the
thing.
It is the biggest humbug in all Christendom. Of the scores of sites and
relics enclosed within its walls, it is unlikely that a single one is
genuine. With all respect to Queen Helena's talent for dreams, her
knowledge of Scripture must have been sparing, or she would have located
Calvary outside the walls of Jerusalem. This place is in the heart of
the city--was always in the heart of the city, in spite of all
gerrymandering to prove it otherwise; and it was more of a flat or a
hollow in the time of Christ than it is now.
As for the other traditions and trumpery gathered in this ecclesiastical
side-show, they are unworthy of critical attention. Probably not one in
a million of the readers of _Innocents Abroad_ but thought the finding
of the Grave of Adam one of Mark Twain's jokes. Not at all; it is
located here under Calvary, and the place from which came Adam's dust
(the Centre of the World) is close by. Then there is that Stone of
Unction, which every one of intelligence knows to be a fraud, and there
is the stone which the angel rolled away, and Adam's skull--they have
that, too.
It would seem that the human animal had exhausted his simian inheritance
then. But no, he can never exhaust that--it is his one limitless gift.
He has gone right on adding to his heap of bones and crockery, enlarging
the museum from time to time to make room. And he will add more. The
future is long, and it is only a question of time and faith when he will
bring over the tombs of the patriarchs from Hebron, the Grotto of the
Nativity from Bethlehem, the House of Judas from Damascus, and the
Street that was called Straight. Oh, he can do it! A creature who can
locate the Holy Sepulchre, the Grave of Adam, the Centre of the World,
Mount Calvary, and fifty other historical sites all within the radius of
a few feet, and find enough of his own kind to accept them, can do
anything. As an insult to human intelligence and genuine Christian
faith, I suppose this institution stands alone.
Do the priests themselves, the beneficiaries, believe it? Perhaps--at
least some of them do. There is nothing so dense, so sodden, so
impenetrable as priestly superstition. Not a ray of reason can enter a
mind darkened for a lifetime by ceremonials in which candles, chantings,
swinging censers, and prostrations are regarded as worship. Could you
produce any evidence that would appeal to the minds of those figures
that march and countermarch, and carry tapers and chant among
these frauds and fripperies of their faith? Hardly--they would not
care for evidence. What they want is more superstition; more for
themselves--more, always more, for their followers; the more
superstition, the more power, the more baksheesh. They have no use for
facts and testimony. They can create both to fit the need. Let any
corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre become vacant, and
immediately some prelate will dream that it is the true place where
Balaam's Ass saw the angel with the flaming sword, and they will
promptly consecrate the spot; then they will excavate and find the sword
and a footprint of the angel, also a piece of the Ass, and they will
make a saint of Balaam, and very likely of the Ass, and they will set
up an altar and get a sign-painter to make a picture of the vision, and
the people will contribute prayers and piastres, and yell baksheesh at
every traveller to keep the high priests of Balaam in food and funds.
Strange that we who regard the Mohammedan pilgrim with disdain or
compassion, on his journey to Mecca and Medina, excuse or condone the
existence of a shrine like this. The Prophet's birthplace and tomb are
at least authentic, and it was his desire that his followers should
visit them. They are acknowledging a fact. These people are supporting a
fraud.
And then the pity of it! The remembering that it was for this trumpery
thing those mighty crusades swept like a flame across Europe, robbed her
of her chivalry, and desolated a million homes; for this that gallant
knights put on their armor and rode away under the banner of the Cross,
shouting, "God wills it!" For this that men have drenched more than one
nation with blood and changed the map and history of the world!
True, one may not altogether regret the crusades. They made romance and
the high achievement to be celebrated in picture and in song. It was
fine, indeed, to ride away in shining mail in a vast army in which all
were officers--splendid knights battling for glory in a cause. Aching
hearts and forsaken homes were plentiful behind, yet even they reflected
the glamour of romance, the fervor of a faith.
But there was one crusade in which there was neither romance nor
glory--nothing except heartbreak and anguish, and the long torture of
the years.
That was the Children's Crusade--the crusade in which fanaticism spelled
its last word--when a countless number of children of all ages, as young
as seven some of them, flocked to the standard of a boy of seventeen and
wandered off down through Europe, to faint and fall and die by hundreds
and by thousands from hunger and heat and thirst--moaning and grieving
unheeded among the stones and bushes--to reach the Mediterranean at
last, a scattered remnant, there to be taken on board some vessels and
sold into slavery in Algiers!
There was no glory, no triumph however imaginary, in that crusade; no
romance, no glamour after the first day's march. It was only weariness
and torture after that--only wretchedness and the fevered cry for the
comfort of a mother's arm. And all for the sake of this dime-museum of
faith, this huge ecclesiastical joke. The pity of it, indeed! Here
to-night, a stone's-throw away, my heart bleeds for those little weary
feet struggling on and on, for those little fainting souls, moaning,
grieving, trying to keep up, lying down at last to coax the blessed
release of death, and I would like to stand here on the housetops of
Jerusalem and cry out against this insult to the memory of One who, when
He said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," could hardly have
foreseen that His words would bear such bitter fruit.
I do not do it, however. I want to live to get home and print this
thing, and have it graven on my tomb.
XXXIII
TWO HOLY MOUNTAINS
We set out early next morning for Mount Moriah, the site of Solomon's
temple and those that followed it.
It was really David's temple in the beginning, undertaken to avert a
pestilence which he had selected from three punishments offered by the
Lord because he, David, had presumed to number his people. A Hebrew
census was a sin in those days, it would seem, and seventy thousand of
the enrolled had already died when David saw an angel with a drawn
sword--the usual armament of an angel--standing by the threshing-floor
of Oman the Jebusite. Through Gad, his Soothsayer, David was commanded
to set up an altar on that spot, to avert further calamity. Negotiations
with Oman were at once begun, to the end that Oman parted with the site
for "six hundred shekels of gold, by weight"; the threshing-floor was
quickly replaced by an altar, and here, on the top of Mount Moriah--on
the great bowlder reputed to have been the sacrificial stone of
Melchizedek--and of Abraham, who was said to have proffered Isaac
here--King David made offering to the Lord, and was answered by fire
from heaven on the newly erected altar. And the angel "put up his sword
again into the sheath thereof."
From that day the bowlder on the top of Mount Moriah became the place of
sacrifice--the great central shrine of the Jewish faith. David decided
to build a temple there, and prepared for it abundantly, as became his
high purpose. But because David had shed much blood, the Lord interfered
and commanded him to turn the enterprise over to Solomon, "a man of
rest." "He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and
I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
over Israel forever."
In the light of thoughtful Bible reading, it is not easy to see that
Solomon was much of an improvement over David, in the long-run, and one
cannot but notice the fact that the promise to establish his throne over
Israel forever was not long maintained. But perhaps the Lord did not
foresee how Solomon was going to turn out; besides, forever is a long
time, and the Kingdom of Solomon may still prevail.
Solomon completed the temple in a manner that made it celebrated, even
to this day. The "oracle, or holy room, which held the Ark of the
Covenant, was overlaid within with pure gold," and the rest of the
temple was in keeping with this dazzling chamber.
The temple was often pillaged during the troublous times that followed
Solomon's reign, but it managed to stand till Nebuchadnezzar's conquest,
four centuries later. It was twice rebuilt, the last time by Herod, on a
scale of surpassing splendor. It was Herod's temple that Christ knew,
and the work of beautifying and adding to it was going on during his
entire lifetime. It was finished in 65 A.D., and five years later it
went down in the general destruction, though Titus himself tried to
preserve it.
Most of what exists to-day are the remains of Herod's temple. The vast
court, or temple area, occupies about one-sixth of all Jerusalem, and of
the genuineness of this site there is no question. In the centre of it,
where once the house of David and Solomon stood, stands the Dome of the
Rock--also called the Mosque of Omar, though it is not really a mosque,
and was not built by Omar. It is, in fact, a marvellous jewelled
casket--the most beautiful piece of architecture in the world, it has
been called--built for no other purpose than to hold the old sacrificial
stone of Melchizedek and Abraham--a landmark revered alike by Moslem,
Christian, and Jew.
One is bound to feel impressed in the presence of that old bowlder,
seamed and scarred by ages of sun and tempest; hacked for this purpose
and that; gray with antiquity--the very corner-stone of three religions,
upholding the traditions and the faith of four thousand years. There is
nothing sham or tawdry about that. The building is splendid enough, but
it is artistically beautiful, and the old rock itself--the genuine rock
of ages--is as bare and rugged as when Isaac lay upon it bound, and the
"chosen people" narrowly missed non-existence.
There is a railing around it; but you can look over or through as long
as you like, and if one is of a reflective temperament he can look a
long time. Among other things he will notice a number of small square
holes, cut long ago to receive the ends of slender supports that upheld
a royal canopy or screen, and he will see the conduits cut to carry off
the blood of the sacrifice. To his mental vision these things will
conjure pictures--a panorama of rites and ceremonials--of altar and
incense, with all the splendid costume and blazonry of the Judean king.
And, after these, sacrifices of another sort--the cry of battle and the
clash of arms across this hoary relic, its conduits filled with a
crimson tide that flowed without regard to ritual or priest.
Other pictures follow: the feast of the Passover, when Jerusalem was
crowded with strangers, when the great outer court of the temple was
filled with booths and pens of the sellers who offered sheep, goats,
cattle, and even doves for the sacrifice; when the temple itself was
crowded with throngs of eager worshippers who brought their sacrifices,
with tithes to the priests, and were made clean.
Amid one such throng there is a boy of twelve years, who with His
parents has come up to Jerusalem "after the custom of the feast." We
think of them as quiet, simple people, those three from Nazareth,
jostled by the crowds a good deal, and looking rather wonderingly on the
curious sights of that great yearly event. They would work their way
into the temple, by-and-by, and they would come here to the Rock, and
perhaps the sad, deep-seeing eyes of that boy of twelve would look down
the years to a day when in this same city it would be His blood that
would flow at the hands of men.
I hope He did not see that far. But we know that light for Him lay
somewhat on the path ahead, for when the feast was over, and His parents
had set out for Nazareth, He lingered to mingle with the learned men,
and He said to His parents when they came for Him, "Wist ye not that I
must be about my father's business?" Among all those who thronged about
this stone for a thousand years, somehow the gentle presence of that boy
of twelve alone remains, unvanishing and clear.
And what a mass of legends have heaped themselves upon this old
landmark!--a groundwork of Jewish tradition--a layer of Christian
imagery--an ever-thickening crust of Moslem whim and fantasy. A few of
them are perhaps worth repeating. The Talmud, for instance, is authority
for the belief that the Rock covers the mouth of an abyss wherein the
waters of the Flood may be heard roaring. Another belief of the Jews
held it as the centre and one of the foundations of the world. Of Jesus
it is said that He discovered upon the Rock the great and unspeakable
name of God (Shem), and was thereby enabled to work his miracles.
But the Moslem soars into fairyland when he comes in the neighborhood of
this ancient relic. To him the Rock hangs suspended in mid-air, and
would have followed Mohammed to heaven if the Angel Gabriel had not held
fast to it. We saw the prints of Gabriel's fingers, which were about the
size and formation of a two-inch auger. Another Moslem fancy is that the
rock rests on a palm watered by a river of Paradise.
In the hollow beneath the Rock (probably an artificial grotto) there is
believed to be a well, the Well of Souls, where spirits of the deceased
assemble twice a week to pray. They regard it as also the mouth of
hell, which I don't think can be true, or the souls would not come
there--not if they could help it--not as often as twice a week, I mean.