I believe in that, because, being a tall man, when I raised up suddenly
I made another just like it. But I am descending into trivialities, and
the Rock is not trivial by any means. It has been there since the
beginning, and it is likely to remain there until all religions are
forgotten, and the world is dead, and all the stars are dark.
* * * * *
[Illustration: JERUSALEM--ITS BUBBLE-ROOFED HOUSES AND DOMES, ITS
CYPRESS AND OLIVE TREES]
In front of the Dome of the Rock the sun was bright, and looking across
the approach one gets a characteristic view of Jerusalem--its
bubble-roofed houses and domes, its cypress and olive trees. I made a
photograph of Laura, age fourteen, and a friend of hers, against that
background, but they would have looked more "in the picture" in Syrian
dress. I am not sure, however; some of our party have had themselves
photographed in Syrian dress, which seemed to belong to most of them
about as much as a baseball uniform might belong to a Bedouin--or a
camel.
We crossed over to the ancient mosque El-Aksa, also within the temple
area, but it was only mildly interesting after the Dome of the Rock.
Still, there were things worth noting. There were the two pillars, for
instance, which stand so close together that only slender people could
squeeze between them. Yet in an earlier time every pilgrim had to try,
and those who succeeded were certain of Paradise. This made it
humiliating for the others, and the impulse to train down for the test
became so prevalent that stanchions were placed between the pillars a
few years ago. We could only estimate our chances and give ourselves the
benefit of the doubt.
Then there is the Well of the Leaf, which has a pretty story. It is a
cistern under the mosque, and the water is very clear. Once, during the
caliphate of Omar, a sheik came to this well for water, and his bucket
slipped from his hands. He went down after it, and came to a mysterious
door which, when he opened it, led into a beautiful garden. Enchanted,
he lingered there and finally plucked a leaf to bring back as a token of
what he had seen. The leaf never withered, and so a prophecy of
Mohammed's that one of his followers should enter Paradise alive had
been fulfilled.
I said I would go down and hunt for the door. But they said, "No"--that
a good many had tried it without success. The cistern used to collect
every year the pilgrims who went down to find that door; no one was
permitted to try, now.
In one of the windows of the old mosque we saw a curious sight: a very
aged and very black, withered man--Bedouin, I should say--reclining face
down in the wide sill, poring over an ancient parchment book, patiently
transcribing from it cabalistic passages on a black, charred board with
a sharpened stick. The guide said he was a magician from somewhere in
the dim interior; certainly he looked it.
From somewhere--it was probably from an opening in the wall near the
Golden Gate--we looked eastward across the valley of Kedron toward the
fair hillsides, which presently we were to visit.
Immediately we set out for the Mount of Olives. We drove, and perhaps no
party ever ascended that sacred hill on a fairer morning. The air was
still, and there was a quiet Sunday feeling in the sunshine. In the
distance there was a filmy, dreamy haze that gave just the touch of
ideality to the picture.
The road that leads up Olivet is bordered by traditional landmarks, but
we could not stop for them. It was enough to be on the road itself,
following the dusty way the Son of Man and His disciples once knew so
well. For this hill of fair olive-groves, overlooking Jerusalem, was
their favorite resort, and it was their habit to come here to look down
in contemplation on the holy city. It was here that the Master felt the
shadow of coming events: the destruction of the city; the persecution
and triumph of His followers; His own approaching tragedy. It was here
that He gave them the parable of the Virgins, and of the Talents, and it
was here that He came often at evening for rest and prayer, after the
buffet and labor of the day. This is the road His feet so often trod--a
well-kept road, with the olive-groves, now as then, sloping away on
either side.
Here and there we turned to look down on Jerusalem, lying there bathed
in the sunlit haze--a toy city, it seemed, with its little round-topped
houses, its domes and minarets, its battlemented walls. How very small
it was, indeed! Why, one could run its entire circuit without losing
breath. It is, in fact, little more than half a mile across in any
direction, and from a distance it becomes an exquisite jewel set amid
barren hills.
I am afraid I did not properly enjoy the summit of the Mount of
Olives--its landmarks, I mean. The Russian and Greek and Latin churches
have spoiled it with offensive architecture, and they have located and
labelled exact sites in a way that destroys the reality of the events.
They have framed in the precise spot where Jesus stood at the time of
His ascension. It is a mistake to leave it there. It should be
transferred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
But the view eastward, looking down on the Jordan and the Dead Sea, with
the mountains of Moab lying beyond, they cannot spoil or change. Down
there on that spot, thirty-five hundred years ago, the chosen people
camped and prepared for the ravage and conquest of this valley, this
mountain, and the fair lands beyond, even to Mount Hermon and the
westward sea. Over there, on "Nebo's lonely mountain," Moses looked down
upon this land of vine and olive which he was never to enter, and being
weary with the harassings of his stiff-necked people, lay down by the
wayside and left them to work out their own turbulent future.
"And the angels of God upturned the sod
And laid the dead man there."
I have always loved those lines, and it was worth the voyage to remember
them here, looking down from the Mount of Olives toward the spot where
lies that unknown grave.
XXXIV
THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE MANGER
It was afternoon when we drove to Bethlehem--a pleasant drive, though
dusty withal. The road lies between grain-fields--fields where Ruth may
have gleaned, and where the Son of Man may have stopped to gather corn.
It gives one a curious feeling to remember that these fields are the
same, and that for them through all the centuries seed-time and harvest
have never failed. Nor have they changed--the walls, the laborers, the
methods, the crops belong to any period that this country has known.
The convent of Elijah was pointed out to us, but it did not matter.
Elijah never saw it--never heard of it. It is different, however, with a
stone across the way from the entrance. Elijah went to sleep on that
stone, and slept so heavily that he left his imprint there, which
remains to this day. We viewed that stone with interest; then we took
most of it and went on.
In a little while we came to the tomb of Rachel. The small, mosque-like
building that covers it is not very old, but the site is probably as
well authenticated as any of that period. Jacob was on his way from
Padan when she died, and he buried her by the roadside "when there was
but a little way to come into Ephrath" (which is Bethlehem). He marked
the grave with a pillar which the generations would not fail to point
out, one to another, as the last resting-place of this mother in Israel
who died that Benjamin might have life.
Poor Rachel! Supplanted in her husband's love; denied long the natural
heritage of woman; paying the supreme price at last, only to be left
here by the wayside alone, outside the family tomb. All the others are
gathered at Hebron in the Field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from
the children of Heth for Sarah's burial-place. Jacob, at the very last,
made his sons swear that they would bury him at Hebron with the others.
He remembered Rachel in her lonely grave, and spoke of her there, but
did not ask that he be taken to lie by her side, or that she be laid
with the others. He died as he had lived--self-seeking, unsympathetic--a
commonplace old man.
Just outside of Bethlehem we were welcomed by a crowd of little
baksheesh girls, of a better look and distinctly of a better way than
the Jerusalem type. They ran along with the carriage and began a chant
which, behold, was German, at least Germanesque:
"Oh, du Froeliche!
Oh, du Heilege!
Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"
I suppose "Oh, thou happy one; Oh, thou holy one," would be about the
translation, with the wailing refrain at the end. I think we gave them
something. I hope so; they are after us always, and we either give them
or we don't, without much discrimination. You can't discriminate. They
are all wretched and miserably needy. You give to get rid of them, or
when pity clutches a little fiercer than usual at your heart.
[Illustration: A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES]
So we were at the gates of Bethlehem--the little town whose name is
familiar at the firesides of more than half the world--a name that
always brings with it a feeling of bright stars and dim fields:
"Where shepherds watched their flocks by night
All seated on the ground,"
and of angel voices singing peace and goodwill. A camel-train led the
way through the gates.
I suppose the city itself is not unlike Jerusalem in its general
character, only somewhat cleaner, and less extensive. We went
immediately to the place of the nativity, but before we could get to it
we were seized and dragged and almost compelled to buy some of the
mother-of-pearl beads and fancy things that are made just across the
way. We escaped into the Church of the Nativity at last--an old, old
church, desolate and neglected in its aspect, though sufficiently
occupied with chanting and droning and candle-bearing acolytes. Yet it
is better--oh, much better--than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
it has a legitimate excuse. If Christ was born in a Bethlehem manger, as
the gospel records, it is probable that He was born here. There are many
reasons for believing that the grotto below this church was used as the
inn stables in that time, and that the brief life which has laid its
tender loveliness on so many lives had its beginning here.
We descended to the grotto and stood on the spot that is said to have
heard His first infant cry. There is a silver star in the floor polished
with kisses, and there are a lot of ornate lamps and other paltry things
hanging about. It does not matter, I suppose, but I wish these
professional religionists did not find such things necessary to
stimulate their faith. Still one could shut his eyes and realize, or try
to realize that he was standing in the place where the Light that has
illumined a world struck its first feeble spark; where the impulse that
for nineteen hundred years has swept across the nations in tides of war
and peace first trembled into life--a wave of love in a mother's heart.
As I say, the rest did not matter.
While the others were looking into the shops across the way, I wandered
about the streets a little, the side streets, which in character cannot
have changed much in nineteen hundred years. The people are poor, and
there are many idlers. There are beggars, too; some of them very
wretched--and leprous, I think. It seems a pity, here in the birthplace
of Him who healed with a word.
We bought some of the Bethlehem beads. They will sell you a string a
yard long for a franc, and they cut each bead separately from
mother-of-pearl with the most primitive tools, and they shape it and
polish it and bore a hole in it, all by hand, and link it on a gimp
wire. In America you could not get a single bead made in that way for
less than double what they ask for a whole string. But, as I have said,
they are very poor here--as poor as when they bestowed a Saviour on
mankind.
XXXV
THE SORROW OF THE CHOSEN--THE WAY OF THE CROSS
We had left Bethlehem and were back in Jerusalem, presently, on our way
to the Jews' Wailing-place. I did not believe in it before I went. I was
afraid it might be a sort of show-place, prepared for the occasion. I
have changed my mind now. If there is one thing in Jerusalem absolutely
genuine and directly linked with its ancient glories, it is the Jews'
Wailing-place.
You approach it through a narrow lane--a sickening gantlet of misery.
Near the entrance wretched crones, with the distaff and spindle of the
Fates, sat in the dust, spinning what might have been the thread of
sorrow. Along the way the beggars; not the ordinary vociferous beggars
of Constantinople, of Smyrna, of Ephesus, even of Jaffa, but beggars
such as the holy city alone can duplicate. Men and women who are only
the veriest shreds of humanity, crouched in the dirt, reeking with filth
and rags and vermin and sores, staring with blind and festering eyes,
mumbling, moaning, and wailing out their eternal cry of baksheesh,
often--if a woman--clutching some ghastly infant to a bare, scrawny
breast. There was no loud demand for alms; it was only a muted chorus of
pleading, the voice with which misery spells its last word. Some made no
sound, nor gesture, even. They saw nothing, heard nothing, knew
nothing--they were no longer alive--they had only not ceased to breathe
and suffer. The spectacle made us gasp and want to cry out with the very
horror of it.
We were through the fearful gantlet at last, and went directly into the
Jews' Wailing-place. There behold the most lamentable passage in the
most tragic epic of all history--the frayed remnant of a once mighty
race mourning for its fall. A few hours before, and but a few rods away,
we had looked upon the evidences of its former greatness, its splendor
and its glory--the place of King Solomon's temple when it sat as on the
pinnacle of the world. Indeed, we were looking at it now, for this wall
before which they bow in anguish is a portion of the mighty architecture
for which they mourn. In the general destruction of Titus this imposing
fragment remained, and to-day they bow before it and utter their sorrow
in the most doleful grieving that ever fell on human ear. Along the wall
they stand or kneel, and on rows of benches behind they gather thickly,
reading from faded and tattered Hebrew Scriptures the "Lamentations," or
chanting in chorus the saddest dirge the world has ever known.
"Because of the palace which is deserted--
We sit alone and weep.
Because of the temple which is destroyed,
Because of the walls which are broken down,
Because of our greatness which has departed,
Because of the precious stones of the temple ground to powder,
Because of our priests who have erred and gone astray,
Because of our kings who have contemned God--
We sit alone and weep!"
[Illustration: THE DEPTH OF THEIR FALL]
It is no mere ceremony--no mock sorrow; it is the mingled wail of a
fallen people. These Jews know as no others of their race can realize
the depth of their fall, and they gather here to give it voice--a tonal
and visual embodiment of despair. Even I, who am not of that race, felt
all at once the deadly clutch of that vast grieving, and knew something
of what a young Hebrew, a member of our party, felt when he turned sick
and hurried from the spot.
What other race has maintained an integrity of sorrow? What, for
instance, does the blood of Imperial Rome care for its departed
grandeur? It does not even recognize itself. What other nation has ever
maintained racial integrity of any kind? But, then, these were a _chosen
people_!
Chosen, why? Because they were a noble people? Hardly. Their own
chronicles record them as a murmuring, rebellious, unstable race.
Following the history of the chosen people from Jacob to Joshua, one is
in a constant state of wonder at the divine selection. We may admit that
God loved them, but we seek in vain for an excuse. In His last talk with
Moses He declared that they would forsake Him, and that He in turn would
forsake _them_ and hide His face because of the evils they should do.
Moses, who knew them even better, distrusted them even more. "For I know
that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves," he said, almost
with his latest breath. He told them that curses would befall them, and
gave them a few sample curses, any one of which would lift the bark off
of a tree. No wonder he was willing to lie down in Mount Nebo and be at
peace.
Yet they _are_ a chosen people--a people apart--a race that remains a
race, and does not perish. Chosen for what? To make a bitter example of
what a race can do when it remains a race--how high it can rise and how
low may become its estate of misery? Remember, I am not considering the
Jew as an individual; he is often noble as an individual; and it was a
Jew who brought light into the world. I am considering a race--a race no
worse than any other, and no better, but a _chosen_ race; a race that
without a ruler, without a nation, without a government--that outcast
and despised of many nations has yet remained a unit through three
thousand years. I am maintaining that only a chosen people could do
that, and, without being able even to surmise the purpose, it is my
humble opinion that the ages will show that purpose to have been good.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE WAY OF THE CROSS
(HOLY WEEK)]
I have already inferred that the landmarks and localities of Jerusalem
may be viewed with interest, but not too seriously. They have all
associations, but most of them not the particular and sacred
associations with which they are supposed to be identified. The majority
of them were not located until Christ had been dead for a thousand
years, and the means of locating them does not invite conviction.
Inspiration located most of them, dreams the rest. That is to say,
imagination. Whenever a priest or a dignitary wanted to distinguish
himself he discovered something. He first made up his mind what he
would like to discover, and then had an inspiration or a dream, and the
thing was done. The eight Stations of the Cross, for instance, were
never mentioned earlier than the twelfth century, and the Via Dolorosa,
the Way of the Cross, was not so known until the fourteenth. Still, it
must have been along some such street that the Man of Sorrow passed
between the Garden and the Cross.
We visited the Garden first. It was now late in the afternoon, and the
sunlight had become tender and still and dream-like, and as we passed
the traditional places--the house of Pilate, under the Ecce Homo arch,
and the others, we had the feeling that it might have been on an evening
like this that the Son of Man left the city, and with His disciples went
down to Gethsemane to pray.
We were a very small party now--there were only four of us and the
guide, for the others had become tired and were willing to let other
things go. But if we were tired, we did not know it, and I shall always
be glad of that fact.
At St. Stephen's gate (the tradition is that he was stoned there) we
stopped to look down on Gethsemane. Perhaps it is not the real site, and
perhaps the curious gilt-turreted church is not beautiful, but set there
on the hillside amid the cypresses and venerable olive-trees, all aglow
and agleam with the sunset, with the shadow of the dome of Omar creeping
down upon it, there was about it a beauty of unreality that was
positively supernatural. I was almost tempted not to go down there for
fear of spoiling the illusion.
We went, however, and the gnarled olive-trees, some of which are said to
have been there at the time of Christ--and look it--were worth while.
The garden as a whole, however, was less interesting than from above,
and it was only the feeling that somewhere near here the Man who would
die on Calvary asked that the cup of sorrow might pass from Him which
made us linger.
It was verging on twilight when we climbed to the city, and the others
were for going to the hotel. But there was one more place I wanted to
see. That was the hill outside of Jerusalem which the guide-books rather
charily mention as "Gordon's Calvary," because General Gordon once
visited it and accepted it as the true place of the Crucifixion. I knew
that other thoughtful men had accepted it, too, and had favored a tomb
not far away called the "Garden Tomb" as the true Sepulchre. I wanted to
see these things and judge for myself. But two of our party and the
guide spoke no English, and my Biblical German needed practice. There
seemed to be no German word for Calvary, and when I ventured into
details I floundered. Still, I must have struck a spark somewhere, for
presently a light illumined our guide's face:
"Golgota! Das richtige Golgota" (the true Golgotha), he said, excitedly,
and then I remembered that I should have said Golgotha, the "Place of
the Skull," in the beginning.
[Illustration: THE TRUE GOLGOTHA--THE PLACE OF THE SKULL
(Notice the large eyes and mouth of the skull formed by cavities in the
cliff. The place of execution is marked by the little heap of stones
above.)]
We were away immediately, all of us, hurrying for the Damascus gate,
beyond which it lay. It was not far--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and
presently we were outside, at the wicket of a tiny garden--a sweet,
orderly little place--where a pleasant German woman and a tall old
Englishman with a spiritual face were letting us in. Then they led us to
a little arbor, and directly--to a tomb, a real tomb, cut into the cliff
overhanging the garden.
I do not know whether Jesus was laid in that tomb or not, and it is not
likely that any one will ever know. But He _could_ have been laid there,
and it is not unlikely that He _was_ laid there, for Golgotha--the hill
that every unprejudiced visitor immediately accepts as the true
Golgotha--overlooks this garden.
We could not ascend the hill--the Mohammedans no longer permit that--but
we could go to the end of the garden and look up to the little heap of
stones which marks the old place of stoning and of crucifixion. It was
always the place of public execution. The Talmud refers to it, and the
Jews of Jerusalem spit toward it to this day. We could make out the
contour of the skull which gave it its name, and even the face, for in
its rocky side ancient tombs and clefts formed the clearly distinguished
features.
It is a hill; it is outside the walls; it is the traditional site of
executions; it is the one natural place to which Jesus would have been
taken for crucifixion. The Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
was _never_ a hill; it was _never_ outside the walls; it was _never_ a
traditional site for anything until Queen Helena began to dream.
Perhaps the reader may say, "With all the tales and traditions and
disputes and doubts, what does it matter?" Perhaps it does not matter.
Perhaps that old question of Pilate, "What is truth?" need not be
answered.
Yet somewhere amid the mass of confliction there follows a thread of
fact. Sifting the testimony, it is difficult to deny that there once
lived a man named Jesus--later, and perhaps then--known as the Christ;
that He was of humble birth, and grew up to teach a doctrine of
forgiveness and humility (a doctrine new to the Hebrew teachers of His
day, whose religion consisted mainly of ceremonial forms); that He was
able to heal the sick; that He had a following who, perhaps, hailed Him
as their king; that it was because of these things that He was crucified
on a hill outside of Jerusalem.
I think this is as far as general acknowledgment goes. The Scriptures
declare more, the sceptic allows less; but the majority of mankind unite
on the foregoing admissions. At all events, a great religion was founded
on this man's life and death--a doctrine of gentleness when creeds are
stripped away--and it is proper that such truth as can be established
concerning the ground He trod, especially on that last dark day, should
be recognized and made known. Of our little party of four there was not
one who--standing there as the stars came out, and looking up at that
hill outlined against the sky--did not feel a full and immediate
conviction that this was indeed the spot where that last, supreme
expiation was made, and that this sweet garden, guarded by these two
gentle people, was the truer site for the Sepulchre which was "nigh at
hand."
XXXVI
AT THE MOUTH OF THE NILE