Conder, in his “Palestine,” has abridged them with judgment; and we give
the following extract: The approach to Jerusalem from Jaffa is not the
direction in which to see the city to the best effect. Dr. E. D. Clarke
entered it by the Damascus gate: and he describes the view of Jerusalem,
when first descried from the summit of a hill, at about an hour’s
distance, as most impressive. He confesses, at the same time, that there
is no other point of view in which it is seen to so much advantage. In
the celebrated prospect from the Mount of Olives, the city lies too low,
is too near the eye, and has too much the character of a bird’s eye
view, with the formality of a topographical plan. “We had not been
prepared,” says this lively traveller, “for the grandeur of the
spectacle which the city alone exhibited. Instead of a wretched and
ruined town, by some described as the desolated remnant of Jerusalem, we
beheld, as it were, a flourishing and stately metropolis, presenting a
magnificent assemblage of domes, towers, palaces, churches, and
monasteries; all of which, glittering in the sun’s rays, shone with
inconceivable splendour. As we drew nearer, our whole attention was
engrossed by its noble and interesting appearance. The lofty hills
surrounding it give the city itself an appearance of elevation less than
it really has.” Dr. Clarke was fortunate in catching this first view of
Jerusalem under the illusion of a brilliant evening sunshine; but his
description is decidedly overcharged. M. Chateaubriand, Mr. Buckingham,
Mr. Brown, Mr. Jolliffe, Sir F. Henniker, and almost every other modern
traveller, confirm the representation of Dr. Richardson. Mr. Buckingham
says, “The appearance of this celebrated city, independent of the
feelings and recollections which the approach to it cannot fail to
awaken, was greatly inferior to my expectations, and had certainly
nothing of grandeur or beauty, of stateliness or magnificence, about it.
It appeared like a walled town of the third or fourth class, having
neither towers, nor domes, nor minarets within it, in sufficient numbers
to give even a character to its impressions on the beholder; but showing
chiefly large flat-roofed buildings of the most unornamented kind,
seated amid rugged hills, on a stony and forbidding soil, with scarcely
a picturesque object in the whole compass of the surrounding view.”
Chateaubriand’s description is very striking and graphical. After citing
the language of the Prophet Jeremiah, in his lamentations on the
desolation of the ancient city, as accurately portraying its present
state, Lam. i, 1–6; ii, 1–9, 15, he thus proceeds: “When seen from the
Mount of Olives, on the other side of the Valley of Jehoshaphat,
Jerusalem presents an inclined plane, descending from west to east. An
embattled wall, fortified with towers, and a Gothic castle, encompasses
the city all round; excluding, however, part of Mount Zion, which it
formerly enclosed. In the western quarter, and in the centre of the
city, the houses stand very close; but, in the eastern part, along the
brook Kedron, you perceive vacant spaces; among the rest, that which
surrounds the mosque erected on the ruins of the temple, and the nearly
deserted spot where once stood the castle of Antonia and the second
palace of Herod. The houses of Jerusalem are heavy square masses, very
low, without chimneys or windows: they have flat terraces or domes on
the top, and look like prisons or sepulchres. The whole would appear to
the eye one uninterrupted level, did not the steeples of the churches,
the minarets of the mosques, the summits of a few cypresses, and the
clumps of nopals, break the uniformity of the plan. On beholding these
stone buildings, encompassed by a stony country, you are ready to
inquire if they are not the confused monuments of a cemetry in the midst
of a desert. Enter the city, but nothing will you there find to make
amends for the dulness of its exterior. You lose yourself among narrow,
unpaved streets, here going up hill, there down, from the inequality of
the ground; and you walk among clouds of dust or loose stones. Canvas
stretched from house to house increases the gloom of this labyrinth.
Bazaars, roofed over, and fraught with infection, completely exclude the
light from the desolate city. A few paltry shops expose nothing but
wretchedness to view; and even these are frequently shut, from
apprehension of the passage of a cadi. Not a creature is to be seen in
the streets, not a creature at the gates, except now and then a peasant
gliding through the gloom, concealing under his garments the fruits of
his labour, lest he should be robbed of his hard earnings by the
rapacious soldier. Aside, in a corner, the Arab butcher is slaughtering
some animal, suspended by the legs from a wall in ruins: from his
haggard and ferocious look, and his bloody hands, you would suppose that
he had been cutting the throat of a fellow creature, rather than killing
a lamb. The only noise heard from time to time in the city is the
galloping of the steed of the desert: it is the janissary who brings the
head of the Bedouin, or who returns from plundering the unhappy Fellah.
Amid this extraordinary desolation, you must pause a moment to
contemplate two circumstances still more extraordinary. Among the ruins
of Jerusalem, two classes of independent people find in their religion
sufficient fortitude to enable them to surmount such complicated horrors
and wretchedness. Here reside communities of Christian monks, whom
nothing can compel to forsake the tomb of Christ; neither plunder, nor
personal ill treatment, nor menaces of death itself. Night and day they
chant their hymns around the holy sepulchre. Driven by the cudgel and
the sabre, women, children, flocks, and herds, seek refuge in the
cloisters of these recluses. What prevents the armed oppressor from
pursuing his prey, and overthrowing such feeble ramparts? The charity of
the monks: they deprive themselves of the last resources of life to
ransom their suppliants. Cast your eyes between the temple and Mount
Zion; behold another petty tribe cut off from the rest of the
inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of
degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure
every kind of insult without demanding justice; they sink beneath
repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present
it to the scimitar. On the death of any member of this proscribed
community, his companion goes at night, and inters him by stealth in the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, in the shadow of Solomon’s temple. Enter the
abodes of these people, you will find them, amid the most abject
wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book,
which they in their turn will teach their offspring to read. What they
did five thousand years ago, these people still continue to do.
Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet
nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their
faces toward Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the whole world,
according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise. But to be
struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem;
you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and
strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under
all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross
that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is
left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The
Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth; and a petty
tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists
unmixed among the ruins of its native land.” To the same effect are the
remarks of Dr. Richardson: “In passing up to the synagogue, I was
particularly struck with the mean and wretched appearance of the houses
on both sides of the streets, as well as with the poverty of their
inhabitants. The sight of a poor Jew in Jerusalem has in it something
peculiarly affecting. The heart of this wonderful people, in whatever
clime they roam, still turns to it as the city of their promised rest.
They take pleasure in her ruins, and would kiss the very dust for her
sake. Jerusalem is the centre around which the exiled sons of Judah
build, in imagination, the mansions of their future greatness. In
whatever part of the world he may live, the heart’s desire of a Jew is
to be buried in Jerusalem. Thither they return from Spain and Portugal,
from Egypt and Barbary, and other countries among which they have been
scattered: and when, after all their longings, and all their struggles
up the steeps of life, we see them poor, and blind, and naked, in the
streets of their once happy Zion, he must have a cold heart that can
remain untouched by their sufferings, without uttering a prayer that God
would have mercy on the darkness of Judah; and that the Day Star of
Bethlehem might arise in their hearts.”
“Jerusalem,” remarks Sir Frederick Henniker, “is called, even by
Mohammedans, the Blessed City (_El Gootz, El Koudes_.) The streets of it
are narrow and deserted, the houses dirty and ragged, the shops few and
forsaken; and throughout the whole there is not one symptom of either
commerce, comfort, or happiness. The best view of it is from the Mount
of Olives: it commands the exact shape and nearly every particular;
namely, the church of the holy sepulchre, the Armenian convent, the
mosque of Omar, St. Stephen’s gate, the round-topped houses, and the
barren vacancies of the city. Without the walls are a Turkish burial
ground, the tomb of David, a small grove near the tombs of the kings,
and all the rest is a surface of rock, on which are a few numbered
trees. The mosque of Omar is the St. Peter’s of Turkey, and the
respective saints are held respectively by their own faithful in equal
veneration. The building itself has a light pagoda appearance; the
garden in which it stands occupies a considerable part of the city, and,
contrasted with the surrounding desert, is beautiful. The burial place
of the Jews is over the valley of Kedron, and the fees for breaking the
soil afford a considerable revenue to the governor. The burial place of
the Turks is under the walls, near St. Stephen’s gate. From the opposite
side of the valley, I was witness to the ceremony of parading a corpse
round the mosque of Omar, and then bringing it forth for burial. I
hastened to the grave, but was soon driven away: as far as my _on dit_
tells me, it would have been worth seeing. The grave is strown with red
earth, supposed to be of the _Ager Damascenus_ of which Adam was made;
by the side of the corpse is placed a stick, and the priest tells him
that the devil will tempt him to become a Christian, but that he must
make good use of his stick; that his trial will last three days, and
that he will then find himself in a mansion of glory,” &c.
The Jerusalem of sacred history is, in fact, no more. Not a vestige
remains of the capital of David and Solomon; not a monument of Jewish
times is standing. The very course of the walls is changed, and the
boundaries of the ancient city are become doubtful. The monks pretend to
show the sites of the sacred places; but neither Calvary, nor the holy
sepulchre, much less the Dolorous Way, the house of Caiaphas, &c, have
the slightest pretensions to even a probable identity with the real
places to which the tradition refers. Dr. E. D. Clarke has the merit of
being the first modern traveller who ventured to speak of the
preposterous legends and clumsy forgeries of the priests with the
contempt which they merit. “To men interested in tracing, within its
walls, antiquities referred to by the documents of sacred history, no
spectacle,” remarks the learned traveller, “can be more mortifying than
the city in its present state. The mistaken piety of the early
Christians, in attempting to preserve, has either confused or
annihilated the memorials it was anxious to render conspicuous. Viewing
the havoc thus made, it may now be regretted that the Holy Land was ever
rescued from the dominion of Saracens, who were far less barbarous than
their conquerors. The absurdity, for example, of hewing the rocks of
Judea into shrines and chapels, and of disguising the face of nature
with painted domes and guilded marble coverings, by way of commemorating
the scenes of our Saviour’s life and death, is so evident and so
lamentable, that even Sandys, with all his credulity, could not avoid a
happy application of the reproof conveyed by the Roman satirist against
a similar violation of the Egerian fountain.” Dr. Richardson remarks,
“It is a tantalizing circumstance for the traveller who wishes to
recognise in his walks the site of particular buildings, or the scenes
of memorable events, that the greater part of the objects mentioned in
the description both of the inspired and the Jewish historian, are
entirely removed, and razed from their foundation, without leaving a
single trace or name behind to point out where they stood. Not an
ancient tower, or gate, or wall, or hardly even a stone, remains. The
foundations are not only broken up, but every fragment of which they
were composed is swept away, and the spectator looks upon the bare rock
with hardly a sprinkling of earth to point out her gardens of pleasure,
or groves of idolatrous devotion. And when we consider the palaces, and
towers, and walls about Jerusalem, and that the stones of which some of
them were constructed were thirty feet long, fifteen feet broad, and
seven and a half feet thick, we are not more astonished at the strength,
and skill, and perseverance, by which they were constructed, than
shocked by the relentless and brutal hostility by which they were
shattered and overthrown, and utterly removed from our sight. A few
gardens still remain on the sloping base of Mount Zion, watered from the
pool of Siloam; the gardens of Gethsemane are still in a sort of ruined
cultivation; the fences are broken down, and the olive trees decaying,
as if the hand that dressed and fed them were withdrawn; the Mount of
Olives still retains a languishing verdure, and nourishes a few of those
trees from which it derives its name; but all round about Jerusalem the
general aspect is blighted and barren; the grass is withered; the bare
rock looks through the scanty sward; and the grain itself, like the
staring progeny of famine, seems in doubt whether to come to maturity,
or die in the ear. The vine that was brought from Egypt is cut off from
the midst of the land; the vineyards are wasted; the hedges are taken
away; and the graves of the ancient dead are open and tenantless.”
3. On the accomplishment of prophecy in the condition in which this
celebrated city has lain for ages, Keith well remarks:--It formed the
theme of prophecy from the death bed of Jacob; and, as the seat of the
government of the children of Judah, the sceptre departed not from it
till the Messiah appeared, on the expiration of seventeen hundred years
after the death of the patriarch, and till the period of its desolation,
prophesied of by Daniel, had arrived. It was to be trodden down of the
Gentiles, till the time of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. The time of
the Gentiles is not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is still trodden down
of the Gentiles. The Jews have often attempted to recover it: no
distance of space or of time can separate it from their affections: they
perform their devotions with their faces toward it, as if it were the
object of their worship as well as of their love; and, although their
desire to return be so strong, indelible, and innate, that every Jew, in
every generation, counts himself an exile, yet they have never been able
to rebuild their temple, nor to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the
Gentiles. But greater power than that of a proscribed and exiled race
has been added to their own, in attempting to frustrate the counsel that
professed to be of God. Julian, the emperor of the Romans, not only
permitted but invited the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and their temple;
and promised to reëstablish them in their paternal city. By that single
act, more than by all his writings, he might have destroyed the
credibility of the Gospel, and restored his beloved but deserted
Paganism. The zeal of the Jews was equal to his own; and the work was
begun by laying again the foundations of the temple. It was never
accomplished, and the prophecy stands fulfilled. But even if the attempt
of Julian had never been made, the truth of the prophecy itself is
unassailable. The Jews have never been reinstated in Judea. Jerusalem
has ever been trodden down of the Gentiles. The edict of Adrian was
renewed by the successors of Julian; and no Jews could approach unto
Jerusalem but by bribery or by stealth. It was a spot unlawful for them
to touch. In the crusades, all the power of Europe was employed to
rescue Jerusalem from the Heathens, but equally in vain. It has been
trodden down for nearly eighteen centuries by its successive masters; by
Romans, Grecians, Persians, Saracens, Mamelukes, Turks, Christians, and
again by the worst of rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And could any
thing be more improbable to have happened, or more impossible to have
been foreseen by man, than that any people should be banished from their
own capital and country, and remain expelled and expatriated for nearly
eighteen hundred years? Did the same fate ever befall any nation, though
no prophecy existed respecting it? Is there any doctrine in Scripture so
hard to be believed as was this single fact at the period of its
prediction? And even with the example of the Jews before us, is it
likely, or is it credible, or who can foretel, that the present
inhabitants of any country upon earth shall be banished into all
nations, retain their distinctive character, meet with an unparalleled
fate, continue a people, without a government and without a country, and
remain for an indefinite period, exceeding seventeen hundred years, till
the fulfilment of a prescribed event which has yet to be accomplished?
Must not the knowledge of such truths be derived from that prescience
alone which scans alike the will and the ways of mortals, the actions of
future nations, and the history of the latest generations?
JESHURUN, a name given to the collective political body of Israelites.
Some derive the word from ישר, _just_ or _righteous_, and so make it to
signify a righteous people. Montanus renders it _rectitudo_, and so does
the Samaritan version. But it seems a considerable objection against
this sense, that Israel is called Jeshurun at the very time that they
are upbraided with their sins and their rebellion: “Jeshurun waxed fat,
and kicked,” &c, Deut. xxxii, 15. It is replied, Jeshurun is the
diminutive of ישר, (for _nomen auctum in fine est nomen diminutivum_,)
and so imports, that though, in general and on the whole, they were a
righteous people, yet they were not without great faults. Perhaps
Cocceius has given as probable an interpretation as any. He derives the
word from שור, which signifies _to see_, _behold_, _or discover_; from
whence, in the future tense, plural, comes ישורו, which, with the
addition of nun _paragogicum_, makes Jeshurun; that is, “the people who
had the vision of God.” This makes the name of Jeshurun to be properly
applied to Israel, not only when Moses is called their king, but when
they are upbraided with their rebellion against God; since the peculiar
manifestation which God had made of himself to them was a great
aggravation of their ingratitude and rebellion.
JESSE. See DAVID and RUTH.
JESUITS, or the society of Jesus, one of the most celebrated monastic
orders of the Romish church, was founded in the year 1540, by Ignatius
Loyola, Forsaking the military for the ecclesiastical profession, he
engaged himself in the wildest and most extravagant adventures, as the
knight of the blessed virgin. After performing a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land, and pursuing a multitude of visionary schemes, he returned to
prosecute his theological studies in the universities of Spain, when he
was about thirty-three years of age. He next went to Paris, where he
collected a small number of associates; and, prompted by his fanatical
spirit, or the love of distinction, began to conceive the establishment
of a new religious order. He produced a plan of its constitution and
laws, which he affirmed to have been suggested by the immediate
inspiration of Heaven, and applied to the Roman pontiff, Paul III. for
the sanction of his authority to confirm the institution. At a time when
the papal authority had received so severe a shock from the progress of
the Reformation, and was still exposed to the most powerful attacks in
every quarter, this was an offer too tempting to be resisted. The
reigning pontiff, though naturally cautious, and though scarcely
capable, without the spirit of prophecy, of foreseeing all the
advantages to be derived from the services of this nascent order, yet
clearly perceiving the benefit of multiplying the number of his devoted
servants, instantly confirmed by his bull the institution of the
Jesuits, granted the most ample privileges to the members of the
society, and appointed Loyola to be the first general of the order.
2. The simple and primary object of the society, says a writer in the
Edinburgh Encyclopædia, was to establish a spiritual dominion over the
minds of men, of which the pope should appear as the ostensible head,
while the real power should reside with themselves. To accomplish this
object, the whole constitution and policy of the order were singularly
adapted, and exhibited various peculiarities which distinguished it from
all other monastic orders. The immediate design of every other religious
society was to separate its members from the world; that of the Jesuits,
to render them masters of the world. The inmate of the convent devoted
himself to work out his own salvation by extraordinary acts of devotion
and self-denial; the follower of Loyola considered himself as plunging
into all the bustle of secular affairs, to maintain the interests of the
Romish church. The monk was a retired devotee of heaven; the Jesuit a
chosen soldier of the pope. That the members of the new order might have
full leisure for this active service, they were exempted from the usual
functions of other monks. They were not required to spend their time in
the long ceremonial offices and numberless mummeries of the Romish
worship. They attended no processions, and practised no austerities.
They neither chanted nor prayed. “They cannot sing,” said their enemies;
“for birds of prey never do.” They were sent forth to watch every
transaction of the world which might appear to affect the interests of
religion, and were especially enjoined to study the dispositions and
cultivate the friendship of persons in the higher ranks. Nothing could
be imagined more open and liberal than the external aspect of the
institution, yet nothing could be more strict and secret than its
internal organization. Loyola, influenced, perhaps, by the notions of
implicit obedience which he had derived from his military profession,
resolved that the government of the Jesuits should be absolutely
monarchical. A general, chosen for life by deputies from the several
provinces, possessed supreme and independent power, extending to every
person, and applying to every case. Every member of the order, the
instant that he entered its pale, surrendered all freedom of thought and
action; and every personal feeling was superseded by the interests of
that body to which he had attached himself. He went wherever he was
ordered; he performed whatever he was commanded; he suffered whatever he
was enjoined; he became a mere passive instrument incapable of
resistance. The gradation of ranks was only a gradation in slavery; and
so perfect a despotism over a large body of men, dispersed over the face
of the earth, was never before realized.
The maxims of policy adopted by this celebrated society were, like its
constitution, remarkable for their union of laxity and rigour. Nothing
could divert them from their original object; and no means were ever
scrupled which promised to aid its accomplishment. They were in no
degree shackled by prejudice, superstition, or real religion.
Expediency, in its most simple and licentious form, was the basis of
their morals, and their principles and practices were uniformly
accommodated to the circumstances in which they were placed; and even
their bigotry, obdurate as it was, never appears to have interfered with
their interests. The paramount and characteristic principle of the
order, from which none of its members ever swerved, was simply this,
that its interests were to be promoted by all possible means, at all
possible expense. In order to acquire more easily an ascendancy over
persons of rank and power, they propagated a system of the most relaxed
morality, which accommodated itself to the passions of men, justified
their vices, tolerated their imperfections, and authorized almost every
action which the most audacious or crafty politician would wish to
perpetrate. To persons of stricter principles they studied to recommend
themselves by the purity of their lives, and sometimes by the austerity
of their doctrines. While sufficiently compliant in the treatment of
immoral practices, they were generally rigidly severe in exacting a
strict orthodoxy in opinions. “They are a sort of people,” said the Abbé
Boileau, “who lengthen the creed and shorten the decalogue.” They
adopted the same spirit of accommodation in their missionary
undertakings; and their Christianity, chamelionlike, readily assumed the
colour of every religion where it happened to be introduced. They freely
permitted their converts to retain a full proportion of the old
superstitions, and suppressed, without hesitation, any point in the new
faith which was likely to bear hard on their prejudices or propensities.
They proceeded to still greater lengths; and, beside suppressing the
truths of revelation, devised the most absurd falsehoods, to be used for
attracting disciples, or even to be taught as parts of Christianity. One
of them in India produced a pedigree to prove his own descent from
Brama; and another in America assured a native chief that Christ had
been a valiant and victorious warrior, who, in the space of three years,
had scalped an incredible number of men, women, and children. It was, in
fact, their own authority, not the authority of true religion, which
they wished to establish; and Christianity was generally as little
known, when they quitted the foreign scenes of their labours as when
they entered them.