CHRISTIAN
From the invasion of warlike Rome we turn to that “Peace and her huge
invasion” which came to the Holy Land during the later days of the Roman
Empire. Before the time of Constantine the Church in Syria had grown and
spread with such startling vitality and promise of even more abundant
life as to bring down upon her the cruelty of persecutions. In the north
the Christian communities were mainly Gentile, in the south Jewish
Christians. They must have been intellectually as well as spiritually
vigorous, for the curious speculations and mystic dreams of the Gnostics
had already, in the second century, gained footing in Syrian
Christianity.
With Constantine (324-337) Roman persecution ceased for ever. The Jews
were permitted to return to Jerusalem, and the construction of the
written Talmud began its career of three centuries. Julian, the last
emperor on the throne before the Empire divided into east and west, had
apostatised from the Christian faith before his ascension, and in 361
he attempted the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem as a strength to
Judaism against Christianity. But the Galilean had conquered, and it was
the day of Christ. The recognition of Christianity as the religion of
the State began a new era, which ran on for a thousand years in the
Eastern Empire, until the siege of Constantinople changed the face of
Europe in 1453. The words of Dante will often recur to the student of
early Christian days in Palestine:--
Ah! Constantine, what evil came as child
Not of thy change of creed, but of the dower
Of which the first rich father thee beguiled.
The reference is to the legend of “The Donation of Constantine,” by
which he transferred Rome and the states of the Church to the Papal See.
Christianity in Syria has run a strange career.
Up to the time of Constantine the Church was at bay, fighting a
desperate battle against the Pagan world. At Cæsarea especially, but in
many another Roman town besides, native Syrians were forced underground
into caves and catacombs, or brought to the death in the public games.
Many records of this period survive. At Sidon, searching about among the
tombs which Renan has recently explored, we came upon a broken marble
slab--evidently the lintel of a church raised in memory of a local
massacre of Christians--with the word MARTURION inscribed on it. The
martyr monuments of Syria are wonderfully full of peace, hope, and
assurance. Like Marius the Epicurean you feel, when first you come upon
them, that for the first time you are seeing the wonderful spectacle of
_those who believe_. You understand his impression of every form of
human sorrow assuaged--desire, and the fulfilment of desire working on
the very faces of the aged, and the young men obviously persons who had
faced life and were glad. And the same wistful sense of a sure word of
revelation comes upon the beholder as that which appealed to him. Surely
here the earth was for once not forsaken of the higher powers, but
visited and spoken to and loved!
After Constantine the pilgrim takes the place of foremost interest,
which the martyr previously held. From 451, when an independent
patriarchate was established at Jerusalem, pilgrimages became very
frequent; and a century later there were hospices with 3000 beds in them
within Jerusalem, while trade of many sorts flourished by their aid. In
the oldest itineraries there are very curious accounts of these
pilgrimages; but two, which Colonel Conder gives, are especially quaint
and interesting. They refer to later pilgrimages, but are appropriate
enough to earlier ones. The first one is from Saewulf, giving an account
of his landing at Jaffa: “From his sins, or from the badness of the
ship,” he was almost wrecked, and his companions were drowned before his
eyes. The other is Sir John Maundeville’s--most fascinating, if most
unscrupulous, of travellers: “Two miles from Jerusalem is Mount Joy, a
very fair and delicious place. There Samuel the prophet lies in a fair
tomb; and it is called Mount Joy because it gives joy to pilgrims’
hearts, for from that place men first see Jerusalem.”
From the first, pilgrimage seems to have had its moral disadvantages and
special temptations. The Turkish proverb runs, “If your friend has made
the pilgrimage once, distrust him--if he has made the pilgrimage twice,
cut him dead.” And it would seem that the Christian pilgrim is not
altogether in a position to throw stones at his Moslem brother. Apart
from any sins to which the freedom of travel in a far land may be
supposed to tempt poor human nature, there are some which are _par
excellence_ pilgrim sins. Thus we find in the seventeenth century the
Armenian patriarch complaining that the seat in the Chapel of St. Helena
in which he used to sit had been so hacked to pieces by relic-hunting
pilgrims that he was “frequently obliged to renew it.” The case was all
the harder because it was not from its association with the patriarch,
but because St. Helena had sat in it, that it was so much in request! If
Mark Twain be a true reporter, there are pilgrims who have inherited
that particular kind of moral frailty with remarkable fidelity to the
manners of their predecessors. Then again, the pilgrimages, which
everywhere stimulated trade, created an amazing amount of fraud in the
sale of false relics and other such traffic. Dr. Conan Doyle’s picture
of the pilgrim in France, who takes a nail from the box of a blacksmith
and sells it to unsuspecting soldiers as one of those which were driven
into the wood of the true Cross, is drawn from the life. Even on the
sacred spots themselves the simplicity of pilgrims has always been a
temptation to custodians. A tale is told of some one who, only a year or
two ago, dropped by accident a Bible down the dry shaft of Jacob’s Well.
The Bible was reclaimed within a few days, but when brought up it was a
mere mass of pulp. A large party of pilgrims had visited the place in
the interval, and had professed a strong desire to drink water from the
famous well. A small stream, conveniently diverted to the well mouth,
had enabled the priest in charge to gratify their desire by draughts of
water drawn from the depths before their eyes.
The pilgrim is still extant. For well-nigh two thousand years he has
come and gone, a tourist who has always had an immense commercial value
for the Holy Land. The levy made on pilgrims at the gate of Jerusalem
was one of the principal causes of the Crusades, and it is hardly more
than a hundred years since a heavy tax was imposed upon every pilgrim
when he reached the gate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The
greater part of those who come now are Russians. Jaffa is full of them,
but they are to be seen in long caravans of pedestrians, with a donkey
or two bearing all their scanty luggage, as far north as Samaria and
Galilee. The men are typical Russian peasants, in the blouses and caps
that are so familiar. Their long hair may be fair or dark, but it is
always matted and coarse. The women, with their good, weather-beaten
faces, are uncommonly like old-fashioned peasant women from the northern
Scottish countrysides. Their head-dress is a simple kerchief, and their
hands grasp a rude pilgrim staff polished with much wear. The privations
of such pilgrimages must be very great. They involve the expenditure of
a lifetime’s savings, and a journey in many cases of at least six
months. Most of this is done on foot, and largely by people who are
growing old. There is no nation that could send forth such multitudes
except “rough but believing Russia.” The belief is everything. They are
very poor people, and very ignorant and simple. Yet many whose minds’
conflict seems only to grow sterner in this land of contradictions, may
own without shame to a touch of something like envy as they see the
exaltation of their childish faith. They encompass the walls of
Jerusalem to the strains of Psalms, and march triumphantly to the sand
south of Jaffa for shells to authenticate their travels, such as those
which appear on the coats-of-arms of some European families, telling of
former pilgrimages. Mere children in intellect, the gleam in their eyes
tells that in their own pathetic way they have entered here into a
veritable kingdom of heaven.
The objects of pilgrimage are somewhat gruesome in
[Illustration: THE DOME OF THE ROCK (MOSQUE OF OMAR), AS SEEN FROM THE
PORCH ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE MOSQUE EL AKSA.]
their way. A favourite ambition used to be that of measuring the “stone
of anointing” in the Holy Sepulchre, in order to have the pilgrim’s own
winding-sheet made the same length. The great goal, however, is the
Jordan, whose banks at the period after Constantine used to be paved
with marble. In the old time a wooden cross was erected in mid-stream,
and the waters were blessed by a priest, after which the pilgrims
tumbled in with such haste that numbers of them were drowned. Here, too,
the winding-sheet is in evidence. Besides the flask of Jordan water
which they fill, they dip their own winding-sheets and those of friends
at home who have been unable to come in person, but have sent these pale
substitutes. It was not our good fortune to see the merry band of
pilgrims at the Jordan, though we met scattered groups of Russians in
many places. One other pilgrim we saw, and he accompanied us through
several days’ march northward. He was a jet-black Abyssinian--a lonely
and silent figure clad from head to foot in a loose robe of pure white
sackcloth. He went with us to Nazareth, the destination of his
pilgrimage. His only word in common with us was “Christianus,” and he
always bowed and crossed himself when he said it. All day long he walked
in silence in our company. He asked for nothing, but ate the meat he
received in singleness of heart, and sat apart watching the loading and
unloading of the baggage with the eyes of a great child.
While so many Christians paid a passing visit to Palestine in the early
days, there were some who came to stay. It was the time of the rise of
monastic institutions, which first appear in the beginning of the fourth
century. Their history from the first is peculiarly associated with
Syria, into which they spread almost immediately after their start in
Egypt. Some of the most famous of the early recluses, including even St.
Symeon Stylites himself, were of Syrian origin.[20] These ascetics were
the natural successors of the martyrs. The first hints of them are given
during the time of earlier martyrdoms, for it is recorded that
Christians as early as the Decian persecutions fled to the wilderness
and led a life there which was soon to become popular beyond all
possibility of forecast.
It was not, however, until Constantine’s favour had secularised the
Church, or at least had made easy that life which hitherto had been so
dangerous, that the reaction set in which gave monasticism its great
hold on the world. This is generally explained as a matter solely of
protest against growing worldliness, or a development of that curious
kind of “other-worldliness” which finds in asceticism the surest means
of attaining earthly fame and heavenly reward. No doubt both these
elements are true. In the early ascetics there was a self-denial
prompted by the purest desire for escape from the defiling society of
their time into the spiritual cleanness of the faith, and from its hard
and coarse materialism into the delicate ideality and refinement of
Christian thought and feeling. It was also, on the other hand, a refuge
and an outlet for much of the inefficiency and moral worthlessness of
the time, which found in its freedom from social restraint and its wide
leisure things exactly to their own taste. But behind all this there is
another fact which is really the most significant of all. Monasticism
was “the compensation for martyrdom.” Readers of the letters of Ignatius
are familiar with that mania for martyrdom which during persecuting
times took possession of so many in the Church. In abnormal and extreme
conditions such as these, certain minds grow hysterical and lose their
perspective and sense of proportion altogether. In such minds a morbid
and passionate delight in pain develops into a sort of lust--a
_religiosa cupiditas_--for suffering torture, just as in the persecutors
cruelty becomes a lust for inflicting it. So asceticism offered itself
when martyrdom could no longer be had--“a voluntary martyrdom, a gradual
self-destruction, a sort of religious suicide.”[21]
The new ideal passed through several successive phases. From an
unorganised and individual way of life within the Church, it developed
first into anchoretism about the beginning of the fourth century. In
barren and solitary places, where life at best was precarious and
physical enjoyment impossible, every cave and den had its tenant. On
Mount Sinai one hermit is said to have lived for fifty years in absolute
solitude, silence, and nakedness. As you ride down the terrific gorges
from Mar Saba to the Dead Sea, you pass along precipitous hillsides and
rock-faces which appear literally riddled with small caves and holes in
the rock and sand. These, which now serve for a covert from the heat for
passing shepherds, or for the lairs of jackals, were once populated by
hermits. Saint Saba is said to have collected the bones of no fewer than
10,000 solitary dwellers in this district, who had fallen victims to the
Carismians. And in many parts of Syria even now, a hillside which during
the day has seemed barren of all human habitation, is unexpectedly
illuminated with hermits’ lights--those “hands praying to God”--in the
dark. The enthusiasm with which this dreary life has filled some of its
devotees may be realised in the following lines from an epistle of St.
Jerome:--“O desert, where the flowers of Christ are blooming! O
solitude, where the stones for the new Jerusalem are prepared! O
retreat, which rejoices in the friendship of God! What doest thou in the
world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt
thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeon of cities?
Believe me, I see here more of the light.”[22]
It was in cloister life, however--at first in smaller communities and
then on the large scale of many cloisters gathered under a common
rule--that early Christianity reached its full development. Besides the
native establishments, there was, in the first centuries after
Constantine, a cloud of religieux, flying like homing doves across the
sea to alight and quietly settle down on holy soil. These
establishments had many faults. They perpetuated little sectarian
differences and exaggerated them into quite ridiculous importance. The
very lamps that hang in the oldest churches are denominational, and are
divided with a childish arithmetic among rival sects. The insistence of
these on their respective rights is such that a guard of armed Moslem
soldiers has to be kept perpetually on the spot to keep the peace. Yet
there is a splendid dash of courage in this part of Church History,
which cannot possibly have been all in vain. It must have been an
exciting life in some of the outpost stations in these old days. “It is
true,” says Warburton of one monastery, “the monks were occasionally
massacred by the Saracens, Turks, and Carismians, but their martyrdom
only gave fresh interest to the spot in the eyes of their successors.”
No doubt these establishments drained the world of some of its best
manhood, and diverted much greatly needed energy from family life and
state loyalties; yet, on the other hand, these were the soldiers of the
Cross who then fought the paganism of the world and conquered it.
Monastic establishments still remain, and supply much-needed inns to
many thousands of poor travellers in Syria. They vary by very wide
degrees of difference from one another. By far the worst place we saw in
Palestine--one of the worst perhaps that could be seen anywhere--is the
convent of Mar Saba near the Dead Sea. Coming out on the high ridge of
the Judean mountain country, we caught a glimpse of two towers, which
we have already described,[23] square and blind, and so pitilessly
unsuggestive that they seemed, as it were, built into the desert, or
part of its fantastic offspring. They were the most unhomely buildings
we had ever seen, and they are the nearest point to which women are
allowed to approach the monastery, lady travellers being accommodated
with cells there if they have not tents. By and by we passed between
them, down a road so steep as to be practically a stairway, on every
step of which loathsomely dirty beggars sat plying their trade. In the
courtyard to which this entrance led were two monks, fat and
stupid-looking, who brought out strings of beads, rosaries, and crosses
of their own manufacture for sale. Having, apparently, absolutely
nothing to do, the making of these things may be taken for sign of
enterprise and commercial genius, but as time is evidently valueless,
they sell their work very cheap. To the right is a rock, hollowed out
into a chamber or broad gallery, which is sacred as having been the
shrine of Saint Saba’s devotions. The entrance is violently coloured in
washes of blue and white paint, so crude and aggressive that it quite
robs the pictures in the interior of their horror, and prepares you to
look with unclouded eye upon the skulls which fill the grilled recesses.
One of these skulls is set in front, to receive the kisses of devout
pilgrims. It is deeply worn and polished. When it has actually been worn
through to a hole it will be replaced, as others have been before it.
Across the courtyard you follow narrow stairs and galleries that run
irregularly along the edge of a precipice; for the monastery has affixed
itself to the face of a cliff four hundred feet high. It clings there,
supported by huge flying buttresses that spring from the depths below in
a fashion which, as one writer says, remind you of pictures of
Belshazzar’s feast. The cells of the monks, little disconnected
“lean-to” sheds or caves, have the Greek cross upon their doors, and the
often-repeated inscription, “O Christ, abide with us!” Here and there
are a few plants in pots, or a feeble attempt at rearing vegetables in
little garden patches which fill in any foot of level among the
many-cornered buildings; while in one cranny grows the solitary
date-palm which Saint Saba planted more than 1300 years ago. At every
few yards you pause to look over a low balustrade into the gorge, which
here is a sort of yellow-ochre gulf, with all the horror but none of the
rich depth of colouring that belongs to frightful abysses. Over these
walls the monks throw meat to the jackals which come and fight for it
below. Occasionally, as we passed, a face was visible at a window,
generally either wizened and dried up, or with a white, neurotic
appearance that was almost more repulsive. Everywhere dirt reigned
supreme--unspeakable filth in open drains and putrid litter. In one
place, where the smell was sickening, a monk was lying asleep by the
side of a broken drain, covered with flies in great black masses on his
face and arms. In another place an abominable-looking dish of food,
fly-blown and disgusting, was pushed with a spoon in it half through a
hole broken in the bottom of a cell door. And everywhere throughout this
palace of disgust was to be read the prayer, “O Christ, abide with us!”
That was the worst. Mar Saba is a sort of combination of prison and
asylum, where lunatics are kept under the charge of monks condemned to
this place for heresy or immorality. Other monasteries we saw, of a very
different kind. Our tents precluded the necessity for our making any of
these our home for the night, but in many cases it would have been very
pleasant to do so. On the top of Tabor, at Tell Hum on the Sea of
Galilee, and in other places, we were received and entertained with the
most cordial and generous hospitality. The clean and spacious
guest-chambers are open to all comers. They are adorned with photographs
of various sorts, and often contain a cabinet of rare local curiosities.
The brothers in charge of these establishments were fine genial men,
courageously facing the risks of fever in deadly spots, or varying their
hospitable labours on the heights by long seasons of study (for some of
them are distinguished scholars); but always ready to meet a stranger as
a friend, and to chat with him in French or German, over a pipe of
Western tobacco, about the great world from which they had gone so far.
In all these ways the many-sided life of the old Christian days lingers
and may still be seen. But it
[Illustration: THE DOME OF THE ROCK (MOSQUE OF OMAR).
From the barracks near the site of the Tower of Antonia. The north
porch of the Dome of the Rock is towards the spectator; to the left
is the Dome of the Chain; to the right, in the middle distance, is
the Mosque of El Aksa.
]
lingers more impressively in the most ancient of the churches which date
from this period. There is in Palestine an astonishing number of ruins
of old Christian churches, many of them dating back, at least so far as
their foundations go, to the Byzantine period. There are many modern
churches, but they are not as a rule impressive. Even when, as in the
Russian church at Gethsemane, the building is in itself rich and costly,
it is so irrelevant as to rouse a feeling of rebellion.
Most of the ancient churches have utterly vanished, like that roofless
basilica which Constantine built on the supposed scene of the Ascension
on the Mount of Olives. In other cases they are mere heaps of ruin, like
the remaining fragments of the Church of Jacob’s Well, which was built
about the middle of the fourth century, and has been several times
rebuilt since then. This church takes most travellers by surprise. They
go expecting an out-door scene, with all the harvest breeze of the
Scripture story on it. They find a newly built white wall, glaring in
the sunshine. Through a gate in this wall they are admitted by certain
broken-down-looking persons in the greenish-black garments of the Greek
clergy. Within the gate, a few steps bring them to the edge of a sort of
oblong pit full of masonry. It is the nave of the old church, and the
splendidly carved pillars of its white stone show how beautiful it must
have been. A door in the sunk side-wall opens upon a groined vault newly
rebuilt. In the dim light you can discern in the centre a rough stone
altar, with candles and lamps and a couple of execrable pictures of
Christ and the woman of Sychar. On the ground before the altar is a flat
stone perforated with a hole two feet in diameter. This is the cover of
the well, and a second clerical person, badly marked with smallpox, lets
down a twist of lighted candles by a long rope, while a little green
lamp of silver hangs above, dripping oil steadily down the well. Surely
this is the infatuation of reverence! If there is any memory of Jesus
which is essentially of the open air, it is this incident of the Well of
Samaria. Yet reverence must build its dark chamber, and proceed to
illuminate with candles the spot where Jesus sat and saw the miles and
miles of waving fields, white already to harvest. No doubt the church
dates from the fourth century; but what right had even the ancients to
build a church here, to keep men busy with their sectarianism on the
very spot where they and all the world were told that the hour was come
when neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem would the Father be
worshipped, but in spirit and in truth?
There are, however, two great churches of this ancient time which waken
feelings very different from these; they have been for centuries the
centres of Christian interest and devotion in the land, covering, as
they are supposed to do, the sites of the birth and death of Jesus
Christ. In some respects they are alike. The outsides of them are
huddled and packed together, a heterogeneous mass of apparently
unrelated buildings. The insides are not, like the houses, Rembrandt
studies in intense light and shadow. By some skilful arrangement, the
sunlight seems to be caught and diffused in a pale luminous twilight
that sinks gradually to darkness in chapels and recesses, and blends
with the light of many lamps and candles not unpleasingly. The Church of
the Holy Sepulchre is the gift of St. Helena, mother of Constantine, and
was consecrated by her in A.D. 336. Tradition relates how, at the age of
seventy-nine, she made her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was baptized in
Jordan, discovered the true Cross, and built the church upon the spot of
its discovery. Our guide-book tells us of an ante-chamber “where
Oriental Christians are in the habit of removing their shoes, though we
need not follow their example.” Yet the Crusaders entered it barefooted,
though with songs of praise, a thousand years ago; and the impulse of
most Christians, however little they may be disposed to believe in the
identity of the sacred sites within, will be to share the veneration of
the Easterns. Not that what we see now is the original building. That
was a rotunda and a basilica, the former quite other than the present
rotunda, as we know from the fact that it formed the model for the
Mosque of Omar. It has suffered many things from assault, from decay,
from fire, and from rebuilding. In the twelfth century the whole group
of detached shrines and monuments was included for the first time in one
huge and complicated building. Probably no such patchwork in stone is to
be seen elsewhere in the world. Yet each rebuilding found many of the
older materials ready for its use, and incorporated them in the newer
work. Thus the columns at the eastern door are supposed to have come
from some ancient pagan temple, and the present foundations of the
pillars belong to the old rotunda. The capitals of many pillars are
Byzantine, while the pink limestone column which is embedded in the wall
to the right of the eastern entrance is also very ancient.
It is a strange conglomeration of imaginary associations and real value
of material. The atmosphere is at times dreadful enough within to
justify that daring little touch of realism in the French bas-relief
over the door, where some of the spectators at the raising of Lazarus
are holding their noses with their hands! The chapel of the Empress
adjoins the altar of the Penitent Thief; Adam and Abraham jostle each
other for standing ground under the sacred roof; the stone of anointing
has been “often changed” according to the guide-book, and the column of
scourging “judging from the narratives of different pilgrims, must
frequently have changed its colour and its size”--yet pilgrims poke a
stick at it and kiss the part that has touched the stone to-day. Every
incident of the world’s great tragedy is commemorated there, from the
footprint of Jesus to the silver socket in the rock where His Cross was
erected. Futile enough all this, and even wearisome. But the worship of
fifteen hundred years is neither futile nor wearisome. And that worship
seems to detach itself from the legends and find its embodiment in the
marvels of precious stone that are gathered there. As one sees the slabs
of costly stone with which the rock is overlaid--the ruddy yellow slab
of the “anointing,” the red and white polished limestone of the central
shrine, the green serpentine and the black basalt--one remembers the
tomb which the Roman bishop ordered in St. Praxed’s, with its
“peach-blossom marble,” its lump of _lapis lazuli_, “blue as a vein o’er
the Madonna’s breast,” and its block of jasper, “pure green as a
pistachio-nut.” But there is a difference. The stones of the Holy
Sepulchre were given in love: they are the tribute of many souls whose
adoration was the noblest feature of their times.
The Church of the Holy Nativity at Bethlehem is a simpler and, to many
minds, a more impressive structure. It consists of a broad nave,
entirely screened off from what lies beyond, with two rounded transepts
and a rounded apse behind the screen--this trefoil-shaped inner building
being the church proper. One of the transepts is the property of the
Armenians; the other, together with the great altar in the apse, belongs
to the Greeks. Below the great altar-rail (“in the breast of God,” in
Dante’s language) is the cave of the Nativity, with steps leading down
to it from either transept. A Mohammedan soldier stands at the bottom to
keep the peace between Christians. The transepts and apse are ablaze
with lamps and hangings. Below, the “manger” is overlaid with coloured
marble, and the rock is entirely covered with yellow silk cloth, on
which are stamped the insignia of the Franciscans--an arm of Christ
crossed with an arm of St. Francis, both shewing the print of nails in
the palms of their hands. All this, and the air of raree-show that
exhibits so many spots where somebody or other stood, destroy any
lingering credulity of which a man may still find himself capable; they
make one rather ashamed, and glad to escape. But the nave is mighty in
its simplicity, and no less mighty in its wealth of historical
association. It is a great severe oblong basilica, with four rows of
massive pillars giving double aisles. Old glass and old mosaics add
their appropriate wealth of sombre beauty. The rafters, replacing
Constantine’s beams of cedar from Lebanon, are the gift of Philip of
Burgundy. Lead for the roof was sent by Edward IV. of England. Most
impressive of all is the old plain font of polished stone, with its
Greek inscription--not, like so many such inscriptions, a record of the
donor’s name, but a prayer for God’s blessing upon those who gave
it--“whose names are known to Thee only.” Opinions differ as to the
plausibility of the claim to the site of our Lord’s nativity; but this
church was built by Constantine, and the Vulgate was written in it by
Jerome. And since that time the feet of countless millions of
worshippers have trodden its stone pavement--a consecration in itself
worth many traditional sanctities.
In this chapter we have sought to gather the most obvious survivals of
that old Christian invasion of Palestine which followed next after the
Roman. Almost inevitably we find ourselves quarrelling with the
legendary lore that has stultified so many venerable buildings and
associations. Yet in its legends too the early Church survives, and some
of them embody eternal truths in forms of rare beauty. Take three of the
legends of the Holy Sepulchre by way of example. They show the spot
where the one-eyed soldier Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ,
received back the lost eyesight at the touch of a drop of the blood.
There, too, is the cleft in the rock through which blood flowed from the
Cross down into the tomb of Adam, whose corpse came to life at once. And
there, on Easter Eve, the sham miracle of the “Holy Fire” has been
enacted annually for at least a thousand years. Who can miss the
underlying truth beneath these legends? They are, for all but the
ignorant and the gross, symbols of the eternal healing and quickening
power that the love and sacrifice of Christ exert on humanity and even
on His enemies. The torch-bearers, who kindle their fires at the blaze
on Easter Eve, and speed thence to Bethlehem and other towns to light
from it the candles waiting on many altars, tell their own exhilarating
lesson. Two other legends may be mentioned, which the Western world owes
to the Syrian Church--those of St. George and St. Christopher. St.
George, who was a Roman soldier under Diocletian, was martyred in A.D.
303. His memory, mixed up with the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda,
and with Crusader stories of Richard Cœur de Lion, stands for the
victory of faith over paganism. St. Christopher would only follow the
strongest, and finding that his master the devil was afraid of Christ,
renounced his service and set out to seek Him who was strongest of all.
The point of the story is that, after seeking Christ far and wide, he
found Him while he was performing the humble task of carrying passengers
across a river. It is characteristic of the pilgrim point of view that
legend has fixed this scene not by some homely German stream but at the
fords of Jordan, where he is said to have carried the infant Christ
across upon his shoulder. Even of such legends no wise man will speak
with scorn. They, too, are monuments of that conquest of Christ which
gives its meaning and its glory to the Christian invasion.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE MOSQUE OF EL AKSA, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]