IN THE HOLY
LAND
CHAPTER IV.
"Within Thy
Gates O Jerusalem." Ramleh in the morning light— Is it the Arimathea
of Joseph?— The start for Jerusalem — Scepticism and half
knowledge— A Scripture difficulty solved [Luke ii. 43-45}—
Irrepressible fertility — Testimony of old travellers — Entrance on
mountain scenery — Ladron — Atmuas — Rash inductions —
Ajalon — Gideon — Upper and Nether Beth-horon — The scenery and
the inspired narrative [Joshua x.]— Mid-day repast— Our one-eyed
dragoman — "Excelsior" — Ancient fertility of the land —
Voltaire and Bayle — Coming fertility, how and when ? [Isa. xxxii. 13]
— The Waldenses — Peculiar shape of the mountains — Abu Gosh
— Kirjath-jearim — The true Emmaus — Alpine experiences —
Scenes clustering -with histories- — A ludicrous adventure —
Absorbing expectation — First look of Jerusalem — Visions of the past
— Tarrying at the Jaffa Gate—" Within thy gates, O Jerusalem."
WE had only time to take a hurried glance at Ramleh ; but
we saw it to advantage in the light of a morning that was singularly bright,
and when a gentle breeze was bearing health to us on its wings. It is a town of
considerable importance, with a population somewhat above five thousand;
two-thirds of whom are Moslems, the other third Christians principally of the
Greek Church. Its streets were narrow and filthy; its gardens and orchards
beautiful and fragrant. The sand from certain quarters, especially from the
south-west, is not only blown up to its walls, but drifted into its lanes -
like the world intruding on the Church and blighting its fruitfulness - and,
along with minute particles of alkali from the accumulated heaps of its ancient
soap-works, afflicts more than half the people with eye disease, many of them
with blindness. It abounds in mosques and minarets, though the architectural
style of the greater number of the mosques makes one suspect that they were
originally Christian churches, built in the time when Richard of England and
his Crusaders had their headquarters at Ramleh, and that, by the addition of
the indispensable minaret and a few internal changes, they were adapted to the
worship of the false prophet. There is one noble tower of extraordinary height,
commanding a view from beyond Carmel on the north to the furthest extremity of
Philistia on the south, which a competent authority declares to have been
originally "the magnificent campanile of a Christian temple." It is not the
only instance in Palestine in which the hawk has taken possession of the nest
of the dove. This town owed its importance at an earlier period to the fact
that it was the point of intersection for the road from the sea-port of Joppa
to Jerusalem, and the great caravan road from Damascus into Egypt. It is mainly
dependent now on the fact that it is the first halting-place for the night for
pilgrims from the West on their way to Jerusalem.
Is this Ramleh, then,
as monkish tradition would persuade us to believe, the Arimathea of Joseph? We
should have liked to have been able to identify it as the place where dwelt
that honourable counsellor who yielded up to our Redeemer his own rocky tomb
"where never man had been laid." But there is really nothing solid or tangible
on which to base such a belief. Ramleh, which signifies "sandy," has no
etymological kindred with Arimathea, understood to be a form of Rama, which
signifies "height," though we suspect it was some imagined connection of this
kind that first gave rise to the tradition. Then the monks, having got hold of
this conjecture, were not slow in finding out, not only the house of Joseph,
but of his friend Nicodemus, and we know not how many others. Out of an almost
invisible thread of fact they will weave you a whole web of baseless
inventions. But the notices of old ecclesiastical chroniclers are clear in
assuring us that Ramleh was of Saracen origin, and owed its existence to the
famous Solyman in the eighth century; while they dwell with probably some
pardonable exaggeration on its early greatness, when it was surrounded by lofty
walls with twelve gates and many strong towers, which bade proud defiance alike
to hostile borderers and foreign invaders. Unquestionably there are various
towns in Palestine which sprang into existence after the Christian era, just as
there are trees now common over the whole land, such as the prickly pear and
the Damascus mulberry, which were unknown in the times of our Lord. The true
Arimathea remains hidden perhaps under some green mound, to stimulate the
curiosity and reward the researches of later travellers.
We started
from the convent gate of Ramleh at an early hour, for we must enter Jerusalem
that day before its gates were closed. The practice of taking advantage of the
early morning for travelling is a necessity in the East, in order to get the
full benefit of the cooler hours of the day, and to have time for the rest and
repast at noon, when travelling would be intolerably oppressive and often
dangerous. But while this is the unvarying practice when proceeding from day to
day on a pilgrimage, it is never done on the first day of departure. On that
day the party does not leave until within a few hours of sunset, and often
pitches its tent on the first night within sight of the place which it has
left. This was our uniform experience; as on our leaving Joppa yesterday, and
afterwards on our setting out from Jerusalem and from Damascus. The custom,
which has all the authority of a law, is very ancient, and allusions to it can
be discovered in Jewish writers at least a century before Christ. The reason in
which it appears to have originated was the very simple one that, if, on the
first evening of unloading the baggage, it was found that anything of value had
been left behind, or anything indispensable to the journey unprovided, there
might yet be time to return and procure it.
We should not have adverted
to this custom, were it not that it seems of some use in illustrating one of
the most beautiful passages in the history of our Lord. When Joseph and Mary
were on their way back from Jerusalem on the first occasion of their visit with
Jesus to the Temple at the feast, they discovered, when halting at sunset, that
their wondrous child was not in the company. The fact has long been used as a
stock objection with infidels, and with interpreters who dwell on the
border-land of infidelity, and it has even been picked up and appropriated by
Strauss as casting doubt on the reality of the entire narrative. Was it
credible, it has been said, that out Lord's parents could have taken a long
day's journey, and never once have inquired for a child so deserving of their
love? This is another instance of that sceptical quarrelling with the Scripture
narrative which has its origin in half-knowledge. Joseph and Mary, it is
probable, were only a few miles distant from the city when they made their
painful discovery. We saw Jerusalem, on the day of our leaving it, from the
place of our encampment on our way south-eastward.
There was high
enjoyment in that morning's ride. The sky was beautifully blue; the air was
balmy; the lark was singing far up in the heaven; clouds of white pigeons
sailed over our heads; birds of varied song made sweet music in the
neighbouring olive-groves; the earth beneath our feet was a rich carpet of
flowers of every form and colour. Rue and fennel, anemones and wild roses,
lupin and narcissus, gracefully cupped lilies, golden striped tulips, and other
flowers familiar to us at home in our meadows and on our road-sides, which we
knew better by their names in our old poetry than by their nomenclature in
botany. There were rich beds of wild thyme, the haunt and feeding-place of the
wild bee, whose honey still makes the rocks of Palestine drop sweetness; and
many a flower, especially of deep crimson hue, unfamiliar to us as were some of
the constellations in the sky above us. This was evidently a region of the Holy
Land from which all its virgin strength and floral glory had not even yet
departed. What must it have been when Solomon sang of the beauty of the rose of
Sharon! It is curious to look into the pages of old travellers some centuries
back, and to find them writing thus of the same region:-"A most pleasant plain
yielding thyme and hyssop, and other fragrant herbs, without tillage or
planting, growing so high that they came to the knees of our asses." Forgive us
if under the enthusiasm of first impressions, with so many sacred associations
hanging over the land, we were tempted to quote words which future experiences
did something to tone down,—
"Thy very weeds are beautiful; thy
waste
More rich than other climes' fertility;
Thy wreck a glory, and
thy ruin graced
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced."
In less than three hours from the time of our leaving Ramleh, we
found ourselves entering among mountain scenery, and gradually becoming
inclosed in a steep narrow glen, up which, with many windings, we were to
ascend by a succession of ridges towards Jerusalem. Indeed, almost before we
were aware, we were in the "hill country of Judah." As you pass from the plain
into the narrowing track, you see on your right hand, about half a mile
distant, a scattered fortress almost seeming to bend over a precipice. Its name
is Ladron. The natural, and probably the correct, supposition is, that it was
originally built to guard the entrance on this important highway to the sacred
city. But the same monkish inventiveness which found a home for Joseph and
Nicodemus at Ramleh, has pronounced this to be "the castle of the good thief,"
the house of the penitent malefactor who was crucified with our Lord. Until
very recently it was the nest and stronghold of predatory Arabs, admirably
situated for purposes of plunder first, and of safety for the robbers
afterwards. Pilgrims, in the last age, breathed more freely when they found
themselves a few miles beyond this den of thieves without having been "stripped
and peeled."
That little town, again, on the left, at the root of the
commencing mountain-range, is called " Amwas" or " Emmaus," and we halt and
look down upon it for a few moments in order to receive a few cautions against
the too ready identifying of places with Scripture names. Even modern
travellers of high learning and authority have tasked and strained their
ingenuity to prove that this is the very Emmaus to which the two disconsolate
disciples were travelling on the memorable afternoon of the day of our Lord's
resurrection. The name is all in their favour, and a tradition which can be
traced down in unbroken line from the third to the thirteenth century confirms
the impression derived from the identity of the name. But the inexorable
conditions of the evangelical narrative give the conjecture to the winds, and
place it beyond all reasonable doubt that this cannot be the Emmaus of Luke,
the scene of that marvellous conversation and gracious self-manifestation by
the risen Christ. The village named in the gospel was only sixty furlongs
distant from Jerusalem: this is one hundred and sixty by the crow's flight. The
two disciples returned to Jerusalem on the same evening. Is it credible that
between afternoon and midnight, with an intervening pause, they could have
travelled a distance of forty miles? Here, then, is an instance in which both
the name and nearly a thousand years of tradition must give way before the
stubborn logic of facts. We were being rapidly educated into an unpleasant
scepticism about localities.
There cannot be a doubt, however, that
that village of Yalo, on the mountain-side towards our left, looks down upon
one of the most interesting scenes of Old Testament history. It is the Ajalon
of Joshua's great prayer and of the answering miracle, when "the moon stood
still in the valley of Ajalon." We were now, therefore, skirting the locality
of one of the grandest events in the life of the chosen people. We had not time
to diverge from our path and trace from point to point in the scenery the
various details of that great conflict, rout, and slaughter, in which the
military strength of the five Canaanitish kings was broken and shivered, and
Jehovah himself fought from heaven so visibly and gloriously for Israel. We
could only look in upon some points in the vast theatre of that mighty drama.
Gibeon still stands, not quite a ruin yet, on a lofty eminence, down whose
sides there are the traces of old gardens and broken terraces, where a few
olives make an effort to live. Upper Beth-horon is perched upon another height,
while Beth-horon the Nether lies down in a valley beneath. The incidents of
that great and notable day can be traced in these various places with the most
perfect certainty, through the singularly minute exactness of the sacred
narrative. The five kings of the Amorites have surrounded Gibeon with a strong
army, determined to punish to the utmost its craven people for their desertion
to that mysterious power which has come up so suddenly upon their land, and the
recollection of whose terrible triumphs at Jericho and Ai is still fresh upon
their minds. Joshua, warned of this by the timid and wily Gibeonites, hastens
through the night, by a forced march, to Gibeon, and early in the morning falls
upon the besiegers by a sudden onslaught which produces universal confusion and
dismay. They flee before the conquering Israelites, toil up the steep ascent to
the Upper Beth-horon, the confusion and the carnage increasing every moment. On
the crest of the village-crowned mountain a new terror awaits them, for, as
they still rush onward, the Lord casts down great hailstones from heaven upon
them, and more perish by the hailstones than are slain by the children of
Israel with the sword. Down they flee into the valley beneath, towards the
Nether Beth-horon, more terrified by the dread artillery of heaven than by the
pursuing hosts of Israel; and then it is that Joshua, with sword in hand,
looking down on the retreating Amorites, and seeing that the day for reaping
the awful death-harvest is all too short, speaks that command in the hearing of
Israel, "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou Moon, in the valley of
Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had
avenged themselves upon their enemies." We cannot determine the modus of that
magnificent miracle. Can we do this, indeed, in regard to any supernatural
work? It is enough for us to know that the laws of nature were so divinely
controlled as to produce this astonishing result. "This was the very longest
day," says the ever quaint Fuller, "which that climate ever did or shall
behold, when time was delivered of twins, two days joined together without any
night interposing."
The ascent was every half-hour becoming steeper and
the sun hotter, and we were not sorry when our guide told us to halt for our
mid-day repast and rest. A piece of carpet was spread for us under a fine old
oak tree, with thick foliage and enormous branches. We began today to eat the
wild honey, which never failed us during our journeyings in Palestine and those
rich oranges, larger than an infant's head, which Giuseppe had purchased
yesterday at the gate of the Jaffa gardens, tasted like nectar. With what skill
he cuts them up into thin slices with that long knife drawn from his belt, not
allowing one drop of juice to escape. We had noticed before this that he was
one-eyed, and we were not long in the country until we observed that this was a
very common fact with men of middle age. Indeed, it would be difficult to
determine whether the possession of both eyes is the exception or the rule.
There are sometimes local causes which so far account for this, as was the case
at Ramleh; and the want of skilful surgeons may explain it in not a few other
instances. But we soon discovered that there was a cause beyond this, operating
always and everywhere, in the terrible conscription for the Sultan's army,
which had tempted hundreds thus to maim themselves in order that they might be
disqualified for military service. We were told, however, that the unscrupulous
Pasha at Jerusalem, determined not to be outdone, had met one trick with
another, and had, some years before, instituted a one-eyed regiment, for
admission to which this Cyclopean condition was a necessary qualification !
After a rest of silence, if not of sleep, we spring to our feet
refreshed, and are again mounted and on our way. We notice a gradual change in
the scenery. We have left many of the wild flowers now behind us; even the
trees are becoming stunted and unsocial, though here and there at intervals we
recognize the dwarf oak, the box, and the laurel. Large naked masses of
limestone crop out here and there upon the mountain sides, though all the way
up to this point it has been possible to trace, in the ruins of old gardens, in
neglected and broken down terraces, in dead vine stocks and gnarled olive
roots, with bright patches of verdure, the evidences of a formerly wider
culture, the relics of a much more extensive fruitfulness. Our friend Lt. Van
de Velde mentions, that where he passed through this same region he met with
the fragments of old watch towers standing in places in which there is now
nothing to watch, but which must at an earlier period have blossomed as the
rose.
And here we may state our conviction, which began to form itself
at this part of our journeyings, and which all our later wanderings went to
confirm. It was a favourite objection with Voltaire and Bayle, and the able
school of infidels of which they were the chief prophets, that this country
could never have possessed the fertility and beauty which are ascribed to it in
the Scriptures; and that the descriptions of it, not only in the poetry of the
Bible, but in its plain histories, are demonstrably gross exaggerations. And we
have heard the fainter echoes of these confident assertions in our own times.
Our belief is that the exaggeration is all on the side of these writers, and
that there is nothing in the condition of modern Palestine to discredit the
inspired representations; nay, that it is quiteconceivable that, without any
strictly miraculous interposition, under the influence of good laws and
industrious intelligent culture, the fruit of general education and sound
religion, the land may yet recover all its old and palmy fertility. This is the
order which prophecy leads us to expect. "Upon the land of my people shall come
up thorns and briers......until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high." The
Turkish administration, especially in its remoter provinces, blights and curses
everything that it touches. The proverb is almost literally true, that wherever
the hoof of a Turkish horse rests, it leaves barrenness behind it. Think of a
country in which the poor farmer is obliged to give two-thirds of the whole
produce of the land he cultivates to the government, and in which the remaining
third is estimated by the rapacious agents of the Pasha, who generally know
nothing either of justice or mercy. Competence is dangerous under such a
system. The thriving man becomes a mark for robbery and oppression. Is it
matter for wonder that, under such a system as this, gardens should have,
returned to wildernesses, the vine withered, the olive-tree drooped and died,
corn fields have become oozy swamps, fountains once used for irrigation have
been choked and sealed up, and hundreds of places which once echoed with the
songs of the reaper or of the vintage now heaps of stones, or masses of tangled
weeds, or barren rocks! " The old instrument is the same, but it is neither
strung with stock, nor played upon with the hand of skilful industry. The rose
of Sharon is faded, her leaves lost, and now nothing but the prickles thereof
are to be seen. But let labour be protected and fairly and certainly
remunerated; let industry be instructed, guided, and stimulated, and how soon
would the land begin to smile with abundance, and to put on again her beautiful
garments! Could that picture of industry which we have sometimes witnessed
among the Waldenses on the slopes of their Cottian Alps, of women carrying
baskets of earth on their heads, and spreading it on the naked rocks from which
the rains and melting snows had washed the soil away, in order to afford
planting-ground for the young vines, only become common in Palestine, and the
energy which it represents be made indigenous there, in how many thousand spots
would the wilderness become a fruitful field! Competent judges have affirmed
that were the one plain of Esdraelon, which stretches from Cape Carmel to Mount
Tabor, a distance of less than thirty miles, to be cultivated according to our
Western notions of culture, it would produce sufficient grain to feed all the
inhabitants of Palestine. The well-known experience of Mr. Meshullam proves
what good farming could evoke from this weary, down-trodden land, and what
sleeping life there is in its soil, when, on his experimental farm at Urtas, a
little to the southward of Bethlehem, he was rewarded by a rotation of five
different crops in one year; and even the peach-stone which he dibbled into the
earth grew peaches within the first twelve months.
As we rode on we
recognized that peculiar formation of many of the mountains which had been
noticed by Richardson and other travellers in a former age, "meeting at their
base, but separated at their top, not by pointed acuminations, but more like
two round balls placed beside each other." We were now passing through a region
which, in the times of that observant traveller, and at a much later period,
was the most dangerous for pilgrims in all Palestine, with the one exception of
the road down to Jericho, through the presence of that powerful and ferocious
brigand, Abu Gosh, who, for fifty years, was the scourge and terror of the
whole region, plundering luckless caravans, and not scrupling to send a bullet
through the body of a pasha who might venture to intrude into his territory and
to question his authority. Those narrow passes and sharp turns in the road,
where concealed bandits could quietly wait their prey, and be ready to point
the muzzle of a gun to their breast as they moved round the angle of a rock,
favoured his robber life. That village up on the margin of the wady, with some
strong-looking buildings frowning in its centre, was the robber's capital; and
the wrecks of his family, returned from long exile, are said to harbour in it
still, like Giant Pope in Bunyan, perhaps watching the passing pilgrim, but no
longer able to do any mischief: they may grin, but they cannot bite.
To
what base uses has that village come; for while the point has not been
absolutely proved, it has at least been rendered highly probable, that
Kuriet-el-Ainab is the actual Kirjath-jearim of Old Testament history, the
place to which the ark of the Lord was brought from Beth-shemesh, and where it
rested under the care of a priestly family further up on the same eminence,
until it was carried up by David from thence to Jerusalem. During the time in
which this sacred symbol of the divine presence tarried in the priest's
mountain-home at Kirjath-jearim, the people must have come up to it from all
quarters for sacrifice and worship; and now that ancient " house of prayer" for
all people had literally been " made a den of thieves."
There are those
who favour the conjecture that this is also the true Emmaus of the evangelical
narrative; and there would indeed be something pleasing in the coincidence that
the little town which for so many centuries before had been the resting place
of the symbol of the divine presence had once at least afforded shelter and
hospitality to the risen Redeemer, the incarnate God. If picturesqueness could
have anything to do in settling such a question, we should prefer, in harmony
with the general opinion of students of sacred topography in Jerusalem, marking
Kolonieh as the real gospel Emmaus, standing a good way up on the wooded slopes
of a mountain, with gardens of fruit trees spreading down to a shady hollow
with its little murmuring brook and its old Roman bridge. Its distance from
Jerusalem is not inconsistent with the supposition, and its present evidently
Roman name only proves that, at a later period, it was garrisoned for a time by
Roman soldiers.
We had severe effort with our now wearied horses before
we got quite clear of those narrow passes in which we had been winding and
ascending for so many hours. There was one zigzag, rugged, almost precipitous
place that nearly worsted us. We had gone over some of the worst passes in the
Alps, we had crossed one of the most formidable ridges of the Appenines by
moonlight, yet some engineering skill had been expended on those roads; but
here the turns were so sharp around the pointed projecting rocks, the beetling
precipices beneath so terrible, and the declivities above us which we were
required to climb so near to the perpendicular, that our best resource for a
little time was to throw the reins upon our horse's neck and to close our eyes.
At length we were upon ground which, though bleak in some places and rugged in
all, was comparatively level; and we began to breathe freely. And now we could
not doubt that we were passing over ground which was rich at almost every step
with Biblical associations. Along this way the procession must have moved
bearing the ark of the Lord from Kirjath-jearim to its place within the
curtained tabernacle on Mount Zion. The whole region before and behind must
have echoed with the glad music of the harp and the psaltery, the clang of the
cymbals, and the soft sound of the silver trumpets. "The singers went before,
the players on instruments followed after; among them were the damsels playing
with timbrels. There is little Benjamin, with their ruler, the princes of Judah
and their council, the princes of Zebulun, and the princes of Naphtali."
Through long centuries, companies of pilgrims must have journeyed over this
lofty table land on their way to keep the solemn annual feasts, converging
towards it from many a wady and glen, their ranks increasing and their songs
becoming louder as they drew near to the sacred city. And if Emmaus was some
where in this quarter, as all seem to believe that it was, then it seems
certain that "on that solemn eventide" of which Cowper speaks, the blessed feet
of the risen Christ must have trodden hereabouts when he talked with those two
disciples - alternately hoping and fearing, believing and doubting - in words
that made their hearts burn within them; though it is probable that gardens and
corn fields may then have filled the air with fragrance and clothed the
landscape with beauty. The Roman legions must have marched along this path to
be the instrument of Heaven's holy and awful vengeance against the doomed city
whose cup of guilt was full. And in later ages this must have been the course
of the brave Crusaders from the far West, ascending under their red cross
banners either to recover Jerusalem to the Christians, or to perish under its
walls and be buried in its sacred dust. In a little while, however, we began to
give scarcely any heed to scenery or incident. The consciousness had been
secretly present to our hearts since the morning, that before sunset we were to
look upon the most sacredly interesting place in the world; and now the
absorbing thought, as the intervening miles slowly lessened between us and our
bourn, was Jerusalem - Jerusalem! We were not, however, without a brief
adventure, that was curiously out of keeping with our state of mind. As we were
riding along at a somewhat brisk pace over a comparatively level part of our
way, we saw a company of five or six men approaching us from the opposite
direction on horseback, and with ample cloaks floating behind them on the
breeze. Who were these imposing riders, to whom distance lent so much
enchantment? Had they borne lances and carried pennons, they might almost have
represented a company of those Crusaders of whom we had been dreaming
half-an-hour before. Alas! for sentiment and romance! They turned out to be
nothing more than mounted " touters" from the different hotels in Jerusalem,
eager to put into our hands their bill of fare, and to extract from us a
promise, which we were slow to give. It was more than a mile before we got rid
of this teasing. It was a somewhat ludicrous instance of the occidental wave
which is beginning to obliterate the old customs of the East. But the same kind
of influence is at work in many other and more serious forms. We have need to
make haste if we would catch the old picture of the East entire. The colours
are fading, the forms are changing. We are convinced that there are many
customs illustrative of Scripture which have yet to be observed and placed on
record. No man has yet quite done for Palestine what Mr. Lane has accomplished,
in his admirable work, for Egypt.
Our eagerness had now grown into
impatience. Surely when we get up to that eminence we shall see Jerusalem! We
ascend, and are disappointed; and so it is a second time and a third. Can we
really be on the right way? At length we pass on to a rocky plateau, and our
range of view is widened. Does that line of bright green in the far distance
mark the course of the Jordan? It does; and that shining strip of water must be
the mysterious Dead Sea, and that lofty wall of green beyond must be the
mountains of Moab. We proceed a few paces onward, and Jerusalem is almost at
our feet. First, green Olivet appears, with a half-ruined monastery on its
summit, and dotted all over with olive trees. Those are the old walls of the
holy city. Behold, rising high above them, is the domed Mosque of Omar, and
that old black structure nearer is the Tower of David. See what a glory the
western sun is shedding upon the venerable city and down into that deep valley
of Hinnom! The dream of a life was realized. We reined in our horse, and gazed
mutely. We confess to have felt so solemn that we refused to speak or to be
spoken to by others; just as we have sometimes felt when entering a
death-chamber where a spirit had just passed away to heaven, and nothing but
the cold beloved dust remained.
Then, as we descended slowly on the
bright greensward, a succession of visions passed rapidly before our mind.
In imagination we saw the city in its palmy days, when Solomon was its
king. The Temple was built and finished and stood on Mount Moriah "very
magnifical," the work of a united religious people - a very poem in stone. The
glory of the Lord had descended and taken visible possession of it, and the
king, with his white robed priests and crowding multitudes, had sung high
praise and holy welcome to the heavenly King, the Divine Inhabitant. Ages
passed, and then we imagined proud Sennacherib's army of Assyrians compassing
the city round about, demanding submission and entrance, or assuring the people
of speedy bondage and destruction in the event of refusal. Hezekiah's prayer
conquers when the besieged people are at their wit's end; and one of God's
soldiers, an angel from heaven, on one night seals in a fatal death-sleep
185,000 of the beleaguering army which had defied the living God. Next, we
thought of Nehemiah in later ages walking by moonlight amidst its ruined walls
and broken gates, hastening to arouse and unite the dispirited and divided
people; and then, under his patriotic, earnest leadership, transfusing his
soul, as it were, into the whole nation, the wall rising from day to day like a
thing of life, its gates set up, and national existence and national hope
restored. Then centuries elapsed again, and we beheld the Son of God walking
and teaching in its streets and places of public concourse, and working
miracles at its Temple-gates, his earthly life closed by the great events of
his crucifixion on Calvary, his resurrection and ascension. And, last of all,
the vision passed before us of the armies of the Roman Titus surrounding the
guilty city, the protracted siege, the terrible scenes of carnage, the burning
Temple, the ploughshare carried through its foundations, and the remnant of the
people that had escaped the sword and the fire scattered to all the winds of
heaven, to become the mocking, and the proverb, and the by-word of all the
nations of the earth. The thought, however, which stood present and prominent
in our mind as we looked down from the heights of the Jaffa road was, that
somewhere within the range of our vision at that moment, those great events had
occurred which had brought redemption to our world! Calvary was near, and the
rocky grave where angels watched, and the green spot from which Jesus had
ascended through that sky to heaven!
But it is remarkable what rude
shocks one's meditations experience when travelling in Palestine. No sooner had
we reached the Jaffa gate by which we were to enter this wondrous city, which
had occupied the waking dreams of a lifetime, than we were stopped by the
jabbering of custom-house officers eager for bribes, and kept waiting long
under a broiling sun until their voracity was satisfied. We then descended
through steep, narrow streets, on loose flinty stones, on which it was next to
impossible for our horse to find solid footing; and after passing under some
gloomy arcades, into which the sunlight never penetrates, landed at the door of
a little inn with scarcely a window on its outside wall, and which had very
much the look of a prison. It was enough. We were in Jerusalem.
Go To Chapter Five
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