Part 18

We went on wandering around, and by-and-by we came to a chapel where the Crown of Thorns was made, and presently to a short column marking the Centre of the Earth, the spot from which the dust was taken that was used in making Adam. You see, it is necessary to double up on some of the landmarks or enlarge the church again.

You can climb a flight of stairs in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and be told that you are on Calvary, and you are allowed to put your hand through the floor into the sockets where the crosses stood. We did not do it, however. We climbed the stairs, but a collection of priests were holding some kind of ceremony with candles and chanting, and we were not sufficiently impressed to wait.

We did pause, as we came away, to note in the vestibule of the Holy Sepulchre the two holes through which on Easter Eve the Holy Fire is distributed to Christian pilgrims who assemble from all parts of the world. On this occasion the Fire Bishop enters the Sepulchre, and fire from heaven lights the candles on the altar. Then the Bishop, who is all alone in the Sepulchre, passes the Holy Fire out through these holes, in the form of a bundle of burning tapers, to priests. The pilgrims with unlighted tapers then rush and jam and scramble toward these dispensers of the sacred flame and pay any price demanded to have their candles speedily lighted. Usually a riot takes place, and the Mohammedan guards are required to prevent bloodshed.

In 1834 there occurred a riot over the Holy Fire which piled the dead five feet deep around the Sepulchre. Four or five hundred were killed, and corpses lay thick even on the Stone of Unction. It seems a useless sacrifice, when one thinks of it, but then the blood of five hundred is only a drop as compared with what the centuries have contributed to this revered shrine.

I want to be quite serious for a moment about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre--here in Jerusalem--now, while I am in the spirit of the thing.

It is the biggest humbug in all Christendom. Of the scores of sites and relics enclosed within its walls, it is unlikely that a single one is genuine. With all respect to Queen Helena's talent for dreams, her knowledge of Scripture must have been sparing, or she would have located Calvary outside the walls of Jerusalem. This place is in the heart of the city--was always in the heart of the city, in spite of all gerrymandering to prove it otherwise; and it was more of a flat or a hollow in the time of Christ than it is now.

As for the other traditions and trumpery gathered in this ecclesiastical side-show, they are unworthy of critical attention. Probably not one in a million of the readers of _Innocents Abroad_ but thought the finding of the Grave of Adam one of Mark Twain's jokes. Not at all; it is located here under Calvary, and the place from which came Adam's dust (the Centre of the World) is close by. Then there is that Stone of Unction, which every one of intelligence knows to be a fraud, and there is the stone which the angel rolled away, and Adam's skull--they have that, too.

It would seem that the human animal had exhausted his simian inheritance then. But no, he can never exhaust that--it is his one limitless gift. He has gone right on adding to his heap of bones and crockery, enlarging the museum from time to time to make room. And he will add more. The future is long, and it is only a question of time and faith when he will bring over the tombs of the patriarchs from Hebron, the Grotto of the Nativity from Bethlehem, the House of Judas from Damascus, and the Street that was called Straight. Oh, he can do it! A creature who can locate the Holy Sepulchre, the Grave of Adam, the Centre of the World, Mount Calvary, and fifty other historical sites all within the radius of a few feet, and find enough of his own kind to accept them, can do anything. As an insult to human intelligence and genuine Christian faith, I suppose this institution stands alone.

Do the priests themselves, the beneficiaries, believe it? Perhaps--at least some of them do. There is nothing so dense, so sodden, so impenetrable as priestly superstition. Not a ray of reason can enter a mind darkened for a lifetime by ceremonials in which candles, chantings, swinging censers, and prostrations are regarded as worship. Could you produce any evidence that would appeal to the minds of those figures that march and countermarch, and carry tapers and chant among these frauds and fripperies of their faith? Hardly--they would not care for evidence. What they want is more superstition; more for themselves--more, always more, for their followers; the more superstition, the more power, the more baksheesh. They have no use for facts and testimony. They can create both to fit the need. Let any corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre become vacant, and immediately some prelate will dream that it is the true place where Balaam's Ass saw the angel with the flaming sword, and they will promptly consecrate the spot; then they will excavate and find the sword and a footprint of the angel, also a piece of the Ass, and they will make a saint of Balaam, and very likely of the Ass, and they will set up an altar and get a sign-painter to make a picture of the vision, and the people will contribute prayers and piastres, and yell baksheesh at every traveller to keep the high priests of Balaam in food and funds.

Strange that we who regard the Mohammedan pilgrim with disdain or compassion, on his journey to Mecca and Medina, excuse or condone the existence of a shrine like this. The Prophet's birthplace and tomb are at least authentic, and it was his desire that his followers should visit them. They are acknowledging a fact. These people are supporting a fraud.

And then the pity of it! The remembering that it was for this trumpery thing those mighty crusades swept like a flame across Europe, robbed her of her chivalry, and desolated a million homes; for this that gallant knights put on their armor and rode away under the banner of the Cross, shouting, "God wills it!" For this that men have drenched more than one nation with blood and changed the map and history of the world!

True, one may not altogether regret the crusades. They made romance and the high achievement to be celebrated in picture and in song. It was fine, indeed, to ride away in shining mail in a vast army in which all were officers--splendid knights battling for glory in a cause. Aching hearts and forsaken homes were plentiful behind, yet even they reflected the glamour of romance, the fervor of a faith.

But there was one crusade in which there was neither romance nor glory--nothing except heartbreak and anguish, and the long torture of the years.

That was the Children's Crusade--the crusade in which fanaticism spelled its last word--when a countless number of children of all ages, as young as seven some of them, flocked to the standard of a boy of seventeen and wandered off down through Europe, to faint and fall and die by hundreds and by thousands from hunger and heat and thirst--moaning and grieving unheeded among the stones and bushes--to reach the Mediterranean at last, a scattered remnant, there to be taken on board some vessels and sold into slavery in Algiers!

There was no glory, no triumph however imaginary, in that crusade; no romance, no glamour after the first day's march. It was only weariness and torture after that--only wretchedness and the fevered cry for the comfort of a mother's arm. And all for the sake of this dime-museum of faith, this huge ecclesiastical joke. The pity of it, indeed! Here to-night, a stone's-throw away, my heart bleeds for those little weary feet struggling on and on, for those little fainting souls, moaning, grieving, trying to keep up, lying down at last to coax the blessed release of death, and I would like to stand here on the housetops of Jerusalem and cry out against this insult to the memory of One who, when He said, "Suffer little children to come unto me," could hardly have foreseen that His words would bear such bitter fruit.

I do not do it, however. I want to live to get home and print this thing, and have it graven on my tomb.

XXXIII

TWO HOLY MOUNTAINS

We set out early next morning for Mount Moriah, the site of Solomon's temple and those that followed it.

It was really David's temple in the beginning, undertaken to avert a pestilence which he had selected from three punishments offered by the Lord because he, David, had presumed to number his people. A Hebrew census was a sin in those days, it would seem, and seventy thousand of the enrolled had already died when David saw an angel with a drawn sword--the usual armament of an angel--standing by the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite. Through Gad, his Soothsayer, David was commanded to set up an altar on that spot, to avert further calamity. Negotiations with Oman were at once begun, to the end that Oman parted with the site for "six hundred shekels of gold, by weight"; the threshing-floor was quickly replaced by an altar, and here, on the top of Mount Moriah--on the great bowlder reputed to have been the sacrificial stone of Melchizedek--and of Abraham, who was said to have proffered Isaac here--King David made offering to the Lord, and was answered by fire from heaven on the newly erected altar. And the angel "put up his sword again into the sheath thereof."

From that day the bowlder on the top of Mount Moriah became the place of sacrifice--the great central shrine of the Jewish faith. David decided to build a temple there, and prepared for it abundantly, as became his high purpose. But because David had shed much blood, the Lord interfered and commanded him to turn the enterprise over to Solomon, "a man of rest." "He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever."

In the light of thoughtful Bible reading, it is not easy to see that Solomon was much of an improvement over David, in the long-run, and one cannot but notice the fact that the promise to establish his throne over Israel forever was not long maintained. But perhaps the Lord did not foresee how Solomon was going to turn out; besides, forever is a long time, and the Kingdom of Solomon may still prevail.

Solomon completed the temple in a manner that made it celebrated, even to this day. The "oracle, or holy room, which held the Ark of the Covenant, was overlaid within with pure gold," and the rest of the temple was in keeping with this dazzling chamber.

The temple was often pillaged during the troublous times that followed Solomon's reign, but it managed to stand till Nebuchadnezzar's conquest, four centuries later. It was twice rebuilt, the last time by Herod, on a scale of surpassing splendor. It was Herod's temple that Christ knew, and the work of beautifying and adding to it was going on during his entire lifetime. It was finished in 65 A.D., and five years later it went down in the general destruction, though Titus himself tried to preserve it.

Most of what exists to-day are the remains of Herod's temple. The vast court, or temple area, occupies about one-sixth of all Jerusalem, and of the genuineness of this site there is no question. In the centre of it, where once the house of David and Solomon stood, stands the Dome of the Rock--also called the Mosque of Omar, though it is not really a mosque, and was not built by Omar. It is, in fact, a marvellous jewelled casket--the most beautiful piece of architecture in the world, it has been called--built for no other purpose than to hold the old sacrificial stone of Melchizedek and Abraham--a landmark revered alike by Moslem, Christian, and Jew.

One is bound to feel impressed in the presence of that old bowlder, seamed and scarred by ages of sun and tempest; hacked for this purpose and that; gray with antiquity--the very corner-stone of three religions, upholding the traditions and the faith of four thousand years. There is nothing sham or tawdry about that. The building is splendid enough, but it is artistically beautiful, and the old rock itself--the genuine rock of ages--is as bare and rugged as when Isaac lay upon it bound, and the "chosen people" narrowly missed non-existence.

There is a railing around it; but you can look over or through as long as you like, and if one is of a reflective temperament he can look a long time. Among other things he will notice a number of small square holes, cut long ago to receive the ends of slender supports that upheld a royal canopy or screen, and he will see the conduits cut to carry off the blood of the sacrifice. To his mental vision these things will conjure pictures--a panorama of rites and ceremonials--of altar and incense, with all the splendid costume and blazonry of the Judean king. And, after these, sacrifices of another sort--the cry of battle and the clash of arms across this hoary relic, its conduits filled with a crimson tide that flowed without regard to ritual or priest.

Other pictures follow: the feast of the Passover, when Jerusalem was crowded with strangers, when the great outer court of the temple was filled with booths and pens of the sellers who offered sheep, goats, cattle, and even doves for the sacrifice; when the temple itself was crowded with throngs of eager worshippers who brought their sacrifices, with tithes to the priests, and were made clean.

Amid one such throng there is a boy of twelve years, who with His parents has come up to Jerusalem "after the custom of the feast." We think of them as quiet, simple people, those three from Nazareth, jostled by the crowds a good deal, and looking rather wonderingly on the curious sights of that great yearly event. They would work their way into the temple, by-and-by, and they would come here to the Rock, and perhaps the sad, deep-seeing eyes of that boy of twelve would look down the years to a day when in this same city it would be His blood that would flow at the hands of men.

I hope He did not see that far. But we know that light for Him lay somewhat on the path ahead, for when the feast was over, and His parents had set out for Nazareth, He lingered to mingle with the learned men, and He said to His parents when they came for Him, "Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business?" Among all those who thronged about this stone for a thousand years, somehow the gentle presence of that boy of twelve alone remains, unvanishing and clear.

And what a mass of legends have heaped themselves upon this old landmark!--a groundwork of Jewish tradition--a layer of Christian imagery--an ever-thickening crust of Moslem whim and fantasy. A few of them are perhaps worth repeating. The Talmud, for instance, is authority for the belief that the Rock covers the mouth of an abyss wherein the waters of the Flood may be heard roaring. Another belief of the Jews held it as the centre and one of the foundations of the world. Of Jesus it is said that He discovered upon the Rock the great and unspeakable name of God (Shem), and was thereby enabled to work his miracles.

But the Moslem soars into fairyland when he comes in the neighborhood of this ancient relic. To him the Rock hangs suspended in mid-air, and would have followed Mohammed to heaven if the Angel Gabriel had not held fast to it. We saw the prints of Gabriel's fingers, which were about the size and formation of a two-inch auger. Another Moslem fancy is that the rock rests on a palm watered by a river of Paradise.

In the hollow beneath the Rock (probably an artificial grotto) there is believed to be a well, the Well of Souls, where spirits of the deceased assemble twice a week to pray. They regard it as also the mouth of hell, which I don't think can be true, or the souls would not come there--not if they could help it--not as often as twice a week, I mean.

A print of Mohammed's head is also shown in the roof of the grotto, and I believe in that, because, being a tall man, when I raised up suddenly I made another just like it. But I am descending into trivialities, and the Rock is not trivial by any means. It has been there since the beginning, and it is likely to remain there until all religions are forgotten, and the world is dead, and all the stars are dark.

* * * * *

In front of the Dome of the Rock the sun was bright, and looking across the approach one gets a characteristic view of Jerusalem--its bubble-roofed houses and domes, its cypress and olive trees. I made a photograph of Laura, age fourteen, and a friend of hers, against that background, but they would have looked more "in the picture" in Syrian dress. I am not sure, however; some of our party have had themselves photographed in Syrian dress, which seemed to belong to most of them about as much as a baseball uniform might belong to a Bedouin--or a camel.

We crossed over to the ancient mosque El-Aksa, also within the temple area, but it was only mildly interesting after the Dome of the Rock. Still, there were things worth noting. There were the two pillars, for instance, which stand so close together that only slender people could squeeze between them. Yet in an earlier time every pilgrim had to try, and those who succeeded were certain of Paradise. This made it humiliating for the others, and the impulse to train down for the test became so prevalent that stanchions were placed between the pillars a few years ago. We could only estimate our chances and give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

Then there is the Well of the Leaf, which has a pretty story. It is a cistern under the mosque, and the water is very clear. Once, during the caliphate of Omar, a sheik came to this well for water, and his bucket slipped from his hands. He went down after it, and came to a mysterious door which, when he opened it, led into a beautiful garden. Enchanted, he lingered there and finally plucked a leaf to bring back as a token of what he had seen. The leaf never withered, and so a prophecy of Mohammed's that one of his followers should enter Paradise alive had been fulfilled.

I said I would go down and hunt for the door. But they said, "No"--that a good many had tried it without success. The cistern used to collect every year the pilgrims who went down to find that door; no one was permitted to try, now.

In one of the windows of the old mosque we saw a curious sight: a very aged and very black, withered man--Bedouin, I should say--reclining face down in the wide sill, poring over an ancient parchment book, patiently transcribing from it cabalistic passages on a black, charred board with a sharpened stick. The guide said he was a magician from somewhere in the dim interior; certainly he looked it.

From somewhere--it was probably from an opening in the wall near the Golden Gate--we looked eastward across the valley of Kedron toward the fair hillsides, which presently we were to visit.

Immediately we set out for the Mount of Olives. We drove, and perhaps no party ever ascended that sacred hill on a fairer morning. The air was still, and there was a quiet Sunday feeling in the sunshine. In the distance there was a filmy, dreamy haze that gave just the touch of ideality to the picture.

The road that leads up Olivet is bordered by traditional landmarks, but we could not stop for them. It was enough to be on the road itself, following the dusty way the Son of Man and His disciples once knew so well. For this hill of fair olive-groves, overlooking Jerusalem, was their favorite resort, and it was their habit to come here to look down in contemplation on the holy city. It was here that the Master felt the shadow of coming events: the destruction of the city; the persecution and triumph of His followers; His own approaching tragedy. It was here that He gave them the parable of the Virgins, and of the Talents, and it was here that He came often at evening for rest and prayer, after the buffet and labor of the day. This is the road His feet so often trod--a well-kept road, with the olive-groves, now as then, sloping away on either side.

Here and there we turned to look down on Jerusalem, lying there bathed in the sunlit haze--a toy city, it seemed, with its little round-topped houses, its domes and minarets, its battlemented walls. How very small it was, indeed! Why, one could run its entire circuit without losing breath. It is, in fact, little more than half a mile across in any direction, and from a distance it becomes an exquisite jewel set amid barren hills.

I am afraid I did not properly enjoy the summit of the Mount of Olives--its landmarks, I mean. The Russian and Greek and Latin churches have spoiled it with offensive architecture, and they have located and labelled exact sites in a way that destroys the reality of the events. They have framed in the precise spot where Jesus stood at the time of His ascension. It is a mistake to leave it there. It should be transferred to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

But the view eastward, looking down on the Jordan and the Dead Sea, with the mountains of Moab lying beyond, they cannot spoil or change. Down there on that spot, thirty-five hundred years ago, the chosen people camped and prepared for the ravage and conquest of this valley, this mountain, and the fair lands beyond, even to Mount Hermon and the westward sea. Over there, on "Nebo's lonely mountain," Moses looked down upon this land of vine and olive which he was never to enter, and being weary with the harassings of his stiff-necked people, lay down by the wayside and left them to work out their own turbulent future.

"And the angels of God upturned the sod And laid the dead man there."

I have always loved those lines, and it was worth the voyage to remember them here, looking down from the Mount of Olives toward the spot where lies that unknown grave.

XXXIV

THE LITTLE TOWN OF THE MANGER

It was afternoon when we drove to Bethlehem--a pleasant drive, though dusty withal. The road lies between grain-fields--fields where Ruth may have gleaned, and where the Son of Man may have stopped to gather corn. It gives one a curious feeling to remember that these fields are the same, and that for them through all the centuries seed-time and harvest have never failed. Nor have they changed--the walls, the laborers, the methods, the crops belong to any period that this country has known.

The convent of Elijah was pointed out to us, but it did not matter. Elijah never saw it--never heard of it. It is different, however, with a stone across the way from the entrance. Elijah went to sleep on that stone, and slept so heavily that he left his imprint there, which remains to this day. We viewed that stone with interest; then we took most of it and went on.

In a little while we came to the tomb of Rachel. The small, mosque-like building that covers it is not very old, but the site is probably as well authenticated as any of that period. Jacob was on his way from Padan when she died, and he buried her by the roadside "when there was but a little way to come into Ephrath" (which is Bethlehem). He marked the grave with a pillar which the generations would not fail to point out, one to another, as the last resting-place of this mother in Israel who died that Benjamin might have life.