CHAPTER X.

THE HOLY CITY.

The three principal sights in Jerusalem are the Mosque of Omar, now standing on the site of Solomon’s Temple, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Muristan, which is the conglomerate remains of numerous edifices raised on the same spot in the course of ages, from Charlemagne to Saladin, but named from the madhouse built there by the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre should be visited in the sunniest part of the day, as the interior is awfully dark. It may be that it is what it assumes to be. There are people who doubt this, as they do everything; but here countless pilgrims in all ages have come to pray and weep, and have kissed every stone and shrine to be seen within the sacred precincts. I have read somewhere how a young lady from the country came to town to hear the immortal Siddons, then in the zenith of her fame. As soon as the performance began, the young lady began to weep immediately. ‘If you weep in this way,’ said a gentleman to her, ‘you will have no tears to shed when the real Siddons appears.’ The same feeling occurs to you in Jerusalem. One is never sure thatthe people are wailing and weeping at the right place. People seem there so much taken up with the dead Christ that they are actually in danger of forgetting the living one, who speaks to us to-day as when He lifted up His Divine voice in the crowded streets of Jerusalem or beneath the proud pillars of the Temple itself.

The question has long been discussed whether the traditional site on which stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the true one. The matter turns upon the course of the city walls in the time of Christ. All are agreed that wherever the sepulchre was, it was without the gate, and not within Jerusalem. From the Gospels we learn that the tomb was rock-hewn, and that it was nigh the place of the Crucifixion. Major Conder’s excavations have almost conclusively proved that the traditional site was without the circuit of the city wall, and though the point cannot be considered as quite settled, there are very strong grounds for believing that the site was elsewhere. By the common consent of experts, the true site has been found a short distance north-east from the Damascus gate of the present city on the rocky knoll immediately above the Jeremiah Grotto of our Bible map. Indirectly, the so-called Jeremiah Grotto contributes some support to the modern identification. It is the spot where executions by stoning were carried out. The locality General Gordon brought into notice as the Holy Sepulchre seems to be quite unfounded. Major Conder points out that the tomb was no new discovery when the General was in Jerusalem—that it is probably not a Jewish tomb at all, and may be assigned to the middle ages.

It is a wonderful city, this old Jerusalem. It was here Solomon built his Temple a thousand years before Christ. This structure was subsequently destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, rebuilt by Zorobabel, and afterwards by Herod. Then came Titus and the Romans, who left the city a desolation. Of all its stateliness—the populous streets, the palaces of the kings, the fortresses of her warriors—not a ruin remains, except three tall towers and part of the western wall, which was left for the defence of the Roman camp. From a Roman point of view, Titus had well earned the honour of a triumph.

Of course in this connection one falls back on Gibbon: ‘In the midst of a rocky and barren country the walls of Jerusalem inclosed the two mountains of Sion and Acra within an oval figure of about three miles. Towards the south the upper town and the fortress of David were erected on the lofty ascent of Mount Zion; on the north side the buildings of the lower town covered the spacious summit of Mount Acra, and a part of the hill distinguished by the name of Moriah, and levelled by human industry, was crowned with the stately temple of the Jewish nation. After the final destruction of the temple by the arms of Titus and Hadrian a ploughshare was drawn over the consecrated ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction. Sion was deserted, and the vacant space of the lower city was filled with the public and private edifices which spread themselves over the adjacent hill of Calvary. The holy places were polluted with monuments of idolatry; and, either from design or accident, a chapel was dedicated to Venus on the spot which had been sanctified by the death and resurrectionof Christ. Almost 300 years after these stupendous events the profane chapel of Venus was demolished by the order of Constantine, and the removal of the earth and stone revealed the Holy Sepulchre to the eyes of mankind. A magnificent church was erected on that mystic ground by the first Christian emperor; and the effects of his pious munificence were extended to every spot which had been consecrated by the footsteps of patriarchs and prophets and the Son of God.’

Admirably Gibbon puts the case. Nevertheless, from that praiseworthy zeal on the part of Constantine, innumerable woes and awful demoralization have ensued. The history of Jerusalem has been dark and dolorous ever since. The priests reaped a golden harvest, and found a believing generation ever ready to accept even the most marvellous of their statements, the Empress Helena leading the way. The clergy made the most of these devout pilgrimages, and exhibited their powers of invention on an enormous scale. The more the pilgrims demanded, the greater the supply. The clergy fixed the scene of each memorable event. They exhibited the instruments which had been used in the passion of Christ: the nails and the lance that had pierced His hands, His feet, and His side; the crown of thorns that was planted on His head; the pillar at which he was scourged; and, above all, they showed the cross on which He had suffered—dug miraculously out of the ground! It seems to us impossible that the credulity of people could ever have been so great; but, alas! there are no miracles or traditions which devoted men and women are unable to swallow. Such miracles as seemed necessary found ample credence.

‘The custody of thetrue cross, which on Easter Tuesday,’ writes Gibbon, ‘was solemnly exposed to the people, was intrusted to the Bishop of Jerusalem; and he alone might gratify the curious devotion of the pilgrims by the gift of small pieces, which they enchased in gold or gems, and carried away in triumph to their respective countries. But as this gainful branch of commerce must soon have been annihilated, it was found convenient to suppose that the marvellous wood possessed a secret power of vegetation, and that its substance, though continually diminished, still remained entire and unimpaired.’ That is enough. It is unnecessary to carry our investigations any further. The only relics in which I could believe were the spurs of that grand old crusader, Godfrey of Bouillon. In that city of pretended sanctity, with its doubtful hallowed ground, it does one good to think of Campbell’s vigorous lines, never more applicable than now:

‘To incantations dost thou trust,And pompous rites in domes august?See, mouldering stone and metal’s rustBelie the vauntThat man can bless one pile of dustWith chime or chaunt.’

Be that as it may, all steps in Jerusalem are dogged with doubt. You hear a great deal more than you can believe. We tread on ruins and know what they are,—so far we can believe their testimony. Yet the city is full of surpassing interest. ‘After Rome,’ writes Dr. Russell Forbes, in his valuable little work, ‘The Holy City: its Topography, Walls, and Temples,’ ‘there is no city which appeals to the feelings like Jerusalem; the sympathy is deeper and stronger than that of Athens, which we place third on the list. Asthe sympathy towards the Eternal City is derived from profane history, so as it were in opposition, one’s feelings toward the Holy City owe their origin to sacred history. These two cities, sacred and profane, stand out boldly on the world’s surface like the figures in Titian’s celebrated picture—one appealing to the sun, the other to the wind. The sacred is more ancient than the profane, and the wind of controversy has swept equally over both, while the spade of modern science has in each case confounded the sceptic and established the truth of the unbroken records of the past.’ That is putting the case rather strongly. At any rate, in studying the topography of Ancient Rome the authorities are many. In Jerusalem they are few—but the Bible, Josephus and the Talmud. It is only of late that we got at the real Jerusalem. It was not till explorations, surveys, and excavations were made that anything beyond tradition, mostly false, was known of the ancient city. It is below its modern level that one has to trace the remains of the real Jerusalem. As Byron wrote of Rome, so we may say of the Holy City:

‘The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fireHave dealt upon the seven-hilled city’s pride.She saw her glories star by star expire,And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide,Temple and tower went down, nor left a site:Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,O’er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,And say, “Here was, or is,” where all is doubly night?’

It was not till 1868 that the time arrived for cheap excursions to Jerusalem. The credit of the idea is to be given to the late Mr. Thomas Cook. In the time of the Crusades the bands which visited Palestine did sounder a leader. At a later date parties travelled in the form of a caravan. Before visiting the lands of the Bible Mr. Cook consulted that eminent traveller and at one time popular author and lecturer, Mr. James Silk Buckingham, as to the best route,—and collected information from every available quarter. Then he made the trip by himself in 1868. On his return home he advertised a tour in Palestine and the Nile in the following spring. Before a month had elapsed thirty-two ladies and gentlemen had taken tickets for the trip to the Nile and Palestine, and thirty to Palestine only; and now they come by the hundred at a time, so popular is the trip. From the year 1868 up to 1891, 1,200 persons had visited Palestine under Cook’s protection. Many of these travellers held high social positions, such as their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, Prince George of Wales; their Imperial Highnesses the Grand Duke and Duchess Sergius, the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, the King of Servia, and other travellers of distinction. It is a part of the business of the firm much patronized by American tourists and the clergy of all denominations. Up to the time of the firm taking up the matter, travellers were at the mercy of savage chiefs, who made them pay dearly for the permission which they granted to pass through their districts. These chiefs were as fickle as they were avaricious, and as dilatory as they were exacting. All this vexatious delay has vanished. When you start you are certain of arrival at the day indicated, and of being able to return in a similar manner. Moreover, the element of danger has been eliminated. You are safe in Jerusalem as in London—perhaps safer; for asthere is always danger in the streets of London from hardened criminals and careless drivers of cabs and omnibuses, and the ever-increasing multitude of men and women who have taken to the bicycle—and ‘rush in where angels fear to tread.’

Finally, after Omar and Saladin, Syria and Palestine were conquered by Selim, and since then, with the slight advent of the Crusaders, have formed part of the Turkish Empire. The inhabitants complain a good deal of the injustice and corruption of the Turkish tax-gatherers, and I fancy not without reason; but that the city is prosperous and flourishing now is evident to the most superficial observer, from the number of new buildings erected in every direction. I believe it is a fact that the number of people living outside the city is far greater than the population within. It is a fashion to build schools and churches and convents everywhere, Russia in this respect standing ahead of the rest. I don’t care to go into the city. What I see there is all fiction, hallowed, if you like, by the superstition of ages. In the daytime all is noise and confusion. The trader sits in his little shop in a narrow street, covered from the sun, and there the people collect in every variety of costume—some in rags and almost naked; others, like the cavass of some consulate, in a dark, showy dress, with a grand sword hanging from his thigh; but the prevailing fashion seems to be a brown or blue jacket hanging over a print skirt extending down to the feet. Some are almost as black as niggers.

Immense as is the traffic of the city and the noise and tumult by day, the silence by night is equally wonderful. There is no living soul or body to be seen in the streets by night—nor a light; not even the barkof a dog is heard. There is scarce a street in which you can walk comfortably either inside Jerusalem or outside. There are stones everywhere to throw you down, and then there is the dust. That deserves a chapter in itself. It is simply awful. There is a cartload of it inside me now. It is white as snow; it fills the air; you can see nothing. As we got out of the railway-station, and got into carriages to drive towards the hotel, we could not see an inch of the way on account of the dust. To make it worse, the drivers all set out at full speed, and in the race to get in first it seemed to me that a collision was inevitable; however, happily, no casualty occurred. A poor unfortunate donkey was run over—that was all.

As an illustration of what the natives have to suffer under Turkish rule, let me give the following account of a gossip with a driver I met with. His father had died and left him a little property in the fertile plain of Sharon. The man did all he could to improve it—fenced it with stones, dug it over and enriched the soil, planted olive-trees and dates, and then, when the crop was nearly ready, the Turkish taxpayer came and demanded a third of the estimated value, and got it. In a fortnight after he was visited by the Bedouins, who took another third, and in the end the poor man had to give up his little farm. The Turks are bad, but the lawless Bedouins who harry the land are infinitely worse. For instance, one of our party drove down to Jericho by himself. He got out to walk in one part of the road, and got ahead of his driver. Immediately he found himself surrounded by a crew of these ruffians. Happily, he had with him the American Consul’s cavass, who, seeing the position, came up with hisGeneral view of Jerusalem from the Convent of the Sisters of Zionloaded revolver, at the sight of which the gentleman was rescued, as the rascals fled. There is no taming the Bedouin of the desert. He only owns the rule of his sheikh. The Turkish ruler of the province is afraid of him, and actually pays him a tribute to be allowed to send his yearly offering to Mecca. No wonder the land is bare of life. It is a wonder that there is any cultivation at all. The people are forced to live in villages, remote from one another, and there they defend themselves against the enemy as best they can. You see nowhere a farmhouse, a cottage, or country house. For miles and miles not a human habitation is visible.

As most of us are sitting half asleep in the smoking-room after our mid-day meal, a wailing sound reaches my ears. I rush to the window and see a funeral procession. Someone has died in one of the houses above us, and they are bearing the dead body into the city for burial. About 100 men and women follow, wailing as they go, while on each side of the coffin—a very unsightly structure borne on a rude bier—walk the black-robed priests, evidently of the Greek Church. The sight is not particularly imposing as the procession makes its way, while the world goes on selling and buying much as usual. I pity the poor mourners and the priests as they move slowly along. I know not, but perhaps the presence of so many priests may indicate that the deceased was a person of some consequence in his community.

I resume my writing, and then a native comes in to rub off the white dust which has come in through the open window. It is impossible to keep out the fine white dust, and all day the flies are equally troublesome.I hear of some of the ladies being bitten by the mosquitoes, but the latter, happily, leave me alone. The courteous manners of the dragomans who fill the hall of the hotel are amusing. All of them seem much interested as to my health, and anxiously inquire how I slept. As I write, Mr. Howard’s nephew is arranging the papers in the smoking-room; a native enters, who kisses the back of his hand with effusion—aThe Church of the Holy Sepulchrepledge, I learn, of faithful service. As to the people in general, they seem to be mere drudges and to have little idea of amusement; amusement in the Holy City is not tolerated. Now and then you see in the narrow, darkened streets a few sitting round a hookah, enjoying a quiet smoke, but the people, dressed out in all the colours of the rainbow, plod up and down wearily in a never-ending stream, in pursuance of their dailytasks. A good deal of building is going on outside the city walls. There is no scaffolding, no hodman with bricks and mortar; the solid stone walls seem to grow up in the most hopeless confusion. Of course you see no decent carriages. Around the door of the hotel there is a daily collection of donkeys and horses and carriages, the last all white with dust and of the most rickety character. One would think they would fall to pieces over the bad roads, almost as bad as those of Constantinople; but I hear of no accident, though it seems as you watch the flying crowd that one may occur at any moment.

As I chat with my dragoman, I ask him if he is married. His reply is that he cannot afford it; it would cost him £60 to get a wife. Perhaps it were as well that the cost of a wife in England were as much; we might have fewer marriages of the kind that tend to misery and want. The servants in the hotel seemed remarkably honest. There was a lock to my door, but I could not get it to act, so my room remained unlocked, and I missed nothing, even when one morning I left my purse on the table, containing all my money, when I went to breakfast. A breakfast consists of hot rolls, good coffee, and delicious honey. At lunch the first course consists of olives, radishes, lemons and vegetables, which are supposed to create an appetite. At dinner we have a wonderful lot of stewed flesh, and vegetables are often served up as a separate course. In the evening the hall is lighted up with many lamps, and the dealers come and turn it into a bazaar. They are not above making a considerable reduction. But really there is very little manufactured in Jerusalem—the Sacred City. Oh, how I loathe the term as Itread the church of the reputed Holy Sepulchre—its stones slippery with the tread of millions of pilgrims in all ages, its sacred shrines worn away by the kisses of the faithful. As I sit outside, a cripple comes to a pillar of the door, on which a cross has been rudely carved. He kisses that cross and stands there praying. Those poor devotees—how they kiss, and kneel, and crawl, and pray!

The most interesting man I have seen is the Rev. Ben Oliel. Born in Morocco in 1826, a man wonderfully active for his years, you would not take him to be more than sixty at the best. At Tangiers he attended the Rabbinical schools, learning Spanish at home, Arabic out of doors, and Hebrew and Chaldee at school. He speaks English with great readiness and fluency. When eighteen years of age he read the New Testament for the first time, but his father took it away from him—however, not before a spirit of inquiry was raised in his mind. In 1847, while visiting at Gibraltar, he became acquainted with a Christian friend, who gave him the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and ‘Keith on Prophecy’ to read. From them he learnt that Jesus was the Messiah and the Saviour of men. He then resolved to come to England to prepare to preach the Gospel to the Jews. The committee of the Society for the Promotion of Christianity among the Jews accepted his services, and sent him to labour in Gibraltar and North Africa. During a visit to England in 1850 he translated the Gospel of St. Luke into Hebrew-Spanish, and also a number of tracts into Hebrew and Spanish. In 1852 he was ordained to the ministry in Orange Street Chapel, London, by twelve ministers representing Presbyterian, Congregational,Baptist, and Lutheran Churches. Shortly after he was recognised by the Presbytery of Edinburgh as a minister, and ordained a missionary of that church, and was sent to Thessalonica and Smyrna, where he established missions. Later on his old society—the British—sent him to Algiers, when he succeeded in inducing his relatives to become Christians, who are now usefully employed in Christian work. Mr. Ben Oliel has been twice married—first to a daughter of Rev. B. Lewis, a Baptist minister of London, and then, after a widowerhood of some years, to a sister of Mr. Seeley, Vicar of Clacton-on-Sea, and a cousin of Professor Seeley, author of ‘Ecce Homo.’

We next find him in Spain. In Cadiz he laboured with much success, sometimes having a congregation of 1,000 hearers. He opened schools for both sexes, where he had as many as 360 children. His success provoked the animosity and opposition of the Romish priests, who started a newspaper to put him down. Thence, for reasons perfectly satisfactory, he returned to his old scene of labour in Algeria, and commenced a very successful mission at Oran. From Oran he was sent to Rome to labour among the Jews, and then the question was put to him—would he go to Jerusalem? To this question there could be only one, and that an affirmative, reply. In the ancient city he is certainly the right man in the right place. In the first place, he can converse in Hebrew with learned Jews and Rabbis, with whom the city is full. It is a curious fact that Hebrew is fast becoming a living tongue in Jerusalem, as is evident from the fact that the only newspapers now published in Palestine are two weeklies in Jerusalem, both in the Hebrew tongue. Anotheradvantage Mr. Ben Oliel possesses is that he can talk to the Sephardim Spanish Jews in their own dialect; and they, it seems, are the most ancient in the city and the most easy of access; and then, again, as an undenominationalist, he has provided an upper room, where he holds an English service on a Sunday, sometimes attended by as many as 100 English-speaking travellers from all parts of the world. His work is now entirely supported by friends, especially Americans, who sympathize in his aim. He has no great society at his back; he fights on his own behalf, in faith that the supplies when needed will come. In his work he is greatly aided by his devoted wife and daughter, who have established schools—one of them a sewing-class of girls, to which I paid a visit.

In his schools Mr. Oliel met with great opposition from the Jewish Rabbis. They held a conference on the subject. The outcome of their conference was seen the following Saturday. Great and solemn warning was preached in every synagogue at morning prayer to the Jews not to continue going to the Christians, and earnest pleading with them to put an end to this sin in Israel. On the doors of all synagogues, inside and outside town, were placards, some of which were handed to individuals. Here is a translation of one:

‘Inasmuch as we hear that two schools of the English have been opened, one inside and the other outside the town, and women, sons and daughters of the Israelite people are going to them, and according to the information that reaches us they are stumbling in the sin of idolatry, for above all they are required tobelieve in their religion, as their conditions, as it is heard; we heard and our bowels trembled, how can it be that because of straits we should forsake our faith, God forbid, and believe in the sin of idolatry, and the end will be that in a short time they will abandon the Holy Law and turn to the law of the Protestants, God forbid, whose whole interest is to tempt and push precious souls of Israel and bring them to their faith, thereupon they are told in the name of theFirst in Zion, and in the name of the exalted Rabbis, evenall the fathers of the House of Judges,the righteous, and in the name of all the Rabbis, that from this day forward, after we have given them to understand the heavy forbidden thing they are doing—certain that Israel are holy—they should withdraw and not go to those places, neither women nor young men, nor girls or little children at all, and let them trust in the Blessed be His Name, who feeds and nourishes all, and to whom is the power and the greatness, and let them not think for a moment of benefit, whose end is bitter like poison of losing their Judaism, God forbid; and no benefit will they derive from those cents, and keep this exhortation before their eyes continually all the days; and in eight days from to-day those schools will be found empty, that no Jew’s foot shall tread in them any more, which we shall hear and rejoice, and if, which God forbid, that time arriving and any still continue to go, let them know assuredly that as they sought to separate themselves from the community of the people of Israel, we also therefore will endeavour with all our strength to separate from them. If sons are born to them, there will be no one to circumcise them, if any get married, there will be no one to give the nuptial blessings. Ifany die, they will not be buried with the Jews. The women will not be married to Jews. To young men no Jewesses will be given. They will be a separate people. We trust that from this day forward they will withdraw from the said schools, and despise them as unclean, and will not go near their doors; and will have trust in God, exalted be His Name, preferring to starve to death as Jews, and not arrive to this measure [of punishment]. And let them not suppose that we shall be silent, but we shall persecute them to the bitter end as far as our hands can reach.‘Blessing to those who obey.’Seal of the Chief Rabbi.Seal of the Judges.

‘Blessing to those who obey.’Seal of the Chief Rabbi.

Seal of the Judges.

Considering that the Rabbis have considerable sums of money sent them from abroad to distribute among the poor every month, and that many houses are given to the worthy penniless free of rent for several years, it is no wonder that the parents of the little ones were afraid to disobey their tyrannic rulers, and kept their children away from the school.

I find the Y.M.C.A. have a branch here, founded by Mr. Hind Smith in 1890, and are doing useful work, and just outside the Jaffa Gate is a depot for the sale of Bibles. But I have been somewhat astonished at the bitter, exclusive spirit displayed in some quarters where I might have hoped for better things. It is difficult for a Jew to make a profession of Christianity. If he does so, he has to leave the place at once. The strong caste spirit among the Jews is also very great. The high caste will not associate with the men of a lower caste. But where people dare not go to therecognised agencies for Jewish conversion, many come to Mr. Oliel for a chat, and Turks as well. Such missionary work as he does seems to be of the right stamp and worthy of British support. An increasing interest is being taken in Jerusalem, though, alas! I cannot say with the Psalmist, ‘Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof.’ They are my stumbling-block by night and day.

BETHLEHEM.

The one spot in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem which one must visit is Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Christ, the music of whose voice and the lustre of whose life have brightened and bettered all the ages, dark and dreary as many of them have been, ever since. It is difficult to visit such a place alone; it is impossible to visit it in company with a garrulous and credulous crowd. I had for companions an esteemed clergyman from Leeds and an Oxford scholar, a man of infinite learning and wit. There had been rain overnight, and the dust was not so much of a nuisance as it generally is, and, besides, we had a refreshing breeze. We did the whole trip between breakfast and lunch. Starting in one of the shabby-looking carriages—the only available vehicle in these parts, which one expects to break down every minute—drawn by a couple of half-starved steeds, it rattled along over the stones at a speed for which one was scarcely prepared. On my way I learned a fact that I may not have mentioned before—viz., that at Constantinople the Sultan had given special orders for the comfort of the excursionists arriving in theMidnight Sunby placing a guard of soldiers aroundthe ship to keep off the crowd, and by giving special orders that the party were to be everywhere received with courtesy and respect. As regards myself, seeing that not very long since the Sultan had ordered one of my books to be burnt, I must own that I felt his conduct in this matter to redound very much to his credit.

We leave our hotel by the road running to the right from outside the Jaffa Gate, and admire very much the long range of neat almshouses built for the poor Jews by the late Sir Moses Montefiore, leaving the Hill of Evil Counsel to the left, and the pretty, red-roofed, clean-looking village inhabited by the German Templars’ community to the right. Then the road passes by the Valley of Rephaim on the right, where David fought twice with the Philistines and conquered them, the signal for the battle the second time being given by a ‘going in the tops of the mulberry-trees,’ which betokened the presence of the Lord. A round stone on the left denotes the well in which, when quenching their thirst, the Wise Men from the East beheld once more reflected in its waters, to their ‘exceeding great joy,’ the star which led them in search of the new-born King of the Jews. On our left is the convent of Mar Elias, now occupied by a brotherhood belonging to the Greek Church. Far off on our right is Giloh, white and glittering in the sun, where dwelt Ahithophel, the Gilonite, David’s counsellor. It is now a village inhabited exclusively by Christians.

Again, on our right, we come to Rachel’s Tomb, at a point where the great highroad to Hebron is left for the road to Bethlehem. There is no dispute as to the identity of Rachel’s tomb; at any rate, for ages thesame legend has been connected with the spot. For hundreds of years the site was marked by a pyramid of twelve stones, placed there for the twelve tribes of Israel. The present monument, built by the Moslems, is white—as every building is in this part of the world—an oblong erection, with a small dome on the top. One of my learned friends points to the whiteness ofBethlehem. (From a Photograph by Fradelle and Young)the limestone which lines all the roads, and which is utilized in all the buildings, whether private or public, as an illustration of the falsehood of the legend connected with the home of Our Lady of Loretto, which, according to monkish legend, flew all the way from Palestine to Italy, where yet it remains. The stone of that building is red, a significant proof of the falsehood of the tale. The next point of interest is David’s Well,in commemoration of the incident recorded in Samuel, when the Philistines being in possession of the town, and David in a hold in or near Cave Adullam, he said: ‘Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate! And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, which was by the gate, and took it and brought it to David; nevertheless, he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said . . . Is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives?’

And now I am in Bethlehem—not a simple country village, as many imagine, but a densely-populated town, with winding, narrow ways, where men and women and children, camels, donkeys, and carriages, seem mixed up in wild disorder. On every side we are shut in with habitations—stony, bare of windows, built high up, with here and there a shop, but chiefly with a simple door on the ground-floor; and then we dash into the market-place, and apparently it is market-day, and half of the open space is filled with buyers and sellers in many-coloured garments of the East; and down on us come the guides and small pedlars, shrieking, ejaculating, spluttering in broken English, just as Byron tells us the Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold.

We enter the Church of the Nativity, regarded as the very oldest specimen of Christian architecture; and a very ugly building it is. In one of the remote quarters I came to an old stone font, bearing the inscription: ‘For the memory, repose and forgiveness of sinners, of whom the Lord knows the name.’ Here,in 1161, Baldwin was crowned King of Jerusalem. Look up at the roof as you pass along, of pure wood and lead, furnished in 1482 by Edward IV. of England and Philip of Burgundy. The guardianship of the church is divided among Greeks, Armenians, and Latins. We are supplied with tapers, and go down in the cave where the Christ was born. A little further on is the place of the manger in which He was laid. In another section of the cave, all hewn out of the solid rock, Joseph is said to have slept when he was warned by God in a dream to take Mary and her child and fly into Egypt. Again, we are shown the spot where the children massacred by King Herod were interred. Fifteen lamps perpetually illuminate the subterranean Church of the Nativity, near which is the Altar of the Adoration, which commemorates the visit of the Magi. Amidst darkness visible we make our way to the cave in which St. Jerome wrote his great work, the translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Vulgate or Latin tongue. It is a dark and dreary spot, and near by we are shown his tomb. One can scarce credit the story of his having done such work in such a corner, or believe that there he lived to reach the ripe age of ninety-two. A year in such a spot would be enough to kill an ordinary orthodox Christian in these degenerate days. I make my exit speedily into the upper air. I have seen enough for one day; no lying legend can tempt me further. The enormous pile of churches built up over the sacred sites, and inhabited by priests of rival Churches, who hate each other like poison, are too much for me.

Bethlehem is the market-place of the Dead Sea Bedouins, and also of the numerous small towns andvillages in the vicinity, and has besides some nourishing manufactures of its own. Its inhabitants are almost exclusively Christian. The people are chiefly employed in the production of embroidered dresses, and in carving in a beautiful way mother-of-pearl. I hear that they are an intelligent and industrious people, and that there are plenty of schools for the children. The women are said to be fair, but I see none such. On our way back we are shown the Field of the Shepherds, sloping up a neighbouring hill. It was there the angel of the Lord appeared to them as they watched their sheep by night. We pass by also the Pools of Solomon—three reservoirs made by the great King for supplying the inhabitants of Jerusalem with water. All the country round is a scene of great activity, as is evident from the enormous amount of terraces to be seen everywhere planted with the universal olive-tree. But at this time we see nothing but stones, with here and there a few black goats climbing the mountain-sides; all life seems to have withered up under the scorching sun. The Wells of Solomon contain no water, the hills no sign of vegetation. They are dry, and so are we.

On the whole, after my visit to Bethlehem, I quite agree with an American writer—the Rev. Mr. Tompkins—in his remarks on the church built by the Empress Helena. While vast, imposing, and suggestive of past glory, it is a fitting monument of that kind of Christianity which, let us hope, is relegated to the past. No instance of an enormous expensive building could show more clearly the folly of erecting to God that which has no earthly use. Unless men can see in future ages that Christianity is for man, and not forGod, I fancy that religion will perish from the earth. To-day one stands in this edifice, which in point of size is justly comparable with any church in the world, and wonders what rash folly ever possessed the Empress to waste so much money. It is so dreary, so cold, so deserted, so utterly the shell of Christianity, that Christianity seems a very farce right here where it began.

THE JEW IN JERUSALEM.

One of the most interesting evenings I spent in Jerusalem was in listening to a lecture by Dr. Wheeler, of the English Hospital in the city, who is now seeking to build a hospital for the Jews there. He is also, I believe, connected with the London Society which is seeking to bring over the Jew to the knowledge of the Messiah, a task by no means easy, as the conviction of the Jew—that the promised Messiah is yet to come—is not easily to be dispelled. I came over with a converted Jew—a clergyman in London. His parents, who were wealthy, lived in Jerusalem. In order to become a Christian he had to sacrifice all his worldly prospects, and aroused such bitter enmity on the part of his relatives that, though he had made the journey for the sake of seeing his dying mother, he almost despaired of an interview, and had to wait five days before his object was achieved.

But to return to Dr. Wheeler. He has been at work in Jerusalem eleven years, and his knowledge of the state of the Jews is profound. The Jews, he told us, in Palestine may be roughly divided into four classes: The Ashkenazim, comprising the fair-haired, sallowGerman Jew, the Russian, Polish, American, etc., who speak Yiddish, and enjoy the protection of the consuls of the countries to which they belong; the Sephardim, or Spanish Jews, many of whom still wear the black turban imposed on them by the mad Caliph Halim; the Gemenites, who have only recently come to the land—they are dark, and wear their hair in side-curls; and the Karaites, a sect which sprang up about the eighth century. These reject the Talmud and deny the authority of the Oral Law; they are few in number, and have but one small synagogue; the orthodox religious Jews have no religious intercourse with them, and regard them as heretics. The Ashkenazim adapt themselves to any costume. The Sephardim all wear the dignified and beautiful Oriental costume. All unite in wearing the love-locks. As to the women, they all dress in Oriental costume, and wear their heads covered. On the Sabbath they are all dressed in their best. Charms are worn on the heads and foreheads and necks of young children, and a sprig of green is worn also as a charm against the evil eye. The Rabbis generally wear long flowing robes, trimmed with fur, and also a turban.

Specially-appointed Rabbis see that the food is properly prepared, as everything must bekosha, or legally clean. Milk must not be taken before or after meat. No Christian food on any account may be consumed; even eggs cooked in Christian pots are refused. Only Jewish wine may be drunk, and if a bottle of it is only touched by a Christian it becomes unclean. The social and religious life of the Jew is identical. The birth of a son causes great rejoicing, and improvesthe social status of the mother. Circumcision on the eighth day, if the child is strong enough, is a holy festival. After eighteen all Jews are expected to marry. Although facilities of divorce are large, they are not often resorted to.

One is struck, said Dr. Wheeler, in living among Jews, with the fact that religion amongst them is not only a creed or an act of observance, but that it pervades every relationship and dominates every phase of life. The Sabbath is the pivot round which family life moves. It is a day of real rejoicing, accompanied by a complete suspension of work. It begins with the cup of blessing, of wine mixed with water, of which all partake. The Sabbath lamp is lit. No burial is allowed on that day. No phylacteries are worn while the Cohenites give the Aaronic blessing—‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee,’ etc. Visiting the sick has great merit. According to the Talmud, eleven visits to the sick will release a soul from Gehenna. All are enjoined to follow funerals, and to pay honour to the remains of the dead. After death the body is allowed to remain awhile unburied. The creed of the Jew is as ancient as the beginning of history. With it are connected the triumphs and struggles and defeats of ages. What strange and opposite feelings has the name of Jew created! What appalling deeds have been perpetrated in connection with his name! The Jew is in every sense, as Dr. Wheeler eloquently told us, the marvel of history—the wonder of the ages—the anomaly of nations. So it has been for upwards of 4,000 years. He is Heaven’s great witness on earth of earth’s righteous King in heaven. Nations have risen and fallen. Mighty empires have crumbledto decay. Assyria, Greece, Carthage, where are they? Yet the Jew—scattered, despised, persecuted, and trampled under foot—has never disappeared. Nay, more, he has risen to be a light and guide to the nations; and many are the statesmen and artists and philosophers who have had Jewish blood in their veins. And yet, say certain good people, the Jews are under a curse. Well, perhaps they are—when poor. Poor people, it seems to me, are under a curse all the world over. To the Jews, Jerusalem is the one holy city, and here they come to die and be buried in its sacred soil. Wealthy Jews in all parts of the world give freely for charity and for charitable purposes, and it is this wealth that brings so many poor Jews to Jerusalem. By these benefactors Jewish children are educated gratuitously. They have three synagogues, all very ancient, and the beautiful pale-green dome of one of them is a conspicuous feature in the view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Jews, because they persecuted the Christ, are not allowed to pass before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They are also still rigorously excluded from the Moslem sanctuary, where it is said stood King Solomon’s Temple in all its glory, though Christians have been admitted of late years to this jealously-guarded spot, containing as it does the Dome of the Rock—a very precious spot in Moslem eyes. Alas! everywhere the Jew in Jerusalem has to come in contact with ‘the pig of a Turk,’ as he contemptuously calls him. I wonder the wealthy Jews do not buy Jerusalem or Palestine itself of the Sultan, who, however, does all he can to keep the Jews from returning there to live and die. Notwithstanding the place it fills in the world’s history, thecountry is a small one. As it is, the Jews in Jerusalem have the greater part of the trade of the city in their hands. They own the shops and the cabs, and their numbers increase every day, very much, as I have said, against the wishes of the Sultan himself.

It is an awful history, that of the Jew in Jerusalem, of incessant revolt on the part of the people, of incessant conquest and massacre on the part of the sanguinary conquerors. Again and again the Jew seemed on the brink of extermination. Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Titus, Hadrian, successively exerted their utmost power to extinguish, not merely the political existence of the State, but even the separate being of the people. Hadrian, to annihilate for ever, writes Dean Milman, all hopes of the restoration of the Jewish kingdom, accomplished his plan of founding a new city on the site of Jerusalem, peopled by a colony of foreigners. The city was called Ælia Capitolina: Ælia after the prænomen of the Emperor, Capitolina as dedicated to the Jupiter of the Capitol. An edict was published to prevent any Jew from entering the new city under pain of death, or approaching its environs even at a distance so as to contemplate its sacred height. More effectually to keep them away, the image of a swine was placed over the gate leading to Bethlehem. The more peaceful Christians were permitted to establish themselves within the walls, and Ælia became the seat of a flourishing church and bishopric. At a later period Julian the Apostate—as the ecclesiastical writers term one of the noblest men who ever wore the imperial purple—embraced the extraordinary design of rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem. In a public epistle to the nation or communityof the Jews, he pities their misfortunes, condemns their oppressors, praises their constancy, declares himself their gracious protector, and hopes, after his return from the Persian war, he may be permitted to pay his grateful vows to the Almighty in the holy city of Jerusalem. The Jews from every part of the world gave freely to assist this pious enterprise. According to the Christian writers, Heaven interfered, and the Temple was left unbuilt. This glorious deliverance was speedily improved by the pious art of the clergy of Jerusalem and the active credulity of the Christian world. It is evident, as Gibbon remarks, the restoration of the Jewish Temple was secretly connected with the ruin of the Christian Church, a Church for which Julian had little love. From the confessions of Jerome himself, Jerusalem seemed saturated with every form of vice and crime.

They tell me the Jew is blind because he is waiting for the coming Messiah, but, I ask, are we not all waiting for a coming Messiah? And the sooner He comes the better for all of us, Jew and Gentile alike. If the Jew is waiting for a coming Messiah, that is surely to his credit—that he remains true to the teaching of his fathers—and shows him to be no more blind than those of us who piously await the dawn of a millennium, which, according to all human appearances, seems as far off as ever. When the Turkish Empire breaks up, it will be no easy matter how to settle in whose hands Jerusalem shall be placed. There may be a terrible fight about the Holy City yet.

It is now the fashion for everyone to rush to Jerusalem. At one time to go there required no little expenditure of money, and time, and trouble. Anexcursion-steamer takes you there for a trifle compared with the expense of the journey only a few years ago. You land at Jaffa, take the train to Jerusalem, and in due time find yourself outside the Jaffa Gate, guarded by Turkish soldiers. Amidst a dirty, many-coloured mob of donkeys, camels, and people, exhausted by the heat, suffocated by the dust, and bewildered by the noise, you are at the Holy City, as lying superstition terms it. It certainly is not Jerusalem the golden, but is very much the reverse. Its smells are indescribable, and to drink its water is death. Your first wonder is why David and Solomon should ever have made it a royal residence at all. It is a city set upon a hill, but it is dominated by hills all round, where no verdure is seen, and where the black goat alone finds a scanty existence. Climb one of these hills, and you look down on the gray, stony city, surrounded by a high wall, over which rise minarets, and mosques, and church spires in wild confusion. There is nothing to charm the eye there. Enter through one of the gates, and you are still more disappointed. You wander in hopeless confusion, shut in on all sides by lofty buildings, with no windows to speak of, only here and there a door; or you plunge into a street with a dark awning, which serves as a bazaar, with shops of all kinds around, where so dense is the crowd that it is with difficulty you make your way. Poverty seems to be the prevailing characteristic of the place. Even the shops fail to attract.

Money is the one thing Jerusalem sucks in as a thirsty soul does water when it comes, and many well-meaning people find there a living prepared for them who would otherwise have to starve. As to the realstate of the people you never hear a word. The Turkish tax-gatherer may grind them down. The wild Bedouin of the desert may come and take what the tax-gatherer has left. But you hear nothing of that, and the daily topic of conversation among the European settlers is the repetition of dogma and the fulfilment of prophecy. It is not till you have cleared out, taken the rail to Jaffa, and sail along the blue waters of the Mediterranean, that you get rid of the nightmare, have done with cant, and once more breathe free.

The fact is, the Holy City is one gigantic fraud. All we know is that there Christ lived and laboured and suffered and died. Not a stone remains of the Jerusalem over whose impending fate He shed bitter tears. The cunning of an interested priesthood has done all the rest, from the discovery of the true cross by the mother of Constantine, to the holy fire which is seen at Easter by a panting, perspiring crowd in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The town itself covers an area of more than 209 acres, of which thirty-five are occupied by the Haram-esh-Sherif. The remaining space is occupied by Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews.

The Greek Church is the strongest branch of the Christians in Jerusalem, having eighteen monasteries, with schools, churches, a hospital, hospice, and a printing press. The Russian church on the Mount of Olives is the grandest ecclesiastical building in the city of the modern type. The Roman Catholics have fine churches, monasteries, and convents. The Armenian Patriarch resides in his convent between the Jaffa and Zion gates. The Latins, Abyssinians, and Copts are also well represented. The Knights Templars of theHoly Sepulchre, a Roman Catholic body under the patronage of the Emperor of Austria, have a fine convent just outside the walls. Priests, and nuns, and sisters of mercy, and devotees, meet you at every turn.

One ought to go to Jerusalem if only to see what priests can build up on small foundations, and to what length superstition can be carried, even in what are termed days of light and progress. In this respect the Turk is as great a sinner as the Christian, and tells you how at the resurrection the risen will have to cross the Valley of Jehosaphat by a bridge of the Prophet’s hair, from which the wicked will fall straight to Gehenna, while to the righteous heaven, with its houris, will open its diamond gates. You see in Jerusalem what you see nowhere else, a city built up by religion, true or false.

In a letter from the Rev. Ben Oliel to a friend, he says:

‘You want to know what is (1) the actual population of Jerusalem; (2) the Jewish population in it; and (3) the number of Jews in all Palestine.‘The Turkish Government, like that of other lands, has its statistical “bureau”—office; but whatever may be its success in the European provinces of the empire, here in Asia its computations are believed to be imperfect, unreliable, and mainly guesswork. The conscription and consequent tax for exemption from military service operate against it. The heads of the several religious communities—Turkish or Moslem, Jewish, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Copt, Maronite, Melchite, etc.—who co-operate in the census, have powerful motives to frustrate exactitude, for it means a larger annual taxation, for which they are maderesponsible; and, apart from this, the inhabitants have strong prejudices against being numbered. Therefore, all estimates of population are merely approximate, and nothing more.‘A young Jew of the highest family in this city, who is employed in offices of trust in the Pasha’s court and has access to official records, a convert of this mission, who confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus on October 27, tells me that in official circles the population of Jerusalem, including its suburbs—Bethlehem, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, etc.—is now computed at 100,000, of which 60,000 are believed to be Jews; and he declares my estimate of the general population of Jerusalem and its immediate suburbs at from 65,000 to 70,000, and the Jewish at about 40,000, to be far too low. He is custodian of the roll of the Sephardim poor—widows, orphans, blind and decrepit old men and their families—amounting to 7,000 souls, that have to be provided for regularly; and yet the Ashkenazim constitute the majority of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem now, and they have a roll of poor as large proportionately. He says the Sephardim pay £1,000 annually for exemption from military service, and the Ashkenazim £1,250, which, at the rate of twomedjidisper head, represents 5,625 men of the age liable to service. Jewish families are prolific, and must therefore be calculated at seven rather than five per family, and if one in each family is liable to service, the result is 39,375 souls. But this has reference to the Jewishrayahs—Turkish subjects; whereas there is a large admixture of those under Russian, Austrian, German, etc., protection, who are free from taxation, military or other. By such aprocess of reasoning his estimate of 60,000 Jews for Jerusalem is almost proved mathematically.‘I have before me Luncz’s First Hebrew Almanack for the Jewish year 1895–96, an interesting compilation; it gives the population of Jerusalem thus: “Number of inhabitants 45,420, of which Jews 28,112 (viz., Ashkenazim 15,074, Sephardim 7,900, Mughrabim 2,420, Gurgis 670, Bucharis 530, Tamanites 1,288, Persians 230); Moslems 8,560; Christians 8,748 (viz., Armenians 695, Greeks 4,625, Abyssinians 105, Syrians 23, Protestants 645, Catholics or Latins 2,530, Copts 125).” He does not say so, but he can only mean the populationinside the walls.’

‘You want to know what is (1) the actual population of Jerusalem; (2) the Jewish population in it; and (3) the number of Jews in all Palestine.

‘The Turkish Government, like that of other lands, has its statistical “bureau”—office; but whatever may be its success in the European provinces of the empire, here in Asia its computations are believed to be imperfect, unreliable, and mainly guesswork. The conscription and consequent tax for exemption from military service operate against it. The heads of the several religious communities—Turkish or Moslem, Jewish, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Copt, Maronite, Melchite, etc.—who co-operate in the census, have powerful motives to frustrate exactitude, for it means a larger annual taxation, for which they are maderesponsible; and, apart from this, the inhabitants have strong prejudices against being numbered. Therefore, all estimates of population are merely approximate, and nothing more.

‘A young Jew of the highest family in this city, who is employed in offices of trust in the Pasha’s court and has access to official records, a convert of this mission, who confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus on October 27, tells me that in official circles the population of Jerusalem, including its suburbs—Bethlehem, Bethany, the Mount of Olives, etc.—is now computed at 100,000, of which 60,000 are believed to be Jews; and he declares my estimate of the general population of Jerusalem and its immediate suburbs at from 65,000 to 70,000, and the Jewish at about 40,000, to be far too low. He is custodian of the roll of the Sephardim poor—widows, orphans, blind and decrepit old men and their families—amounting to 7,000 souls, that have to be provided for regularly; and yet the Ashkenazim constitute the majority of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem now, and they have a roll of poor as large proportionately. He says the Sephardim pay £1,000 annually for exemption from military service, and the Ashkenazim £1,250, which, at the rate of twomedjidisper head, represents 5,625 men of the age liable to service. Jewish families are prolific, and must therefore be calculated at seven rather than five per family, and if one in each family is liable to service, the result is 39,375 souls. But this has reference to the Jewishrayahs—Turkish subjects; whereas there is a large admixture of those under Russian, Austrian, German, etc., protection, who are free from taxation, military or other. By such aprocess of reasoning his estimate of 60,000 Jews for Jerusalem is almost proved mathematically.

‘I have before me Luncz’s First Hebrew Almanack for the Jewish year 1895–96, an interesting compilation; it gives the population of Jerusalem thus: “Number of inhabitants 45,420, of which Jews 28,112 (viz., Ashkenazim 15,074, Sephardim 7,900, Mughrabim 2,420, Gurgis 670, Bucharis 530, Tamanites 1,288, Persians 230); Moslems 8,560; Christians 8,748 (viz., Armenians 695, Greeks 4,625, Abyssinians 105, Syrians 23, Protestants 645, Catholics or Latins 2,530, Copts 125).” He does not say so, but he can only mean the populationinside the walls.’

As an illustration of the difficulties awaiting the Jew who is led to renounce Judaism, I quote from a convert’s letter a few particulars:

‘I will briefly say that I commenced the journey of life in Jerusalem as son of one of the first Jewish families that found their way back to the fatherland. According to the custom of our people, my dear mother sent me to school when I was only two. I sat at the feet of our Rabbi school-teachers until I was twelve; then I studied the Rabbis’ commentaries and had an Arab tutor. At thirteen years of age I entered the Seraya, or Government House of Jerusalem. I studied to be an Arabic and Turkish scribe, and attended the Jewish school to learn French.‘In the Government House there are three judges appointed to represent respectively the Christian, Jewish, and Moslem citizens. My uncle is the Jewish judge. At sixteen I became one of the scribes of the Chief Justice, and two years ago his assistant secretary.‘When I used to visit Jaffa I heard about Mr. Ben Oliel from many Jews who frequented his house for discussion and study of God’s Word. In 1890 he came up to Jerusalem, and at last I met him. The first time that I called upon him I was in company with my father, my uncle the judge, the son of the Chief Rabbi, and another Rabbi, one of the judges of the Jewish Court.‘The Chief Rabbi appoints twelve judges, who each serve a term of three months every year, and every dispute between Jews must first be brought before them, and, if needs be, is referred by them to the Turkish Court.’

‘In the Government House there are three judges appointed to represent respectively the Christian, Jewish, and Moslem citizens. My uncle is the Jewish judge. At sixteen I became one of the scribes of the Chief Justice, and two years ago his assistant secretary.

‘When I used to visit Jaffa I heard about Mr. Ben Oliel from many Jews who frequented his house for discussion and study of God’s Word. In 1890 he came up to Jerusalem, and at last I met him. The first time that I called upon him I was in company with my father, my uncle the judge, the son of the Chief Rabbi, and another Rabbi, one of the judges of the Jewish Court.

‘The Chief Rabbi appoints twelve judges, who each serve a term of three months every year, and every dispute between Jews must first be brought before them, and, if needs be, is referred by them to the Turkish Court.’

In time the writer became a Christian and was baptized. He adds:

‘It was my desire to get the training that would make me a good Christian teacher, but I could not travel without a passport, and could not get this except through the application of my father, who, instead, gave strict orders that no passport should be made for me. After a year of vain endeavour, I was able to persuade a friend who was in the office where they are written, on the score of friendship, to give me atishcara, or local passport, which, however, he did not dare to record; off in the country it served me well. My plan was to start on a trip through the country and seize any opportunity that might offer of getting to Egypt. I started from the Damascus Gate, my faithful horse being my only companion. We travelled first to Nablous, the ancient Sichem, and finding that the Samaritans were soon to keep their passover, I waited to see their celebratedsacrifice. Each family took a lamb, and they went out and pitched their tents on Mount Gerizim before the tomb of Sichem, the son of Hamor, whom they hold in great reverence, and camped out there for eight days. On the first day their high-priest sacrificed a lamb for each family, and every day he himself mixed the unleavened cakes. Leaving Nablous, I struck across country till I came to an Arab village on the Jordan, and then followed its course until I came to Tiberias. Along this part of the country many of the villagers knew me, and wherever I was acquainted they entertained me freely with their proverbial hospitality. At one Bedouin encampment they insisted on roasting an entire sheep. This they did in a very primitive fashion. They dug a ditch in the earth, and made fire within it until it was very hot, and then, removing the fire, they laid the lamb, well seasoned, on the hot ashes, and then buried it for a couple of hours. It then made a very savoury dish, of which we all partook, dipping into the same dish.‘Tiberias is one of the four sacred cities of the Jews, and there I found a large number residing. It is also a favourite resort because of its hot springs of healing qualities. I had left Jerusalem almost ill, and so was very glad to take a course of baths here.‘From Tiberias I journeyed towards Nazareth, and visited the Tomb of Jethro, near the horns of Hassau, where probably our Lord preached His wondrous Sermon on the Mount. At Nazareth I was hospitably entertained at the Latin Convent, and a priest showed me all the sights of the town. Next day 400 or 500 French pilgrims arrived, and I shared their entertainment.‘After three days I resumed my journey, with the intention of embarking at Haifa and passing on to Egypt without being seen at Jaffa.’

‘Tiberias is one of the four sacred cities of the Jews, and there I found a large number residing. It is also a favourite resort because of its hot springs of healing qualities. I had left Jerusalem almost ill, and so was very glad to take a course of baths here.

‘From Tiberias I journeyed towards Nazareth, and visited the Tomb of Jethro, near the horns of Hassau, where probably our Lord preached His wondrous Sermon on the Mount. At Nazareth I was hospitably entertained at the Latin Convent, and a priest showed me all the sights of the town. Next day 400 or 500 French pilgrims arrived, and I shared their entertainment.

‘After three days I resumed my journey, with the intention of embarking at Haifa and passing on to Egypt without being seen at Jaffa.’

And in due time the writer made his escape, and was welcomed in America, mainly owing to the assistance of Mr. Ben Oliel, who had been the means of his conversion.

ALEXANDRIA.

We left Jaffa on the Monday, and in twenty-four hours after were landed at Alexandria. Alexandria is not a desirable place to land at; travellers have to trust generally to native boatmen, who are a race of robbers. For instance, an American gentleman described to me how it fared with him on attempting to land a few years since. He and a friend made a bargain with a respectable man to put them ashore. He called a boatman, into whose boat they got with their luggage. No sooner had the man rowed a little way from the ship than he stopped and demanded the instant payment of a sum four times the amount that had been agreed upon. The travellers said they had made an agreement with his master, and he was bound to carry it out. He replied that he had no master; that the boat was his, that the oars were his, and that he would neither take them back to the ship nor row them ashore unless they complied with his request. One of the gentlemen had a revolver, which he held at the rascal’s head, telling him to prepare for instant death. The man sullenly obeyed, but no sooner had he reached the shore than helanded and preferred against the travellers a charge of attempting to murder him. The affair promised to be serious, but it was discovered by the judge that the revolver was not loaded, nor ever had been loaded, and the travellers were at length allowed to depart in peace. I heard of another case of a Frenchman shooting his boatman, who refused to fulfil his contract. In my case, happily, I landed on the quay, and had no trouble with the boatmen at all.

At length I am fairly landed in the land of the Pharaohs—a land whose records are engraved in stones, and date thousands of years before the birth of Christ. You see nothing of Alexandria till you approach it, and then it spreads out before you in all its charm, from Pharos, the most ancient lighthouse in the world, on one side, to Pompey’s Pillar on the other. Soon after I land at the quay, I make my way to the railway-station in a carriage and pair, for which I had agreed to pay a shilling. At the station the driver has the impudence to demand two shillings, which I refuse to give, whilst a dragoman, who has fastened himself on to me, though I have attempted to get rid of him, demands a shilling for his unnecessary attendance. I offer him threepence; he is indignant. ‘I am a dragoman,’ he exclaims in an angry tone. ‘What do you take me for?’ At length I give him sixpence, and he goes away in peace. I smoke my first pipe of excellent Egyptian tobacco, swallow a tiny cup of coffee, all sugar and grounds, and survey the scene from the outside of the excellent railway-station, which is a credit to the city. Every minute a blacking boy begs me to let him clean my boots, but as I need not his services they are declined. On my way I have seenevery sign of industry and wealth: spacious shops, and a fine square adorned with handsome houses, and with a good statue of Ibrahim Pasha—the man to whom modern Egypt owes its first dawn of revived prosperity. The municipal authorities of the place havePompey’s Pillar, Alexandriadone much to promote its prosperity. The traveller will find it to his advantage to stop here a day or two. The hotels are excellent, and, with one exception, by no means dear. The harbour is full of shipping and steamers, and the number of trains laden with merchandise running between Cairo andAlexandria seems incessant. The railway-carriages are an immense improvement on those which take you from Jaffa to Jerusalem. Alexandria has a population of over 300,000, and its prosperity has greatly increased of late. The English reside principally at Ramleh, five miles off, to which there is a local train service. On your way you pass the battlefield between the English and the French, where our General, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, lost his life in the hour of victory.

Commerce seems to have had her birthplace in Egypt. In the time of Joseph, we read, all countries came there to buy corn. Fifteen hundred years before the birth of Christ its merchants brought indigo and muslins from India, and porcelain from China, and the fame of its mariners was great. The trade route was down the Persian Gulf, along the Tigris, through Palmyra—the Tadmor of old—down to the cities of the Mediterranean. Arab mariners also sailed from India, keeping close to the coast till they reached Berenice, in the Red Sea, whence the goods were transported to Captos, thence down the Nile to Alexandria. ‘Under such Emperors as the cruel and dissipated Commodus,’ writes Mr. R. W. Fraser, in his ‘British India,’ ‘the plundering barbarian, Caracalla, and the infamous Heliogabalus, the wealth that came from the East through Alexandria to the imperial city of Rome, passed away to Constantinople and the rising cities along the Mediterranean.’

The glory of Alexandria in the olden time was the Serapeum, sacred to the worship of Serapis, a god originally worshipped in Sinope, and brought to Alexandria by the Emperor Ptolemy—worshippedeventually by the Romans as the Supreme Being, the beneficent Lord of Life and Death. It is clear the Ptolemies—at one and the same time Egyptian Pharaohs and Greek princes—felt the need of a real and presiding deity for the great city, with its enormous population, not only from Greece and its colonies, but from all the nations and tribes of the Mediterranean and the East.

As the seat of a god-worship became important, so did the deity its patron. When Alexandria became the official and mercantile capital of Egypt, Serapis became the chief of all the gods of the land, and there his shrine was worshipped for nearly one thousand years. The worship of Serapis was the last to fall before the advancing force of Christianity. The philosopher saw in Serapis, writes Macrobius, nothing more than theanima mundi, the spirit of whom universal nature is the body; so that by an easy transition Serapis came to be worshipped as the embodiment of the one Supreme whose representative on earth was Christ. This is clear from a letter written by the Emperor Hadriana.d.131. ‘I am now become,’ writes Hadrian, ‘fully acquainted with that Egypt which you extol so highly. I have found the people vain, fickle, and shifting with every change of opinion. Those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians; even those who style themselves the bishops of Christ are actually devoted to Serapis. There is no chief of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian bishop, who is not an astrologer, a fortune-teller, or a conjurer. The very Patriarch of Tiberias is compelled, when he comes to Egypt, by one party to adore Serapis, by another to worship Christ.’

And this seems to show that some Christians, in order to escape persecution, enjoyed their own faith under the cover of the national and local worship, which was susceptible of a spiritual interpretation quite cognate to their own ideas. A similar case occurred in Spain, as the historical reader may remember, when so many Jews, in fear of the Inquisition, nominally became Roman Catholics. Accordingly, it is clear that the tone of the higher, the fashionable society in Alexandria was to believe that on some grander or philosophic theory all these religions differed in form, but were essentially the same; that all adored one Logos or Demiurge under different names, all employed the same arts to impose on the vulgar, and all were equally despicable to the real philosopher.

The worship of Serapis was abolished in the reign of Justinian, and of the former glory of the Serapeum nothing now remains, unless it be Pompey’s Pillar, which was said by some to have formed part of the Serapeum. According to Tacitus, sick persons were accustomed to pass a night in the Serapeum in order to regain their health. The colossal statue of Serapis was involved in the ruin of his temple and religion. It was believed that if an insult were offered to that statue, chaos would ensue. When a Christian soldier aimed his first blow, even the Christians trembled for the event. The victorious soldier, Gibbon tells us, repeated his blows; the huge idol was overthrown and broken in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled carcase was burnt in the amphitheatre amidst the shouts of the people, and many persons attributed their conversion to thisdiscovery of the impotence of their great deity. A process something similar, attended with similar results, has more than once occurred in the history of missionary enterprise.

Deeply interesting is Alexandria from a historical point of view. It was founded by Alexander the Great more than 300 years before Christ. King Ptolemy, the first of that name, made it the capital of his kingdom, laid the foundations of its enormous library, and held out inducements to men of learning to come from all parts of the world to settle there. During the siege of the city by the Romans the library was burnt, but Antony afterwards gave the library a large collection of manuscripts, which formed the nucleus of a second library. In the early centuries of our era the town was torn with religious dissensions about the Jews and religious dogma. It was here the beautiful Hypatia, the fair heroine of Kingsley’s celebrated novel, was torn to pieces by an infuriated mob. St. Mark is said to have preached the Gospel here. It was here that there arose fierce discussions between Arius and Athanasius and Cyril. The Christians were persecuted with great severity by Decius, by Valerianus, and Diocletian. The city then declined in wealth and importance. Its population dwindled away. All fanatics, Christian or pagan, seem to me equally to blame.

It was at one time, as I have said, the headquarters of the worship of Serapis. The temple stood to the east of Alexandria, near Pompey’s Pillar. It is said to have been one of the most remarkable buildings in the world, and was filled with excellent statues and other works of art. It was destroyed by the Christian fanatic, Theophilus, during the reignof Theodosius II. Gibbon describes the prelate as ‘a bold, bad man, the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and blood.’ The library of the Serapeum is said to have contained about 400,000 manuscripts; at any rate, when it was burnt by the command of the Khalif Omar, the manuscripts were said to have been sufficiently numerous to heat the public baths for six months. Perhaps it is as well they were not all preserved. Of making many books there is no end, and many are the books published in this intelligent age, the burning of which would be no loss, but a gain, to the reading public. Among the famous men who studied in the original library of Alexandria were Strabo, Hipparchus, Archimedes, Plato, and Euclid.

Then came the blighting rule of the Turk, and the wise men moved away. They are all vanished—gone; in their place have come the Jew banker, the tradesman, and the merchant prince. The people amuse me. They wear the cotton tunic longer, and have a more Arabian cast of feature than the Jews. I see a funeral, with a long line of women following. I see a Turk at his devotions. He spreads a small carpet before him, then raises his arms above his head, muttering something all the while; then he bows his body so that the head touches the ground, and so he goes on.

In a little while we are off for Cairo, or Caire, as they call it here. On my way I get my first glimpse of one of the branches of the Nile, one of the largest, and certainly the most renowned, rivers in the world. In a few days I see more of the Nile, the overflow of which has not yet been dried up, and watch the peoplein the mud, far too soft to admit of ploughing, hoeing the land, rich and dark, and casting in the seed which is soon to bear an abundant harvest. On our way to Cairo we pass a fertile country, and see crops of sugarcane and rice and maize growing, and the blue-clad fellaheen at work. We pass several big towns, which seem thickly populated and full of life. The houses are everywhere the same—white, with flat roofs.

As originally founded, Alexandria was only equalled by Rome itself. It comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles, and was peopled by 300,000 free inhabitants, besides at least an equal number of slaves. The lucrative trade of Arabia and India flowed through its port to Rome and the provinces. No one lived an idle life. There was plenty of work for all, chiefly in glass-blowing, weaving of linen, and the manufacture of papyrus. The people, a mixture of all nations under the sun, were difficult to rule, and always ready for sedition. A transient scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of a public salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or a religious dispute, such as the sacrilegious murder of a divine cat, was quite sufficient to create a bloody tumult.

Origen was a native of Alexandria. It was there, after his time, that the endless controversy as to the nature of the Three Persons in the Trinity originated—a controversy which lasted for centuries, which led to wars and massacres, and which finally separated the Churches of Greece and Rome. The Jews, who had settled in Alexandria by the invitation of the Ptolemies, carried the teaching of Plato into their religious speculations. In time Arius arose to proclaim his idea of the Logos, and Athanasius to oppose and protest, andultimately triumph. The Homoousians prevailed, and the Homoiousians were branded and persecuted as heretics—enemies alike to God and man; yet Athanasius was driven from his diocese, and the famous St. George of Cappadocia reigned in his stead. The pagans of Alexandria, who still formed a numerous and discontented party, were easily persuaded to desert a Bishop whom they feared and esteemed. At a later time Cyril became the Archbishop, and distinguished his orthodox career by the animosity with which he expelled the Jews, and opposed the doctrine of Nestorius, who taught that there was a Divine and human Christ, and refused to worship the Virgin Mary as the mother of God.

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