I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
I GO OUT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
Before we met our carriage at the Damascus Gate to ride out to the farthest point on the Mount of Olives we walked through David Street to the Wailing Place of the Jews. Every book we had studied warned us of the unspeakable condition of the narrow filthy streets in this Jewish quarter of Jerusalem the Golden. But they were all written before British arms had captured the Holy City and, even in these short months, made it in so many ways a new Jerusalem. In the windows of the shops we had seen the quaint pictures of the water-carrier with his leather bag, but not one had we seen in the streets of the city. The menace of the water bag with its myriad germs is already a thing of the past. For the first time in all its long history, under rulers of many great faiths and names, the City has water, plenty of water, fresh, clear, safe. What that simple statement means can be appreciated only by those who know by experiencewhat a priceless boon water is to cities that have little. One could change the whole record and history of Oriental cities with water systems!
When the history of Palestine in the war is fully recorded, one of the most thrilling chapters will be written about the lead pipes now standing boldly in the city streets two feet above the ground, capped by very modern shining faucets. The girls and women who come to them with their water jars beamed with joy as they watched the silver stream pouring out in the sun. For four hundred years the Turks ruled in Jerusalem and in all that time no attempt was made to establish a water system although more than once the inhabitants were taxed with the promise of water that was some day to come. In a little over two months the British engineers had brought running water into every street of the city. New paths are so rapidly making their way through old Palestine!
For its water Jerusalem had depended upon winter rains to fill its great cisterns. The houses had underground reservoirs, some of which had not been cleaned in more than twenty years. At the Mosque of Omar was a largereservoir where the water from the springs about Solomon’s Pools flowed down through a great aqueduct built by the Romans when Herod ruled over the Jews. The searching engineers had found springs in the hills with fresh, pure water running to waste and, at the rate of fourteen thousand gallons an hour, it is now pumped up to the top of a high hill, run by gravity down through a long pipe-line to a great reservoir that has been built and carefully protected on the outskirts of the city. Direct lines take this pure water to the hospitals and into the city streets. Despite the shrinking of the population, caused by the evacuation of the Turk, more than ten times as much water has been used as in previous years, which silences the oft-repeated statement that the people would not appreciate the water if they had it. We were interested to learn that some of the pipes had been sent to Egypt to be forwarded for use in Palestine by the American Red Cross Commission after we entered the war. But the Commission found that the need for water which we had anticipated had been practically answered by the Royal Engineers.
One is deeply impressed by the change in therecord of contagious diseases. The reduction in cholera, smallpox, typhoid, and typhus is remarkable. Even under the sound of booming guns, children’s welfare bureaus were organized, lessons in health given, nurses trained and kitchens opened to provide food for the babies, the sick and the old. The workers of the American Red Cross deserve and receive full gratitude for their enthusiastic and intelligent work in and about the City in those days immediately following its surrender.
The people on David Street seemed to have lost something of the fear that writers of the past saw in their haunted faces. It may be the fact that now they are free. The old-time pressure and petty persecution by corrupt officials is past. The Turkish prison no longer yawns threateningly. A trader may go unmolested about his work. The heavy taxation demanded in the past by a succession of officers, from the least to the greatest, has disappeared. Contentment not known for untold generations reigns in humble homes.
From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”
From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”
From the brow of the Mount of Olives where they lay sleeping under white crosses—these also “fling to us the torch.”
It may be for this reason that on both occasions of our visit to the Wailing Place there were but few present and they were old men, old women, and some very young children. Young manhood was not there, it was hard at work. Many of the older boys and girls were in school. The leader of the group chanting the Lamentations that morning was an old white-haired patriarch with eyes of fire. He was the only one of the group that did not interrupt his wailing to look at us. One tall, strong, impressive specimen of womanhood moved along the line to quiet some women whose wailing had become a piercing shriek or to straighten out a child who irreverently chased a playmate up and down the path. The guide said that her name was Miriam and that she had a son with much money in England. Erect and fine, forceful and devout, she reminded us of that other Miriam who led her people to victory. Here and there one saw women’s strong faces stained with tears and marked with suffering. They leaned against the foundation stones of the old Temple area in an abandonment of emotion and sorrow. Near the end of the line was a very old man leaning tremblingly upon his staff. Jamil said that he was repeating one phrase over and over. “O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance!” His voice was bitter and full ofanguish. A great wave of pity swept over us for these and all they have suffered, and yet survived. Against those massive walls of the past, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian had hurled their hosts and battered them to earth. They had risen again only to meet the Roman and the Saracen, the brave Crusader and the unspeakable Turk until in very truth they lay “in heaps.” Piled one above another, the various cities lie waiting until the hammer and spade of the excavator shall open up all their secrets for us. Buried deep down in the earth is that early city of the Jebusites, over it the glorious city of Solomon, the city heroically brought again into being by Nehemiah, the city of Herod which Titus hammered into ruins and Hadrian rebuilt, above it the city of the Saracens built after their wave of conquest, the city of the Crusaders, and now the city of the Turks, standing boldly above the ruins of the long past. It stands, the protected property of a new conqueror who loves it, whose army chose the hardest road to victory to save it from the marks of war, whose people have come into it with knowledge that they may overcome its ignorance, a conqueror who bears no malice,who is tolerant of the Jew and the Mohammedan though he worships at the Cross which they hate.
As if reading our thoughts, the guide said quietly, “Some day it will be only the wall for the wailing that we shall see. There will be no more need for wailing, and the children will forget. So the young prophets among the Jews say in the markets. We shall see.”
We walked through a section of the Temple area and out past the Austrian Hospice through the Damascus Gate where, according to agreement, the carriage waited.
The road out to the spot where the Mount of Olives drops abruptly to the plain has been repaired, stray shell holes filled in and a large section of new road built since that wonderful day when the last line of Turks were driven from the position they thought secure. The air was as clear as an October day at home and the shining city “compact together” seemed substantial and strong. It was along the high ridge of Olivet that, in the pressure of the days when relief workers toiled twelve and fifteen hours without respite, they came to renew their strength. In the home of the Greek Patriarch more than one strong soul, overcome for themoment by the ceaseless stream of dirty, hopeless, despairing human things that he must strive to save from the wreckage of war, found, in the white moonlight sifting down over the hill, in the kindly stars, in the silence and in sacred memories, courage to attempt again tasks that had been called impossible.
We had been gazing so steadily at the city that when the driver suddenly stopped we turned in surprise. There on a gently sloping stretch of ground, close to the road at the left, stood row after row of crosses over the resting places of Scot and Londoner, Welshman and Irishman, Indian and Anzac who had paid for the Holy City with his life. On some of the crosses fresh green garlands were hanging, and on one a wreath with English holly.
We got down from our carriage and walked slowly along, looking now at the crosses and now at the place where in agony of soul Christ had prayed for the strength to meet the test of Calvary that has made the Cross forever the symbol which shall mark the spots on earth most sacred to us. These lying out on the hillside had also been to Calvary.
A little farther on in the road we passed menin the British uniform. They had survived the terrible test of those wind-swept hills with the rain falling in torrents, the benumbing cold, the soft, thick, gray mud, the night in the open with no shelter save a little wall of stones built up with care only to be blown over by a sudden vicious blast, with little food and only the ammunition that could reach them on the backs of the pack donkeys. It was through this they had won that peaceful city lying contentedly there in the sun, even the shining dome of its Mohammedan Mosque unharmed.
The German hospice, Kaiserin Augusta Victoria, lies out on this road. It is exceedingly well built and untouched by shell fire. Although the Turk utterly demolished the mosque of Nebi Samwill and shot away its stately minaret, he turned no gun on this that was German property. Even when his airmen, flying over Olivet, knew that an enemy signal station had been set up in the garden of the hospice no shot fell upon it. “This house,” said Jamil, “is like a German castle on the inside. The tower was built higher than any tower on the Mount, the trees set out with care. The picture of the Saviour is painted in the chapel and the picturesof the Kaiser and the Kaiserin are on the long wall. It was common talk at the beginning of the war that the Crown Prince should live here when he became King in Palestine. Now it is the Headquarters for the British Army.... It is the Will of God!” he added solemnly after a moment. We took a picture of the hospice with two British Tommies standing at the gate.
We had to leave our carriage and walk to the point where the Greek Church tower looks down over the stretch of rugged upland crossed by many a wadi, over the walled-in level spaces where green things were growing, over the plains of the Jordan and the Dead Sea so blue in the distance, away to the far mountains of Moab. It was a wonderful picture at which one could look for long hours and come back to enjoy again and again. It was from this point of vantage that the relief workers watched the taking of Jericho. In the grove we found the “husks that swine did eat,” lying about on the ground. Jamil picked one of the long brown pods from the tree and under the pressure of his urging we tasted it. It was sweeter than sugar cane, nauseatingly sweet. It took no imagination to understand why one wouldaccept it as food only as a last resort. In this grove we found the hyssop which the women at the hospice use both as medicine and for the whitening of their clothes. In a sunny sheltered spot we found violets, although we were wearing our warmest wraps.
Jamil sat down on a stone to talk with a workman while we, wandering about on the slopes of the hill, found a warm sheltered spot looking toward Mount Moriah. In all the days that we were in Jerusalem we could not fully sense the fact that the Christian was now free to visit all the sacred places, that the Temple area was open to him, that he might enter the sacred Mosque of Omar which once it had been death to enter.The Turk had gone!We took out the Book and read the old instructions for the building of the Tabernacle, read the orders for the building of Solomon’s temple and the majestic words of its dedication when at last the building was finished:—“and Solomon stood before the Altar and said—‘O Jehovah, God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven above or on the earth beneath; who keepest covenants in loving kindness with thy servants that walk before thee with all their hearts.... But will God invery deed dwell on the earth? behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded!... When thy people Israel are smitten down before the enemy because they have sinned against thee; if they turn again to thee and confess thy name and pray and make supplication unto thee in this house then hear thou in heaven and forgive thy people Israel and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest to their fathers.’” Of Solomon’s Temple scarce a vestige remains, yet Israel again is returning to the land of its fathers. We read of the visits of Jesus to the new temple which, great as it was, had so little of the glory of the old. How it must have thrilled Him, a little country boy from the village of Nazareth, when He saw it for the first time at the great feast. He seems to have had no fear, as with all simplicity He pressed near to the great doctors of learning, listening eagerly and asking keen questions, the keenest questions that can be asked—those that leap from the alert and hungry mind of a boy of twelve.
And we read of that other day when He heard the quarrelings and cursings, saw the gross wickedness of the bargainings of the money-changersand those who bought and sold the sacrifices, and cried aloud in words of burning denunciation, “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves!”
Little wonder that the scribes and Pharisees looked aghast at the crowds that pressed to hear as He taught daily in the temple, or that they demanded by whose authority He did these things and asked each other helplessly what they could do, since “the people were very attentive to Him,” and “the whole world had gone after Him.” In the temple courts how keen were His answers to their clever questioning designed to condemn Him, so keen that after awhile none dared ask Him any more questions. Yet when the teaching was over and, leaving the half-hostile, half-admiring crowd, He went out to the Mount of Olives to pray—then He knew that He must die.
It all seemed very real as we sat looking down upon the City. So real that we dreaded to read of the days before Him, of the hard way that the rulers of the synagogue, because of their jealous conservatism, the desire to make their own places secure, the fear lest the people shouldfollow Him as prophet and leave them as priests, had already in their hearts condemned Him to go. So we closed the Book.
Leaving the carriage again at the Damascus Gate we wandered back past the convents, through Christian Street. The city was becoming a very live thing to us. The children smiled at us as we passed through the narrow arcade to our hotel. Oranges and dainty soft spring flowers from the valley were in our room.
“I have lived thousands of years today,” said my friend. “I have been fighting all the battles from the days of King David to the days of King George and I am weary.” I smiled in sympathy, for one does not live in days or years in Palestine but in centuries. The march of events over broken cobblestones, past walls crumbling with age, catches one in its onward sweep and leaves him breathless as he hurries on from what has been to what is, and from what is to what is to be.
We took up our American mail. The steady tread of history’s myriad marchers halted for a moment. The clippings from the papers told us of the wedding of a girl whom we love. Across the top of the clipping was written in thegirl’s own hand, “Unspeakable happiness. The greatest day of my life!” Names of guests, the most minute details as to flowers and gowns followed. In another clipping we read of the divorce of a girl we had known in school. She had been married twenty years. I remembered the account of her wedding. In the hall we heard laughter. Marie was listening to the extravagant compliments of Alphonse. A letter from a boy of eleven asked for stamps from Egypt and Palestine. “I want them more than anything in the world,” he wrote. The next letter brought a clipping making passing reference in six short lines to a critical misunderstanding in the Far East. While we were reading it, a woman came to tell us a story of great sorrow and desperate need. The wild storm of human wrath and revenge that swept over Russia had left her, who had never known anything but love, happiness and plenty, stranded, utterly alone, with not even a ruble of her vast estates.
It is a confusing world. Great events and small jostle each other along its highways. Wrapped securely about with affairs of self, old and young fail to see the momentous hours of human destiny as they pass—pass so swiftly,to leave them on some future day dumb with surprise, aghast at the significance of the things which, having eyes, they saw not and, having ears, they heard not. It is a most confusing and perplexing world, but alas for him who does not love it, pity for him who does not believe in it, shame upon him who will not share the task of saving it.
Tomorrow would be Sunday and we would go to the Garden.