JERUSALEM-EXCAVATIONS AND TOMBS. 639 many parts with crystalline incrustations, pure and white; in others, stalac- CHAPTER tites hang from the roof, and stalagmites have grown up from the floor. The .XLI. entire rock is remarkably white, and, though not very hard, will take a polish quite sufficient for architectural beauty. tent. The general direction of these excavations is south-east, and about parallel Direction with the valley which descends from the Damascus Gate. I suspect that they and exextend down to the Temple area, and also that it was into these caverns that many of the Jews retired when Titus took the Temple, as we read in Josephus. The whole city might be stowed away in them; and it is my opinion that a great part of the very white stone of the Temple must have been taken from these subterranean quarries. TOMBS OF SIMON THE JUST AND OF THE SANHEDRIM. Simon. These curious sepulchres are rarely visited. They are in the valley of the Kidron, a short distance north-east of the Tombs of the Kings, and under the cliffs on the north side of the wady. They are frequented exclusively by the Jews, and mostly on their festival days. I once entered them on the thirtythird day after the Passover-a day consecrated to the honour of Simon. Many Tomb of Jews were there with their children. Like all other sects in the East, they make vows in reference to shaving off the hair from their own and their children's heads in honour of some saint or shrine. A number had that day been clipped, the hair weighed, and a sum distributed to the poor in proportion to the weight. The surrounding fields and olive orchards were crowded with gaily-dressed and merry Hebrews. I never saw so many pretty Jewesses together on any other occasion. The tombs seemed to me to have been cut in what were originally natural caves. The entrance to all of them was very low, and without ornament. The interior was spacious and gloomy in the extreme, especially that which was said to contain the Sanhedrim. There were between Tombs of sixty and seventy niches where bodies may have been placed; and from this the Sannumber, perhaps, the idea originated that they were the crypts of the seventy men of the Great Synagogue. Dr. Wilson seems to have heard of these tombs, but he confounds them with those of the judges, which are a mile or more to the north-west. hedrim. On the general subject of willies and sacred tombs, have you ever thought of Sacred the interpretation put upon them by our Lord? In Luke we read, "Woe unto tombs. you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres."1 How? why? might not the Pharisees have replied, that, by honouring their remains and their memory, they condemned their murderers? 1 Luke xi. 47, 48. PART The greatest sin of Israel and of the world was, and is, apostasy from the true God and his worship by idolatry; and the most prevalent mode of this Allusion of apostasy is sacrilegious reverence for dead men's tombs and bones. This is our Lord the most prevalent superstition in the great empire of China, and in Western Asia, Jews, Moslems, Metawelies, Druses, Nesairiyeh, Ismailiyeh, Kurds, Yezedy, Gipsies, and all sects of Christians, are addicted to it. Every village has its saints' tombs-every hill top is crowned with the white dome of some neby or prophet. Thither all resort to garnish the sepulchres, burn incense and consecrated candles, fulfil vows, make offerings, and pray. So fanatical are they in their zeal, that they would tear any man to pieces who should put dishonour upon these sacred shrines. Enter that at Hebron, for example, and they would instantly sacrifice you to their fury. Now, it was for rebuking this and other kinds of idolatry that "the fathers killed the prophets;" and those who built their tombs would, in like manner, kill any one who condemned their idolatrous reverence for these very sepulchres. Thus the Pharisees, by the very act of building those tombs of the prophets, and honouring them as they did, showed plainly that they were actuated by the same spirit that led their fathers to kill them; and, to make this matter self-evident, they very soon proceeded to crucify the Lord of the prophets because of his faithful rebukes. Nor has this spirit changed in the least during the subsequent eighteen hundred years. Now, here in Jerusalem, should the Saviour re-appear, and condemn with the same severity our modern Pharisees, they would kill him upon his own reputed tomb. I say this not with a faltering perhaps, but with a painful certainty. Alas! how many thousands of God's people have been slaughtered because of their earnest and steadfast protest against pilgrimages, idolatrous worship of saints, tombs, bones, images, and pictures! And whenever I see people particularly zealous in building, repairing, or serving these shrines, I know them to be the ones who allow the deeds of those who killed the prophets, and who would do the same under like circumstances. If you doubt, and are willing to become a martyr, make the experiment to-morrow in this very city. You may blaspheme the Godhead, through all the divine persons, offices, and attributes, in safety; but insult these dead men's shrines, and woe be to you! Touch of a tomb polluting. It was probably that he might render apostasy into this insane idolatry impossible to a faithful Jew, that Moses made the mere touching of a grave, or even of a bone, contamination. The person thus polluted could not enter his tent, or unite in any religious services. He was unclean seven days, and was obliged to go through a tedious and expensive process of purification. And, still more, if the person would not purify himself, he was to be cut off from the congregation and destroyed. Strange, that even this stern law was not sufficient to restrain the Jews from worshipping dead men's graves. VALLEY OF HINNOM-TOPHET. 641 VALLEY OF HINNOM-TOPHET. CHAPTER XLI. This valley commences north-west of the Jaffa Gate, above the Upper Pool of Valley of Gihon. Descending eastward to the immediate vicinity of the gate, it turns Hinnom. south, and the bed of it is occupied by the Lower Pool of Gihon. Below this it bends round to the east, having the cliffs of Zion on the north, and the Hill of Evil Council on the south. It is here that Hinnom properly begins, and it terminates at Beer 'Ayub, where it joins the valley of Jehoshaphat. The cliffs on the south side especially abound in ancient tombs, and it was this part that was called Tophet. Here the dead carcasses of beasts, and every offal and abomina- Tophet tion, were cast, and left to be either devoured by that worm that never died, or consumed by that fire that was never quenched. Hinnom was condemned to this infamous service, perhaps, because in it, when Israel fell into idolatry, they offered their children in sacrifice to Baal. Jeremiah has an extended reference to this place and its horrid sacrifices: “Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; they have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons in the fire--burnt-offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but The valley of slaughter." 1 This denunciation was doubtless fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar sacked and destroyed Jerusalem; and more emphatically by Titus and "his men of war." Josephus says that when Titus saw, from a distance, these valleys below Jerusalem heaped full of dead bodies, he was so horrified at the sight that he raised his hands, and called Heaven to witness that he was not responsible for this terrific slaughter. "1 Jeremiah was commanded to break the potter's "bottle" or jar in the pre- Breaking sence of the ancients of the people and the priests, after he had denounced a jar. these terrible judgments upon them in the valley of Tophet.2 The people of this country have the same custom of breaking a jar when they wish to express their utmost detestation of any one. They come behind or near him, and smash the jar to atoms, thus imprecating upon him and his a like hopeless ruin. The cruel sacrifices of children in this valley are frequently referred to by Sacrifices Jeremiah. They were made to "pass through the fire unto Moloch;"3 from which it appears that Baal and Moloch were names for one and the same deity. The victims were placed on the red-hot hands of the idol, and their agonizing shrieks were drowned by cymbals and the shouts of the frenzied worshippers. Milton thus sings indignant at these "abominations :" "Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears, to Moloch Jer. xix. 1-12. Jer. xix. 10. 3 Jer. vii. 31; xix. 5; and xxxii. 35. PART Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire To his grim idol-in the pleasant vale of Hinnom, Tophet thence, The place seems to have become infamous for idolatry at an early age. Isaiah speaks of it metonymically by the name Tophet, for the place where Sennacherib's army was to be consumed by the breath of the Lord: "For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a Valley of stream of brimstone, doth kindle it."1 Under its original name of Hinnom, Hinnom a Grecised into Gehenna, it is used in the New Testament as synonymous with, type of hell. Respect due to sacred places. or as a type of hell. The idea seems to be borrowed from the above passages, and from the scenes which were witnessed in this valley. The language of our Saviour, as given by Mark,2 is copied almost verbatim from Isaiah.3 As I move about among these sacred localities, an inquiry of this sort is constantly arising, With what amount of reverence should a pious mind regard them? I prefer to use the word respect. There is nothing now in or about Jerusalem that can justly claim from me any religious reverence whatever. This subject is one of much importance, and needs to be placed in a clear light and upon a proper basis, for the number of visitors of all ages who resort hither is rapidly multiplying, and I notice an increasing disposition among many Protestants to glide into the same sort of reverential deportment in presence of these localities that Roman Catholics and Orientals generally manifest. This should be arrested, not by treating with profane levity such places and scenes, but by acquiring correct views in regard to them, and the manner in which we may derive both pleasure and profit from visiting them, while at the same time we escape this dangerous bias toward idolatrous reverence. There are two or three distinctions to be made, fundamental and broad enough to reach every case of the kind that can come before the pious mind. The first is, that in the Mosaic economy, which multiplied holy places and instruments, it was not the place or the thing itself that was regarded and treated as holy. Moses, for example, was commanded to put off his shoes before the burning bush, not that it was any more holy than any other bush in The divine the desert of Sinai. The reverence was simply and solely to the infinite and presence uncreated Being who for the moment dwelt in it in a peculiar manner. So the ark, with the mercy-seat, and the apartments in the Tabernacle and Temple where it was placed, were holy, for no other reason than that God, who is ever to be approached with fear and reverence, there made his special abode. The "bush," without the Presence, differed in nothing from any other; and so of the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and of every other place on this earth. When the divine presence is withdrawn, all religious reverence before the place the object of reverence. 1 Isa. XXX. 33. 2 Mark ix. 44-48. 3 Isa. lxvi. 24. SACRED SHRINES-USE AND ABUSE. 643 XLI. or thing must cease of course. There is nothing, therefore, about the Temple CHAPTER area, or the so-called Sepulchre of Christ Jesus, that can now receive any other worship than that which is purely idolatrous. The prophets and apostles always acted upon this principle. To mention but one of a hundred instances, the disciples of our Lord, when they hurried to ascertain the truth of the report about the resurrection, manifested not the slightest reverence for the tomb. Peter ran right into it without stopping to take off his shoes, as you must now do before the fictitious sepulchre in the church, and this, too, though he knew with absolute certainty that his Lord had been there, and had but just left the place. The same is true in the case of the women; none of them seem to have dreamed that the rock-tomb merited any reverence when the Lord himself was gone. Nor do we again hear a whisper about this tomb throughout the entire New Testament history. There is no evidence that any one of them ever revisited it. gious re verence The second great principle in regard to these shrines is, that no religious No relireverence to human beings or to angelic spirits was ever tolerated, nor to any place or thing that represented them. We cannot, therefore, participate in any to the such rites or ceremonies without enacting a piece of naked idolatry, every way, creature. and in all ages and places, extremely offensive to God. This sweeps into one general and undistinguished category of condemnation the entire catalogue of shrines, and tombs, and caverns sacred to dead men. The third grand fact bearing upon this subject is, that God, in his providence, has so ordered matters that not one of all these shrines can show any just title to the honours claimed for them. The bush is gone, the tabernacle has vanished, not one stone of the Holy of Holies remains, and doubt and uncertainty absolutely impenetrable rests on every sacred locality, and upon everything connected with them. And in view of the sad and ruinous perversions to which their very shadows give rise, I am thankful that there is not a single tomb of saints, nor instrument employed in manifesting miraculous power, nor a sacred shrine, whose identity can be ascertained. You have given only a negative answer to my inquiry, and, after all, I feel that the whole truth has not been stated. shrines. Certainly not. To discuss the matter of sacred sites and scenes in detail Proper use would require a volume, and I have no disposition to enter the arena of such of sacred earnest controversy. The proper use to be made of these things can be laid down in a few words. We should so conduct our visits as to confirm faith and deepen the impressions which the Bible narratives of what here took place in former ages are intended to produce; and for this the materials are abundant and satisfactory. |