In

schools are in connection with this noble institution. connection with the Anglican Church there is a little Arab community, under the direction of a pastor from Alsace, whose chief mission-field is among the Jews.

Health of Jerusalem.-Speaking of the healthiness of Jerusalem as a place of permanent residence, Sir Moses Montefiore, in the narration of his late tour (1876), says :—

"I had some conversation on the subject of general drainage in Jerusalem with a gentleman of authority; he told me that all the refuse of the city is now carried into the Pool of Bethesda, which, strange to say, I was informed is close to the house intended for the barracks, and the soldiers now living there appear not to experience the least inconvenience from its vicinity. If arrangements could be made to clear that pool entirely, to admit pure water only, and to dig special pools for the purpose of conducting there the city drains, Jerusalem might become free from any threatening epidemic. All the doctors in Jerusalem assured me that the Holy City might be reckoned, on account of the purity of its atmosphere, one of the healthiest of places." The mean temperature, from 1851 to 1855, was, according to Barclay

Plan of Description.-As there is no difficulty in finding one's way about in Jerusalem, and the whole city is compact together," it is considered undesirable to describe certain "walks," especially as it is impossible to make such

a division correspond to the various tastes and inclinations of travellers. We shall therefore describe-1st. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre; 2nd. The Temple, or Mosque of Omar; 3rd. All the principal places of interest within the City, starting from the Jaffa Gate; 4th. A Tour round the outside of the City; 5th. The Environs.

THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. [The church is in the Christian Quarter, in a street sometimes called Palmer Street.]

No one can approach this spot without a very reverential feeling. It is the shrine at which millions have worshipped in simple faith, believing that here our Lord was crucified, that here His body lay, that here He revealed Himself after His resurrection. The question, which is now the great question of controversy, is this: The Calvary and Holy Sepulchre stand now in the very heart of the city, far within the present walls. Could the site ever have been outside the walls? If it ever was, then this may be the very spot where the cross stood on Calvary, and the Sepulchre may be that which Joseph of Arimathæa gave, “wherein never man lay.”

It is a pity to disturb the mind of the traveller on the threshold of such a sacred spot, and we have no intention of giving an elaborate epitome of the various sides taken in the controversy. The Scripture account is as follows:

"The bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the High Priest for sin are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate" (Heb. xiii. 11, 12). He was taken from the Judgment Hall unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say a place of a skull (Matt. xxvii. 33). The place where Jesus was crucified was "nigh unto the city" (John xix. 20), and appears

66

to have been beside some public thoroughfare. "They that passed by reviled Him" (Matt. xxvii. 39).

The story of the removal from the cross and the burial in the sepulchre is given thus minutely in St. John's Gospel : "And after this, Joseph of Arimathæa, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He came, therefore, and took the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of Jews is to bury, Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore, because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand" (John xix. 38-42). In the Gospel of St. Mark the additional information is given that they "laid Him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone into the door of the sepulchre " (Mark xv. 46).

There is no historical evidence that the site of the Holy Sepulchre was determined until the third century, when it appears, from Eusebius, that over the Sepulchre had been erected a Temple of Venus. In the fourth century, the Empress Helena had a vision, in which she recognized the site, and by means of a miracle discovered the true cross (p. 128). Constantine thereupon built a group of edifices over the sites, A.D. 326. These were destroyed by the Persians in 614; rebuilt, 616. In 936, fire partly destroyed the church; and the Muslims inflicted damage to it in 1010. The present church was built by the Crusaders, and has undergone a long series of disasters and rebuilding.

The history of the church has been so often recorded, and is such a lengthened story of vicissitudes, that it is out of the province of this book to enter minutely into it. The reader is referred to Fergusson's works, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Barclay's City of the Great King, Besant and Palmer's City of Herod and Saladin, etc.

It must be remembered that Fergusson has expounded a theory that the Sepulchre of Christ is the Dome of the Rock (p. 137), a theory which has been amply exploded.

Dean Stanley has an interesting note which may throw some light on the controversy as to the site of the Sepulchre.

Every traveller will ask, "Is there any good argument in favour of the Tomb of Christ having ever been within the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?" Dr. Stanley says, "In the topographical question, the opponents of the identity of the Sepulchre have never done justice to the argument first clearly stated in England by Lord Nugent, and pointedly brought out by Professor Willis, which is derived from the so-called tombs of Joseph and Nicodemus. Underneath the western galleries of the church, behind the Holy Sepulchre, are two excavations in the face of the rock, forming an ancient Jewish sepulchre, as clearly as any that can be seen in the valley of Hinnom, or in the Tombs of the Kings. That they should have been so long overlooked, both by the advocates and opponents of the identity of the Holy Sepulchre, can only be accounted for by the perverse dulness of the coventual guides of the church, who point the attention of travellers and pilgrims, not to those sepulchres, but to two graves sunk into the floor in front of them, possibly, however, as Dr. Schulz suggests, dug at a later time to represent the graves, when the real object of the ancient sepulchres had ceased to be intelligible; just as the tombs of

some Mussulman saints are fictitious tombs erected over the rude sepulchres hewn in the rock beneath.

"The traditional names of Joseph and Nicodemus are probably valueless. But the existence of these sepulchres proves almost to a certainty that at some period the site of the present church must have been outside the walls of the city, and lends considerable probability to the belief that the rocky excavation, which perhaps exists in part still, and certainly once existed entire, within the marble casing of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, was at any rate a really ancient tomb, and not, as is often rashly asserted, a modern structure intended to imitate it."

As the traveller enters The Court, which is a little lower than the street, he will notice first the vendors of rosaries and relics, and a miscellaneous collection of beggars, more or less deformed; then, if any special service is going on, a guard of Turkish soldiers, stationed here to keep the peace between the rival sects; if no special service demands that they should be drawn up in the courtyard armed, they will be seen in the porch or vestibule of the church. Then he will look at the south façade of the church, which is generally disappointing to travellers even though they have been long familiar with it from photographs.

[The best Time to Visit the church is early in the morning. It is generally closed from 10.30 to 3 P.M.; but admission can be obtained during those hours on payment of The morning light is the best for seeing the

a fee. church.]

Entering by the door on the left of the church-the principal entrance the first of the many places of interest pointed out in this wonderful building, or series of buildings —is the Stone of Unction, where the body of our Lord was laid for anointing, when taken down from the cross.