Part 12 (1/2)
Five or six times Bertram had attempted to get into the Tabernacle of the Holy Sepulchre; but so great had been the rush of pilgrims, that he had hitherto failed. At last his dragoman espied a lull, and went again to the battle. To get into the little outside chapel, which forms, as it were, a vestibule to the cell of the sepulchre, and from which on Easter Sat.u.r.day issue the miraculous flames, was a thing to be achieved by moderate patience. His close contiguity to Candiotes and Copts, to Armenians and Abyssinians was not agreeable to our hero, for the contiguity was very close, and Christians of these nations are not very cleanly. But this was nothing to the task of entering the sanctum sanctorum. To this there is but one aperture, and that is but four feet high; men entering it go in head foremost, and those retreating come out in the other direction; and as it is impossible that two should pa.s.s, and as two or three are always trying to come out, and ten or twelve equally anxious to get in, the struggle to an Englishman is disagreeably warm, though to an Oriental it is probably matter of interesting excitement.
But for his dragoman, Bertram would never have succeeded. He, however, so pulled and hauled these anxious devotees, so thrust in those who endeavoured to come out, and clawed back those who strove to get in, that the pa.s.sage became for a moment clear, and our hero, having bent low his head, found himself standing with his hand on the marble slab of the tomb.
Those who were there around him seemed to be the outcasts of the world, exactly those whom he would have objected to meet, unarmed, on the roads of Greece or among the hills of Armenia; cut-throat-looking wretches, with close-shaven heads, dirty beards, and angry eyes; men clothed in skins, or huge skin-like-looking cloaks, filthy, foul, alive with vermin, reeking with garlic,--abominable to an Englishman.
There was about them a certain dignity of demeanour, a natural apt.i.tude to carry themselves with ease, and even a not impure taste for colour among their dirt. But these Christians of the Russian Church hardly appeared to him to be brothers of his own creed.
But he did put his hand on the slab of the tomb; and as he did so, two young Greeks, brothers by blood--Greeks by their creed, though of what actual nation Bertram was quite unable say--pressed their lips vehemently to the marble. They were dirty, shorn about the head, dangerous looking, and skin-clothed, as we have described; men very low in the scale of humanity when compared with their fellow-pilgrim; but, nevertheless, they were to him at that moment objects of envy.
They believed: so much at any rate was clear to him. By whatever code of morals they might be able to govern their lives, whether by any, or as, alas! might be too likely, by none, at least they possessed a faith. Christ to them was an actual living truth, though they knew how to wors.h.i.+p him no better than by thus kissing a stone, which had in fact no closer reference to the Saviour than any other stone they might have kissed in their own country. They believed; and as they reverently pressed their foreheads, lips, and hands to the top and sides and edges of the sepulchre, their faith became ecstatic. It was thus that Bertram would fain have entered that little chapel, thus that he would have felt, thus that he would have acted had he been able. So had he thought to feel--in such an agony of faith had he been minded there to kneel. But he did not kneel at all. He remarked to himself that the place was inordinately close, that his contiguity to his religious neighbours was disagreeable; and then, stooping low his head, not in reverence, but with a view to backing himself out from the small enclosure, with some delay and much precaution, and, to speak truth, with various expressions of anger against those who with their heads continued to push him the way he did not wish to go, he retreated from the chapel. Nor while he was at Jerusalem did he feel sufficient interest in the matter again to enter it. He had done that deed, he had killed that lion, and, ticking it off from his list of celebrities as one celebrity disposed of, he thought but little more about it. Such, we believe, are the visits of most English Christians to the so-called Holy Sepulchre.
And then he killed the other lions there: Calvary up in the gallery; the garden, so called, in which the risen Saviour addressed the women running from the sepulchre; the place where Peter's c.o.c.k crew; the tomb of Nicodemus--all within the same church, all under the one roof--all at least under what should be a roof, only now it has fallen into ruin, so that these sacred places are open to the rain of heaven, and Greeks and Latins having quarrelled about the repairs, the Turks, now lords of the Holy Sepulchre, have taken the matter into their own hands, and declared that no repairs shall be done by any of them.
And then he attended the Greek ma.s.s--at least, he partly believed that he did so, somewhat doubting, for the ma.s.s was not said as are those of the Romans, out at an open altar before the people, but in a holy of holies; very holy, it may be imagined, from the manner in which the wors.h.i.+ppers rubbed their foreheads against certain gratings, through which a tantalizing glimpse might be had of the fine things that were going on within. Had they but known it, it might all have been seen, holy of holies, head-wagging priest, idle yawning a.s.sistant, with legs stretched out, half asleep, mumblement, jumblement and all, from a little back window in a pa.s.sage opening from that Calvary gallery upstairs. From thence at least did these profane eyes look down and see all the mumblement and jumblement, which after all was little enough; but saw especially the idle clerical apprentice who, had that screen been down, and had he been called on to do his altar work before the public eye, would not have been so nearly asleep, as may perhaps be said of other clerical performers nearer home.
But Bertram's attention was mainly occupied with watching the devotions of a single woman. She was a female of one of those strange nations, decently clad, about thirty years of age, pleasant to the eye were she not so dirty, and had she not that wild look, half way between the sallow sublime and the dangerously murderous, which seems common to oriental Christians, whether men or women. Heaven might know of what sins she came there to leave the burden: heaven did know, doubtless; but from the length of her manoeuvres in quitting herself of their weight, one would say that they were heavy; and yet she went through her task with composed dignity, with an alacrity that was almost joyous, and certainly with no intentional self-abas.e.m.e.nt.
Entering the church with a quick step, she took up a position as though she had selected a special stone on which to stand. There, with head erect, but bowing between each ceremony, she crossed herself three times; then sinking on her knees, thrice she pressed her forehead to the floor; then rising again, again she crossed herself. Having so done somewhat to the right of the church, but near the altar-screen, she did the same on the corresponding stone towards the left, and then again the same on a stone behind the others, but in the centre. After this she retreated further back, and did three more such wors.h.i.+ppings, always choosing her stone with an eye to architectural regularity; then again, getting to the backward, she did three more, thus completing her appointed task, having crossed herself thirty-six times, and pressed her head with twenty-seven pressures upon the floor. And so, having finished, she quickly withdrew. Did any slightest prayer, any idea of praying, any thought of a G.o.d giving grace and pardon if only asked to give, once enter that bowing bosom?
”Why do those Turks sit there?” said Bertram, as he left the building. Why, indeed? It was strange to see five or six stately Turks, strict children of the Prophet doubtless, sitting there within the door of this temple dedicated to the Nazarene G.o.d, sitting there and looking as though they of all men had the most right so to sit, and were most at home in so sitting; nay, they had a divan there, were drinking coffee there out of little double cups, as is the manner of these people; were not smoking, certainly, as is their manner also in all other places.
”Dem guard de keys,” said the dragoman.
”Guard the keys!”
”Yes, yes; open de lock, and not let de Christian fight.”
So it is. In such manner is proper, fitting, peaceable conduct maintained within the thrice Christian walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
On his return to the hotel, Bertram accepted an invitation to join Miss Todd's picnic in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, and then towards evening strolled up alone on to the Mount of Olives.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.
If there be one place told of in holy writ, the name of which gives rise to more sacred feelings than any other, it is that of the Mount of Olives; and if there be a spot in that land of wondrous memories which does bring home to the believer in Christ some individualized remembrance of his Saviour's earthly pilgrimage, that certainly is it.
There is no doubting there, no question there whether or no the ground on which you tread was not first called ”the mount” by some Byzantine Sophia; whether tradition respecting it can go back further than Constantine; whether, in real truth, that was the hill over which Jesus walked when he travelled from the house of Lazarus at Bethany to fulfil his mission in the temple. No: let me take any ordinary believing Protestant Christian to that spot, and I will as broadly defy him to doubt there as I will defy him to believe in that filthy church of the holy places.
The garden of Gethsemane near the city, ”over the brook Cedron,”
where he left his disciples resting while he went yonder to pray; the hill-side on which the angel appeared unto him, strengthening him, and whither Judas and the mult.i.tude came out to take him; Bethany, the town of Mary and Martha, ”fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem,” where Lazarus was raised from the dead; the spot from whence he sent for the a.s.s and the a.s.s's colt; the path from thence to the city by which he rode when the mult.i.tude ”cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David!” the same mult.i.tude which afterwards came out against him with staves: these places are there, now as they were in his day, very credible--nay, more, impossible not to be believed. These are the true holy places of Jerusalem, places for which Greeks and Latins do not fight, guarded by no sedate, coffee-drinking Turks, open there to all men under the fair heavens, and desolate enough, too, even in these pilgrim weeks, for any one or two who will sit there alone and ponder over the wondrous history of the city that still lies over against him.
But what is the so strong evidence of the actual ident.i.ty of these places? What is it that makes me so sure that this is the Mount of Olives, and that water-channel there the brook Cedron, and the hamlet on the other side the veritable Bethany? Why is one to be so sure of these, and yet feel such an infinity of doubt as to that village of Emmaus, that valley of Ajalon, that supposed Arimathea, and the rest of them? Nay, I cannot well say, at any rate not in these light novel pages. Dr. Stanley, with considerable distinctness does say. But go and see: with the ordinary Protestant Christian seeing here will be believing, as seeing over in that church of the holy places most indisputably will be disbelieving.
Hither Bertram strolled, and, seated on the brow of the hill, looked over to Jerusalem till the short twilight of the Syrian evening had left him, and he could no longer discern the wondrous spots on which his eye still rested. Wondrous, indeed! There before him were the walls of Jerusalem, standing up erect from the hill-side--for the city is still all fenced up--stretching from hill to hill in varying but ever continued line: on the left was the Hill of Sion, David's hill, a hill still inhabited, and mainly by Jews. Here is still the Jews' quarters, and the Jews' hospital too, tended by English doctors, nurtured also by English money; and here, too, close to David's Gate, close also to that new huge Armenian convent, shall one, somewhat closely scrutinizing among heaps of rubbish, come upon a colony of lepers. In the town, but not of it, within the walls, but forbidden all ingress to the streets, there they dwell, a race of mournfullest Pariahs. From father to son, from mother to daughter, dire disease, horrid, polluting, is handed down, a certain legacy, making the body loathsome, and likening the divine face of man to a melancholy ape. Oh! the silent sadness, the inexpressible melancholy of those wan, thoughtless, shapeless, boneless, leaden faces! To them no happy daily labour brings rest and appet.i.te; their lot forbids them work, as it forbids all other blessings. No; on their dunghills outside their cabins there they sit in the sun, the mournfullest sight one might look on, the leper parents with their leper children, beggars by inheritance, paupers, outcasts, mutilated victims,--but still with souls, if they or any round them did but know it.
There also, directly facing him, was the Mount Moriah, also inside the walls, where Solomon built the house of the Lord, ”where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared, in the thres.h.i.+ng-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.” For this city, Jerusalem, had, in still more ancient days, before the thought of that temple had come into men's minds, been the city Jebus, a city even then fenced up, and here had been the thres.h.i.+ng-floor which Ornan tendered to David without price, but which the king bought for six hundred shekels of gold.
Yes; here before him as he sat was the site of that temple, Solomon's temple, ”exceeding magnificent, of fame and glory throughout all countries,” of which David had been worthy only to collect the materials. The site! nay, but there were the very stones themselves.