Following in the footsteps of the Master, on Good Friday eve I descended the acclivities of Moriah, crossed the same stone bridge over which he had passed,[217] and, entering the Garden of Gethsemane, I sat down beneath the aged olive-trees, and read the touching story of his passion. Returning to the city, in an “upper room,” in company with a few friends, I partook of the Lord’s Supper. That night I could not sleep. Walking out upon the house-top, I looked down upon Gethsemane. Unbroken silence reigned. The city slumbered. The lights around the balcony of the minaret burned dimly. The night wind blew softly from over the deep sea. The paschal moon was descending in the west. A silvery haze, like a gauze of purity, overspread the serene heavens. It was four o’clock in the morning. From an adjacent court-yard a cock announced the dawn of day. The distant east began to glow with the morning’s earliest light. It was Good Friday in Jerusalem――the hour and the event of all time. Well may Christian affection ask, “Where is Calvary?” Who would not approach such a place in silent prayer? Wisely its identity is unknown to earth. Though its location is the first object of research by the Christian traveler when he enters the Holy City, yet it is the last to be determined with satisfaction. Tradition designates a rock, inclosed within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as the Mount of Crucifixion; but the site involves a controversy so complicated, that the mind prefers the recollection of the event to the examination of the argument. Rejecting this legendary Calvary of the monks, I sought for one more in harmony with the topography of the city and with the casual allusions of the Evangelists. Though it is now impossible to identify Golgotha with certainty, yet topographical facts and sacred history are so concurrent that the mind is left almost without a doubt as to the direction of the place. As the final scene in our Lord’s trial occurred in the Tower of Antonia, which was near St. Stephen’s Gate, it is more than probable that the executioners, instead of leading Jesus through the crowded and excited city, led him out of this, the nearest gate. And as at that time there was no place suitable for capital executions either on the south, west, or north side of Jerusalem, we must search for one on the east side of the city. According to St. John, “The place where Jesus was crucified was nigh unto the city,”[218] and St. Paul assures us that Christ suffered without the gate.[219] As the priests of old were accustomed to drive the red heifer to sacrifice, and the scapegoat to the wilderness, out of the eastern gate of the Temple inclosure, so it would be only another instance of the remarkable correspondence between the types of the Old Testament and the life of Jesus if the Jews, though unwittingly, led the Savior to execution out of St. Stephen’s Gate. Where, then, should Calvary be sought for but in the environs of Jerusalem on the east?