Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old: A Complete Life of Christ Written in Simple Language, Based on the Gospel NarrativeHurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Religion
Hurlbut's Life of Christ For Young and Old: A Complete Life of Christ Written in Simple Language, Based on the Gospel Narrative
Hurlbut, Jesse Lyman
Jesus Christ -- Biography
But most of those who have studied carefully all that can be known about
the city of Jerusalem and the hills around it, have believed that the
true Calvary was not where the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre now
stands, but at some other place. Many think that it was a rounded,
grass-covered little hill just outside the city on the north. The side
of this hill looking toward the city is very steep, and in it are two
great caves. As one stands on the city wall and looks at this rounded
hill, with the two holes in it, he thinks of a skull--which is a man's
head without the skin and the flesh, and with two eye-holes. This hill
may have been called "the skull-place," because it looks so much like a
skull. On this skull-like hill it may be that Jesus was crucified.
[Illustration: Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sometimes claimed to be
built upon the site of Calvary]
[Illustration: Turning to the women weeping over him, Jesus said: "Women
of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your
children!"]
Jesus walked through the streets of the city loaded down with the heavy
beam of his cross on his shoulders. The soldiers were dragging him on,
and some were driving him forward with blows, when suddenly, worn out
with suffering, and fainting from loss of blood and want of food, he
sank down upon the ground, unable to carry his load any further. Just
then a man coming from the country into Jerusalem, met the soldiers and
the crowd with Jesus. This man was named Simon. He was not Simon Peter,
the disciple of Jesus, but another Simon, who had come from a city far
away in Africa, called Cyrene. The soldiers seized this man, and made
him help Jesus in carrying the cross, until they came to Calvary.
Following the soldiers who had been commanded to crucify Jesus, was a
crowd of Jewish priests and scribes, the teachers of the law, and a
multitude of the lowest of the people, all shouting aloud their
rejoicing that Jesus was to be put to death, just as if he had been the
wickedest man in all the land. But among these were a few friends of
Jesus, and some of the women who had known him and loved him, and were
now weeping over the wrongs done to him.
Jesus turned and spoke to these women:
"Women of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and
your children! For the time is coming when they shall say, 'Happy are
those who have no children to suffer and to die.' In those days they
shall call out to the mountains, 'Fall on us,' and to the hills, 'Hide
us.' If this is what they do now in the beginning, what will they do
then in the end?"
Even in those terrible moments Jesus was not thinking of himself and his
own sufferings, but the sorrows that would soon come upon others.
[Illustration: ANCIENT JERUSALEM]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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