Letters from the Holy LandButler, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson)
Religion
Letters from the Holy Land
Butler, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Southerden Thompson)
Palestine -- Description and travel
the tortuous interior the rough steep steps cut in the rock that lead to
Calvary, on your right hand. On climbing to the top, groping in the
twilight, you find yourself in a chapel lined with plates of gold and
hung with votive lamps. The sacred floor, which is the very top of
Calvary, is entirely cased in gold, and under the Greek altar is shown
the socket of the Cross, a hole in the rock. Our altar stands to the
proper left of the Greek, which has the post of honour. Descending from
Calvary there is a long stretch of twilight church to traverse before we
come to the sepulchre. Again I had not realised, from the books I have
read, the great distance that separates the two, and, indeed, many
writers in their scepticism have done their best to belittle the whole
thing. I confess that before to-day I was much under the influence of
these writers, but I have now seen for myself, a privilege I am deeply
thankful for. It was an overwhelming sensation to find the spaces that
separate the sites so much vaster than I had expected, and to have, at
every step, the conviction driven home that after all the modern
wrangling and disputing the old tradition stands immovable. It certainly
would be hard to believe that when St. Helena came here the dwellers of
Jerusalem should have lost all knowledge of where their "Tower-hill"
stood in the course of three centuries. She was commissioned, as you
know, by her son the Emperor Constantine, that ardent convert to
Christianity, to seek and secure with the utmost perseverance and care
all the holy sites, and to her untiring labours we owe their
identification to this day. The great central dome of the church rises
above the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, which chapel stands in the vast
central space, a casket enclosing the rock hollowed out into Our Lord's
Tomb and its ante-chamber. You enter this ante-chamber and, stooping
down, you pass on your hands and knees into the sepulchre itself. On
your right is the little low, rough-hewn tomb, covered with a slab of
stone worn into hollows by the lips of countless pilgrims throughout the
long ages of our era. A monk keeps watch there, and beside him there is
only space enough for one person at a time. I have made many attempts to
tell you my thoughts and feelings during those bewildering moments of my
first visit, but I find it is impossible, and you can understand why.
JERUSALEM, _8th April 189-_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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