Jamil sat down on a stone to talk with a workman while we, wandering about on the slopes of the hill, found a warm sheltered spot looking toward Mount Moriah. In all the days that we were in Jerusalem we could not fully sense the fact that the Christian was now free to visit all the sacred places, that the Temple area was open to him, that he might enter the sacred Mosque of Omar which once it had been death to enter. _The Turk had gone!_ We took out the Book and read the old instructions for the building of the Tabernacle, read the orders for the building of Solomon’s temple and the majestic words of its dedication when at last the building was finished:—“and Solomon stood before the Altar and said—‘O Jehovah, God of Israel, there is no God like thee in heaven above or on the earth beneath; who keepest covenants in loving kindness with thy servants that walk before thee with all their hearts.... But will God in very deed dwell on the earth? behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded!... When thy people Israel are smitten down before the enemy because they have sinned against thee; if they turn again to thee and confess thy name and pray and make supplication unto thee in this house then hear thou in heaven and forgive thy people Israel and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest to their fathers.’” Of Solomon’s Temple scarce a vestige remains, yet Israel again is returning to the land of its fathers. We read of the visits of Jesus to the new temple which, great as it was, had so little of the glory of the old. How it must have thrilled Him, a little country boy from the village of Nazareth, when He saw it for the first time at the great feast. He seems to have had no fear, as with all simplicity He pressed near to the great doctors of learning, listening eagerly and asking keen questions, the keenest questions that can be asked—those that leap from the alert and hungry mind of a boy of twelve. And we read of that other day when He heard the quarrelings and cursings, saw the gross wickedness of the bargainings of the money-changers and those who bought and sold the sacrifices, and cried aloud in words of burning denunciation, “My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves!” Little wonder that the scribes and Pharisees looked aghast at the crowds that pressed to hear as He taught daily in the temple, or that they demanded by whose authority He did these things and asked each other helplessly what they could do, since “the people were very attentive to Him,” and “the whole world had gone after Him.” In the temple courts how keen were His answers to their clever questioning designed to condemn Him, so keen that after awhile none dared ask Him any more questions. Yet when the teaching was over and, leaving the half-hostile, half-admiring crowd, He went out to the Mount of Olives to pray—then He knew that He must die.