England -- Fiction; Love stories; Scholars -- Fiction
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 multitude 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 ass and the ass's colt; the path from thence to the city by which
he rode when the multitude "cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of
David!" the same multitude 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 identity 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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