There are some places mentioned in the Gospels as to which we have roughly some idea of position. We know that the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of those that sold doves, were somewhere in the outer court of the Temple. The “treasury” was one of those boxes, placed in the Court of the Women, where offerings of money--even the two mites of the widow--might be made. “Solomon’s Porch” was apparently the cloister on the eastern wall, and is not to be confused with the “Beautiful Gate” (Kîpunos) on the west.[287] We can also picture to ourselves the view of Jerusalem seen from Olivet when the disciples pointed to the mighty masonry of the Holy House, of which not one stone is left standing on another.[288] “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.... Behold, your House is left unto you desolate.” But it is because of the history of that day of sin and sorrow, when the three crosses were raised in the cold morning after Passover night, that we now read and write so much about the Holy City; and our present inquiry is the most important of all. The white chalky slopes of Olivet were terraced and dotted with grey olive trees then as now, with here and there a fig garden and a solitary palm. But looking west there was only hard rock under grey walls--hard and stubborn as the hearts of the people, and as unlike the purple copses and dove-haunted oak woods of Galilee as was the sacerdotalism of priests to the teaching of the Son of Man. Above the mighty ramparts the great “wing wall” (not a “pinnacle”) of the House itself towered 150 feet over the gate towers and cloisters of the inner court. The black smoke of the fig-tree logs rose high above the great Altar. The scarps of Antonia frowned down on the Temple from the north. Beyond these great buildings were the white-washed domes of the city, and farther yet the great square towers by Herod’s palace. Perhaps a glimpse might be caught of the trees in its gardens, and of the wicked bronze statues from which its fountains poured; of the great halls, and cloisters, and fluttering doves. And outside, to the north, was the precipice and rounded summit of the Place of a Skull. Below the feet of the disciples was the Kidron gorge, the sepulchre of King Alexander cut in its cliff, and perhaps hard by in the flatter ground to its north the olive-yard of Gethsemane, and the rocky slope of the Agony to come; while on the western side was the spring of Bethesda, with its great reservoir in front, and its five cloisters, near the “Sheep Place,” where the flocks were gathered to the watering. [Sidenote: BETHESDA]