Entering, we go through a high-arched door past a ledge cut into the wall at the right where Mohammedan officers smoke long-stemmed water-pipes while they sit with their legs crossed and direct the soldiers posted here to keep the crowds in order. We go into a great square vestibule in the centre of which, with rows of immense candles at its head and foot, there lies under a long row of beautiful brass lamps a rectangular stone of rose-coloured marble about eight feet long and four feet wide. It is four inches above the floor, and around its edges burn the wax tapers of worshippers. This is the Stone of Unction on which it is said the body of the Lord was laid when it was anointed for burial. Pilgrim after pilgrim walks forward and prostrates himself before it. Each one gets down on his knees, and bows his head to the floor, then leans over and kisses the stone. As we come closer we see that the marble has been worn rough by the pressure of human lips. As we stand and watch the earnest worshippers who pray before it, we cannot but be impressed with their faith. An old peasant woman in black, who trembles as she puts her long thin hands caressingly on the marble, bends over and touches it again and again with her withered lips. A pretty boy of ten crosses himself and kneels beside his Armenian mother while they go through their devotions together. Another pilgrim lays his beads on the slab, that they may be blessed by the contact, and crosses himself as he rises. Now there kneels a family of Greeks, the men in the ballet-girl costume of the Albanians, followed by a richly dressed lady who lays some cakes of incense on the slab, and prays long before it. Behind her come two Russian women with long strips of white linen in their hands. Waiting until the crowd has partially thinned, they measure the stone with this cloth, and cut it into strips of just the size of the slab. They rub these strips over the stone, praying as they do so, for these are to be their winding sheets, and they believe that, buried in them, they will rest more easily in their graves. It is difficult to appreciate the solemnity of the worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There is superstition mixed with earnest, honest faith, as is so often the case in the poor, weak human brain, even in those who lay claim to greater intellectuality than these poor pilgrims.