“OUR feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.”[139] Drawn by an irresistible attraction, pilgrims flock hither from the very ends of the earth. The crumbling walls, the squalid filthy streets, the mouldering ruins, are regarded with a profound and reverential interest by millions of mankind, such as no other spot on earth can excite. To the Jew it is the centre alike of his patriotism and his religion. The Christian remembers that here the Son of God was crucified for the sins of the world. The Mohammedan, retaining in a mutilated and distorted form, the great facts of Jewish and of Christian scripture, and adding to them the legends of his own prophet, regards Jerusalem as second, and hardly second, in sanctity to Mecca itself. Nowhere else are the representatives of such various nationalities to be found as in this meeting-place of the three great monotheistic faiths which have spread so widely over the habitable globe. Jews who have travelled on foot from Poland or Morocco, may be seen weeping outside the temple walls. Greeks, Latins, Armenians, Copts, kneel side by side with worshippers from America, from Australia, and from every nation in Europe. Nubians, Hindoos, Affghans, Persians, Tartars, Arabs, prostrate themselves before the sacred rock from whence their prophet commenced his fabled journey to heaven, or gaze with awe on the spot to which he will, as they believe, return to judge the world. [Illustration: TOMB OF ABSALOM.] [Illustration: PLAN OF JERUSALEM, FROM THE ORDNANCE SURVEY.] The city, which holds so conspicuous a place in the later Scriptures, is in the earlier ones only referred to incidentally or obscurely. It is commonly identified with the Salem of which Melchizedec was king; and Mount Moriah, upon which Abraham was about to offer up Isaac, is thought to be the same with that on which the Temple was afterwards built. Dean Stanley argues strongly against this view, and would transfer the city of Melchizedec to a town, the site of which is marked by a village still bearing the name of Salem, near the ancient Shechem. The sacrifice of Isaac he would likewise place in the same neighbourhood on the summit of Gerizim. Though his arguments are weighty and deserve serious consideration, they cannot be accepted as conclusive. That the king of Jerusalem, in the days of Joshua,[140] bore a name or title almost the precise equivalent of that of the king of Salem, who was Abraham’s friend, is an important fact in the discussion. Adonizedec, the Lord of righteousness, would be a probable successor of Melchizedec, the King of righteousness.