216. Jerusalem the Golden

Jerusalem the Golden

Psa_137:5 : ’93If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.’94

Paralysis of his best hand, the withering of its muscles and nerves, is here invoked, if the author allows to pass out of mind the grandeurs of the Holy City where once he dwelt. Some captive, seated by the river Euphrates, wrote this psalm, and not David. Afraid I am of anything that approaches imprecation, and yet I can understand how any one who has ever been at Jerusalem should, in enthusiasm of soul, cry out, whether he be sitting by the Euphrates or the Hudson or the Thames, ’93If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning!’94 You see, it is a city unlike all others for topography, for history, for significance, for style of population, for waterworks, for ruins, for towers, for domes, for ramparts, for literature, for tragedies, for memorable birthplaces, for sepulchres, for conflagrations and famines, for victories and defeats.

I am here at last in this very Jerusalem and on a housetop, just after the dawn of a morning in December, with an old inhabitant to point out the salient features of the scenery. ’93Now,’94 I said, ’93Where is Mount Zion?’94 ’93Here at your right.’94 ’93Where is Mount Olivet?’94 ’93In front of where you stand.’94 ’93Where is the Garden of Gethsemane?’94 ’93In yonder valley.’94 ’93Where is Mount Calvary?’94 Before he answered, I saw it. No unprejudiced mind can have a moment’92s doubt as to where it is. Yonder I see a hill in the shape of a human skull, and the Bible says that Calvary was the ’93place of a skull.’94 Not only is it skull-shaped, but just beneath the forehead of the hill is a cavern that looks like eyeless sockets. Within the grotto under it is the shape of the inside of a skull. Then the Bible says that Christ was crucified outside the gate, and this is outside the gate; while the site formerly identified as Calvary was inside the gate. Besides that, this skull hill was for ages the place where malefactors were put to death, and Christ was slain as a malefactor. The Saviour’92s assassination took place beside a thoroughfare along which people went ’93wagging their heads,’94 and there is the ancient thoroughfare. I saw at Cairo, Egypt, a clay mould of that skull hill, made by the late General Gordon. While Empress Helena’97eighty years of age and imposed upon by having three crosses exhumed before her dim eyes, as though they were the three crosses of Bible story’97selected another site as Calvary, all recent travelers agree that the one I point out to you was, without doubt, the scene of the most terrific and overwhelming tragedy this planet ever witnessed. There were a thousand things we wanted to see that December day, and our dragoman proposed this and that and the other journey, but I said: ’93First of all, show us Calvary. Something might happen if we went elsewhere, and sickness or accident might hinder our seeing the sacred mount. If we see nothing else, we must see that, and see it this morning.’94 Some of us in carriage and some on mule-back, we were soon on the way to the most sacred spot that the world has ever seen or ever will see. Coming to the base of the hill, we first went inside the skull of rocks. It is called Jeremiah’92s Grotto, for there the prophet wrote his book of Lamentations. The grotto is thirty-five feet high, and its top and side are malachite, green, brown, black, white, red and gray.

Coming forth from those pictured subterraneous passages, we begin to climb the steep sides of Calvary. As we go up, we see cracks and crevices in the rocks, which I think were made by the convulsions of nature when Jesus died. On the hill lay a limestone rock, white but tinged with crimson, the white so suggestive of purity and the crimson of sacrifice that I rolled it down and brought it to America.

It is impossible for you to realize what our emotions were as we gathered, a group of men and women, all saved by the blood of the Lamb, on a bluff of Calvary, just wide enough to contain three crosses. I said to my family and friends: ’93I think here is where stood the cross of the impenitent burglar, and there the cross of the penitent miscreant, and here, between, stood the cross on which all our hopes depend.’94

As I opened to the nineteenth chapter of John to read, a chill blast struck the hill and a cloud hovered, and a natural solemnity deepened the spiritual solemnity. I read a little but broke down. I defy any emotional Christian man sitting upon Golgotha to read aloud and with unbroken voice, or with any voice at all, the whole of that account in Luke and John, of which these sentences are a fragment: ’93They took Jesus and led him away, and he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, where they crucified him and two others with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst;’94 ’93Behold thy mother!’94 ’93I thirst;’94 ’93This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;’94 ’93Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.’94 What sighs, what sobs, what tears, what tempests of sorrow, what surging oceans of agony in those utterances! While we sat there the whole scene came before us. All around the top and the sides, and the foot of the hill, a mob raged. They gnash their teeth and shake their clenched fists at him. Here the cavalry horses champ their bits and paw the earth and snort at the smell of the carnage. Yonder a group of gamblers are pitching up as to who shall have the coat of the dying Saviour. There are women almost dead with grief among the crowd, his mother and his aunt, and some whose sorrows he had comforted, and whose guilt he had pardoned. Here a man dips a sponge into sour wine, and by a stick lifts it to the hot and cracked lips. The hemorrhage of the five wounds has done its work.

The atmospheric conditions are such as the world saw never before or since. It was not a solar eclipse, such as astronomers record or we ourselves have seen. It was a bereavement of the heavens! Darker! until the towers of the temple were no longer visible. Darker! until the surrounding hills disappeared. Darker! until the inscription above the middle cross becomes illegible. Darker! until the chin of the dying Lord falls upon the breast, and he sighed with his last sigh, the words, ’93It is finished!’94

As we sat there, a silence took possession of us and we thought: ’93This is the center from which continents have been touched, and all the world shall yet be moved. Toward this hill the prophets pointed forward. Toward this hill the apostles and martyrs pointed backward. To this all heaven pointed downward. To this, with foaming execrations, perdition pointed upward. ’91Round it circles all history, all time, all eternity; and with this scene, painters have covered the mightiest canvas, and sculptors cut the richest marble and orchestras rolled their grandest oratorios, and churches lifted their greatest doxologies, and heaven built its highest thrones.’94

Unable longer to endure the pressure of this scene, we moved on, and into a garden of olives, a garden which in the right season is full of flowers; and here is the reputed tomb of Christ. You know the Book says, ’93In the midst of the garden was a sepulchre.’94 I think this was the garden, and this the sepulchre. It is shattered, of course. About four steps down we went into this, which seemed a family tomb. There is room in it for about five bodies. We measured it, and found it about eight feet high and nine feet wide and fourteen feet long. The crypt where I think our Lord slept was seven feet long. I think that there once lay the King wrapped in his last slumber. On some of these rocks, the Roman government set its seal. At the gate of this mausoleum on the first Easter morning, the angels rolled the stone, rumbling down the hill. Up these steps walked the lacerated feet of the Conqueror, and from these heights he looked off upon the city that had cast him out, and upon the world he had come to redeem, and at the heavens through which he would soon ascend. But we must hasten back to the city. There are stones in the wall which Solomon had lifted. Stop here and see a startling proof of the truth of prophecy. In Jeremiah, thirty-first chapter and fortieth verse, it is said that Jerusalem shall be built through the ashes. What ashes? people have been asking. Were those ashes just put into the prophecy to fill up? No! the meaning has been recently discovered. Jerusalem is now being built out in a certain direction where the ground has been submitted to chemical analysis, and it has been found to be the ashes cast out from the sacrifices of the ancient temple; ashes of the wood and ashes of bones of animals. There are great mounds of ashes, accumulation of centuries of sacrifices. It has taken all these thousands of years to discover what Jeremiah meant when he said, ’93’91Behold the days shall come,’92 saith the Lord, ’91that the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel unto the gate of the corner, and the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes.’92’93 The people of Jerusalem are at this very time fulfilling that prophecy. Pass by the place where the cornerstone of the ancient temple was laid three thousand years ago by Solomon. Explorers have been digging, and they have found that cornerstone seventy-five feet beneath the surface. It is fourteen feet long, and three feet eight inches high, and beautifully cut and shaped, and near it was an earthen jar that was supposed to have contained the oil of consecration used at the ceremony of laying the cornerstone. Yonder from a depth of forty feet a signet ring has been brought up inscribed with the words, ’93Haggai, the Son of Shebaniah,’94 showing it belonged to the prophet Haggai, and to that seal ring he refers in his prophecy, saying, ’93I will make thee as a signet.’94 I walk farther on, far under the ground, and I find myself in Solomon’92s stables, and see the places worn in the stone pillars by the halters of some of his twelve thousand horses. Farther on, look at the pillars on which Mount Moriah was built. You know that the mountain was too small for the temple, so they built the mountain out on pillars, and I saw eight of those pillars, each one apparently strong enough to hold a mountain.

Here we enter the Mosque of Omar, a throne of Mohammedanism, where we are met at the door by officials who bring slippers that we must put on before we take a step farther, lest our feet pollute the sacred places. A man attempting to go in without these slippers would be struck dead on the spot. These awkward sandals adjusted, we are led to where we see a rock with an opening in it, through which, no doubt, the blood of sacrifice in the ancient temple rolled down and away. At vast expense the mosque has been built, but so somber is the place I am glad to get through it and take off the cumbrous slippers, and step into the clear air. Yonder is a curve of stone, which is part of a bridge which once reached from Mount Moriah to Mount Zion, and over it David walked or rode to prayers in the temple. Here is the wailing-place of the Jews, where for centuries almost perpetually during the daytime, representatives of every generation of the Jews have stood putting their heads or lips against the wall of what was once Solomon’92s temple. It was one of the saddest and most solemn and impressive scenes I ever witnessed to see scores of these descendants of Abraham with tears rolling down their cheeks, and lips trembling with emotion, a book of psalms open before them, bewailing the ruin of the ancient temple and the captivity of their race, and crying to God for the restoration of the temple in all its original splendor. Most affecting scene! And such a prayer as that, century after century, I am sure God will answer; and in some way the departed grandeur will return, or something better. I looked over the shoulders of some of them and saw that they were reading from the mournful Psalms of David, while I have been told that this is the litany which some chant:

For the temple that lies desolate,

We sit in solitude and mourn;

For the palace that is destroyed,

We sit in solitude and mourn;

For the walls that are overthrown,

We sit in solitude and mourn;

For our majesty that is departed,

We sit in solitude and mourn;

For our great men that lie dead,

We sit in solitude and mourn;

For priests who have stumbled,

We sit in solitude and mourn.

I think by that prayer Jerusalem will come again to more than its ancient magnificence; it may not be with precious stones and architectural majesty, but in a moral splendor that shall eclipse forever all that David or Solomon saw.

But I must get back to the housetop where I stood early this morning, and before the sun sets, that I may catch a wider vision of what the city now is and once was. Standing here on the housetop, I see that the city was built for military safety. Some old warrior, I warrant, selected the spot. It stands on a hill twenty-six hundred feet above the level of the sea, and deep ravines on three sides do the work of military trenches. Compact as no other city was compact. Only three miles’92 journey round, and the three ancient towers, Hippicus, Phasaelus, Mariamne, frowning death upon the approach of all enemies. As I stood there on the housetop in the midst of the city, I said: ’93O Lord, reveal to me this metropolis of the world, that I may see it as it once appeared.’94 No one was with me, for there are some things you can see more vividly with no one but God and yourself present. Immediately the Mosque of Omar, which has stood for ages on Mount Moriah, the site of the ancient temple, disappeared and the most honored structure of all the ages lifted itself in the light and I saw it’97the temple, the ancient temple! Not Solomon’92s temple, but something grander than that. Not Zerubbabel’92s temple, but something more gorgeous than that. It was Herod’92s temple, built for the one purpose of eclipsing all its architectural predecessors. There it stood, covering nineteen acres, and ten thousand workmen had been forty-six years in building it. Blaze of magnificence! Bewildering range of porticos, and ten gateways, and double arches, and Corinthian capitals chiseled into lilies and acanthus. Masonry beveled and grooved into such delicate forms that it seemed to tremble in the light. Cloisters with two rows of Corinthian columns; royal arches; marble steps, pure as though made out of frozen snow; carving that seemed like a panel of the door of heaven let down and set in; the facade of the building on shoulders at each end lifting the glory higher and higher; and walls wherein gold put out the silver and the carbuncle put out the gold and the jasper put out the carbuncle, until in the changing light they would all seem to come back again into a chorus of harmonious color. The temple! The temple! Doxology in stone! Anthems soaring in rafters of Lebanon cedar! From side to side, and from foundation to gilded pinnacle, the frozen prayer of all ages!

From this housetop on the December afternoon we look out in another direction and I see the king’92s palace, covering a hundred and sixty-thousand square feet, three rows of windows illumining the inside brilliance, the hallway wainscoted with all styles of colored marbles, surmounted by arabesque, vermilion and gold, looking down on mosaics, music of waterfalls in the garden outside answering the music of the harps thrummed by deft fingers inside; banisters over which princes and princesses leaned, and talked to kings and queens ascending the stairway. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Mountain city! city of God! Joy of the whole earth! Stronger than Gibraltar and Sebastopol; surely it never could have been captured!

But while standing on the housetop I hear the crash of the twenty-three mighty sieges which have come against Jerusalem in the ages past. Yonder is the pool of Hezekiah and Siloam, where again and again the waters reddened with human gore. Yonder are the towers, but again and again they fell. Yonder are the high walls, but again and again they were leveled. To steal the treasures from her temple and palace and to dethrone this queen city of the earth, all nations plotted. David taking the throne at Hebron, decides that he must have Jerusalem for his capital; and, coming up from the south at the head of two hundred and eighty thousand troops, he captures it. Look, here comes another siege of Jerusalem! Assyrians under Sennacherib, enslaved nations at his chariot wheel, having taken two hundred thousand captives in his one campaign; Phoenician cities kneeling at his feet, Egypt trembling at the flash of his sword, comes upon Jerusalem. Look, another siege! The armies of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar come down and take a plunder from Jerusalem such as no other city ever had to yield, and ten thousand of her citizens trudge off into Babylonian bondage. Look, another siege! and Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts by night go through a breach of the Jerusalem wall, and the morning finds some of them seated triumphant in the temple, and what they could not take away because too heavy, they break up’97the brazen sea, and the two wreathed pillars, Jachin and Boaz.

Another siege of Jerusalem: Pompey with the battering-rams which a hundred men would roll back, and then at full run would bang against the wall of the city, and catapults hurling the rocks upon the people, left twelve thousand dead, and the city in the clutch of the Roman war-eagle. Look, a more desperate siege of Jerusalem! Titus with his tenth legion on Mount of Olives, and ballista arranged on the principle of the pendulum to swing great boulders against walls and towers, and miners digging under the city, making galleries of beams, which, set on fire, tumbled great masses of houses and human beings into destruction and death. All is taken now but the temple, and Titus, the conqueror, wants to save that un-harmed; but a soldier, contrary to orders, hurls a torch into the temple and it is consumed. Many strangers were in the city at the time, and ninety-seven thousand captives were taken; and Josephus says one million one hundred thousand lay dead. But looking from this housetop, the siege that most absorbs us is that of the Crusaders. England and France and all Christendom wanted to capture the Holy Sepulchre and Jerusalem, then in possession of the Mohammedans, under the command of one of the loveliest, bravest and mightiest men that ever lived’97for justice must be done him though he was a Mohammedan’97glorious Saladin! Against him came the armies of Europe, under Richard, Coeur-de-Lion,King of England; Philip Augustus, King of France; Tancred, Raymond, Godfrey, and other valiant men, marching on through fevers, plagues and battle charges, amid sufferings as intense as the world ever saw. Saladin, in Jerusalem, hearing of the sickness of King Richard, his chief enemy, sends him his own physician; and from the walls of Jerusalem, seeing King Richard afoot, sends him a horse. With all the world looking on, the armies of Europe come within sight of Jerusalem. At the first glimpse of the city they fell on their faces in reverence, and then lifted anthems of praise. Feuds and hatred among themselves were given up, and Raymond and Tancred, the bitterest rivals, embraced, while the armies looked on. Then the battering-rams rolled, and the catapults swung, and the swords thrust, and the carnage raged. Godfrey, of Bouillon, is the first to mount the wall. The Crusaders, a cross on every shoulder or breast, having taken the city, march bareheaded and barefooted to what they suppose to be the Holy Sepulchre, and kiss the tomb. Jerusalem at last was the possession of Christendom. But Saladin again took the city, and for the last four hundred years it has been in possession of cruel and polluted Mohammedanism!

Another crusade is needed to start for Jerusalem, a crusade in our own century greater than all those of the past centuries put together; a crusade in which you and I will march; a crusade without weapons of death, but only the Sword of the Spirit; a crusade that will make not a single wound nor start one tear of distress, nor incendiarize one homestead; a crusade of Gospel Peace! The cross to be again lifted on Calvary, not, as once, an instrument of pain, but as a sign of invitation. The Mosque of Omar shall give place to a church of Christ, and Mount Zion become the dwelling-place, not of David, but of David’92s Lord; and Jerusalem, purified of all its idolatries, and taking back the Christ she once cast out, shall be made a worthy type of that heavenly city which Paul styled ’93the mother of us all,’94 and which St. John saw, ’93the Holy Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God.’94 Through its gates may we all enter when our work is done; and in its temple, greater than all the earthly temples piled in one, may we worship. Russian pilgrims lined all the roads around the Jerusalem we visited that winter. They had walked hundreds of miles, and their feet bled on the way to Jerusalem. Many of them had spent their last farthing to get there, and they had left some of those who started with them dying or dead by the roadside. An aged woman, exhausted with the long way, begged her fellow-pilgrims not to let her die until she had seen the Holy City. As she came to the gate of the city she could not take another step, but she was carried in, and then said: ’93Now hold my head up till I can look upon Jerusalem;’94 and her head lifted up, she took one look and said: ’93Now I die content; I have seen it; I have seen it.’94 Some of us before we reach the heavenly Jerusalem may be as tired as that, but angels of mercy will help us in, and one glimpse of the temple of God and the Lamb, and one good look at the ’93King in his beauty,’94 will more than compensate for all the toils and tears and heart-breaks of the pilgrimage. Hallelujah! Amen!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage