The Mount: Introductory

THE H0X7NTAIN WHICH IS ON THE EAST SITE OP THE CITT.** — EZEK. XI. 23. “THE MOUNT THAT IS CALLED THE MOUNT OP OLIVES.” — LUKE XXL 37.

A RECENT personal visit has confirmed the long-entertained impression, that the most interesting locality in Palestine — and if so, in one sense, the most interesting spot in Ihe world — is THE Mount op Olives

For this pre-eminent distinction, it is doubtless indebted entirely, like other localities in that land of marvels, to the undying memories which cluster around it; and yet, apart from these, it possesses, in no ordinary degree, physical features peculiar to itself, and which render it almost unique among other celebrated localities. “The place is nothing — the associations are everything,” is the feeling of which, generally speaking, all travellers, in traversing the desolate, featureless valleys of that once hallowed region, are painfully conscious. Yet there are some striking and remarkable exceptions, and pre-eminently so is Olivet. So far, indeed, as the mount itself is concerned, a thousand scenes in our own and in other lands are alike infinitely grander and more beautiful. There is nothing conspicuous in height, nothing picturesque in form, nothing re-

* Other references to this visit will be found throughout the volume illustrative of its contents; these, however, have generally been inserted in footnotes, so as not to interrupt the continuity of the text.

markable, as in other sister mountains in Palestine, in colour. We had long been familiar, in imagination at least, with its contour. But the moment can never be forgotten, when, coming up from the sterner Old Testament memories of Bethhoron and Gibeon, the well-known outline of ‘* the mount before Jerusalem” disclosed itself from the heights of Nebi-SamueL It was the first time any of the localities revealed themselves, which bore the impress of the Redeemer’s presence and footsteps — the first glimpse obtained of the scenes of His teaching. His miracles, His agony, His triumph. Apart, however, from these overpowering feelings, there was nothing arresting or impressive. As the eye traversed that wide panorama, an otherwise unconspicuous green swell, with triple top, sprinkled with trees, and crowned apparently with a ruin — this, with an unpretending walled town fronting its western slope, studded with a few domes and minarets, at once and far ever took its place, in the most sacred shrine of memory, as the first view of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives:

It requires, however, to be on the Mount itself, to appreciate its peculiar claims to our admiration. In pursuing its bridle-paths, or wandering on its slopes, the feature which makes the first and deepest impression, is the proximity of this isolated green hill to the Holy City itself, — the narrow gorge of the Kedron alone dividing them; and which in olden time must still more remarkably have separated busy life from quiet seclusion — the hum of a great capital from “sequestered solitude.” What Lycabettus was to Athens and the Athenians, or, if we might be allowed a more home and homely reference, what Arthur s Seat was, and is, to our own northern capital, — such was Olivet, and especially in former times, to Jerusalem. The comparison might be pursued between these three mountains, at all events, in the conspicuous feature common to all, (and in each case so impressive,) the view from their summits. There are few prospects in the world finer than what are obtained from the two former. From the rocky apex of the Attic mount, the eye takes in at a glance, Athens and its Acropolis, the -^gean Sea, Salamis, and the graceful hills of -ffigina; besides a grand sweep of varied landscape, from Hymettus on the left, to the bold mountains to the far right which encircle the Gulf of Corinth. With the view from the Scottish Lycabettus more of our readers will be familiar, with its striking counterpart and duplicate of Acropolis and Mars Hill, and nobler than blue Mgean. But though in some respects it be unfair, comparing what are in themselves so dissimilar, we hesitate not to say, that, in diversity and strangeness of combination, the view from the summit of Olivet will not suffer when thus confronted with its western compeers. The striking feature here is that of contrast; — a contrast which, as we have just said, must have been greater and stranger still, when the city hard by, now comparatively solitary, was then “full of people.” In the palmy days of Jerusalem, it must have seemed like a vast Border watch-tower, separating death from life. Not more striking the transition between the green strip of the Nile in Egypt and the barren contiguous desert: not more striking the contrast between the tropical verdure on the banks of the Barrada at Damascus, with the arid desolation of the hills of bare red earth, at whose base rushes its life-giving stream;

6 MEMOBIES OF OLIVi;!.

than that between the view on the one side of OuVET, — the hallowed and gorgeous magnificence of Jerusalem, ‘* beautiful for situation,” (the western slope of this Jehel Tilr* keeping vigil, like a wakeful Levite, over its sacred edifices,) — — with that on the other, — a wild sea of sand-hills and limestone rocks, tossed and tumbled, as with Titan bands, in endless, fantastic, savage confusion, till they sink in the deep depression of the Jordan valley; — the Dead Sea gleaming like dulled quicksilver in the far distance, backed by the wall of the Moab mountains. When these latter have their weird forms tinted with the varying hues of evening, the intervening barrenness becomes more apparent. It seems an awful and impressive picture of desolation and death, set in a frame of turquoise and amethyst.

But if such be the Mount op Olives, apart from sacred associations, what must it be with them? It reminds us of these same mountains of Edom of which we have just spoken, when their gray rocks and furrowed ridges, picturesque in themselves, are gilded and glorified with sunlight. Holy memories indeed! from the time when Abraham was here greeted, as there is a strong probability in believing he was, by the aged priest of Salem, on his way from the conquest of the five kings to his tents and terebinths at Hebron ;t

* Jebel Tdr: — “The mountain of mountains: “” the strong mount: “” the mountain rock: “the Arabic and Chaldee name for the Mount of Olives. What Hermon — “Jebel-esh-Sheikh” — ‘the Chief mountain,” was to Dan and Naphthali in northern Palestine, so was Olivet to the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah, — “the Mount “par excellence. Mount Tabor is also called, at this day, Jebel TAr, from its conspicuous summit: although Van de Yelde supposes this to be simply a contraction of* Tabor.”

f The king of Sodom went out to meet him *’at the valley of Jhaveb, or 4s he joumeyed from Beersheba, and looked towards the olive-crowned summit from the heights of Eephaim, when “he lifted up his eyes and saw the place (Moriah) afar off,” and rejoiced at the foreshadowed sacrifice; — until He whose “Day** made him glad, Himself trod its green slopes, — the true Isaac, — the divine-human Victim, — ‘the Lamb for the burnt-offering,” — who in the depths of its olive groves had the fillets bound around his brows for His own great oblation. Need we say it is with Hm Olivet is most sacredly identified. Interesting as are the few Old Testament memories which gather around it, these have “no glory by reason of the glory that excelleth.” There is a tradition in one of the Jewish Targums, that the dove of Noah plucked the olive leaf from one of its trees. The tradition contains, at all events, a nobler spiritual verity. The true Dove of Peace, whose office it is to glorify Jesus, — “He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you,” (John xvi. 14,) — has plucked from this mount, or rather from the lips of its great Teacher, more than from any other spot in the Holy Land, olive branches of comfort and hope for the tempest-tossed. Its every nook is baptized with His prayers and tears. His prophecies and warnings, and echoes with His latest benediction. It is a silent evangelist of the life of Christ; — the Ararat on which the true Ark rested, and on which the bow of covenant-promise shone in holiest lustre. The story of Redeeming love is

which is the king’s dale,** and where also Melchizedek brought forth his bread and wine. Josephus — a sufficiently trustworthy authority on such a point — evidently places this ‘’kings dale*’ immediately to the east of Jerusalem.

graven as with an iron pen and lead on its rocks for ever! No sooner do we descend from the gate of St Stephen, by the old worn path trodden by the millions of successive generations, and reach the bridge across the Kedron, than we are on the footsteps of Jesus. However sadly we may fail to track these, in the ruined streets we have left behind, (the poor modern travesty of “the City of the Great King,”) we find them constantly here. It was in the truest sense His home. We never red of Him spending a night in Jerusalem. But oft and again, when “every man went unto his own house, Jesus went unto the Mount op Olives,” (John vii. 53, and viii. 1;)* — “And in the daytime he was teaching in the temple, and at night he went out and abode in the mount called the Mount of Olives,” (Luke xxi 37;) “And he came ouo (of the city) and went, as he was wont, to the Mount of Olives,” (Luke xxi. 37;) “Jesus ofttimes resorted thither,” (John xviii. 2.) Thus, more than any other spot in Palestine, (not even Nazareth or Capernaum excepted,) is the traveller conscious of an almost overpowering impression of the Redeemer’s Humanity, the realisation of Him as a living Personal Presence. The all-absorbing, soul-stirring thought, amid these identical features of unchanpino: nature, is this: On these same rocks and knolls, the eye of the Son of God and the Lord of glory rested. From the top of Olivet, or as He crossed its shoulder by the Bethany bridle-path. He saw yonder sun rise, just as it does now, over the purple wall of Moab; He heard the birds welcome the morning beams;

* An unfortunate division of the chapter made by our excellent translators in our authorised version, dissevers these verses, which have a touching meaning and pathos when thus read in connexion.

He witnessed the lark carolling in the azure sky; or, it may be, the magnificent eagle, the oldest and noblest emblem of His own protection and love, soaring overhead ;* He listened to the rustling of the gray olive leaf; He saw that carpet of gorgeous wild flowers, before they received their touching modern name of “The Saviour’s blood-drops,” and which still cluster in the “olive-bordered way,” where the Hosannahs greeted Him, and where His tears fell. In a sense far truer, though far different from that intended to be conveyed by the Jewish tradition in the Midrash of Rabbi Jenna, “the Divine Majesty dwelt three years and a half on the Mount of Olives, to see whether the Jewish people would, or would not, repent, calling, * Return unto me, and I will return unto you;* ‘Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near;’ and then, when all was vain, returned to its own place.” f While at the present day, and for the last fifteen centuries, thousands on thousands of devout worshippers have crowded to the Holy Land to see what they imagine to be the Holy Sepulchre, and to worship in the church erected on the traditional spot, — we need not wonder that Eusebius, in one of his early works, written before the journey of the Empress Helena to Jerusalem, speaks of the many pilgrims who come up from all parts of the earth to worship on the Mount of Olives.| Not “an high hill as the hill of Bashan;” not bold in outline and rich in vegetation as Tabor; — a mere undulation compared with towering Hermon and its diadem of eternal snow: — yet of this guardian mountain, this” lion

Deut. xxxii. 11. t Lightfoot, ii. 39.

X See Thrapp’s Ancient Jerusalem, p. 223.

of Judah,” overiooking his “rocky den in Zion,” (Ps. lxvi. 2,) it may be appropriately said, ‘* Thou art more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey,” (Ps. lxvi. 4;) or as the inspired minstrel again speaks of the same adjoining summit, — “Why leap ye,” (why look ye with envious eye,) “ye high hills? this is the hill which God desireth to dwell in, yea, the Lord will dwell in it for ever,” (Ps. lxviii. 16.)

The double claim on our interest and regard, which, as we have sought to show in the preceding pages, the Mount of Olives, possesses, may be noted and illustrated further in detail, (it may form the most suitable introduction to the chapters which follow,) by transcribing some rough jottings taken on the spot. Such impressions — photographed, so to speak, at the moment, under its own living light — must at least be truthful. In company with a friend, and with our Bibles (the best of all Palestine guides) in hand, several hours of a bright Sabbath in spring, were spent in leisurely traversing the various scenes of interest on its sacred ground, and gathering up their vivid and impressive lessons; — a Sabbath which the writer can never cease to regard as the most memorable in his life. These notes, being copied as they were written at the moment, will account for their abrupt and fragmentary character. There is no change but to complete unfinished sentences, and a few needful verbal amendments.

Mount op Olives,
Sabbath the 17th March 1867.

I am sitting, at this moment, on the ledge of the bridge over “the brook Kedron,” with its dry channel, my foot on the first spot of ground on Olivet. The morning services in the English Church on Zion may well give an appropriate tone to a Sabbath sojourn and communion on the Mount: text of the sermon Ps. lxxxvii. —” His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob, Glorious things are spoken of thee, city of Gody As I write, Gethsemane with its old olives is within a hundred paces: other gnarled trees of the same, still nearer, may possibly be those of the Agony. Not a breath ruffles their foliage, nor that of the dark silent

cypress intermingled with them I look round on

the Temple wall, — a road is at its base. This must have been the very same which Jesus and His disciples traversed. The enclosure of Gethsemane is unsightly in the extreme; but one is glad of the shelter from this oppressive sun, while we read together the touching account in Luke, of the Gethsemane sufferings. We are close by the large stone and little hillock pointed out as that whereon the disciples were found

sleeping for sorrow.

We are now wending up the road leading to the

top of Olivet, the same which I pursued alone yesterday, and where, at the same place, I saw, quite close, a magnificent eagle describing its gigantic gyrations,* forcibly reminding of the figure applied to Israel of old, and which will doubtless be true of Israel restored, *’ As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone

It is somewhat remarkable that, unlike the experience of other travellers, this was the only fine specimen either of wild beast or bird seen durgni our journey through Palestine.

did lead him,” (Deut. xxxii. 11.) This, too, is doubtless the road which our Lord and His apostles most frequently took on their way to Bethany; and by which the latter

returned to Jerusalem after the Ascension Have

just passed a fig-tree on the right, but not like the one doomed by the Saviour, “having nothing but leaves,” for the figs are already formed, and the leaves are only bursting

and no more We have come to an olive grove full

of venerable trees, similar to what we saw, four days ago,

near Bethhoron Nebi-Samuel to the left, the most

conspicuous point in the view. Truly appropriate, if, as has been supposed, it formed the site of the “Great high place ‘* — where the Tabernacle was pitched by Solomon, previous to its final removal to Mount Zion.

We are now seated on the northern summit of Olivet,

to the north of the Bethany road More of a bird’s

eye view of the Temple area. Have just read together the 8th of 1st Kings; and been picturing that wondrous scene of consecration when thousands on thousands were doubtless ranged, where now we are, gazing down in rapt devotion. Yonder is Mount Zion, from which the Ark was brought; and there the sacred courts where Solomon ofiered his vast

sacrifices How intense the solitude and quiet at

this moment! Not a sound: not one wreath of smoke is seen in the city, nor even song of bird heard: only one or two ghost-like female figures in white, are flitting along the crumbKng pavement of the Mosque of Omar. ‘’ How doth

the city sit solitary!*’ The northern outlier of

Olivet intervenes, and shuts out all but Nebi-Samuel with its tower; — otherwise we should have a view of several of the interesting localities seen last week, Gibeon, &c.*

Returned east, by David’s road” toward the way

of the wilderness.” We have paused and read together “at the top of the Mount,” where “he worshipped God” — the passage in the loth of 2d Samuel. Could it be, on yonder stony limestone cliff, that Shimei came out to curse the king? The view, at present, is wonderful from this point. Large masses of cumulous summer clouds, in summer glory, project deep shadows on the white billowy roll of otherwise featureless hills which descend in rapidly-shelving masses to the crevasse f of the Jordan and Dead Sea. The mountains of Moab and Ammon as they near the latter, are dimmed; but they come out grandly as we gaze on the spot

where Jordan enters “the Asphaltite Lake.” We

remember that the country before and around us was the seat of the Amorite kings, so much in our thoughts a day or two ago, in connexion with Joshua’s great battles at Gibeon and Bethhoron. We can only dimly discern in the haze and glare, the rocky cliffs, on one of which Kerak (Kir Moab) must be; and another on which Balaam stood. J

This intervening height was Scopus. It reminded of the many “armies of the alien” which have made it their tenting-ground. Here Cestius first pitched his camp, and afterwards Titus. Here it was Sennacherib “shook his hand against the mountain of the Daughter of Zion — the hiU of Jerusalem,” (Isa x. 32.)

+ This ocean-like swell of these strange snowy-looking hills, seamed apparently with crevasses and covered with moraineSj often suggested the recollection of the view, with which Alpine explorers are familiar, of the Mer de Glace as seen from the Jardin, at Chamouni. This was specially recalled when traversing the savage road — (a very valley of the shadow of death) — between the convent of Mar Saba and the De§d Sea.

t “From the top of the rocks he saw,” (Num. xxiii. 9.)

Pisgah too must be there, (we have just read the passage in Deut.,) from whose summit the greatest of old world heroes descried “that goodly mountain even Lebanon,” In one of those ravines” in the land of Moab over against

Bethpeor ““God buried him.” Nigh where we are

now looking, Israel must have advanced to the land of

promise We have been reminded also (and turned

to the passage) of the beautiful episode in the history of these Moab valleys — the story of Ruth and Naomi.

Then that strange country lying between us and

the Jordan valley was the scene of John’s preaching and of the Saviour’s temptation; — we have read together the description in St Matthew. The outer framework seems strikingly to fit the picture. Truly “a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” What a scene for that superhuman conflict, when the Tempter “left Him for a season,” to prepare for the more awful struggle in the place which we have a little ago gazed upon — Gethsemane Yonder too is Jordan; but I confess it is not “the silvery gleam through the strip of emerald” I had expected to find it. It seems, from this point, a featureless river flowing through a blasted plain, on to its deep grave in the Dead Sea.,.... Full of strange mingled memories is that site of Sodom and Gomorrah. We have just glanced over the whole passage, describing the battle of the confederated chiefs, “Tidal King of nations,” &c. &c. — We can picture their terrible rout: and, even from our last week’s journey, can imagine the difficulties, in such a country, of the old Patriarch’s whirlwind march, by day and by night, till he overtook the conquerors, with their ill-gotten spoil, at Damascus.

k.

Then we can see in imagination (perhaps within sight of where we are now sitting) that mysterious personage of Old Testament history — the type of a Greater who in after ages trod the same spot — coming forth from “Salem,” with bread and wine” and his priestly blessing.

«

Turning south towards “the hill country of Judea.” — These hills are generally featureless and monotonous, but a striking range of rugged mountains are on this side the Dead Sea. — Bethany is between; but hid from view. Can that be Bethphage, the ruins crowning the rounded eminence on the other side of Bethany? But it seems too far south-east for this.* We see most prominently farther south — Beth-haccerem — or the “Frank Mountain,” as it was named by the Crusaders.-|- ..... Despite of modern authorities that would remove the scene to Gerizim, may not that height in the middle distance, in the direction of Bethlehem and

We afterwards discovered this prominent village to be Abhti Dis. I find now it has often been mistaken by travellers for Bethphage. But the grounds on which its claims are negatived seem irresistible. See subsequent chapter, in which Bethphage is treated.

+ It was also called Jebelel-Fureidis — the “Paradise” of Herod, which tba base and unscrupulous king adorned with gardens, and where he himself was buried. This conspicuous mountain, although in a very much smaller form, always reminded the writer, in its outline, of the home-scene with which he is most familiar, the view of Ben Lomond, as seen from Loch Ard, Perthshire. The resemblance of many places in the Holy Land to weU-known scenes in Scotland more than once occurred. Notably, the view of Carmel from the eastern end of the plain of Esdraelon near Jenin, to that of the Carse of Stirling near the sources of the Forth, bounded in the distance by Damyat and the Ochil range. No wonder so conspicuous a hin as El’Fureidis was made, in the olden time, one of the beacon-stations for the use of torch-signals. ‘*Set up a sign of fire in Betkhaccerem,^* (Jer. vL 1.)

Hebron, be the spot where the Father of the Faithful, with his son Isaac at his side, “lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off “? We have read the passage together, and

it seems well to dovetail with the narrative And

nearer still, is the valley of Eephaim, the old boundary line between Judah and Benjamin.*

• ••••••

To complete the Panorama we must turn to the west. In the distance are Solomon’s *’ mountains of Bether: ‘* — and in this clear atmosphere, appearing close at our feet, is the city of the Great King.f The tower of Hippicus stands out prominently by the Jaffa Gate. Directly opposite is St Stephen’s, and the long-closed Golden Gate with its double archway. Most conspicuous of all, of course, is the octagonal Mosque of Omar, with its gardens and funereal cypresses. Close to where we now are, must have been the chief lunar station.

* There it was David encountered the Philistines: “the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees” was the Divine watchword for battle and victory. Once a fruitful spot this “Valley of Giants” must have been; — for prosperous Israel is compared to “one gathering ears in the Valley of Rephaim,” (Isa. xvii. .5.)

+ I find Warburton, in his “Crescent and the Cross,’* (after all, the best of books on Eastern travel,) graphically speaks, in describing this very view, of” the atmosphere being like a crystal lens, and every object in the Holy City as clear as if it lay within a few yards, instead of a mile’s distance. Each battlement upon those war-worn walls, each wild flower that clusters over them, is visible,*’ p. 236. I am glad to find such an authority thus briefly endorsing my humble estimate of the prospect from the summit of Olivet, “From hence is the most interesting, if not the most striking view in the world. From it is laid bare every fibre of the great heart of Palestine.” — Jb.

t Here the appearance of the new moon, from torches waved on the mountains of Moab, was signified to the Temple -ofiicials, and also communicated to the various mountain-heights in the land.

“Fair as the moon/* “and terrible as an army

with banners” * For here the 1 0th Roman Legion under Titus had their fortified camp, and closed in mortal combat with the Jews near to Gethsemane.f But we must now leave the height, and with it the view of Jerusalem, descending towards Bethany.

I am now seated on a stone embossed with lichen, and the ground strewed around with crimson anemones. The almond-tree is blossoming, and the fig-tree just putting forth its tender leaves. This spot I shall always in future thought, associate with the scene of The Ascension. It is a secluded platform of rock — abutting from the beaten path — with a gentle valley on either side. It seems best, or well to correspond with the em ek BeOaviov. We have just read the brief but remarkable passages; and love to think of that glorious Ascent — up, it may be, in such a deep blue sky as is now o’ercanopying our heads. The view from this spot down to the Jordan, the Dead Sea, and Moab mountains, is grand in the extreme. Indeed nothing on all Olivet has so impressed me, as the magnificence of the prospect which, evening after evening, must have disclosed itself here to the eye of Incarnate Majesty and Love; when, in the glow of 4ihe setting sun, those hills, which have now on them the sultry haze of mid-day, are changed into ruby. This is the third time in succession I have visited the spot. No wonder

Sol. Song, vi. 10.

+ It is recorded that the ground was soaked with blood — “His blood be apon us and upon our children!” (Matt, xxvii. 25.)

B “Jesus ofttimes resorted thither,” to enjoy, in this Sabbath

cahn, exemption from the noise and tumult of the city.*

Bethany is just in sight and no more, with the

Frank Mountain again in the distance.

We have not visited Bethany to-day, but preferred descending by the lofty ridge on the right, which joins the lower road between it and Jerusalem A Sabbath-day’s meditation on Ouvet would not be complete were we to omit the best authenticated scene of all its Scripture incidents — that of “the Triumphal entry.” We have just been seated at the spot in “the Valley of Bethany,” when Jerusalem first comes in sight — (As we were reading the passages, and as I now write, a large flock of sheep are between us and the city, following a group of shepherds. In other flocks we have seen, goats have been intermingled; in which case apparently, the shepherd follows and drives them. But the sheep “hear the shepherd’s voice”, and they “know ‘^ and “follow” him.) There are two successive

* I find in a home letter on my first visit to the same place, after confessing to disappointment with other localities, I thus expressed myself on returning to our tents at iight — “The Mount of Olives and our day’s ride across it, redeems all. I am not referring to sacred associations, although it is difficult to dismiss these, but I was amazed with the wild grandeur and beauty of the view from the top of Olivet and from Bethany: the sweep of olive-clad valleys interspersed with limestone rocks: — the long range of undulating country betweei us and the deep gorge of the Jordan; and, though only dimly visible through chequered light, the grand waU of Moab mountains. I was specially touched to think of all this landscape being that which was daily familiar to the eye of Jesus and His disciples to and fro in their journeys to Bethany. What a glory these old olives give to the Mount which bears their name!” &c. — Fiiday, March 15th.

views of Jerusalem by this road. After obtaining the first of these, the path takes a steep and curved descent, into what our guide told us on Friday was called “The Valley of Bethany.” On reaching this lowest point, the view of the gorge, down towards the Valley of Eephaim (?) is alike wild and beautiful, reminding of some of our own quieter Highland straths — only the lime-stone giving a brighter aspect.

But we have now reached the culminating point — the most striking turn in what is now so well known as the “Hosanna road” — fringed all round with those crimson anemones, touchingly called “Christ’s blood-drops.’’ Their red lips seem still uttering a silent testimony of love to Him who here paused in His triumph, and at the sight of the city was

dissolved in a flood of tears.* We finish our five hours,

by seating ourselves “over against the Temple,” where the Lord must have sat (or nigh to the place) with His disciples, as described in’Matthew xxiv. It must have been, too, at this very time of the evening, when the sun was reddening with his fires the Rocks of Moab. We select what appears a probable locality. Great deep shadows are flinging themselves

* “A specially rich cluster of them were at the undoubted spot, where He saw the city and wept over it.” — Hom/e Letter. I may here add, nothing can exceed the beauty and diversity of the spring flowers in Palestine; and more especially the glow imparted to hill and valley in the morning or evening sunlight from patches of this same anemone. I never can forget one evening in particular, riding along the tropical plain of Jericho, the flush of crimson glory on one of the mountain-sides near the Dead Sea. The floral brilliancy of March and April is one great reason for the selection of these months for the tour of the Holy Land, when “the winter is past, the rain (the latter rain) is over, and gone; and the flowers appear on the earth” (Sol. Song, ii. 11, 12.)

across the gorge of the Eedron: the westering son is gilding the domes and cupolas of the city as well as the bright patches of spring verdure on the slopes of Olivet and Zion. Have just read together the passage The reference to the Fig-tree, “Learn a parable,” &c., we have seen to-day over and over illustrated: ‘’summer is nigh;” and it is just putting forth its tender leaves. Also, from the same spot, may not the sight of such a shepherd and flock as we have now met, possibly have suggested the grand Judgment-day parable of

the sheep and the goats?

• •••••

But the shadows of evening are creeping farther and farther up the mountain side. It is now also near the anniversary of the Agony; and having completed the circuit of the mountain, we are again reminded of the Great event, by finding ourselves, where we started, at everrevered and loved Gethsemane. What a Sanctuary! What a Sabbath-day’s journey! Surely “it is good for us to be here.” To Him who givei it all its sacredness, let the prayer be breathed ere we cross the Kedron — ‘’Abide with us for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent,”

Ere we close these introductory remarks, it may be well to add, that the Olivet of the present is changed materially, in much of its outward aspect, from what it was in the day of its most sacred memories, and, as such, is shorn doubtless of many features of former attractiveness and beauty. Perhaps in nothing more so, than in the sparse groups of olive trees, the alone representatives, or rather successors, of noble groves of these, which, interspersed with the terebinth,* pomegranate, fig, and palm, once clothed its sides and waved on its top. We know that the whole country for miles around, and specially “The Mount,” was stripped of magnificent trees by the sappers in the army of Titus, for the purposes of the siege. In the words of a well-known writer, “The blooming gardens with their bubbling fountains and cool-water courses, in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem had enjoyed sweet hours of delight and recreation, were ruthlessly swept away. The trees now in spring-flower fell before the axe, the landmarks were thrown down, the water-courses destroyed: even the deep and shady glens were levelled, and filled up with the masses of rugged and picturesque rocks which used to overshadow them.”

“All the fruitful orchards, the shady avenues where in these

days of peace and happiness they had enjoyed the luxury of their delicious climate, the temperate days of spring, and the cool summer nights, were utterly destroyed. It was a lamentable sight to behold the whole gay and luxuriant suburban region turned to a frightful solitude.” + Probably at the same time, the two celebrated cedars near its central summit, under whose canopy were ranged stalls and booths for vendors of the Temple-ofierings, and on whose boughs nestled flocks of turtledoves and pigeons, shared a similar fate.. The same may be said of the towers, vineyards, oratories, olive-yards, and sheep-

* Every traveller is struck with the graceful and gigantic specimen of the terebinth north-east of the Damascus Gate, still surviving, as if to tell, like the few remaining stones in the Temple walls hard by, “what manner” others, at one time, must have been.

t MUman’a History of the Jews; last edition, p. 324, 355.

folds, which have now well-nigh disappeared, all of which, however, must have given life and animation to the scene; — suggesting too, as they did to the Divine Redeemer, illustration for some of the most interesting of His parables and sayings. As is well known, a few ancient olive trees — denizens of the mount — still remain to mark and consecrate its most sacred spot — Gethsemane. But even here, alas! the hand of man has done what it could to mutilate and desecrate. Flagrant is the violation of all taste, not to say of reverential feeling, which has been perpetrated on these ever-hallowed precincts. For while the eight venerable trees still redeem its interest and sacredness, a mute protest cannot fail to rise from the heart of every pilgrim, as he sees the obtrusive white wall of clay and the modern artificial garden-plots, which have taken the place of the silent grove which formed the scene of the Agony. Even the Kedron, so intimately associated alike with Olivet and with these closing scenes in the life of Christ, seems to have shared, (though probably from causes purely physical,) the inevitable changes resulting from long centuries of desolation. It can no longer claim the appellation of “Brook;” and, unless in exceptional years, not even that of “a winter torrent.” The traveller seeks in vain, in many places in that deep gorge, for any trace of a channel or water-course. Different, we have reason to believe, from the time of Jerusalem’s glory, when the present sterile valleys were clothed in verdure, and when a richer vegetation must have materially affected the climate, generating and retaining moisture, not to be found, now that “the land languisheth.”*

* Dr Robinson, in hia invaluable work, offers the conjecture, that the

One other spot (shall we call it more sacred still even than Gethsemane?) may possibly be entitled, indirectly, to hold a place among the Olivet Memokies. But as it is still matter of speculation, and must always be of extreme uncertainty, we have not ventured, by supporting a favourite theory, to include “Calvary” among the other localities which have no such dubiety attached to them. We may only venture to aflSrm, that while apparently irresistible arguments negative the claims of the present traditional site of the Crucifixion and Holy Sepulchre, — there are not wanting strong presumptive grounds to fix that memory of memories, too, in the Valley of the Kedron. In this case “all His acquaintance, and the women which followed Him from Galilee, and who stood afar off, beholding these things,” (Luke xxiii. 49,) would have gazed on the expiring agonies of their Divine Redeemer from the lower slopes of Olivet.*

drying up of the Kedron may be referred to an anterior date and cause: so far back indeed as the reign of Hezekiah, when that monarch, taking counsel with his princes and his mighty men to cut off the water-supply from the Assyrian army, “stopped the upper water-course of Qihon, [diverted the fountainj and brought it down to the west side of the city of David,*’ (2 Chron. xxxiL 30;) in other words, that the water which aforetime fed the Kedron was thus conducted by some subterranean channel into the city. — See voL i. p. 346. The researches of the “Palestine Exploration Society” will likely ere long throw light on this very question.

* A friend, subsequently referred to, to whose kindness I was much indebted in Jerusalem, and who moreover, from his long residence, is thoroughly conversant with topographical questions, in riding along with us on the day of our departure to Scopus, pointed to a rounded knoU in the Kedron valley, about a quarter of a mile higher up than Gethsemane, which, in common with others, he considers to answer remarkably the conditions and descriptions in the Evangelical narratives. “A place called Golgotha.” According to St Luke “The place which is called a skull,” [Luke xxiii. 33,] (not “of skulls,” which it would have been if, as some suppose, a burying-ground — but [Kpoflov] probably of skull-shape — a rounded

We close these introductory remarks with one practical thought. Olivet derives its undying sacredness from being, pre-eminently, the abode of Christ. But in the truest, most real sense, there is an Olivet around us all; — sacred ground, on which the ever-abiding Peesence may be felt and rejoiced in. We can say, in the glowing words of the Canticles, regarding that true Mount of faith, of which the earthly Olivet was but the type and symbol, “Until the day break and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense,” (Sol. Song iv. 6.) The lowliest chamber of the lowliest Christian may become a Peniel where he sees God “face to face;” more truly so, perhaps, than in treading those sacred eminences of which we have been speaking, where the cry seems ever to resound, in plaintive echoes, from profaned groves and desecrated altars, and amid the fables of a lying superstition — “they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!” Indeed, although we have spoken of the vivid realisation of Christ’s personal Presence in traversing Olivet — yet if it did not seem inconsistent and paradoxical, (every traveller at least will understand our meaning,) there is strangely blended with this, an equal — often a painful diflBculty — in waking up to an adequate sense of these august realities, and bringing one’s soul, from the altered present, into harmony with the stupendous transactions and associations

protuberance.) Then, it was “the place “— a known locality. It was near a thoroughfare — on the way to the country — for the title on the cross was read by” many of the Jews “who were passing to and fro, [John xix. 20.] It was outside the city gate, [Heb. xiii. 2,] but yet adjacent to the city, [John xix. 20.] Certainly all these notices singularly accord with the spot above indicated. — 5ee Art.” Oolgotha,’* in Pith’s Bible Die.

of the past. Nay; farther; holy scenes, or the most sacred of traditional/* Holy Places,” do not in themselves necessarily kindle or foster devotion. Nothing is often more painful than the absence, or at least deadness and chillness, of deep and profound emotion, at the moment when visiting spots whose very names we have been wont to pronounce with bated breath. The words poured into a sinner’s ear, by the same Divine lips, at another locality equally sacred, enshrine a truth of pre-eminent comfort to those who have no Olivet to climb but Faith’s “delectable mountain,” — no oratory to kneel at but the bedside, — no Gethsemane to repair to but the sublime consciousness of the Great Sufferer’s undying sympathy in their hour of darkness and soul-struggle, — “Jesus saith unto her. Woman, believe me, the hour Cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at

Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour

cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him,” (John iv. 21-23.) Yes, — “neither in this mountain nor jet at Jerusalemi.” Gerizim and Olivet are silent and voiceless — ruined deserted altar-stones, which memorialise — no more — a glory which has departed. But at what place soever “the Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee,” there, there is a present God. The first hymn sung at our tent- worship on our first Sabbath in Palestine, amid the orange-groves of Jaffa forms the true key-note of this “true worshipper’* “worshipping the Father:” —

“Jesus, where’er Thy people meet
There they behold Thy mercy-seat;

Where’er they seek Thee Thou art found.
And every 2)Zac« is hallo w’d ground.”

Impressively as these consecrated spots go to confirm and illustrate the Gospel story, and thus indirectly to strengthen the evidences of Christianity, yet, if the writer might be allowed another personal reference, he felt that a testimony, greater and more convincing far to the truth of religion, was that supplied immediately after his return home, at the sick-bed and death-bed of a beloved member of his flock; one, vigorous in intellect as well as matured in grace, whose faith (to use his own words) “every hour death drew nearer, grew stronger and stronger,” as from the Olivet of Prayer he descried with clear eye the walls of the better New Jerusalem, “whose gates shall not be shut at all by day!” “Because thou hast seen thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.’* * Olivet, Ramah, Gibeon, Bether, and the sisterhood of encircling hills, live only to symbolise a glorious, deathless truth, which, with the name of Zion for its centre, has the broad earth for its circumference —” as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so doth the Lord compass his people from henceforth and for ever,” (Ps. cxxv. 2.) Meanwhile let us reverently draw near in thought to a place so surrounded with holy memories; — saying, as may be pre-eminently said of “the mount which is before Jerusalem,” and of Him who when on earth made it His most consecrated haunt,” Surely the Loed is in this place

This is none othee than the house of God, and this is

THE gate of heaven!” f

* John XX. 29.

+ After these sentences were written; — in refreshing my memory with

* It may not be out of place in connexion with what gave the mount its distinctive appellation of “Olivet/* or ‘* The olives” (2 Sam. xv. 30,) to say a word on the Olive Tree.

All who have seen the olive, in this the land of its glory, will understand the allusion and comparison of the prophet of Israel, “His beauty shall be as the olive tree,”

his vivid descriptioDS, I find similar reflections, thus admirahly expressed, had occurred, on the same spot, to my friend the author of “jEasticard,” —” I was not tempted even to fancy on that holy day, that Christ was nearer to me, or prayer more real in Jerusalem or on Olivet, than when I entered ‘into my closet and shut the door,* amidst the every-day world of Glasgow. And so, while I thanked God, with my whole heart, for having permitted me to visit these spots which shed such a light on the history of the Holy One, who in the flesh had lived and moved among them, I felt if possible still more thankful for the conviction, now deepened, that the poorest in my parish at home — the busy artizan, the man or woman in the dark lane, the crowded alley, or the lonely garret — could, through simple faith and child-like love, enjoy the presence, the grace, and the peace of Christ, as truly as if they were able to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and to worship, on the Lord’s Day, among the recesses of Olivet, or on the spots consecrated of old by the bodily presence of the Saviour. Most thankful was I for knowing that the person, not the place, was holy — that His love was not local, but universal; and that not only among the silent hills of Palestine — in Jerusalem, Nazareth, or Tiberias, but in our crowded cities, common place villages, highland glens, and in every nook and corner of the great palace our Father, Jesus may be known, loved obeyed, and glorified. With thanksgiving I repeated on Olivet: —

* There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime.
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime, — Who carry music in their heart.
Though dusky lane and wrangling mart.
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.’”

Eastwai-d, pp. 188, 189.

(Hosea xiv. 6.) Also the Psalmist’s reference, “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God,” (Ps. lii. 8.) Though used extensively of old, as now, for an article of commerce, it would seem, like the cypress of the Mohammedan, to have possessed, in the eyes of the Jews, a sacred character, and to have been employed at times as a national and religious emblem. Its wood was used in the most hallowed and conspicuous parts of Solomon’s temple; “within the oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits high.” ...” and for the entering of the oracle he made doors of olive tree,” (these gates were two leaved and overlaid with gold.) ... “So also made he, for the door of the temple, posts of olive tree, a fourth part of the wall,” (1 Kings vi. 23, 31, 33.) The tabernacle and tempie lamps were “fed with pure olive oil beaten for light,” (Lev. xxiv. 2.) Olive branches, as we shallfind, were employed at one at least of the Israelites’ sacred feasts, and wreaths of it are supposed to surround several of their ancient coins. I have never seen the remark specially made in the record of any journeyings in the Holy Land — and hence, perhaps, the reason of having been struck with this more than with any other feature of Palestine, that it is literally “the land of Olives.” It is the grand characteristic — the distinctive glory, bf the country. Groups, plantations, /oresfe, bestud its mountains, plains, and valleys, from whatever point it is entered in the south, till you bid to it farewell amid the magnificent olive groves of Kedesh-Naphtali and Banias. And the peculiarity is, that in most places the trees appear to be venerable occupants of the soil, their ancient trunks gnarled and twisted into most picturesque shapes. Those most specially memorable are at Bethhoron, Nablous, and near Bethlehem; the others, already mentioned, at Kedesh-Naphtali, and, of course, the reverend ones in Gethsemane. After all the manifold revolutions the land has undergone, — temples, towers, palaces, cities, perished from remembrance, — even after all that torch and axe could effect in despoiling her of her sylvan characteristics — ‘’discovering her forests;” — while even of the Vine it may now literally be said, “the boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it,” the olive-teee still continues to assert its ancestral renown; and like the hoary head, which is “a crown of glory,” waves its silvery tresses on the hills of Palestine. We do not wonder that so discerning a traveller as Van de Velde should thus speak of the loveliest of all spots in the country, and of what constitutes the main feature in this beauty of Nablous and the valley of Shechem: “Here there is no wilderness, here there are no wild thickets; yet there is always shade: not of the oak, the terebinth, and the carob-tree, but of the Olive -grove — so soft in colour, so picturesque in form, that for its sake we can willingly dispense with all other wood.’’ The gray green colour of the leaf seemed always to accord well with the triste and mournful state of the land, — the ashen hue, so touchingly referred to in the following extract from the pen, which, of all others, can best do justice to the description. Had the writer, however, been in Palestine, he would not have omitted the most pictorial feature, — the wonderful variety in fantastic shape and form, — each patriarchal trunk a separate study: —” In the

Van dk Veldb’s Traveh in the Holy Land, voL 1, p. 386.

Holy Land, the reminiscences connected with it, are of course more touching than can ever belong to any other tree of the field. ... It had been well for them” (the ancient painters) “to have felt and seen the Olive-tree, to have loved it for Christ’s sake, partly also for the helmed Wisdom’s sake, which was to the heathen, in some sort, as that nobler Wisdom which stood at God’s right hand when He founded the earth, and established the heavens. To have loved it even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced, line by line, the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves inlaid on the blue field of the sky; and the small rosy white stars of its spring blossoming, and the beads of sable fruits scattered by autumn along its topmost bough, (the right in Israel of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow;) and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver-gray and tender, like the down on a bird’s breast, with which, far away, it veils the undulations of the mountains; these, it had been well for them to have seen and drawn, whatever they had left unstudied in the gallery.”*

We may add Mrs Hemans’s equally beautiful and descriptive lines —

‘* But thou, pale Olive! in thy branches lie,
Far deeper spells than prophet grove of old
Might e’er enshrine. I could not hear thee sigh
To the wind’s faintest whisper, nor behold
One shiver of thy leaves’ dim silvery green.

RusKiN’a St(m€8 of Venice, vol. iii. p. 174.

Without high thoughts and solemn, of that scene
When in the garden the Redeemer pray’d,
When pale stars look’d upon His fainting head.
And angels, ministering in silent dread.
Trembled perchance within thy trembling shade.”