The Ship Dwellers Part 25

Poor Rachel! Supplanted in her husband's love; denied long the natural heritage of woman; paying the supreme price at last, only to be left here by the wayside alone, outside the family tomb. All the others are gathered at Hebron in the Field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought from the children of Heth for Sarah's burial-place. Jacob, at the very last, made his sons swear that they would bury him at Hebron with the others.

He remembered Rachel in her lonely grave, and spoke of her there, but did not ask that he be taken to lie by her side, or that she be laid with the others. He died as he had lived--self-seeking, unsympathetic--a commonplace old man.

Just outside of Bethlehem we were welcomed by a crowd of little baksheesh girls, of a better look and distinctly of a better way than the Jerusalem type. They ran along with the carriage and began a chant which, behold, was German, at least Germanesque:

"Oh, du Froliche!

Oh, du Heilege!

Bakshees.h.!.+ Bakshees.h.!.+"

I suppose "Oh, thou happy one; Oh, thou holy one," would be about the translation, with the wailing refrain at the end. I think we gave them something. I hope so; they are after us always, and we either give them or we don't, without much discrimination. You can't discriminate. They are all wretched and miserably needy. You give to get rid of them, or when pity clutches a little fiercer than usual at your heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CAMEL TRAIN LED THE WAY THROUGH THE GATES]

So we were at the gates of Bethlehem--the little town whose name is familiar at the firesides of more than half the world--a name that always brings with it a feeling of bright stars and dim fields:

"Where shepherds watched their flocks by night All seated on the ground,"

and of angel voices singing peace and goodwill. A camel-train led the way through the gates.

I suppose the city itself is not unlike Jerusalem in its general character, only somewhat cleaner, and less extensive. We went immediately to the place of the nativity, but before we could get to it we were seized and dragged and almost compelled to buy some of the mother-of-pearl beads and fancy things that are made just across the way. We escaped into the Church of the Nativity at last--an old, old church, desolate and neglected in its aspect, though sufficiently occupied with chanting and droning and candle-bearing acolytes. Yet it is better--oh, much better--than the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it has a legitimate excuse. If Christ was born in a Bethlehem manger, as the gospel records, it is probable that He was born here. There are many reasons for believing that the grotto below this church was used as the inn stables in that time, and that the brief life which has laid its tender loveliness on so many lives had its beginning here.

We descended to the grotto and stood on the spot that is said to have heard His first infant cry. There is a silver star in the floor polished with kisses, and there are a lot of ornate lamps and other paltry things hanging about. It does not matter, I suppose, but I wish these professional religionists did not find such things necessary to stimulate their faith. Still one could shut his eyes and realize, or try to realize that he was standing in the place where the Light that has illumined a world struck its first feeble spark; where the impulse that for nineteen hundred years has swept across the nations in tides of war and peace first trembled into life--a wave of love in a mother's heart.

As I say, the rest did not matter.

While the others were looking into the shops across the way, I wandered about the streets a little, the side streets, which in character cannot have changed much in nineteen hundred years. The people are poor, and there are many idlers. There are beggars, too; some of them very wretched--and leprous, I think. It seems a pity, here in the birthplace of Him who healed with a word.

We bought some of the Bethlehem beads. They will sell you a string a yard long for a franc, and they cut each bead separately from mother-of-pearl with the most primitive tools, and they shape it and polish it and bore a hole in it, all by hand, and link it on a gimp wire. In America you could not get a single bead made in that way for less than double what they ask for a whole string. But, as I have said, they are very poor here--as poor as when they bestowed a Saviour on mankind.

x.x.xV

THE SORROW OF THE CHOSEN--THE WAY OF THE CROSS

We had left Bethlehem and were back in Jerusalem, presently, on our way to the Jews' Wailing-place. I did not believe in it before I went. I was afraid it might be a sort of show-place, prepared for the occasion. I have changed my mind now. If there is one thing in Jerusalem absolutely genuine and directly linked with its ancient glories, it is the Jews'

Wailing-place.

You approach it through a narrow lane--a sickening gantlet of misery.

Near the entrance wretched crones, with the distaff and spindle of the Fates, sat in the dust, spinning what might have been the thread of sorrow. Along the way the beggars; not the ordinary vociferous beggars of Constantinople, of Smyrna, of Ephesus, even of Jaffa, but beggars such as the holy city alone can duplicate. Men and women who are only the veriest shreds of humanity, crouched in the dirt, reeking with filth and rags and vermin and sores, staring with blind and festering eyes, mumbling, moaning, and wailing out their eternal cry of baksheesh, often--if a woman--clutching some ghastly infant to a bare, scrawny breast. There was no loud demand for alms; it was only a muted chorus of pleading, the voice with which misery spells its last word. Some made no sound, nor gesture, even. They saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing--they were no longer alive--they had only not ceased to breathe and suffer. The spectacle made us gasp and want to cry out with the very horror of it.

We were through the fearful gantlet at last, and went directly into the Jews' Wailing-place. There behold the most lamentable pa.s.sage in the most tragic epic of all history--the frayed remnant of a once mighty race mourning for its fall. A few hours before, and but a few rods away, we had looked upon the evidences of its former greatness, its splendor and its glory--the place of King Solomon's temple when it sat as on the pinnacle of the world. Indeed, we were looking at it now, for this wall before which they bow in anguish is a portion of the mighty architecture for which they mourn. In the general destruction of t.i.tus this imposing fragment remained, and to-day they bow before it and utter their sorrow in the most doleful grieving that ever fell on human ear. Along the wall they stand or kneel, and on rows of benches behind they gather thickly, reading from faded and tattered Hebrew Scriptures the "Lamentations," or chanting in chorus the saddest dirge the world has ever known.

"Because of the palace which is deserted-- We sit alone and weep.

Because of the temple which is destroyed, Because of the walls which are broken down, Because of our greatness which has departed, Because of the precious stones of the temple ground to powder, Because of our priests who have erred and gone astray, Because of our kings who have contemned G.o.d-- We sit alone and weep!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEPTH OF THEIR FALL]

It is no mere ceremony--no mock sorrow; it is the mingled wail of a fallen people. These Jews know as no others of their race can realize the depth of their fall, and they gather here to give it voice--a tonal and visual embodiment of despair. Even I, who am not of that race, felt all at once the deadly clutch of that vast grieving, and knew something of what a young Hebrew, a member of our party, felt when he turned sick and hurried from the spot.

What other race has maintained an integrity of sorrow? What, for instance, does the blood of Imperial Rome care for its departed grandeur? It does not even recognize itself. What other nation has ever maintained racial integrity of any kind? But, then, these were a _chosen people_!

Chosen, why? Because they were a n.o.ble people? Hardly. Their own chronicles record them as a murmuring, rebellious, unstable race.

Following the history of the chosen people from Jacob to Joshua, one is in a constant state of wonder at the divine selection. We may admit that G.o.d loved them, but we seek in vain for an excuse. In His last talk with Moses He declared that they would forsake Him, and that He in turn would forsake _them_ and hide His face because of the evils they should do.

Moses, who knew them even better, distrusted them even more. "For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves," he said, almost with his latest breath. He told them that curses would befall them, and gave them a few sample curses, any one of which would lift the bark off of a tree. No wonder he was willing to lie down in Mount Nebo and be at peace.

Yet they _are_ a chosen people--a people apart--a race that remains a race, and does not perish. Chosen for what? To make a bitter example of what a race can do when it remains a race--how high it can rise and how low may become its estate of misery? Remember, I am not considering the Jew as an individual; he is often n.o.ble as an individual; and it was a Jew who brought light into the world. I am considering a race--a race no worse than any other, and no better, but a _chosen_ race; a race that without a ruler, without a nation, without a government--that outcast and despised of many nations has yet remained a unit through three thousand years. I am maintaining that only a chosen people could do that, and, without being able even to surmise the purpose, it is my humble opinion that the ages will show that purpose to have been good.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WAY OF THE CROSS

(HOLY WEEK)]

I have already inferred that the landmarks and localities of Jerusalem may be viewed with interest, but not too seriously. They have all a.s.sociations, but most of them not the particular and sacred a.s.sociations with which they are supposed to be identified. The majority of them were not located until Christ had been dead for a thousand years, and the means of locating them does not invite conviction.

Inspiration located most of them, dreams the rest. That is to say, imagination. Whenever a priest or a dignitary wanted to distinguish himself he discovered something. He first made up his mind what he would like to discover, and then had an inspiration or a dream, and the thing was done. The eight Stations of the Cross, for instance, were never mentioned earlier than the twelfth century, and the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross, was not so known until the fourteenth. Still, it must have been along some such street that the Man of Sorrow pa.s.sed between the Garden and the Cross.

We visited the Garden first. It was now late in the afternoon, and the sunlight had become tender and still and dream-like, and as we pa.s.sed the traditional places--the house of Pilate, under the Ecce h.o.m.o arch, and the others, we had the feeling that it might have been on an evening like this that the Son of Man left the city, and with His disciples went down to Gethsemane to pray.

We were a very small party now--there were only four of us and the guide, for the others had become tired and were willing to let other things go. But if we were tired, we did not know it, and I shall always be glad of that fact.

At St. Stephen's gate (the tradition is that he was stoned there) we stopped to look down on Gethsemane. Perhaps it is not the real site, and perhaps the curious gilt-turreted church is not beautiful, but set there on the hillside amid the cypresses and venerable olive-trees, all aglow and agleam with the sunset, with the shadow of the dome of Omar creeping down upon it, there was about it a beauty of unreality that was positively supernatural. I was almost tempted not to go down there for fear of spoiling the illusion.

We went, however, and the gnarled olive-trees, some of which are said to have been there at the time of Christ--and look it--were worth while.

The garden as a whole, however, was less interesting than from above, and it was only the feeling that somewhere near here the Man who would die on Calvary asked that the cup of sorrow might pa.s.s from Him which made us linger.

It was verging on twilight when we climbed to the city, and the others were for going to the hotel. But there was one more place I wanted to see. That was the hill outside of Jerusalem which the guide-books rather charily mention as "Gordon's Calvary," because General Gordon once visited it and accepted it as the true place of the Crucifixion. I knew that other thoughtful men had accepted it, too, and had favored a tomb not far away called the "Garden Tomb" as the true Sepulchre. I wanted to see these things and judge for myself. But two of our party and the guide spoke no English, and my Biblical German needed practice. There seemed to be no German word for Calvary, and when I ventured into details I floundered. Still, I must have struck a spark somewhere, for presently a light illumined our guide's face:

"Golgota! Das richtige Golgota" (the true Golgotha), he said, excitedly, and then I remembered that I should have said Golgotha, the "Place of the Skull," in the beginning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRUE GOLGOTHA--THE PLACE OF THE SKULL

(Notice the large eyes and mouth of the skull formed by cavities in the cliff. The place of execution is marked by the little heap of stones above.)]

We were away immediately, all of us, hurrying for the Damascus gate, beyond which it lay. It was not far--nothing is far in Jerusalem--and presently we were outside, at the wicket of a tiny garden--a sweet, orderly little place--where a pleasant German woman and a tall old Englishman with a spiritual face were letting us in. Then they led us to a little arbor, and directly--to a tomb, a real tomb, cut into the cliff overhanging the garden.

I do not know whether Jesus was laid in that tomb or not, and it is not likely that any one will ever know. But He _could_ have been laid there, and it is not unlikely that He _was_ laid there, for Golgotha--the hill that every unprejudiced visitor immediately accepts as the true Golgotha--overlooks this garden.

We could not ascend the hill--the Mohammedans no longer permit that--but we could go to the end of the garden and look up to the little heap of stones which marks the old place of stoning and of crucifixion. It was always the place of public execution. The Talmud refers to it, and the Jews of Jerusalem spit toward it to this day. We could make out the contour of the skull which gave it its name, and even the face, for in its rocky side ancient tombs and clefts formed the clearly distinguished features.

It is a hill; it is outside the walls; it is the traditional site of executions; it is the one natural place to which Jesus would have been taken for crucifixion. The Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was _never_ a hill; it was _never_ outside the walls; it was _never_ a traditional site for anything until Queen Helena began to dream.

Perhaps the reader may say, "With all the tales and traditions and disputes and doubts, what does it matter?" Perhaps it does not matter.

Perhaps that old question of Pilate, "What is truth?" need not be answered.

Yet somewhere amid the ma.s.s of confliction there follows a thread of fact. Sifting the testimony, it is difficult to deny that there once lived a man named Jesus--later, and perhaps then--known as the Christ; that He was of humble birth, and grew up to teach a doctrine of forgiveness and humility (a doctrine new to the Hebrew teachers of His day, whose religion consisted mainly of ceremonial forms); that He was able to heal the sick; that He had a following who, perhaps, hailed Him as their king; that it was because of these things that He was crucified on a hill outside of Jerusalem.