William Francis Lynch

“ For their peace of mind here, I hope that they may never know how much they have injured a cause, of which some of them are the professed champions; and, for their future welfare, every true Christian will pray that the evil has not been premeditated. I have not meant to reflect upon those who honestly doubt; for faith is not a product of reason, but a gift, an inspiration from on high. I allude to those whose intellectual pride prompts them to parade their own attainments in opposition to, rather than in the search of, truth, — which never shrinks from a fair encounter. ”

“ I envy no quality of the mind or intellect of others, — not genius, wit, nor fancy; but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I prefer a firm religious belief to any other blessing; for it makes discipline of good, creates new hopes when earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life in death, and, from corruption and decay, calls up beauty and divinity ”

“ On its acclivity, a little more to the north, he wept for the fate of Jerusalem. In the garden below, he was betrayed, and within those city walls he was crucified. Everything is calculated to inspire with awe, and it is fitting that, except in prayer, the human voice should not disturb these sepulchral solitudes.
From the slope of the Mount of Olives projects a rock, pointed out by tradition as the one whereon the Saviour sat when he predicted and wept over the fate of Jerusalem. ”

“ One truth we therefore know, that, unaccompanied with an upright heart and a chastened will, with the morality which springs from religion, the measure of man’s intellect is the measure of his ruin. The pride of wealth inspires contempt, and the pride of place awakens resentment, — they are human follies, and are punished by human means; but the pride of intellect, wherein the gifted wars with the Giver, is a crime which the dread Creator has reserved for special retribution. ”

“ How eventful, yet how fearful, is the history of this people! “The Almighty, moved by their lamentations, determined, not only to relieve them from Egyptian bondage, but to make them the chosen depositary of his law, by the observance of which men might be gradually prepared for the advent of the Saviour. Living at first under a theocracy, the most perfect form of government that can exist, for it unites infinite wisdom with power supreme;” ”

“ Crowning one of them is Jerusalem, a living city; on the slope of the other is the great Jewish cemetery, a city of the dead. Each tree in this grove, cankered, and gnarled, and furrowed by age, yet beautiful and impressive in its decay, is a living monument of the affecting scenes that have taken place beneath and around it. The olive perpetuates itself and from the root of the dying parent stem, the young tree springs into existence. These trees are accounted 1000 years old. Under those of the preceding growth, therefore, the Saviour was wont to rest ”

“ The Almighty withheld from the Israelites all knowledge of the final resting-place of their great lawgiver: may not the same Supreme Wisdom have left us in ignorance of the exact position of places infinitely more sacred, to preserve them from desecration, whether of wanton malice or intemperate zeal? The possibility that any assigned spot may be the true one, and the certainty that it cannot be very far removed from it, is sufficient to inspire awe in every feeling breast. ”

“ Such is the law of all intelligence. “The rapt seraph that adores and burns,” the chief of the hierarchy of Heaven, the moment he deems himself sufficient for his own support, by that one act of impious self-idolatry, falls, headlong, from his high estate. ”

“ No other spot in the world commands a view so desolate, and, at the same time, so interesting and impressive. The yawning ravine of Jehoshaphat, immediately beneath, was verdant with vegetation, which became less and less luxuriant, until, a few miles below, it was lost in a huge torrent bed, its sides bare precipitous rock, and its bed covered with boulders, whitened with saline deposit, and calcined by the heat of a Syrian sun. Beyond it, south, stretched the desert of Judea ”

“ Ascending the hill from the tomb, and for the second time during the ride recognising the Dead Sea through gorges in the mountains, we passed some extensive olive orchards, and after turning aside to the left to look at a nearly dry cistern called David’s Well, and admiring the luxuriant groves of olives and figs, and the many vineyards which beautify the head of the ravine of Ta’amirah, we entered Bethlehem, the “city of king David,” and the birthplace of the Redeemer; and went direct to the Franciscan convent, a large, massive, and ancient building. ”

“ JERUSALEM
Passing a large tomb which stands conspicuous to the north, we camped a little off the Jaffa road, beside an olive-tree, about a mile and a half distant from the city; and as far south-west from the reputed place where the empress Helena was buried, and immediately west of the site most probably occupied by the besieging camp of the Roman army under Titus. There were many fields of grain around us, occasionally separated by low walls of uncut and uncemented stone. ”

“ SACRED LOCALITIES
Visitors to Jerusalem consist, usually, of three classes: — the ignorant and credulous, who are prepared to believe everything; the conceited and intolerant, who are equally determined to believe nothing; and the weak and indolent, who side with the last, because it is easier to doubt than to investigate. ”

“ While we gazed upon it, a crowd of Abyssinian pilgrims called out to us with such fierce expressions of fanatic rage that our hands instinctively grasped our weapons. The movement had its effect, and after indulging our curiosity, we passed on unmolested.
“Next to Mecca, Jerusalem is the most holy place of Muhammedan pilgrimage, and throughout the year, the mosque of Omar and its court are crowded with turbaned worshippers. This mosque, built upon the site of the Holy Temple, is the great shrine of their devotions. ”

“ The second, stubborn and querulous, scoffs openly at what they hear, and laughs in their sleeve at the simplicity of those who differ from them. The third, not sufficiently ill-natured to sneer, adopts the opinions, without the malevolence, of others, who, because they are more positive, they conclude must be the best informed. ”

“ In the words of Milton, “Truth is strong, next to the Almighty.” The mists of human prejudice cannot long withstand the penetrating light of truth, — which is the purest ray, reflected from the brightest gem in the diadem of the Great Jehovah. ”

“ The garden consists of eight enormous olive-trees, their venerable appearance truly typical of old age; and there can scarcely be a reasonable doubt that this is, indeed, the very place where the Saviour wept and prayed.
“Crossing the valley of Jehoshaphat, and ascending the slope of Mount Moriah, we passed by the Golden Gate, now walled up by the Turks. Why it is called ‘golden,’ I am unable to say, unless from its rich and elaborate sculpture. ”

“ The rocks and the caverns were not only places “of retreat, and forts against enemies, in times of war and trouble; they were also ordinary dwelling-places, both commodious and agreeable, in the country of the Israelites. On the coasts of the Red Sea sad the Persian Gulf, in the mountains of Armenia, in the Balearic Islands, and in the isle of Malta, we learn that certain people had no other homes than the hollows of the rocks, scooped out by their own labours; from which circumstance they took the name of Troglodytes, which signifies, in Greek, those who hide themselves in caverns. ”

“ Most of the wall, and all the houses of, Jerusalem, were demolished by Titus. Who, therefore, can believe in the assigned localities along the “Via Dolorosa”? Who can credit that here the Virgin Mary was born; there, the Saviour instituted the sacrament of the last supper; or that yonder is the house where Pilate sat in judgment? Faith does not require, and true reverence would not be sustained by, such weak credulity. ”

“ While other crimes seem rather to excite the pity than to provoke the immediate wrath of heaven, and, by degrading the soaring spirit to the earth, serve to humble its pride, this appears to be a rebellion against Him, who is a jealous God, and who will avenge his cause. ”

“ At all events, on such a subject, an excess of enthusiasm is preferable to insensibility; and he who believes and bows down is more to be envied than he that stands scornfully erect because unconvinced by so many feet and inches. ”

“ Neither need anything be said of the present condition and future prospects of Palestine; for it is a theme too copious for this work, even if it were not above the capacity of its author. I can only express an opinion, founded upon what I have seen and heard, that the fanaticism of the Turks is fast subsiding, with the rapid diminution of their number, while the Christian and Jewish population is increasing. As yet, this holds good only of the capital. The country traversed by nomadic tribes, and cultivated but in patches, continues to be as insecure as it is unproductive. ”

“ These mountains were not always thus barren and unproductive. The remains of terraces yet upon their slopes, prove that this country, now almost depopulated, once maintained a numerous and industrious people.
North of Gethsemane, nearer the bed of the ravine and the one-arched bridge which spans it, is a subterranean church, in a grotto reputed to contain the tomb of the Virgin Mary. Having no faith in the tradition, which is based on an improbable legend, I did not visit it ”

“ He who, in such places, with tape-line and rule, employs himself measuring the sizes of objects, and their exact distances from each other, thereby endeavouring not only to destroy what he persuades himself are the illusions, but absolutely undermining the religious belief, of others, is little better than a heathen. ”

“ Visited, to-day, the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and other places consecrated by tradition. All these localities have been so repeatedly and so minutely described by other writers, as to be familiar to every Sunday-school scholar, beyond the age of childhood, at home; and Jerusalem itself is, geographically, better known to the educated classes in the United States, than Boston, New York, or Philadelphia, to those who do not reside in and have not visited them. ”

“ In the Latin convent at Jerusalem, poor pilgrims are allowed to remain thirty days, with two meals a day, free of cost; in the one at Bethlehem, three days; and at Ramleh, one day. No Frank is permitted to hold real estate in Palestine, or, I believe, in any part of the Turkish dominions. In the country around Jerusalem, olives, figs, wheat, barley, dhoura, lentils, melons, cucumbers, artichokes, and many leguminous plants and Irish potatoes are cultivated ”

“ It was in the valley of Jehoshaphat that Melchisedec, king of Salem, met Abraham on his return from defeating the five kings in the vale of Siddim. In the depths of this ravine Moloch was worshipped, beneath the temple of the Most High, which crowned the summit of Mount Moriah.
THE GREAT BURIAL-PLACE
In the village of Siloam, the scene of Solomon’s apostasy, the living have ejected the dead, and there are as many dwelling in tombs as in houses. ”

“ The walls were of mosaic, representing saints and devils engaged in most furious combats; but unfortunately, although our cicerone zealously endeavoured to point out which were the saints and which the devils, we often fell into a mistake respecting them. We were shown throughout the convent, which is constructed in the well-known Saracenic style of architecture; and the patriarch long detained us with an account of the improvements he intended to make. ”