Jerusalem artichoke

“ Even after this explicit warning, many of Jesus' followers interpreted these predictions as referring to the changes which would obviously occur in Jerusalem when the reappearing of the Messiah would result in the establishment of the New Jerusalem and in the enlargement of the city to become the world's capital. In their minds these Jews were determined to connect the destruction of the temple with the "end of the world." They believed this New Jerusalem would fill all Palestine; that the end of the world would be followed by the immediate appearance of the "new heavens and the new earth." ”

“ When Jerusalem is first thought of as "the great city," it is as the city of "the Jews," as the centre and essence of those principles by which spiritual is transformed into formal religion, and all sins are permitted to hide and multiply under the cloak of a merely outward piety. When it is next thought of as Babylon, the conception is extended so as to embrace, not a false Judaism only, but a similar falseness in the bosom of the universal Church. ”

“ The Jew, the Greek, the Copt, the Georgian, the Armenian, the Arab, and the Turk mingle with the modern European and with the Franciscan monk from Italy in the narrow lane; and black-veiled ladies with white cloaks, seated on crimson saddles high up on the white Damascene asses, are led to the shops, or to the lower fruit-market which glows with colour, its green and gold contrasting with the violet or rich brown robes of the merchants. The whole history of Jerusalem is represented by its crowd to-day. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How striking a picture of their degradation and fall from their once proud estate as the chosen ones of God, is shown as they gather on Fridays to their wailing-place; five courses of large bevelled stones being all that remain of Solomon’s grand Temple! Here are Jews of all ages and of both sexes, crying bitterly over fallen Jerusalem. Old men, tottering up, bury their faces in the joints and cavities, and weep aloud as though their hearts were breaking, while in chorus comes the low, plaintive wail of the women. ”

“ This natural desire to awaken piety through the medium of the senses, and to banish all unbelief by touching with the hand, and seeing with the eye, the memorials of the crucifixion, has, there is reason to apprehend, been sometimes abused by fraud as well as by ignorance.
But it is nevertheless worthy of remark, that from the very situation of Jerusalem, so well defined by natural limits which it cannot have passed, there is less difficulty in determining places with a certain degree of precision than would be experienced in any other ancient town. ”

“ Jerusalem is a very ugly city. It is badly built of mean stone houses perched on the slope of the watershed, and seems in constant danger of sliding into the Kedron Valley. Beautiful bits of architecture are to be admired in its interior—the Gothic façade of the Holy Sepulchre, the grand walls of the Temple, the glowing interior of the mosque; the view towards the east is also very fine, a long wall of far-off mountains, with a foreground of embattled parapets and slender minarets standing out against the distance. ”

“ The time of the Gentiles is not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is still trodden down of the Gentiles. The Jews have often attempted to recover it: no distance of space or of time can separate it from their affections: they perform their devotions with their faces toward it, as if it were the object of their worship as well as of their love; and, although their desire to return be so strong, indelible, and innate, that every Jew, in every generation, counts himself an exile, yet they have never been able to rebuild their temple, nor to recover Jerusalem from the hands of the Gentiles. ”

“ What confusion in Israel! What dissension and mutual hatred! There is still a small handful, whom I will not call a sect, men of pious, peaceful minds, who wait in simplicity and humility for the appearance of the Messiah, who reject every other word but that of God, and keep his ordinances in his temple. Of their number I reckon myself one—Elisama also belongs to them, as do nearly all the Aramæan Jews who live in the Diaspora. In Jerusalem, however, there are few such to be found. Now thou art forewarned, go, and Jehovah bless and keep thee! ”

“ Do we not rightly claim the Jews as the principal witnesses to Christianity, or shall we set all this down as mere accident, a freak of fortune, a superficial correspondence without any essential connection? Shall it be regarded as mere accident that, within a few years after the appearing of this King who has thus gathered the Gentiles to His standard, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the nation scattered to the four winds of the earth—that the polity of Israel for ever ceased, that the Temple shook, and that revival was rendered thenceforward impossible? ”

“ Jerusalem's pangs are not as dying agonies, but as travailing throes, which after a while will be forgotten, for joy that a child is born into the world. Let the literal Jerusalem comfort herself with this, that, whatever straits she may be reduced to, she shall continue until the coming of the Messiah, for there his kingdom must be first set up, and she shall not be destroyed while that blessing is in her ”

“ From this period the history of the Holy Land is less connected with the Jews than with the policy of the different governments by which their country has been occupied. More attached to their ancient faith than when it was established at Jerusalem, we find them, both in the East and West, labouring with the most indefatigable zeal to revive its principles and extend its authority. Hence their celebrated schools at Babylon and Tiberias,—the source of all legislation, and the seat of judgment in all cases of doubtful opinion. ”

“ At first glance the site of Jerusalem seems one of the most unpromising places in all the land of Palestine for a great city. It lies on two or three low hills, projecting from the irregular plateau, which extends southward from the watershed of central Judah. It is overshadowed by higher hills near by and has no lofty, commanding acropolis. The Wilderness of Judea bounds it on the east and the hills and valleys about are rocky and comparatively barren. ”

“ This means that Jerusalem can only be rebuilt when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they embrace her stones and dust. ”

“ Notwithstanding the many sacred memories connected with their city, and the fact that it had been the seat of a Temple in the days of the Israelitish kingdom, to which the tribes of Israel had resorted in numbers, no attempt was now made on their part to dispute the legitimate right to Jerusalem being regarded as the only place where the sacrifices and services enjoined by the precepts of the Mosaic Law could be offered. ”

“ But in a few words it must be said that the impression is one of disappointment at Jerusalem. The streets are dirty and ill-paved, and scarcely any properly authenticated spot can actually be pointed out. Each sanctimonious-looking dragoman has a sniffle, and ‘lies like a wily Hindu.’ From the Greek or Armenian priest who humbugs the miserable pilgrims with his ‘Holy Fire,’ to the hawker of cards of sham flowers from Zion or Bethlehem, sham shells from the Jordan, or sham wood from Olivet, there is nothing but falsehood and extortion. ”

“ It is necessary to insist that the contrasts are not easy to turn into combinations; that the red robes of Rome and the green scarves of Islam will not very easily fade into a dingy russet; that the gold of Byzantium and the brass of Babylon will require a hot furnace to melt them into any kind of amalgam. The reason for this is akin to what has already been said about Jerusalem as a knot of realities. It is especially a knot of popular realities. Although it is so small a place, or rather because it is so small a place, it is a domain and a dominion for the masses. ”

“ The capture of Jerusalem by David and the building of the Temple there by Solomon are doubtless historical facts, but they cannot be said to receive any additional confirmation from monuments. There have been so many destructions and rebuildings of temples on this site, that it is difficult to say to what era the lower strata belong. It is apparent, moreover, from the Egyptian tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, the city founded by the heretic king, Amenophis IV., about 1500 b.c., that Jerusalem was a well-known city and sacred shrine prior to the Hebrew conquest, and even to the date of the Exodus. ”

“ The Mohammedan, retaining in a mutilated and distorted form, the great facts of Jewish and of Christian scripture, and adding to them the legends of his own prophet, regards Jerusalem as second, and hardly second, in sanctity to Mecca itself. Nowhere else are the representatives of such various nationalities to be found as in this meeting-place of the three great monotheistic faiths which have spread so widely over the habitable globe. Jews who have travelled on foot from Poland or Morocco, may be seen weeping outside the temple walls. ”

“ In a street that leads by these foundation walls is the Jews' wailing place where for many centuries devout Hebrews, gathered from every country, have met on each Friday afternoon to bemoan the fate of Jerusalem and to petition for the restoration of the kingdom. One sees no more pathetic sight in a trip around the world than this assemblage of men and women, some gray-haired, some in middle life and many mere children, chanting their laments and caressing the stones which the hand of Solomon laid when he was building the temple which marked the summit of Jewish political power. ”

“ Israel and Jerusalem are constantly described in the Psalms as being the marks for the malignity and opposition of external enemies. Indeed, a persistent note of the Church, Jewish as well as Christian, is the hatred which she awakens in the powers of this world. The object of suspicion and attack from Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon in early days, Jerusalem fares no better after the humiliation of the Captivity. ”

“ Herod the Great renewed and beautified the city, and to court favor with the Jews rebuilt the Temple on a splendid scale. This was Jerusalem in its final glory. Seventy years later the Jews rebelled, and Titus destroyed the city so completely that it is said to have remained a barren waste without a single inhabitant for fifty years.
To-day the city is divided into "quarters"—Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan, and Armenian. All worships are permitted, and the sacred relics—most of them—of whatever faith, are accessible to all. ”

“ There could be no more impressive comment on the infatuation and folly of the times than the embellishment of Jerusalem with palaces and public buildings, with the view to imitate the glory of Solomon. In everything the king differed from his father Josiah, especially in his treatment of Jeremiah, whom he would have killed. He headed the movement to restore paganism; altars were erected on every hill to heathen deities, so that there were more gods in Judah than there were towns. Even the sacred animals of Egypt were worshipped in the dark chambers beneath the Temple. ”

“ To see the Jews scattered over the whole world, according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise. But to be struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem; you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth ”

“ There are to follow certain radical changes in the realm of nature. Splendid rivers of water are to flow through Jerusalem, necessitating changes in the formation of the land there. The fortress capital of the Jews strongly entrenched among the Judean hills is to become, as the world's metropolis, a mighty city, with rivers to float the earth's commerce. The light of the sun and moon will be greatly increased, and yet this greatly intensified light will become at Jerusalem a shadow cast by the greater light of the presence of God. ”

“ In the city of Jerusalem there are now some sixty thousand souls, and a composite population it is. While about two-thirds of the people are Jews and the remainder divided almost equally between the Mohammedans and Christians, one can count representatives of a score or more of nations in an hour's walk. The streets of Jerusalem are narrow and crooked, and one is going up hill or down hill all the time. The houses, the stores, the walls, the gates and the customs of the people seem more Oriental than European. ”

“ If these promises were in part fulfilled when the Jews, after their return out of captivity, were settled in peace in their own land and brought as it were into a new world, yet they were to have their full accomplishment in the gospel church, militant first and at length triumphant. The Jerusalem that is from above is free and is the mother of us all. In the graces and comforts which believers have in and from Christ we are to look for this new heaven and new earth. ”