Jerusalem

“ Jerusalem was designed to have a good influence upon the nations and countries round about, was set in the midst of them as a candle upon a candlestick, to spread the light of divine revelation, which she was blessed with, to all the dark corners of the neighbouring nations, that from them it might diffuse itself further, even to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was set in the midst of the nations, to be as the heart in the body, to invigorate this dead world with a divine life as well as to enlighten this dark world with a divine light, to be an example of every thing that was good. ”

“ It is followed by the cry "Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" as from the Hebrew heroes, in that their hour of success, bursts that name of all earthly names most dear to the sons of Israel! Jerusalem, their mother, will be free, her liberty from a galling yoke will be the crowning reward of their labours and perils, no foe will now dare to oppose the conqueror's onward march towards the holy city.
Maccabeus joins in the shout, and shares in the exultation; he tramples his own private griefs under his feet, that they may cast no gloom over the triumph which God has vouchsafed to the arms of his people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With its solemn doctors, its insipid canonists, its hypocritical and atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem has not conquered humanity. The North has given to the world the simple Shunammite, the humble Canaanite, the impassioned Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the Virgin Mary. The North alone has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by the Pharisees, and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages, and come down to us. ”

“ Jerusalem and its temples appeared to them as a city placed on the summit of a mountain, toward which all people should turn, as an oracle whence the universal law should proceed, as the centre of an ideal kingdom, in which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should find again the joys of Eden. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Hew ye down her trees, And cast up a mound against Jerusalem; This is the city to be punished; Everywhere there is oppression in the midst of her. 7As a cistern welleth with her waters, So she welleth with her wickedness; Violence and spoil is heard in her; Before Me continually is sickness and wounds. 8Be thou corrected, O Jerusalem, Lest My soul be alienated from thee, Lest I make thee desolate, A land not inhabited.
9Thus saith the Lord of hosts: They shall thoroughly glean as a vine The remnant of Israel ”

“ We had attained to Jerusalem, and our dreams were with the angels. Jerusalem the earthly had not forced itself upon our minds; we held the symbolism of the journey lightly, and the mind read a mystery in delicate emotions. The time was to come when some of us would be discontented with Jerusalem, as some of the disciples who fell away were discontented with the poor and humble Jesus ”

“ Let the inhabitants of Jerusalem be strengthened for me in the Lord of hosts, their God.
6 In that day I will make the governors of Juda like a furnace of fire amongst wood, and as a firebrand amongst hay: and they shall devour all the people round about, to the right hand, and to the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place in Jerusalem.
7 And the Lord shall save the tabernacles of Juda, as in the beginning: that the house of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, may not boast and magnify themselves against Juda. ”

“ For centuries Jerusalem had been known as the Holy City. Why was it so called? Not because of its inhabitants, for, instead of being holy, many of them were sunk in wickedness and impurity. Jerusalem was called the Holy City simply because of one inhabitant; it was the dwelling-place of God, and His presence there made it what no other city of the earth was, the Holy City. ”

“ A beautiful and fruitful plain, yet with something of declivity, lay before them, the only level ground in the immediate vicinity of the city. On whichever side you quit Jerusalem, the ground falls, for Jerusalem stands elevated and conspicuous on the surface of the earth, as it does in the history of the world. ”

“ So spoke Los, travelling thro darkness & horrid solitude:
40And he beheld Jerusalem in Westminster & Marybone,
Among the ruins of the Temple: and Vala who is her Shadow,
Jerusalems Shadow bent northward over the Island white. ”

“ It is only by repeatedly visiting the immediate country about Jerusalem that one becomes aware of the magnificent scale of its hills and valleys: however desolate, arid, and uncultivated, there is an air of majesty about them to which no description can do justice. ”

“ Further, the habit is, I know, to think and speak of Jerusalem as Israel, which may be likened to our finding an embroidered shred, and holding it up as a magisterial robe of Cæsar's. Jerusalem is but a stone of the Temple, or the heart in the body. Turn from beholding the legions, strong though they be, and count the hosts of the faithful waiting the old alarm, 'To your tents, O Israel!'—count the many in Persia, children of those who chose not to return with the returning; count the brethren who swarm the marts of Egypt and Farther Africa ”

“ The city bearing the ancient name of Jerusalem does not indeed occupy the same site, being built round the sacred spot where the garden once stood, in which a mortal sepulchre received the lifeless form of the Saviour of the world.
But happier times seem dawning on the dispersed of Judea. Our own days have seen the foundations of a Jewish Christian church laid in Jerusalem; our Queen Victoria and the King of Prussia united to commence a work of love, thereby fulfilling in part the promise made to the Jews of old, “And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers.” ”

“ At Jerusalem live the High Priests, the old custodians of the Temple, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, the Levites and their guards, the descendants of those who pursued and killed the prophets, the petrifiers of the Law, the bigots of the letter, the haughty depositories of arid fanaticism. At Jerusalem are the treasurers of God, the treasurers of Cæsar, the guardians of the treasure, the lovers of wealth; the Publicans with their excisemen and parasites, the rich with their servants and their concubines, the merchants with their crowded shops ”

“ And now glance your eye along these roads that [270] come winding over the hills by which Jerusalem is encircled. See! The whole country seems awakened into an intensity of life and animation. It is the Passover. Far off as the eye can reach, the great highways and the narrow paths are covered with masses of living beings, thousands upon thousands pouring onwards, and still succeeded by other thousands, till it seems as if the whole habitable globe was sending its inhabitants and its tribute to this sacred city. ”

“ But however sincere the beliefs of the past may have been, we cannot but confess, when studying in detail the traditional topography of Jerusalem, that it has grown and changed just as the city itself has done, because of the succession of various ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they shed their blood. ”

“ O Jerusalem that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, behold your God!"
Themes to this day not understood by the Gentiles! Incomprehensible to the divines of Christendom!
The everlasting perpetuation of a chosen race—a diviner monument in its dispersion and preservation than in its national antiquity. Its restoration to more than its ancient empire, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, with Jehovah exalted in his chosen people as the Lord God Omnipotent, is the vast subject of the prophetic Hebrews. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jerusalem has a stupendous history and is yet the most disappointing city in the world; a small, gilded-gingerbread city with no beautiful building except the blue-tiled Mosque of Omar, no first-class view except that of the walls and roof-tops from the Mount of Olives; a city trading its past for Western charity ”

“ The scene of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem surrounded by the welcoming multitude, is a wonderful reproduction of life and movement, and so also is the scene, towards the end, showing his last journey up to Calvary. All Jerusalem seems to have turned out to see him pass and to follow him, the many laughing, the few sad. The people fill the narrow streets to overflowing, and press round the spears of the Roman Guard. ”

“ Then I remembered that in the same strips of medieval landscape could be seen always, here and there, a steep hill crowned with a city of towers. And I knew I had the mystical and double pleasure of seeing such a hill and standing on it. A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid; but it is more strange when the hill cannot anywhere be hid, even from the citizen in the city.
Then indeed I knew that what I saw was Jerusalem of the Crusaders; or at least Jerusalem of the Crusades. It was a medieval town, with walls and gates and a citadel, and built upon a hill to be defended by bowmen. ”

“ Unto thee shall it come; that which thou hast long wanted and wished for, even the first dominion, a dignity and power equal to that of David and Solomon, by whom Jerusalem was first raised, that kingdom shall again come to the daughter of Jerusalem, which it was deprived of at the captivity. It shall make as great a figure and shine with as much lustre among the nations, and have as much influence upon them, as ever it had ”

“ I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land. ”

“ Spreading them out before the Sun like stalks of flax to dry?
The Infant Joy is beautiful, but its anatomy
Horrible ghast & deadly! nought shalt thou find in it
But dark despair & everlasting brooding melancholy!
25 Then Albion turnd his face toward Jerusalem & spoke
Hide thou Jerusalem in impalpable voidness, not to be
Touchd by the hand nor seen with the eye: O Jerusalem
Would thou wert not & that thy place might never be found
But come O Vala with knife & cup: drain my blood
30 To the last drop! ”

“ Not only is the New Jerusalem of Isaiah, which has a new heaven above it and a new earth beneath, simply the old earthly Jerusalem, which has attained to the highest glory and happiness; but in the Apocalypse also, the Jerusalem which has come down from heaven is an earthly city with great walls of jasper and pure gold, founded upon twelve precious stones, with twelve gates consisting of pearls, that are not shut by day, in order that the kings of the earth may bring their glory into the city, into which nothing common and no abomination enter. ”

“ Escaping, however, from the city, from its bad smells and loathsome and importunate beggars, we can ascend the hills, and contemplate a panorama, where every stone is a witness of God's revelation, and every ruin a monument of His wrath. On these bare summits high and ennobling thoughts fill the mind, bringing a calm that is found with difficulty in bustling and crowded cities. He who is careless or unbelieving, he who travels only from curiosity or to kill time, had better take my advice, and avoid Jerusalem. ”

“ The silence is broken suddenly by the musical cry of the Muedhdhin on the minaret of a mosque—a long, rolling, and tremulous note, echoing all over Jerusalem, as he “testifies there is no God but God,” and calls to the faithful that “prayer is better than sleep.” The simple dignity of Islâm contrasts with the superstition, the hurried services, the tawdry magnificence of degraded Eastern churches, and we understand how it was that the reformed faith of Muḥammad conquered Asia. The second scene is that of the summer noon, which presents to us an epitome of the long history of the Holy City. ”

“ And how will Jerusalem look when Asshur has been dashed to pieces on the strong fortress? The prophet passes over here into the tone of Psa 48:1-14 (Psa 48:13, Psa 48:14) . Psa 46:1-11 and Psa 48:1-14 probably belong to the time of Jehoshaphat; but they are equally applicable to the deliverance of Jerusalem in the time of Hezekiah. “Look upon Zion, the castle of our festal meeting. Thine eyes will see Jerusalem, a pleasant place, a tent that does not wander about, whose pegs are never drawn, and none of whose cords are ever broken.” ”