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 pass 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.
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.