“But he made the outside of the temple wonderful beyond account, both in description and to sight. For having piled up huge terraces, from which, on account of their immense depth, it was hardly possible to look down, and reared them to the highth of four hundred cubits, (six hundred feet!) he made them on the same level with the hill’s top on which the shrine (ναος) was built, and thus the open floor of the temple (ἱερον, or the outer court’s inclosure) was level with the shrine.”
I have drawn thus largely from the rich descriptions of this noble and faithful describer of the old glories of the Holy Land, because this very literal translation gives the exact naked detail of the temple’s aspect, in language as gorgeous as the most high-wrought in which it could be presented in a mere fancy picture of the same scene; and because it will prove that my conception of its glory, as it appeared to Christ and the four disciples who “sat over against it upon the Mount of Olives,” is not overdrawn, since it is thus supported by the blameless and invaluable testimony of him who saw all this splendor in its most splendid day, and afterwards in its unequaled beauty and with all its polished gold and marble, shining and sinking amid the flames, which swept it utterly away from his saddening eyes forever, to a ruin the most absolute and irretrievable that ever fell upon the works of man.
This was the temple on which the sons of Jonah and Zebedee gazed, with the awful denunciation of its utter ruin falling from their Lord’s lips, and such was the desolation to which those terrible words devoted it. This full description of its location shows the manner in which its terraced foundations descended with their vast fronts, six hundred feet into the valley of Kedron, over which they looked. To give as clear an idea of the place where they sat, and its relations to the rest of the scene, I extract from Conder’s Modern Traveler the following description of Mount Olivet.
“The Mount of Olives forms part of a ridge of limestone hills, extending to the north and the south-west. Pococke describes it as having four summits. On the lowest and most northerly of these, which, he tells us, is called Sulman Tashy, the stone of Solomon, there is a large domed sepulcher, and several other Mohammedan tombs. The ascent to this point, which is to the north-east of the city, he describes as very gradual, through pleasant corn-fields planted with olive-trees. The second summit is that which overlooks the city: the path to it rises from the ruined gardens of Gethsemane, which occupy part of the valley. About half way up the ascent is a ruined monastery, built, as the monks tell us, on the spot where the Savior wept over Jerusalem. From this point the spectator enjoys, perhaps, the best view of the Holy City. (Here Jesus sat, in our scene.)
“The valley of Jehoshaphat, which lies between this mountain and the hills on which Jerusalem is built, is still used as a burial-place by the modern Jews, as it was by their ancestors. It is, generally speaking, a rocky flat, with a few patches of earth here and there, about half a mile in breadth from the Kedron to the foot of Mount Olivet, and nearly of the same length from Siloa to the garden of Gethsemane. The Jews have a tradition, evidently founded on taking literally the passage Joel iii. 12, that this narrow valley will be the scene of the final judgment. The prophet Jeremiah evidently refers to the same valley under the name of the valley of the Son of Hinnom, or the valley of Tophet, the situation being clearly marked as being by the entry of the east gate. (Jeremiah xix. 2, 6.) Pococke places the valley of Hinnom to the south of Jerusalem, but thinks it might include part of that to the east. It formed part of the bounds between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, (Joshua xv. 8. xviii. 16,) but the description is somewhat obscure.” [Modern Traveler Palestine, pp. 168, 172.]
MOUNT MORIAH.
THE LAST SUPPER.
Meanwhile the offended and provoked dignitaries of Judaism were fast making arrangements to crush the daring innovator, who had done so much to bring their learning and their power into contempt. Some of the most fiery spirits among them, were for defying all risks, by seizing the Nazarene openly, in the midst of his audacious denunciations of the higher orders; and the attempt was made to execute this act of arbitrary power; but the mere hirelings sent upon the errand, were too much awed by the unequaled majesty of the man, and by the strong attachment of the people to him, to be willing to execute their commission. But there were old heads among them, that could contrive safer and surer ways of meeting the evil. By them it was finally determined to seize Jesus when alone or unattended by the throngs which usually encompassed him,——to hurry him at once secretly through the forms of law necessary for his commitment, and then to put him immediately into the hands of the Roman governor, as a condemned rioter and rebel, who would be obliged to order his execution in such a way as that no popular excitement would rescue the victim from the grasp of the soldiery. This was the plan which they were now arranging, and which they were prepared to execute before the close of the passover, if they could get intelligence of his motions. These fatal schemes of hate could not have been unknown to Jesus; yet the knowledge of them made no difference in his bold devotion to the cause for which he came into the world. Anxious to improve the few fast fleeting hours that remained before the time of his sufferings should come on, and desirous to join as a Jew in this great national festival, by keeping it in form with his disciples, he directed his two most confidential apostles, Peter and John, to get ready the entertainment for them in the city, by an arrangement made with a man already expecting to receive them. This commission they faithfully executed, and Jesus accordingly ate with his disciples the feast of the first day of the passover, in Jerusalem, with those who sought his life so near him. After the supper was over, he determined to use the brief remnant of time for the purpose of uprooting that low feeling of jealous ambition which had already made so much trouble among them, in their anxious discussions as to who should be accounted the greatest, and should rank as the ruler of the twelve. To impress the right view upon their minds most effectually, he chose the oriental mode of a ceremony which should strike their senses, and thus secure a regard and remembrance for his words which they might fail in attaining if they were delivered in the simple manner of trite and oft spoken oral truisms. He therefore rose after supper, and leaving his place at the head of the table, he laid aside his upper garments, which, though appropriate and becoming him as a teacher in his hours of public instruction, or social communion, were yet inconvenient in any active exertion which needed the free use of the limbs. Being thus disrobed, he took the position and character of a menial upon him, and girding himself with a towel, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet in it, wiping them with his towel. He accordingly comes to Simon Peter, in the discharge of his servile office; but Peter, whose ideas of the majesty and ripening honors of his Master were shocked at this extraordinary action, positively refused to be even the passive instrument of such an indignity to one so great and good,——first inquiring “Lord, dost thou wash my feet?” Jesus in answer said to him, “What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.” That is, “this apparently degrading act has a hidden, useful meaning, at this moment beyond your comprehension, but which you will learn in due time.” Peter, however, notwithstanding this plain and decided expression of Christ’s wise determination to go through this painful ceremony, for the instruction of those who so unwillingly submitted to see him thus degraded,——still led on by the fiery ardor of his own headlong genius,——manfully persisted in his refusal, and expressed himself in the most positive terms possible, saying to Jesus, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.” This solemn remonstrance had the effect of checking Peter’s too forward reverence, and in a tone of deeper submission to the wise will of his Master, he yielded, replying however, “Lord, wash not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” Since so low an office was to be performed by one so venerated, he would not have the favor of his blessed touch confined to the baser limbs, but desired that the nobler parts of the body should share in the holy ablution. But the high purpose of Jesus could not accommodate itself to the whims of his zealous disciple; for his very object was to take the humblest attitude before them, by performing those personal offices which were usually committed to slaves. He therefore told Peter, “He that is washed needs not save to wash his feet, but is clean in every part;”——a very familiar and expressive illustration, alluding to the circumstance that those who have been to a bath and there washed themselves, will on their return find themselves wholly clean, except such dust as may cling to their feet as they have passed through the streets on their return. And any one may feel the force of the beautiful figure, who has ever gone into the water for the purposes of cleanliness and refreshment, on a warm summer’s day in this country, and has found by experience that after all possible ablution, on coming out and dressing himself, his wet feet in contact with the ground have become loaded with dirt which demands new diligence to remove it; and as all who have tried it know, it requires many ingenious efforts to return with feet as clean as they came to the washing; and in spite of all, after the return, an inspection may forcibly illustrate the truth, that “he that is washed, though he is clean in every part, yet needs to wash his feet.” Such was the figure with which Jesus expressed to his simple-minded and unlettered disciples, the important truth, that since they had been already washed, (baptized by John or himself,) if that washing had been effectual, they could need the repurification only of their feet——the cleansing away of such of the world’s impure thoughts and feelings as had clung to them in their journeyings through it. So, after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments and sat down again, he said to them, “Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me Master and Lord; and ye say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you this as an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Truly the servant is not greater than his lord, neither is he that is sent greater than him that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”——A charge so clear and simple, and so full, that it needs not a word of comment to show any reader the full force of this touching ceremony.