The Virgin being sick, and now at the point of death, prayed her Son that the apostles might all be permitted to be present at her departure; and they were accordingly transported in a moment from all parts of the world, whither they had travelled preaching the gospel; and found themselves together by her bedside at Jerusalem; all except Thomas, who by a particular judgment was left behind.
She died, and was buried by the apostles in this spacious tomb, which they left not for three days and nights; during all which time sweet music from unseen angelic harps was floating amid the vaults and through the air above. At the end of this time, Thomas was placed among them, and was disconsolate when he found he had been denied the privilege of witnessing her death. He begged, however, that as he had not been allowed to see her while yet alive, he might be permitted to look at the corpse; they complied, and the tomb was opened for him; but the body was gone, nothing remaining but the grave clothes and winding sheet. At the same time the music of the angels ceased, by which they knew that the body was ascending to heaven. Thomas, with tears, gazed upward, and caught a glimpse of the ascending form; and to comfort him she dropped for him a girdle of marvellous beauty, which fell upon a rock adjoining the tomb; “which rock,” says the book, “is held in the greatest veneration by all persons, and has granted for it indulgences, like those of the other sacred places of Jerusalem.”[63]
Maundrell says of this stone, that there is “a winding channel upon it, which they will have to be the impression of the girdle when it fell, and to be left for the conviction of all such as shall suspect the truth of their story.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
Visit to the Mount of Olives to procure olive root. Cabinet work from it. Attempt, by a Fancy spell, to raise up again the ancient city of Jerusalem. Its appearance. Fortifications. Towers. Royal palace. Stupendous wall supporting the Courts of the Temple. Outer Cloister. Solomon’s Porch. Court of the Gentiles. Inner Cloister. Gate called “Beautiful.” Court of the Jews. Court of the Priests. Altar. The TEMPLE. Its dazzling façade. Noble entrance. Skill of the Architect. Vestibule. Grape-vine of Gold. The Sanctuary. Its furniture. Holy of Holies. Effect of this place on Pompey. Walls of the edifice. Stones of amazing size. Frame work of the city. Villages and gardens around. Effect of the contrast between the Temple and Mount of Olives. The millions coming up to the Passover. Their Hymns. The Roman army. Titus takes a view of the city. Events foretelling its doom. The horror-stricken prophet.
The olive root makes beautiful cabinet work; and, desirous of procuring some from the Mount of Olives to be worked up for my friends, I took one day an interpreter and a couple of natives, and ascended the mountain to see if I could purchase some. Southward of Absalom’s monument is the village of Siloa, standing in what appears to have been a quarry; and consisting partly of houses erected on the rocky platforms, and in part of caves cut in the side of the declivity. This was quite deserted; but near the summit of the mountain I was fortunate enough to find a house with occupants, from whom I purchased the privilege of cutting some roots.[64] It may afford an idea of the state of the arts at Jerusalem, when I mention that the best axe which we could find in the city was a species of blunt grubbing-hoe; and that we actually grubbed through the thick roots; and this, they informed me, is the usual way of cutting wood in that country. Mr. Nicholayson had owned an English axe, but his Arab guards had carried it off at the conclusion of the siege.
Soon after commencing operations on the trees, we found ourselves surrounded by a dozen wild looking men, who seemed to have started up from beneath the ground, where probably they had been concealed in the caves and artificial pits with which the country abounds. They were induced, by the offer of a trifling compensation, to assist us; and while they were tugging away at the wood, I sat down a few yards off to make some plans and sketches of the city. In half an hour the interpreter came to say that they had all fled; and on returning I found that not an individual of them was to be seen. The soldiers at the city gate below had spied them out with their glasses, and a detachment had been sent up to seize them; but they were too cunning, and escaped; and as we stood by the tree, we heard them, in their flight, calling to the soldiers, and using epithets that were any thing but complimentary. I have introduced this simple circumstance, however, not so much for its own sake, as to give me an opportunity of carrying the reader once more to the top of the Mount of Olives. And here I wish him to sit down at the spot which I have just been occupying on the central eminence, and gaze down on this place of wonderful history, and of tender and thrilling association. But my object is not to speak of the present city of Jerusalem; I wish to blot out all that picture, defaced in so many places by wretchedness and unsightly ruins, and to place before his imagination the ancient city of Jerusalem, when she sat upon these hills in her jewelled ornaments,—when “glorious things were spoken of thee, O city of God.”
Often as that city is upon our lips, I believe there are few persons who have an idea of its extraordinary splendor in the olden times; for it was a place not only unique, and of strange religious interest, but also of wonderful magnificence. The period of Solomon’s reign might perhaps be selected as that when its effect was most imposing; but I prefer for our picture the time, of the Agrippas, because, while the splendor of Jerusalem was scarcely less than in the reign of Solomon, we have, by the aid of Josephus, more ample materials for forming a judgment of its appearance; and this, too, with a slight exception, was the city whose streets our Saviour trod, and over which, while observing it from a spot just below us here on the Mount of Olives, he wept in the sad anticipation of its downfall.