CHAPTER 95
IN OUR TIME, and in all well-governed lands, when a man has been sentenced to death, he is taken to prison and kept there safely for a few days, that he may prepare to die. No one is allowed to do him harm; good food is given him to eat, and he is allowed to live his last days in peace. But in the old times, when Jesus was among men, prisoners appointed to die were treated with the greatest cruelty. They were mocked and beaten and spit upon for an hour or more, and then they were led away to death.
So it was with Jesus on that day. After the soldiers had treated him shamefully, they took off the scarlet robe and put on him his own clothes. Then they laid upon his wounded shoulders the heavy beam of his cross, and led him from Pilate's palace through the streets of Jerusalem toward a hill outside the city wall. This hill was called in the Hebrew tongue, the language of the Jewish people, "Golgotha," a word meaning "Skull-place." In the language of the Romans, the word meaning "Skull-place" was "Calvaria," and from this word the place where Jesus was crucified has been called "Mount Calvary."
It is not certain where was the true Mount Calvary, the place of Christ's cross. For a long time it was believed to be a little hill on the west of the city; and over that hill was built in the after years a great church, called "The Church of the Holy Sepulchre," because inside that church they show not only the place where people thought that the cross stood, but also the tomb or sepulchre in which Jesus was buried. To this church thousands of people go every year, thinking that they can see the very places where the Saviour died and was buried.
But most of those who have studied carefully all that can be known about the city of Jerusalem and the hills around it, have believed that the true Calvary was not where the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands, but at some other place. Many think that it was a rounded, grass-covered little hill just outside the city on the north. The side of this hill looking toward the city is very steep, and in it are two great caves. As one stands on the city wall and looks at this rounded hill, with the two holes in it, he thinks of a skull—which is a man's head without the skin and the flesh, and with two eye-holes. This hill may have been called "the skull-place," because it looks so much like a skull. On this skull-like hill it may be that Jesus was crucified.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, sometimes claimed to be built upon the site of Calvary
Turning to the women weeping over him, Jesus said: "Women of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your children!"
Jesus walked through the streets of the city loaded down with the heavy beam of his cross on his shoulders. The soldiers were dragging him on, and some were driving him forward with blows, when suddenly, worn out with suffering, and fainting from loss of blood and want of food, he sank down upon the ground, unable to carry his load any further. Just then a man coming from the country into Jerusalem, met the soldiers and the crowd with Jesus. This man was named Simon. He was not Simon Peter, the disciple of Jesus, but another Simon, who had come from a city far away in Africa, called Cyrene. The soldiers seized this man, and made him help Jesus in carrying the cross, until they came to Calvary.