This alone would suffice to make Palestine an ideal training-ground for a nation to learn righteousness. The whole theory of Providence which dominates the earlier Old Testament, and lingers on in popular belief through the New, is apparent on every mile of these valleys. That theory was that even in the present life the sin of man will be immediately punished by adversity, and his righteousness rewarded by prosperity. It was a theory which had to be abandoned, and the whole marvellous story of Job shews us the process of the nation’s discarding it. To us it seems wonderful that it should have been able to survive at all in face of the inexplicable and at times apparently irrational facts of all human experience. But the fact that in Syria nature’s rewards and punishments are so certain and so immediate goes far to explain both its origin and its persistence.
Such thoughts as these regarding Syria inevitably lead towards one goal. There is but one symbol in the world which expresses all that depth of pain which we have found in the history of this sorely-tried land, and at the same time forces on even the most thoughtless its moral significance. That symbol is the Cross of Christ. It is still to be seen very frequently in Syria, generally in its Greek form
. In this form it is more impressive than in the other. The oblique lower bar represents a board nailed across the shaft for the feet of the sufferer to rest on. The realistic effect of this is surprising, for it brings home to one’s imagination in a quite new way the terrible fact that men have actually been crucified.
The later history and legend of the cross in Palestine is one of singular and tragic interest. First of all there is the preposterous story of St. Helena’s dream—the miraculous discovery of the three crosses, and the miracle of healing which enabled her to distinguish the cross of Christ from those of the robbers. Since then the sacred wood has been tossed about from hand to hand, hunted for, bargained for sinned for, died for. Its presence in their army comforted the Crusaders in their misery; the sight of it in the hands of the Saracens filled them with despair. The restoration of it was among the chief demands conceded by Saladin when he surrendered Acre to Richard; and when he failed to deliver it, hostages to the number of 2700 were slaughtered in sight of the Saracen camp. All through the Crusades it was the badge of self-devotion to the holy wars, and a strange tale is told of an occasion on which Louis IX., presenting robes to his courtiers according to an ancient custom, had crosses secretly embroidered on them, so that the wearers found themselves committed unawares to the Crusade.
For 1500 years that symbol pointed to the site which the buildings of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre cover. Godfrey was buried there, and many a devout soul regarded it as the holiest of holy places. In the middle of the nineteenth century the question of its authenticity was raised; and General Gordon, who spent part of the last year before he went to Khartoum, in Jerusalem, championed the identification of the hill of Jeremiah’s Grotto, just outside the Damascus Gate, with Calvary. His point of view was a strange one. It was suggested by the words “place of a skull,” from which he developed the idea of the Holy City as the body of the bride of Christ, this hill being the head, Zion the pleura, and so on. The theory, so far as it regards Calvary, has appealed to many competent judges who were very far from adopting the mystical and emblematic views of Gordon. The hill is an old quarry, within which Jeremiah is supposed by tradition to have written his Lamentations. It is quite a little hill, whose short and scanty grass was burnt up with drought when we saw it, leaving a surface of loose sandy soil. A man crucified here would have the Mount of Olives in his eyes behind some roof-lines of the city. By a curious coincidence a rock-hewn tomb, with a groove running in front of the face of it for a great stone which would close its entrance, has been discovered close by. It is a grave with only one loculus in it, and it is temptingly like one’s idea of the Garden Tomb of Joseph; but it is said to be undoubtedly of later date than the death of Jesus. From one point in the road, somewhat nearer the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the hollows and caves of the hill, which here breaks along its length into a small precipice, bear a striking resemblance to a chapfallen skull. Not that the features can be examined in anything like accurate detail. But in the evening, while the sun sets over Jerusalem and the shadows slowly deepen, the resemblance is sufficient to strike one who had not heard that this was the place so named. Many arguments have been urged for this new site. Its proximity to an ancient Jewish cemetery is in favour of the probability that Joseph’s tomb was there. It was close to the public highway, as Calvary undoubtedly was. It is also significant that the gate now known as the Damascus Gate was formerly called St. Stephen’s Gate; and tradition affirmed that through it St. Stephen was led forth to his martyrdom. It is probable that the martyrdom took place on the public execution-ground, where, in the natural course of events, Jesus and the robbers would also have been crucified. Finally, and most important, recent explorations have discovered, in various parts of the city, huge Jewish stones which are believed by advocates of this theory to be those of the wall which stood there in the time of Christ. By completing the line of these stones a wall is reconstructed which encloses the traditional Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while it leaves Gordon’s site still outside. To get the Holy Sepulchre outside this wall, as we know the place of the crucifixion was, it would be necessary to imagine a sharp angular recess in the wall pointing inwards, with Calvary filling the space within the arms of the angle. It matters little where the spot was. Yet it would be interesting if the north side of the city should ultimately claim Him from the west—Nazareth, as it were, from Rome. The garden and the new grave belong to an English committee of trustees endowed in 1901. It would indeed be a striking thing if, after all the idolatry of sites which the vision of St. Helena started, the real hill and garden where the world’s great tragedy was enacted should prove to have gone past Roman and Greek worshippers both, and to have been committed to the hands of Protestants.[61]
No one who has stood upon that hill of Golgotha and thought of the wondrous past can have failed to perceive a mystical and dark connection between the crime which has rendered Jerusalem so famous, and all that deathly and spectral fate which has befallen the spirit of Syria. As we stand amid the deepening shadows of sunset on the spot where Christ was crucified, a change seems to come, as the blood-red sky crimsons the minarets and domes. It is no longer Christ that hangs upon the Cross, but Palestine. No other land would have crucified Him. Had He come to Greece He might have been neglected or ridiculed, but certainly not crucified. For that it needed a religion as bitterly earnest, and at the same time as morally decayed, as Judaism was then. And that same moral and spiritual condition which set up the Cross for Jesus, has finished its course by crucifying the nation that murdered Him. Most literally this happened in the days when Titus used up all the trees near Jerusalem to make crosses for Jews. But in Sir John Mandeville’s time the legend had expanded to this, that at the Crucifixion all the trees in the world withered and died. Certainly a blight came upon the land of Palestine. It has sometimes been asserted that the nation which crucified Jesus Christ can never again rise to national prosperity or greatness. The forces at work in history are far too subtle and complex to allow any one to say with assurance what the future may or may not have in store for a race. But this at least is evident, that meanwhile the Cross has marked this region for its own; the land is everywhere on its Cross, and the obvious cause of this is the want of righteousness, both in oppressors and oppressed. It is a land that cries aloud for righteousness in its agony.
CHAPTER V
RESURRECTION
In regard to the future of Palestine the outlook of different writers varies perhaps as much as upon any similar question that could be named. Every one is familiar with the Utopian dreams which optimistic constructors of programmes cherish regarding it. On the other hand, grave and thoughtful writers have sometimes felt the misery of its present state so heavily as to abandon all hope for the future, and to acknowledge the most discouraging views as to the possibilities before the land. Apart from sentiment, or from some favourite method of interpreting prophecy, the reasons for such pessimism are mainly two. One is the change of climate, which appears from many indications to be an unquestionable fact. The other is the destruction of terraces, and the consequent washing away of soil from the higher regions of the country. These are serious considerations, which cannot be ignored. If this view be the correct one, the only permanent continuance of Syria will be as a symbol of judgment, a kind of Lot’s-wife pillar among the peoples, a sermon in stone upon the ethical principles which govern the fortunes of nations. The land will remain as a proverb, but will never again be a home.
Yet neither these nor any other such forebodings seem to the ordinary observer quite to be justified. If the climate has changed, may not that be due to causes that can be remedied? By proper drainage of swamps and planting of trees, it would seem perfectly possible to modify climatic conditions to an extent at least sufficient to allow the hope of prosperous agriculture and pleasant habitation. As to the terraces, if they have been constructed once they may be reconstructed with hope of result. There are tracts even in the desert itself where traces of former cultivation may still be seen. If the uncivilised or semi-barbarous tribes of the ancient time built up the land until handfuls of corn waved on the tops of mountains, surely it is not too much to expect that men armed with all the skill and appliance of modern engineering may yet repeat the process. The instance of Malta has been already cited; and, apart from that it is a very dusty world, and soil accumulates as if by magic where man provides for it a place to rest on.