With a view to dispel the ignorance which, like the pall of death, enshrouds the Jewish mind, generous efforts have been made within the last quarter of a century to ameliorate the condition of those whose temporary or permanent abode is in Jerusalem. By a munificent donation from Mr. Touro, of New Orleans, a new Jewish hospital has been erected just beyond the Yâffa Gate, on the right of the road leading to Bethlehem. Constructed of stone, with a handsome exterior, and containing forty beds, it is governed by a manager, a steward and stewardess. Attached to it is a farm and a fruit nursery, which in coming years will be of great value to the institution. It is the most home-like looking building either in the city or in its environs, and the inmates who lounge beneath its spacious portico are immeasurably happier than those who reside in stone hovels within the town. Though it is the gift of an American citizen, Sir Moses Montefiore bears the honor of being the founder of the hospital. Acting simply as disbursing agent or trustee for the fund, Sir Moses should have had the magnanimity to disabuse the public mind, and render honor to the distinguished benefactor.
Within Jerusalem there are several institutions for the religious benefit of this fallen people. The School of Industryfor Jewesses, under Miss Cooper, of England, is not far from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the street leading to the Damascus Gate. Nearly forty Jewesses, between the ages of ten and fifty, are there employed. Their chief work is embroidery and needle-work, some of which is so excellent as to adorn the garments of the Pasha. The inmates labor four days in the week; in summer from seven o’clock till twelve, and in winter from eight till one. The building is divided into three departments—the work-room, bazar, and school-room. Twelve Jewesses attend the day-school, eleven the boarding-school; and seven, who are proselytes, between the ages of five and fifteen, are permanent boarders. Strong in their traditional faith, and because of the influence of the morning and evening service in the institution, the parents of these children give the governess no little trouble in attempting to regain them to the faith of their national church.
To the west of the female school is the House of Industry for Converts and Inquirers, under the auspices of the “London Society for promoting Religion among the Jews.” The inquirers are maintained gratuitously for two years, though required to labor at some mechanical trade. Most of the inmates are cabinet-makers, manufacturing useful and curious articles out of olive-wood and other kinds indigenous to the country. All the beneficiaries are males, ranging from sixteen to forty-five years of age. A portion of each day is devoted to such religious instruction and devotion as may lead these sons of Israel to Christ. Since the establishment of the institution in 1848, forty-two converts have been baptized in the name of the adorable Trinity, and a proselyte-meeting is daily held and well attended. With a clearness worthy of maturer Christians, some of the converts answered our questions touching their religious experience, and, if faithful to their high calling, will be lights to their brethren in the Holy City.
Among the Christian sects in Jerusalem, the Armenians are the most wealthy, aristocratic, and influential. Their chief establishment is on Mount Zion, consisting of the gorgeous Church of St. James, and a spacious convent capable of accommodating eight thousand pilgrims. Here, in a new and magnificent apartment, their patriarch resides, whose episcopal jurisdiction includes all Palestine and the beautiful island of Cyprus. Their communicants number about five hundred, whoare mostly foreign born, and are among the chief merchants in the metropolis. Their hundred priests are fine-looking men, attired in neat black robes, and high hats of the same color without brims. They employ their time in conducting two theological schools for the education of neophyte priests, in running a printing-press, and in clerical duties. In doctrine the Armenians are Monophysites; in ritual, pompous; in practice, “good livers.”
Priding themselves on the power of their royal patrons, the Greek and Latin Christians are contesting their respective claims to superiority. Together with their patriarch, who is head of the Church, the Greeks have three hundred bishops, priests, nuns, and theological students. The patriarch resides in elegant style in a convent attached to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in which there is a fine library of two thousand volumes. Extending his episcopal sceptre over fourteen sees, he also controls with absolute authority the twelve convents for monks and nuns within the city, to which are connected as many churches. In addition to a theological seminary and three common schools, they have a college of a high grade in the Convent of the Cross, a mile and a half west of the city, where one hundred young men have entered a collegiate course of seven years, maintained and educated gratuitously by Russian gold. Not less than four thousand people are under their pastoral care, most of whom are native born. Their ancient rivals, the Latins, are rising rapidly to affluence and power in the Holy City. Occupying conjointly with the Greeks and Armenians the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they hold exclusive possession of the Chapel of the Apparition, their principal place of worship in Jerusalem. Numbering not less than fifteen hundred communicants, who are mostly Syrian born, they have a patriarch, a hundred monks, and ten nuns. Subject to their control are a number of churches, schools, and convents. Among the latter is their famous Terra Santa Convent on Mount Akra. It is celebrated for its immense treasures, the gifts of European royalty, and no traveler should leave Jerusalem without seeing those munificent donations. A hundred Franciscan friars here abide, living in luxury, and, though moderately temperate themselves, are only too happy to offer their guests a glass of the choicest arrakee. Here is the residence of the superior of the convent, who is always anItalian, appointed by the Pope every three years. For the maintenance of this monastic establishment a sum not less than $45,000 is annually expended. Connected with it is the Casa Nuovo, for the entertainment of pilgrims gratuitously for two weeks, though a gift is never refused; and here is the grand bazar of pious wares, where the curious traveler may purchase rosaries, crosses, and crucifixes to any amount.
A monastic life leads to indolence and contention, and the Greek and Latin monks of Jerusalem are ignorant and idle, domineering and quarrelsome, and unworthy representatives of the Christian name. No one familiar with their character and devotion can regard them as the true successors of the apostles, or that the faithful missionary spirit underlies their zeal for temporal and spiritual conquest. It is the ancient love of power, and the perpetuation of the controversy which rent the Church of God in the ninth century. Watching the movements of each other with a jealousy as persistent as it is revengeful, their rivalries engender bitter contentions, which, culminating in a quarrel and a riot, the infidel Turk is compelled to suppress by force of arms. By a conventional arrangement, they visit in procession the sacred shrines in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at stated hours on ordinary days, and also on festival occasions. The Greeks have the precedence, and the Latins follow. Occasionally their festivals occur on the same day and at the same hour, when their sectarian virulence gaining the mastery of their piety and reason, they aim to silence each other by louder vocal and instrumental sounds. Such was the case on Easter Sunday. Though not their Easter, it was a high day with the Greeks. As in all basilicas, a broad aisle encircles the interior of the church, serving as a path for the march of the procession. The chapel of the Latins opens into this aisle on the west, and at that time they were intoning the Easter service. Attired in their most gorgeous robes, and followed by an immense concourse of people, the Greeks had made the circuit of the church, and, turning their faces toward the open chapel of the Latins, chanted a barbaric hymn with such force that for a moment the Catholics were unable to proceed. Fortunately, the organist came to the rescue of his bishop, and, opening the stops of his magnificent organ, so thundered with his instrument as to compel the Greeks to beat a retreat.
With all their admiration for the Church of St. Helena, their mutual jealousies are allowing the building to fall to ruin for the want of timely repairs. The rain, beating in through the circular aperture in the dome, has so far detached the plastering as to leave the lathing exposed. After every storm large quantities of the plaster fall, and, while present on one occasion, a piece fell to the injury of a personal friend. Supposing it would be a concession of the right of possession to allow either sect to repair the dome and save the church from ruin, both parties refuse to do it conjointly, and neither will allow the other to do it separately.
France and Russia would confer an unspeakable benediction upon the world, and remove a scandal from the Christian name, by stopping such petty feuds, and demanding a reconciliation no less humane than Christian. But it is to be feared the emperors of those great nations have political designs in the East to be consummated which are promoted rather than retarded by such ecclesiastical broils. Both aspire to empire in the Holy Land. More fortunate than the Emperor of the North, Napoleon III., as the imperial patron of the Latin Church, has received, as a consideration for the services rendered the Turkish government in the Crimean war, the venerable Church of St. Anne, near St. Stephen’s Gate, and the beautiful green square opposite the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was once the possession of the Knights of St. John. Russian gold, however, has purchased what Turkish liberality had withheld. In the East, “money answereth all things.” A Turk will sell his soul for gold. Under the auspices of the Russian government, a piece of ground beyond the city walls on the northwest side has been purchased, and sixteen thousand square yards have been inclosed by a stone wall, not unlike, in strength and appearance, the wall of a fort. Within the inclosure four water-tanks have been constructed, several buildings erected, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, a large house for the ecclesiastical mission, a hospital containing sixty beds, and an asylum capable of receiving three hundred pilgrims. For the completion of this extraordinary work on the Meidan the Russian pilgrims to the shrines of the Holy City have contributed 660,000 rubles, and a farther sum of 350,000 is required to complete the original design. Within the city the Russians are erecting an asylum for female pilgrims, which in every waywill be worthy of the wealth and power of their nation. In excavating to lay the foundation of this building, the workmen descended through the rubbish thirty-five feet, when they came upon the remains of porticoes and pillars which once formed part of the principal entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the time of Constantine the Great. It is an event of thrilling interest to the archæologist and Biblical scholar; and were a commission appointed by the several Christian nations of the earth to secure the consent of the Turkish government, and to superintend the excavation, ancient Jerusalem might be uncovered, the palaces of her kings exhumed, and the paths trodden by the world’s Redeemer pressed by the willing feet of his devoted followers.
For more than forty years the light of a pure Christianity has been shining upon the city of David, dispelling the mists of error, revealing new forms of moral beauty, and lighting up the path of life. In 1841, the European mission to Jerusalem was modified and its several branches united under a common head, whose episcopal supervision includes Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Abyssinia. Uniting in this religious compact, England and Prussia agreed that the diocesan bishop should be nominated alternately by the sovereigns of the two kingdoms, with the right of veto invested in the Archbishop of Canterbury as to the Prussian nominee. The only stipulations in the contract are the right to alternate with the British sovereign in appointing the incumbent of the Episcopal see, and the use of the cathedral when not occupied by the English Christians. True to her traditional policy to gain all things and lose nothing by her treaties, England consented, and the treaty was ratified. To support the bishop, the late Frederick William of Prussia funded $75,000, and England contributes annually a sum equal to the interest on the above amount.
The foundation stone of the new Protestant Cathedral was laid by Bishop Alexander in 1842, on Mount Zion, and consecrated to God on the 1st of January, 1849. To comply with the exacting conditions imposed by the Turkish government, the church was built in connection with the English consulate. It is now called “Christ Church,” and is an elegant Gothic structure of yellow limestone, capable of accommodating 300 persons. Attached to it is a large plat of ground, occupiedby residences and offices for the clergy and agents of the mission. Bishop Gobart, the present incumbent of the see, is a man of genuine Episcopal dignity; his face is kind and intelligent; his heart has the pathos of a woman’s. His Easter sermon was simple, tender, evangelical. He enlists your attention by the tenderness of his tones, and melts you to tears by the depth of his emotion. He is a Christian of large charities, maintaining out of his ample income several schools in different parts of Palestine. He is assisted by the Rev. Mr. Hefter, an eminent scholar and a thorough gentleman, and by the Rev. Dr. Sandriczki, who has the general oversight of the literature of the mission. Near the church on Mount Zion is the Bible House, well supplied with the precious Word of Life. Not far from it is the female school, containing thirty native pupils; and beyond the wall on Zion, in a substantial stone building, is the male department, in which eighty boys were being educated for Christ by five Christian teachers.