The friend who had come with us had been often in the Garden. He told us of the beautiful service of the Relief Workers here on Easter morning, of the night after Allenby entered Jerusalem when the workers filled with joy over the manner of the victory came to this sacred spot to pray in gratitude and for strength for the long wearying days of toil which lay ahead. He told us of the Armenian girl, kneeling early one morning in the damp grass, trying to repeat Gethsemane’s prayer. She was a graduate of the American Woman’s College, was teaching in a girls’ high school when deportation orders came, and from then until her rescue had been an Arab’s slave in his dirty tent.
It was very still. The walls of the city shut out its sounds, and it was too early for regular traffic along the road to Bethany. A British Tommy climbed over the wall and sat upon a great rock under a gnarled old tree, his hat in his hand. Pictures of the old masters painted on walls of cathedrals, hanging in great galleries, hymns tender and sweet that had thrilled the souls of thousands, poetry that had comforted man in his deepest hours of need, shadowy forms of Crusaders who had dared the perils of sea and land, hunger and thirst and the swords of the enemy, the monk, the pilgrim, the student searching for truth:—all these passed before us under the olive trees and went out into the mist.
Suddenly the day seemed to fade and that night of centuries ago came stealing into the Garden. Kneeling there under the olive trees, we saw Love make its supreme sacrifice and were not ashamed of the overwhelming emotion that stirred our souls to greater depths than ever had been touched before. We read the words softly—“if possible—if possible—nevertheless thy will be done.” The rest of the picture was not so hard to look upon for He had triumphed. He rose from His prayer a Conqueror.
There was more than one grassy hollow near the sheltering wall where the disciples might have slept in the open, as did many at the time of the Passover. Regretful, He wakened them. The Roman soldiers with staves and smoking torches were coming down over the hill. His doom was sealed. What the law gave them no right to do, misunderstanding, cunning, and craft had done. Judas kissed him. We read the rest of the story from a little book that made it very plain.[[1]] Then we prayed, but not with words—there were no words.
[1]. By an Unknown Disciple—Hodder and Stoughton.
On the little bridge that crosses over the Kedron to the Bethany road we stood for a long time looking back, loathe to leave. We remembered the white crosses of yesterday standing in long rows over there on the other side of the mount. He was not alone in the Garden! With Him there had gathered through the centuries an understanding multitude, young and loving life as did He, who had met their own Gethsemanes and gone out from them bravely to die.
Again we went through St. Stephen’s Gate and along the path where the Roman guards had led their prisoner. We stopped at Pilate’s Hall. Like a king indeed he met the false testimony of his accusers, the cynical questions of Pilate, the jesting soldiers who had seen many a man condemned to die but none who met the madness of a multitude that cried “Crucify! Crucify!” with such dignity and calm. No wonder Rousseau cried aloud as he studied the story, “Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus died like a God!” With what ardent devotion have the great artists of the past attempted to paint for us those scenes. So vivid were they as we stood there in Jerusalem, looking up at the tower of Antonius where Jesus suffered the scourging, that their reality pierced our souls.
When the fickle crowd left the hall shouting curses as they had shouted hosannas, they moved along the narrow street which still bears the name Via Dolorosa.
Opposite the Pretorium is a convent. In it are orphans and stray waifs picked up about Palestine. The ravages of war have added to the usual number and the place is crowded. On this Sunday they were at service, and the clean happy faces as they sang made us feel that it was because of the Sorrowful Way over which He had walked that they were sheltered and fed. Although intended for Jews, Turk and Armenian, Jew and Gentile sat together in the Chapel of Love and Forgiveness. It is under this convent, many feet below the level of the present street that one finds bits of the old Roman pavement over which the multitude, curious, cruel, mocking, followed Him to the place of crucifixion.
Each spot along the Via Dolorosa is marked—the place where the Master took up His cross, the turn in the narrow street where in answer to the tears and prayers of the women He said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourself and your children,” the spot where, staggering from weakness, He fell beneath His cross and Simon lifted it and carried it to the hill of Death, dumbly sharing the Saviour’s pain. At each place of suffering as we passed, we saw men and women praying and making the sign of the cross. All men walked silently.