Via Dolorosa, since the coming of the British, is scrupulously clean. The houses of stone with beautiful doorways and old carvings on the doorposts make a solid unbroken wall on either side, and very early the street is quite dark. Narrow and not even a mile in length, it stands out in the memory above all the great highways of the world.
We did not follow the narrow streets to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where reverent worshipers were at that moment kneeling before the tomb, or kissing the stone upon which are the marks of the three crosses. It seemed incredible to us at first that this small church could cover both the spot which was called Calvary and the tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea. Within the church are the chapels of the Greeks, the Romans, the Armenians and the Copts. In each are beautiful shrines with very precious lamps studded with jewels, lamps that burn in honor of each of the four Christian groups. Once there were four great doors of entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but so frequent were the quarrels of those coming to worship that these doors were closed leaving only one way of entrance. The key to this door is still held by a Mohammedan according to the command of General Allenby, in memory of the fact that the Caliph Omar spared and continually protected this Church. Priceless jewels are hidden within it, the gifts of Pilgrims from every land. Its treasury is the richest in the world. Jamil saw it when it was shown to the former German Emperor for whom he interpreted, but could never find it again, so devious were the ways that led to it. The Kaiser’s gift, presented as with impressive ceremony he knelt to pray, was of great value—in gold.
But it was not to this church of the Holy Sepulchre with its wonderful shrines, its most sacred associations reaching back into the long past, filled with memories of devout men and women, rich and great, poor and lowly, young and strong, weak and old, who had reverently worshiped before the rent in the rock, the place where the soldiers parted His garments, the tomb in the solid stone down in the very bowels of the earth, worn smooth as glass by the feet of pilgrims who, like Peter and John, must stoop to enter it, and Golgotha, reached by winding steps cut in the rock and leading up almost to the roof of the church—it was not this place which we sought as we came from the garden of Gethsemane, following Him along the Sorrowful Way. It was out on the hills beyond the Damascus Gate to the spot called Gordon’s Calvary that we went, not because we cared to enter into all the reasons why many believe it to be the place of suffering, rather than the other, but because out there on the wind-swept rocks under a darkening sky, with a garden in the little valley and the tombs cut in solid rock, their “great stones” lying near—out there with no priest and no altars it was easier to read the words of the Book and try to understand them.
It was on this Mount of Calvary, looking down upon the city, that there came to us an overwhelming sense of the sin of selfishness and greed. In the ruins of Belgium we had felt it, in the tumult of war on the battlefields of France we had seen what it could do, in the records of the desperate struggles of the Peace Table we had caught glimpses of its power, in China we saw its work, in Korea we looked upon its suffering victims, and here on Calvary the weight of the world sorely wounded and dismayed by sin, pressed hard upon us. It would not have been possible to bear had we not read also of the stone rolled away and the great triumphant Victory.
A deep conviction settled down upon us until it possessed every muscle and fiber of body and mind, until it possessed our souls—the thing that He preached and that only can save the world. His great command that man love his God and serve his neighbor—this principle alone can rescue humanity from the abyss of chaos into which blind greed, individual and national, has plunged it. As the pilgrims knelt at the Holy Sepulchre, we knelt there under the open skies on the hill that is called Calvary to accept again His first great commandment, and the second that is like unto it, in repentance and humility to pray for pardon for past failures and strength for new endeavors.
That night at evening service in clear soprano voice a boy in the choir sang:
There is a green hill far away
Without the city wall
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.