ACELDAMA.
Turning to the right up the Valley of Hinnom, we see, on the dark and gloomy Hill of Evil Counsel, Aceldama. Down to a very late period, it continued to be used as “a field to bury strangers in.”[[167]] Skulls brought away from this spot and submitted to the examination of competent ethnologists, have been pronounced to be those of negroes and other non-semitic races.
Another tomb, on the north side of the city, demands brief mention here. It used to be called the tomb of the kings, but it has now been identified as that of Queen Helena, a Jewish Proselyte, who in the first century of our era died, and was buried at Jerusalem. It is remarkable not only for the extent and perfect preservation of the sepulchral chambers, but for the ingenious mechanism by which the entrance was closed or opened—a huge stone being rolled to or from the mouth of the entrance. It thus affords an interesting contemporary illustration of the words of the evangelists, “Who shall roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? And when they looked they saw the stone rolled away, for it was very great.”[[168]]
THE TOMB OF HELENA.
But it would be impossible, with the space at our disposal, to describe, however briefly, all the objects of interest in and around Jerusalem. Whole volumes have been devoted to the subject without exhausting it. This brief and inadequate sketch may be brought to a close by recalling to memory a Sabbath morning service in Christ Church on Mount Zion, as the Protestant church, recently erected there, is called. The liturgy had gained a deeper significance and impressiveness from the associations of the place. The sermon had set forth Christ crucified as the hope alike of Jew and Gentile. And the concluding hymn brought tears to many eyes; solemn penitential thoughts to many hearts. Not a few of the congregation, overcome by emotion, were unable to join audibly as we sang:—
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Enthronéd once on high,
Thou favoured home of God on earth,