TO-MORROW the equestrian pilgrims will pitch their tents on the holy hill of Zion. It will be a time of rejoicing. I think that each one of the party will put down in his diary. “This is the happiest day of my life.”
The nearer we come to our journey’s end, the more intense becomes the excitement. The night before reaching the city, our tents are pitched in a valley. “Coming events” have already begun to “cast their shadows before them.” Each one of the company is excited; each one filled with life, hope, and anticipation. We all sing: “I’m a pilgrim; I’m a stranger; this world is not my home,” “I seek a city whose builder and maker is God,” and “Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, my happy, happy home.” At length, “weariness spreads her ever welcome couch,” and we fall asleep. Some of us dream that Jerusalem is a “golden city.”
The leaden-footed hours of the night pass by. About five o’clock in the morning,
“Light breaks in upon my brain.
’Tis the carol of a bird—
The sweetest song ear ever heard.
And mine are so thankful
That my eyes run over with glad surprise.”
It is a nightingale, the queen of songsters. Perched on a swaying limb, not far away, she flings her merry notes into the sleeper’s tent. The little warbler sings as if the heart of melody has been broken on her tuneful tongue. Methinks it is the sweetest song ever wafted to human ears on the perfumed breezes of the night. It reminds one of the time when the angel host sang to the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem. I can not sleep. The morning star has dropped such a bright light from the sky that it looks like day.
The pilgrims are up early enough to see the stars, one by one, fade away. The sun rises clear and bright above the eastern hills, and flings his rays of light across a cloudless sky.
We are off earlier than usual. At ten o’clock we ascend the brow of a hill, and “Zion, the city of God,” bursts full upon our vision! Every horse is stopped. Every head is uncovered. Not a word is spoken. I can never forget the flood of “sweetly solemn thoughts” that comes to me during the calm of this holy hour. Oh! the thrill of joy that goes through the soul of man when he finds his prayers answered; when he realizes that the toil and sacrifice of years have not been in vain; when he sees the bud of hope ripen into golden fruit! Only one person on this earth knows what it cost me to come here. Would you calculate the cost in money? As well undertake to fathom the ocean with a fishing cord, or to count the stars of heaven on your fingers and toes! It cost——!! But I forget all that, when I behold Jerusalem, “The city of the great King, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.”
The Hebrew word, Jerusalem, probably means “vision of peace,” and I have no doubt but that in olden times the beauty of the city and the surrounding country fully justified the name. It was then “the joy of the whole earth;” but the Lord hath covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud, in his anger, and cast down, from heaven unto the earth, the beauty of Israel. Jerusalem is withered, like its emblem, the blighted fig-tree. It was once a monument of the goodness, now of the severity, of God. The city has been twenty-seven times besieged, often taken, pillaged, and burnt. Occasionally the very ground has been plowed up! And yet “it is good to be here”—it is still a holy city. Mount Moriah has not been removed, Calvary is still on its base, and the Mount of Olives is now just as it was when from it our blessed Lord “was received up into heaven.”