Reader, imagine that you are standing with me on a broad, level shelf of rock. Approaching its centre, we see what might be called a huge cistern, ninety feet square, hewn into the rock to a depth of twenty feet. A long flight of broad, stone steps leads us down into this excavation, whose rocky walls are perpendicular. A door, cut in the south wall, conducts us into a series of rock-hewn chambers. With lighted candles, we pass into the first room, thence through a small door to the second, the third, and so on. All these chambers are honey-combed with vaults, cut in the rock, for the reception of the ancient dead. This underground mansion of the dead extends seventy-five feet from north to south, and fifty feet from east to west. It is a perfect network of rooms. The ceiling is elaborately adorned with carved wreaths and roses, with vines, leaves, trees, and fruits. Everywhere the chisel has left undeniable evidence of the sculptor’s skill. The outside door is usually closed by a large flat, circular stone, which looks much like a wheel, or a block sawn off of the end of a log. Before entering, we have to “roll the stone away from the door of the Sepulchre.”
Let us now return to the Pool of Siloam, and walk up the other ravine, which is known as the Valley of Hinnom. Of this valley, Doctor Geikie, who is always a safe man to quote from, says: “Israelites once offered their children to Moloch, and these very rocks on each side have echoed the screams of the innocent victims, and reverberated with the chants and drums of the priests, raised to drown the cries of agony. It is well called the Valley of Hinnom—‘the Valley of the Groans of the Children:’ a name which perpetrates the horror once excited by the scenes it witnessed; especially, it would seem, in this lower part. Here, under Ahaz, Manasseh, and Amon, the hideous ox-headed human figure of Moloch—the summer sun in his glowing and withering might—was raised in brass and copper, with extended arms, on which were laid, helplessly bound, the children given up by their parents ‘to pass through the fire’ to him; a heated furnace behind the idol sending its flames through the hollow limbs, till the innocents writhed off into a burning fire beneath. Ahaz and Manasseh had set a royal example in this horrible travesty of worship, by burning alive some of their own children; and what kings did commoners would be ready to copy. In later times the very words Ge-Hinnom—‘the Valley of Hinnom’—slightly changed into Gehenna, became the common name for hell. The destruction of Assyria is pictured by Isaiah as a huge funeral pile, ‘deep and large,’ with ‘much wood,’ ‘prepared for the king,’ and kindled by the breath of Jehovah, as if by ‘a stream of brimstone.’ Jeremiah speaks of ‘high places’ in this valley, as if children had been burned on different altars; and he can think of no more vivid image of the curse impending over Jerusalem than that it should become an abomination before God, like this accursed place.”
In this same valley are two pools, known as the Upper and Lower Pools of Gihon. The lower and larger of the two is near the southwest corner of the city. This immense reservoir is, approximately, 600 feet long, 160 feet broad, and 40 feet deep. It has a capacity for 19,000,000 gallons. The other pool is about three hundred yards farther up the valley. It, also, is very large, but not so capacious as the lower one. From this Upper Pool of Gihon, water is conveyed through an aqueduct to the different pools in the city, of which there are quite a number.
BURIAL OF CHRIST.
Standing on the city wall just above the Damascus gate, and looking directly north, we see, about two hundred yards away, a mount rising up somewhat higher than we are. It looks like the upturned face of a man. We see first the chin, then the eyeless sockets, and then the forehead beyond. It is Golgotha, the place of a skull. Here is where the world’s greatest tragedy occurred. No mark is left to show where the cross stood; yet Calvary has become the centre of the world’s thought.
Some two hundred and fifty yards west of Calvary, there are some tombs cut in the solid rock. One of these has been pointed out by Captain Conder as the probable one in which our blessed Lord lay for three days and nights. When we remember that Captain Conder is a scientist of a high order, that he has been in Palestine twenty years, sometimes with twenty and sometimes with forty men with and under him, searching out ancient names, places, and history, we must acknowledge that he is good authority on these subjects. Of this tomb, he says: “It would be bold to hazard the suggestion that the single Jewish sepulchre thus found, which dates from about the time of Christ, is indeed the tomb in the garden, nigh unto the place called Golgotha, which belonged to the rich Joseph of Arimathaea. Yet its appearance, so near the old place of execution, and so far from the other old cemeteries of the city, is extremely remarkable.”