TESTIMONY OF GIBBON.

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the Holy Sepulchre, of Mount Calvary, Bethlehem, and the Mount of Olives, and the grotto where Christ revealed the mysteries to the Apostles. St. Jerome, about the year 385, gives a complete delineation of the same places, and what is more to the purpose, he speaks of them having been visited by pious Christians from the time of our Saviour's ascension as a thing well known. He says that in his time pilgrims resorted to Jerusalem from the most distant parts of the known world, and he especially mentions Britain. It is needless therefore to pursue this chain of evidence any farther, as it was no longer possible that these sacred places should be forgotten or mistaken. In a word, the mass of evidence is indeed overwhelmingand Gibbon himself admits this much, and says, THAT THE CHRISTIANS HAVE FIXED BY UNQUESTIONABLE TRADITION

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THE SCENE OF EACH MEMORABLE EVENT." How important such a testimony from such a man!

CHAPTER IX.

GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE, THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT, THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, AND BETHANY.

LEAVING Jerusalem by St. Stephen's gate, I came to the edge of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and descending the steep by a rocky winding path nearly to the bottom of the gorge, the place was pointed out to me where it is said St. Stephen suffered martyrdom, and where Saul of Tarsus stood and held the clothes of his murderers while they stoned him to death. It is a bare sloping slab of rock of no great extent, and with no striking feature whatever by which it may be distinguished excepting the meeting of two roads and the general grandeur and solemnity of the whole scene. The path takes a bend for a short way to the east, and then reaches the bridge over the Kedron, along which the Saviour passed that night in which he was betrayed to the garden of Gethsemane, and along which he was conducted as a prisoner back to Jerusalem. Here the road branches along the north side of the brook, and between it and the garden of Gethsemane onward towards Siloam, and then up by the eastward slope of the mount of Olives to Bethany. Another path forks off directly from the end of the bridge past the northern boundary of Gethsemane as walled in, and the

THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE.

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tomb of the Virgin Mary and of Joseph, and takes the steep at once up the Mount of Olives by the spot where Jesus wept over the city, and to the place from which he ascended.

Very intense indeed were my feelings when I approached Gethsemane, and the solemnity was elevated when I noticed that no adorning whatever had been attempted at the spot where the Man of sorrows suffered agony in the garden. With the exceptions which shall be mentioned, and with which the heart of every pious man will sincerely concur, the grotto, the rock, and the whole garden of Gethsemane still present almost the same appearance they probably presented in that awful night when "the heathen raged and the people imagined vain things." The only material alteration effected has been the building of a wall of stone and lime fifteen feet high round the sacred spot, by the Mahometan authorities, to prevent Christian pilgrims from destroying the olive trees by carrying off twigs and even branches as relics of the spot. Turning the northern corner, with the face eastward, I came to the door of the garden, which I found locked. But I had procured a Turkish permit, and had been told the hour at which I would be received; and thus although nobody answered my first call at the door, I knocked loud and long, when at last a little bandy-legged bronzed sinewy Arab opened the door from within, rubbing his eyes so as to convince me that he had been sound asleep. But before taking me into the garden, I was shown the spot where Peter, James, and John, were said to have tarried, and to have fallen asleep, while Jesus went from them about a stone's cast to pray. It is exactly opposite the door, and upward a little on the slope, and it presents a small flat of stone raised a little from the

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THE EIGHT OLIVE TREES.

rest of the rock, apparently of not much more extent than would admit of three or four men sitting or lying in the way in which they are said to have been.

The principal feature in the Garden was eight olive trees gnarled and time-worn, probably the most aged, and undoubtedly the most venerable in the whole world. Their large trunks much decayed and small tops of foliage still survive the lapse probably of two thousand years or more. Around the bottom of these trees, on the surface of the ground, heaps of dry stones have been built up. And certainly, when I looked at the aged stocks in all the different stages of hardy decrepitude, I felt somewhat apprehensive that their life would ere long become extinct. But I noticed, and the fact was explained to me, that plenty of young suckers were sprouting from the base, and it is said, in proportion as the vigour of the parent ceases this offspring grows with the more rapidity, indicating that the roots never decay. Moreover, when the young shoots acquire a certain strength and stature, one of them seems to take the lead and the rest begin to fade, so that this one in time becomes the sole representative of its parent. And thus there is a renewal of these trees as often as required, and probably every two or three hundred years or more. And in this way it is easy to conceive that these olives grow still where they did in the time of our Saviour; and also, that if they had even been cut down, as has been alleged, by Titus at the siege of Jerusalem, they would live still, and their boughs and blossoms would mark the spot anew. It is said that the enclosure of the garden has been enlarged about one-third so as to contain about the third of an English acre. Besides the eight aged olives, it is now planted with three young cy

TRADITIONS AS TO THIS HALLOWED SPOT.

205 presses, many hollyhocks, roses, wallflowers, and some rosemary.

As I looked around, a very solemn feeling began to steal over my mind in the unbounded and unbroken silence of the spot where the Man of sorrows, despised and rejected, suffered such agony for sinners that his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. This agony he suffered under the triple shade of the city, the mountain, and the darkness of midnight. There was something very impressive in everything around, and the more so that no attempt has ever been made willingly to disturb the tradition of this hallowed spot. It is a place of entire seclusion, just such a spot indeed as a soul desirous of being alone with God would select, overhung by the Mount of Olives, the heights of Jehoshaphat, and the walls of Jerusalem. I walked pensively around and across again and again, and meditated, and poured forth the mental prayer, humbled and elevated too with the thought that this was the place where our Lord walked and wept and was agonized, and I felt as if the spot possessed a charm more hallowed and severe than even Calvary itself. Here for ages the pilgrim has knelt and kissed these olive trees, carrying thence a few of the fallen fruit or a twig or a portion of the bark to remind him at his own distant home of the spot where Christ was sorrowful unto death. Tradition says that this garden belonged to his mother by hereditary succession, and that Jesus was wont during his whole public ministry to make this place his well known retreat from the "contradiction of sinners against himself." Often among these groves at meditation and prayer, many a tear from his eyes has watered this soil, and many a sorrow and suffering has he endured. At the south