Christ but the carpenter's son.... By permission of the Kaliphs, the
Christians might visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer's staff in place
of a sword! For shield, a beggar's scrip! But the bishops accepted, and
then ushered in an age of fraud, Christian against Christian.... The
knoll on which the Byzantine built his church of the Holy Sepulchre is
not the Calvary. That the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the
body of Christ. The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered
a monkish deceit.... Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of
the Damascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate
is the Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked
for a guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growing
upon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the base on
the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From the
foot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of men
extending down to the gate.... I know!--I know!--I and misery know!...
When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between the
ancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecuting
the Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured from
them.... Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sits
afar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, and
by the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witness
testifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the children
of Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. Then
Herod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding the
tribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his way
in. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, nor son
of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beat upon
them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live.... Kings
have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map from which
old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! the divisions