It seems amusing to look back upon, and yet I should hardly care to pass that night again. No one knew that the Bedouin would not come down upon us in the darkness. No one could be certain that in their anger they would not fire into our tents from the rocks above us. Yet we stationed a strong guard, and all of us slept soundly. No attack was made, and we rose in the morning very thankful that all was safe. For several hours after starting from the night's camping ground we saw companies of Bedouin posted on the tops of the hills about us, but they did not dare to attack us. They looked ugly enough, however, with their Arab horses and their long guns. They were greatly superior to us in numbers, and, if they had been only a little less afraid of Frank arms, we might have had more trouble. As it was, their caution was very well advised, for we all had revolvers, and their long match-locks would have been almost worthless in a combat with foreigners. All this country through which we passed before we reached Jerusalem again is celebrated for the robberies and murders which have been perpetrated by the lawless Bedouin. In fact it has an ancient reputation of this sort, for it was this very wilderness of Judea that the man whom the good Samaritan relieved, passed through, when he went down to Jericho and fell among thieves.

On our way back to Jerusalem we visited Bethlehem. It is pleasant to find such places as Bethlehem and Nazareth, so far superior to the ordinary eastern towns in cleanliness and decency. The inhabitants of both are almost all Christians, and both are distinguished in Syria for the beauty of the women. The grotto of the nativity at Bethlehem, with its golden lamps and silken hangings, did not interest me half so much as the sight of the hillsides where David tended his father's flocks, and the shepherds saw the multitude of the heavenly host on the night that Christ was born. The grotto is probably an imposture, but the hills and valleys about are the same that we read of in most ancient story. That same evening we made our way northward, past the spot where Rachel died, and where her tomb now stands, until the Holy City lay spread out before us on the opposite heights, and we felt the truth of the Psalmist's words, "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.' Down the deep vale of Hinnom, and through the Valley of Jehoshaphat,—until we crossed over and pitched our tents for the night upon the Mount of Olives.

Memorable evening! It was the Mohammedan feast of Ramadan, and at the firing of the sunset gun, circlets of lamps were lit, upon the minarets of all the mosques, that shone through the growing darkness like crowns of glory. Beneath our feet was the sacred city, where David reigned, and where Jesus taught. Somewhere in this lowly valley the Savior passed that last most bitter night of agony in the garden,-up that steep path he was taken to his trial,- on one of those mounds outside the walls he hung those six long hours, parched with thirst and quivering with intensest pain, under the blazing noon-day sun. Who could lie down to sleep without most solemn and grateful thoughts that night? And when the morning dawned and all the splendor of the great temple enclosure dawned upon us, who could help being half intoxicated with the imaginations of the hour? There, across the valley, was the place where the cloud of glory descended upon the temple, and Solomon dedicated to God the courts of the house of the Lord. The

great open area of these courts now occupies a space of fifteen hundred feet in length by a thousand feet in breadth, and contains thirty-four acres. The temple of God has given place to a Mohammedan mosque, but the broad courts are beautiful still. The massive and lofty walls, the mosaic pavements, alternating with plots of fresh, green grass, the dark olives, the tapering cypresses, the marble fountains, the broad, elevated platform encircled by airy arches, the richly carved pulpits and prayer-niches and miniature cupolas, the great mosque with its noble dome glittering with enameled tiles, in arabesques of rainbow-hues, the secluded, sacred air that seemed to belong to all, the white figures of veiled women stealing from one mass of foliage to another, the turbaned heads bowed low in prayer,- all this was deeply impressive. But what must it have been, when these enclosing walls were hid by triple rows of marble columns a hundred and twenty feet in height and a thousand feet in length, forming arched colonnades grander than those of the grandest cathedral of modern days! What must it have been when, in place of this mosque, stood the magnificent structure of the temple, with its lofty portico towering above all the rest! What must it have been, when a hundred thousand worshipers joined in the solemn chants of the sanctuary—a multitude whose voice was like the sound of many waters, and which furnished John in the Apocalypse with his imagery, when he described the worship of the temple on high! Ah, Jerusalem is beautiful, but the beauty of the past has gone forever. Only in the heavenly Jerusalem, and in the song of the multitude that no man can number, will it ever be restored.

us.

But time would fail me to tell the whole. Jerusalem must be left behind Northward, past Mizpeh and Gibeon, through Bethel and Shiloh, to Jacob's well, and Sychar, a city of Samaria. Here, at the foot of Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, and between them both, we passed a quiet Sabbath day. We joined in worship with a number of parties encamped near us. Before we left the place, we visited the small, plain, white-washed chamber which constitutes the Samaritan Synagogue, and gazed from a respectful distance upon the great roll containing the precious Samaritan Pentateuch, which, though not written, as they relate, by the grandson or great-grandson of Aaron, may yet date back to the beginning of the Christian era. Then we clambered to the top of Gerizim, and inspected the pit and the stones where the passover-lambs are killed and roasted every spring, and where twelve men, in white surplices and turbans, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, still from year to year maintain the ancestral Samaritan worship. Then, descending, we made our way northward, by way of Samaria and Dothan, to Jezreel and Shunem, Nain and Endor, all situated at the east of that great plain of Megiddo or Esdraelon, which we saw three weeks before, in all its grandeur and desolation, from Mount Carmel. Thence we climbed the hill and stood in Nazareth, the scene of thirty years of Jesus' life. The appearance of the little town is very pleasing, with its dazzling white walls embosomed in a green framework of cactus-hedges, and of fig and olive trees. The House of the Virgin we were not able to see, because, as tradition relates, the sacred dwelling was carried off in the thirteenth century by angels, in order to prevent its desecration by the Moslems. This may be regarded as authentic, for during the Pontificate of Paul II, that infallible head of the Church, this miracle was solemnly confirmed and vouched for by the Papal See. For reasons which may be imagined as well as they can

be described, we neglected to visit the workshop of Joseph, although the sight was offered us at so low a price as three piastres. But two things we did see which were much better worth seeing,- first, the spring outside the village, with its many maidens drawing water, much as Laban's daughters did of old; and, secondly, the hill to the southwest of the town which, from a height of eighteen hundred feet, commands a lovely view of the vale of Nazareth, together with the distant prospect of Carmel and the great, wide sea beyond. To this spring where the women gathered, Mary the Virgin must have often led the steps of her infant Son, and from that summit the youthful Jesus must often have looked off toward the horizon which marked for him the farthest limit of the visible world, while he pondered upon the work for the world's deliverance, which even then began to spread out like this grand panorama before him.

From Nazareth we passed on to Mount Tabor and the Lake of Galilee, and past the ruins of the cities on which the curse of Jesus rested because they repented not. Then to Safed, Cæsarea-Philippi, and Damascus. And with Damascus we must close our journey. It is a fitting close. The famous view of Damascus, from the ridge north of the city, has been celebrated by every traveler, yet it has never been praised enough. It is the most beautiful vision that strikes the eye of the traveler in the east. The plain of Damascus is covered with foliage, as far as the eye can reach. The endless orchards of fig, pomegranate, mulberry, almond, apricot, orange and olive, form an unbroken sea of green, that surrounds the city and washes its very walls. The minarets and domes of Damascus rise in slender and swelling beauty from the midst of the green, and no language can do justice to the exquisite contrast between the white spires and the verdure that surrounds them. This plain of waving leaves is bounded by high and barren mountains. The snowy crest of goodly Hermon, and its subject hills, fill all the north and west. It is a legend of the Moslems that Mohammed, the prophet, never entered Damascus, exclaiming as he passed by, "Man can have but one Paradise,-I will not take mine on earth." Alas, that the beauty of the outside show is so belied by squalor and wretchedness within! But so it is with all the land of Palestine. The prospect often pleases,—and only man is vile. Neither Damascus nor Jerusalem can satisfy. And there was no lesson that I learned in the Holy Land, more impressive and lasting than this: There is no earthly city, however famed in story or sacred from associations of the past, where the soul can rest and say, Here I will abide, here I will dwell forever. If we would find rest, it must be, not in the earthly but in the heavenly Canaan, not in the Holy City where prophets spake and Jesus walked while here in mortal flesh, but only in that city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. It was only this common feeling of us all that the old medieval poet expressed, in those most sweet and sacred lines:

XLVII.

THE CRUSADES.*

The subject of this paper illustrates the powerful effects of the law of association. Important events invest the spots where they occur with a peculiar sacredness. This is true not only in individual experience, but in general history. The principle has special application to religion. Every great religion has attracted popular devotion to its birthplace or its shrines, its ritual or its pilgrimages. Even Christianity is not without its holy places; for the very reason that it is a historical religion, as distinguished from a system of priestly ceremonial or of abstract doctrine, it bestows upon these holy places a genuine and a reasonable regard; the places are helps to its influence and verifications of its truth. The Jew looked with affection to the city where David built his capital upon the rugged heights of Zion, and the Christian looks with an equal though a different interest to that other hill where the Son of David was crucified and buried.

Christianity, however, differs from other religions, in that it is pre-eminently the religion of the Spirit. It accepts the help of the outward and visible so far as these can minister to inward devotion, but it counts these idolatry when they usurp the thought and worship that belong to God. It has felt at every step of its history the common tendency of human nature to exalt the means above the end, the form above the substance. And there have been whole generations in which the religion of Christendom, so-called, has well-nigh fallen back to the plane of the earthly and material. There were two hundred years of the middle age, when the church forgot her living Lord in her jealousy for the possession of his sepulchre. As Hegel has well expressed it in his Philosophy of History, "She sought the truth of spirit in a tomb; she was met by the old words: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here but is risen!" This mighty movement and culmination of an externalized Christianity we call the Crusades. My purpose is briefly to review the occasions, causes and results of the Crusades, with special reference to ecclesiastical history and to European civilization.

In the eleventh century pilgrimage was a thing of ancient date. It had begun even under the heathen emperors. Though Titus had burned the temple at Jerusalem and drawn the ploughshare over its ashes, and though Hadrian had founded a pagan colony on Mount Zion and built a temple to Venus on the hill of Calvary, Christians even thus early found their way to the Holy City. The conversion of Constantine, and the royal progress of Helena, the mother of the emperor, with the breaking down of heathen

*An Essay read before The Club, Rochester, February 15, 1876.

altars and the discovery of the Savior's tomb which followed, rendered pilgrimage both common and fashionable. Constantine erected the church of the Holy Sepulchre; his mother marked the path of her pilgrimage by the churches which she built; it is only a natural result that we should possess, from a date so far back as the fourth century, an itinerary designed for the use of pilgrims from Bordeaux, by way of Constantinople, to Jerusalem. The more sagacious and spiritual Fathers of the church, such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine and Jerome, protested against these pilgrimages as needless and dangerous. But the tide soon became too strong for resistance. The number who set out for the east continually increased. Hospitals were founded for the refreshment and care of the pilgrims. They were exempted from tolls and taxes. The staff and wallet, the scallop-shell upon the hat, from the shore of the Mediterranean, and the palm-branch from Jericho in the hand, became insignia of a lower order of nobility, to which the poor as well as the rich might aspire. Not only were there rewards at the hands of men. The journey to Palestine became a work of merit which availed with God. In connection with the growing faith in works of supererogation, thousands persuaded themselves that bathing in the Jordan was a baptism which washed away all sins, and that the shirt in which they entered the Holy City, if only preserved for a winding-sheet, would in the last great day ensure them a blessed resurrection.

In the year 637, only five years after Mohammed's death, the wave of Saracenic invasion under the Caliph Omar swept over Syria and Egypt, and for a century thereafter it rolled onward almost without a check. But almost the last great act of the undivided Roman Empire was the repulse of the Moslems from Constantinople in 718 by sturdy Leo, the Emperor of the East. But for this staggering blow, and that other crushing defeat which they suffered at the hands of Charles Martel a little later at Tours (732), the Saracens might have descended upon Christendom while her social and governmental institutions were yet unformed, and we might be the heirs of an Asiatic instead of a European civilization. When the empire was actually divided, and Charlemagne united the western lands, the crisis of Saracen fury and ambition had passed. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, not wholly interrupted by the recent wars, began anew and with redoubled enthusiasm. The very hazards of an expedition to a foreign land and among the infidels stimulated the imagination. The holy places of the Christian were holy places of the Moslem also. Though hatred of the western image-worship was difficult to conceal, Saracen thrift seemed to get the better of Saracen bigotry. Or, did the Moslems learn courtesy from their Caliph Haroun al Raschid, who assured all Franks of safety, and in token thereof sent to Charlemagne the keys of the church of the Holy Sepulchre? Whatever may be the explanation, it is certain that the great Charles helped on the growing tendency of the times by proclaiming in the eighth century that throughout his whole realm pilgrims to Palestine should be gratuitously provided for, at least to the extent of lodging, fire and water.

No proper estimate of the events that followed can be formed, without taking into account the traditional hold which pilgrimage had come to have upon people of every class, the almost unobstructed freedom of it from the first to the tenth centuries, and the sacrilege which seemed involved in