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These are positive obstacles in the way of this new fallacy: others of a negative character are equally prohibitive.

8. The site is destitute of both historical record and archæological proof indicating it to be the scene of our Lord's crucifixion. No identification is well founded that does not possess some link binding it to the past; but, for this spot no witness in secular or ecclesiastical history breaks the silence of the ages, no ancient relic appropriate to, or significant of, its alleged ancient service as a place of crucifixion survives. Those who select this spot decide the matter in advance, and then wait or hope for some evidence to turn up in its favor. Direct connections are conspicuously absent from the reasons assigned by Mr. Fisher Howe, and repeated by Dr. Charles S. Robinson; but if one still wishes to see how vague and weak are the most definite considerations that can be brought to the support of this locality, Captain Conder's doubtless will suffice :

(1) The hill stands outside the city.

(2) A group of rock-cut tombs exists somewhere off to the west, about two hundred yards from the hill.

(3) A Christian tradition, as early as the fifth century of our era, teaches that the protomartyr Stephen was stoned near here, on the north of the city.

(4) This vicinity has apparently been always considered unlucky, accursed, and haunted."

One would surely refuse to believe that such a beggarly array of makeshifts could be seriously proposed by any sensible man to offset the numerous and strong warrants of the Holy Sepulchre, were it not set forth in black and white and signed by its author. The truth is, we have, here, to deal with an effort to get away from tradition, which cannot be done without proceeding independently of testimony; for the early Christians had all the testimony there was in the case, very much more than we have, and they used it both intelligently and carefully for recognizing the identical spot. Historical and archæological evidence cannot favor two sites: inasmuch as all there is points to the Holy Sepulchre, there can be none for the hill beside the Jeremiah grotto.

9. The method pursued by the advocates of the Grotto-Hill for the site of Calvary is radically wrong in that they attempt to determine the place of crucifixion before, and apart from, that of the tomb. In the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre: " in relation, therefore, to the place of crucifixion the sepulchre was near at hand. Accordingly, the sepulchre, being something tangible and peculiar in structure, is the key to the scene of the crucifixion: the featureless area of crucifixion cannot be a key to the sepulchre. To pitch upon the site of the crucifixion first is quite out of order, the wrong way of going to work; and it is extremely hazardous, because, on a very low estimate, there are nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand that the neighboring sepulchre will never be found, being absent. This is just what occurs in the Jerusalem, Pal. Explor. Fund Memoir, p. 431,

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present instance: no sepulchre of the proper sort for the tomb of our Lord can be found in the vicinity. There are graves enough, to be sure, all over and around this mount, for it has long been a Mohammedan cemetery. To the northwest of the hill-top, somewhat less than three hundred feet, a complex, subterranean, Jewish tomb occurs, consisting of a large central vault, surrounded by sepulchral chambers: originally a lateral descent of steps led down into the chambers on the north, through which access might be gained to the central vault; and subsequently, when the Jews had crumbled to dust and their descendants had disappeared, the Christians appropriated the burial-place and cut a similar stairway on the south in such way as to afford more direct access to the central vault. The whole is fully described by Herr Conrad Schick in the Zeitschrift des. d. Palæstina Vereins, IX. 74–78. This was a catacomb rather than a tomb, and wholly deficient in the criteria of the sepulchre of our Lord. The same is true of all other rock-hewn places of interment near the Hill, or to the east of the thoroughfare.

Westward, across the great highway to Shechem and Samaria, two tombs have been discovered by Herr Conrad Schick. The first is described by Dr. Chaplin in the Pal. Explor. Fund, Quarterly Statement for 1876 (p. 9), as an ancient sepulchre sunk vertically in the rock into which was let down through the roof a less ancient large sarcophagus conjectured to be that of the Empress Eudocia: it lies about seven hundred and thirty feet distant from the top of the Grotto-Hill, and in ground affording “various remains of early Byzantine sculpture, cornices, pavements," etc., possibly relics of that "very large sanctuary, conspicuous for elevation and beauty, in honor of Stephen, the first of deacons and martyrs, distant less than a stadium from Jerusalem," which Eudocia the consort of Theodosius erected and where "her own remains were deposited, when she had departed to the unfading life." No one claims this tomb for the sepulchre of our Lord. The second is described by Herr Schick in the Quarterly Statement for October, 1879, p. 198 sq., and by Captain Conder in the Quarterly Statement for July, 1881, p. 202 sq., April, 1883, p. 75 sq., and in the Jerusalem Memoir. It lies about seven hundred and seventy feet distant from the Grotto-hilltop, and is excavated in the scarp of a low platform of rock artificially levelled to be the site of some sort of a building. Here, also, the thin soil is composed of "rubbish containing many pieces of hewn and even richly carved stone, a circular wall of cubical blocks, rosettes, water-drops, triglyphs, palmleaves," etc., etc. Perhaps the cloister of the church erected by Eudocia stood here. At any rate the tomb yielded a mortuary slab marked by a Christian cross and engraved in Greek letters of the fifth or the six century, reading, "Tomb belonging to -." On one or the other of these two spots the Basilica of Stephen certainly rose; and with equal certainty it marked the supposed scene of his stoning and falling asleep-which, therefore, was not the summit of the Grotto-Hill. Only Captain Conder proposes this tomb for the sepulchre of our Lord: beyond a doubt it is the Tomb of St. Stephen seen by the Russian pilgrim Daniel in 1113 A. D. Both of these tombs, however, are removed too far from the Grotto-Hill to be "in the place where Jesus

was crucified," from which they were separated by a great thoroughfare: besides, neither one of them has the right character or date.

For our Saviour's sepulchre was no mere grave, nor even a Jewish koka running perpendicularly into the rock: it was a sepulchral chamber, equivalent to the Roman cubiculum, in one of whose sides had been cut a tabletomb, a rectangular recess, or a arcosolium, an arched recess, over a loculus parallel with the wall; and this loculus was covered by a slab on which our Lord's body lay for the unfinished process of embalming with sweet spices and ointment, for he never was buried in the loculus beneath corresponding to a grave. Now, such a rock-hewn sepulchral chamber, not unlike a vault in our cemeteries, and provided with such a lateral table-tomb, is wholly absent from the sides or vicinity of the Grotto-Hill. Those unsatisfied people who still wish to ascertain the true site of Calvary must find the authentic sepulchre first, and show us the adjacent Golgotha last: they ought not to offer the last for our acceptance first.

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10. Such a course serves to betray the nature of this roaming movement. Generally it is a reaction from what is repellent, yet adventitious, in the rotunda and chapels of the Holy Sepulchre, and a withdrawal of faith from what is really valid there. In his first visit Dr. Edward Robinson did not even examine, much less study, the Holy Sepulchre. To quote his own words: This was the Christian Sabbath, and it was also Easter Sunday.....I looked in for a few moments upon the Latin ceremonial....The high altar was placed directly before the door of the sepulchre; so that we could not enter.... All this excited in my mind a feeling too painful to be borne; and I never visited the place again.”10 In his second visit he went there to look at the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and of Nicodemus; but he speaks of having inspected nothing else. With such, this rejection is a matter of feeling, a sentiment, a grief; and when the search for a new site is undertaken it is not one of scientific induction from facts. But, occasionally, as with General Gordon, it is an infatuation after allegory; and rarely, as in Captain Conder's case, the motive is not conscience at all but an overweening insatiable ego, all for fame. Yet each and every one who embarks in this speculation allows himself to be controlled by one impulse, and then by a second impulse exercises a most amazing amount of credulity in relying upon an incomparably more untrustworthy substitute.

II. There is nothing to be gained by forsaking the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as it stands to-day. Had the Jeremiah-Grotto Hill been the original scene of Calvary, we would now behold there all the shams we meet with in the traditional locality: could it now be proved that the Jeremiah-Grotto Hill is the real spot, all the falsehoods within the present building of the Holy Sepulchre would instantly emigrate over to that site. The witches would go too. The modern representatives of the oriental churches within the Holy Sepulchre are not a whit less inclined to perpetrate frauds of station and follies of ceremonial than their predecessors-in fact they are surpass. ingly more so inclined than were the Christians of Constantine's time. Or,

10 Biblical Researches, Vol. i. pp. 223, 224.

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Pseudo-Kranion.

if a third locality for the ancient Calvary and sepulchre were found, the We might as well forgive same things would soon happen there; and so on. with patience, stay where we are, and wait for improvement.

12. On account of the evil there may be in anything, it is neither logical nor necessary to throw overboard the whole of that thing, including the good there is in it. Those who, shocked by the sacrileges of the Holy Sepulchre, in order to get rid of them wander away to the spot above Jeremiah's Grotto, are in all probability leaving behind the genuine with the spurious. When our Saviour found the Temple desecrated by impious intruders, did he therefore stigmatize it as a "filthy old church" and argue that the whole thing was a fraud? Or, did he schismatically turn his back on the sacred precincts, stray away to some other spot, and try to set up a new temple, affirming it to be the true one? By no means; that was not his way. He drove the sinners out, and adhered to the legitimate sanctuary. In like manner, we are bound to hold fast to whatever may be veritable and credible in the present Church of his passion; and, as for the remedy, we are to do as much as lies in our power for the regeneration and recovery of the place, earnestly looking for the Lord himself to purify this shrine of his worship which during so many long centuries has at least commemorated his death and resurrection. So Lord Ellesmere felt when he sang :

Oh! for that garden in its simpler guise,

Where she the earliest of His mourners came-
Came ere the stars of Syria's cloudless skies
Grew pale before their morning burst of flame

Oh! if the lichen now were free to twine
O'er the dark entrance of that rock-hewn cell,
Say, should we miss the gold-encrusted shrine
Or incense fumes' intoxicating spell?
Would not the whispering breeze, as evening fell,
Make deeper music in the palm-tree's shade
Than choral prayer or chanted ritual's swell?

ARTICLE IX.

CRITICAL NOTES.

I.

DARWIN ON HERBERT SPENCER.

THE remarkable urbanity characteristic of Mr. Darwin's writings made it rather difficult to tell just what he thought of the capacity of the writers whom he quoted or to whom he referred. Thus his passing reference to Herbert Spencer as a "profound philosopher" was long ago set down by many either to the credit of Mr. Darwin's good manners or to the discredit of his judgment of philosophers. This doubt has not been altogether dissipated by the publication of the great naturalist's "Life and Letters;" for though he confesses repeatedly that he himself is no philosopher, his writings show that he greatly underestimated his abilities in that direction; while his distinct references in correspondence to Mr. Spencer's work and methods of argument show how far apart the two men were in their whole plane of movement, Mr. Darwin being, in the main, in the strictest sense of the term, an inductive philosopher, bent on keeping within sight of his facts, while Mr. Spencer was a deductive philosopher, who treated facts as some

preachers do texts, as

point of departure.

though their chief value consisted in furnishing a A voyage with Mr. Darwin is like a trip in a coasting

vessel through the interminable channels of the Alaskan archipelago; while a voyage with Mr. Spencer leads you straight out into the boundless waves

of the Pacific.

Mr. Darwin's hesitancy in accepting Mr. Spencer's conclusions is incidentally expressed in a letter to Mr. Wallace upon the subject of spontaneous generation, which he himself could never believe. Speaking of Mr. Bastian's effort to prove the theory, he says: "I am not convinced, partly, I think, owing to the deductive cast of much of his reasoning; and I know not why, but I never feel convinced by deduction, even in the case of H. Spencer's writings."

became in this country the most prominent expounder of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Darwin gives his views of the importance of the true deductive method quite fully, remarking, to begin with: "I have long wished to know something about the views of the many great men whose doctrines you give. With the exceptions of special points I did not even understand H. Spencer's general doctrine; for his style is too hard work for me.

In writing at a later date to Mr. J. Fiske, who early

read so lucid an

I never in my life expositor (and therefore thinker) as you are; and I think

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