THE RENT ROCK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 65

THE RENT ROCK.

(Rev. HrGH Macmillan*,, D.D., LL.D., in the Sunday at Home.)

The rock on which Jerusalem is built is tertiary limestone of different degrees of hardness. An exceedingly compact silicious chalk with bands of flint, called "mizzy." crops almost uniformly to the surface ; underneath which a softer stratum of indurated chalk, called "malaky, 1 " extends for a considerable depth ; but out of this lower stratum cisterns for holding water and caves for storing purposes aie excavated, which are roofed over by the haider upper crust. So exceedingly hard, difficult of cleavage and durable is this uppsr mizzy crust, that it makes most admirable building material. It forms the tableland surface of the Holy City ; and under the name of the "meeshour" rock, it constituted the foundation. immovable and inviolable, of the stronghold of Jehovah, and was often u.°ed by the s.ncred writers as a poetical or symbolical expression of the justice and equity which should lie at the basis of the national character. This is the peculiar rock that the earthquake rent.

Removing in imagination the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and ia this way trying to obtain a true picture of the locality as it must have been in the days of our Lord, we can realise that the ground was originally not an artificial terrace, but a rounded hillock of bare rock, very like the rocky knolls which may frequently be seen to the north of Jerusalem ; at the present day, surrounded by gardens. _j Btsides the tomb of our Lord, other Jewish sepulchres were excavated in the sides of it, some of which have been discovered in different places within the area of the church. The eastern part of the rock would constitute the floor of the Chapel of I Calvary, on a higher level than the rest of the great church ; while most of the western part would be quarried out of a - lower level for the ordinary purposes of • the church, and the places of crucifixion, and sepulchre would be left in their original state ; just as the rocky summit of Mount Moriah, the site of the threshing . floor of Araunah, and of the altar of David, - »nd subsequently of the Holy of Holies ; of the Temple, has been left for ages to the present day untouched in all its original roughness, in the centre of the splendid \ Dome of -the Rock. The rock of Calvary j and the sepulchre would be therefore freely exposed to all the influences of the weather, to the heat of summer and the frost of winter, and to the expansion of the moisture that penetrated into minute crevices. But all these natural influences would split the rock in the line of its own natural cleavage ; and this would be the case, as we have seen, also with an ordinary earthquake. But the cracks which we notice at the present day in the rock of the Holy Sepulchre were not produced by ordinary weathering or cleavage. They were split across the line of cleavage, and must therefore have been produced in a strange and preternatural fashion. TLe peculiar testimony of the rent rocks at Jerusalem is one which only a scientific age like the present could appreciate. The first Christian age could not see anything out of the ordinary course in the fissures of the rocks. They would be to it perfectly natural, the kind of result which an I earthquake might be expected to produce. J The early Christians saw no difference be- j tween these fissures and other earthquake j fissures. Neither did the long centurie.-, j that followed appreciate the force of the argument. They looked upon the fissures under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as confirming in a general way the historical truth of the earthquake at tLe Ciuci- | rixion, and that was all. They had not j the scientific knowledge tn understand how that, not only was the fact of the earthquake pioved by the fissures, but :dao the manner of it by the peculiar character of the fissures. This scientific evidence has been reserved for our scientific days. There are, indeed, sceptical persons who have not seen this proof oi lealised it- significance v, ho insert that th'.-ie »J l noi.hu. .; supernatural about the earthquake. j\'. ! ordinal y earthquake might have happened , in the ' locality at the -same time as the j death of our Lord, but it was a mere . coincidence. The two things had nothing | whatever to do with one another. But ue believe, what the Gospel nanative averts that the earthquake and the rending of the rocks were most intimately associated with the cross of Christ, and with the cio^s of | Christ alone formed an essential part of the awful tiagedy. Kveu Gibbon takes notice of the pieternatural daikness which reigned over this province of the Roman | Empire for three hours in the reign of Tiberius at the vety time that Jisus was dying on Calvary : and he adds that this event, which ought to have excited the wonder, curiosity, and devotion of mankind, passed wit Lout notice in an age of science and lustory. Now we know that this daikneits was not caused by an eclipse, but «as the miiaculous piecursor of a miraculous eat tkquake.