HOLY WEEK IN JERUSALEM.

Temuka Leader, Issue 7662, 31 December 1914, Page 1

HOLY WEEK IN JERUSALEM.

THE CHURCH OF THR SRPUL-

■ CMRI3. My first impression in Hi; Churen of the Holy Sepulchre was that 1 had suddenly come into a barbaric castle of magic connected with innumerable caves of Aladdin, writes Robert .Hitchens in Hie Century Magazine,” giving his impressions of holy week in Jerusalem. The .most wonderful church in Christendom ! To gain this astounding sanctuary, the church of the live creed.-:, of the five monasteries, of from twenty to thirty chapels, of the sn.-tnly sacred localities, in will h in C a !’!' i nal site of Calvary is uHu-c-i with the legendary site of Adam's burial ground, the place of the Virgin's agony, with the place of the Resurrection-,' I had passed (hrouyh the narrow, dirty, crowded, and marvellous alloys called 'ln Jeruca’cm streets, leaving on the left the Greek monastery whore tho patriarch T!aI mianos lives, often in fear for h's i life : had descended between the; i rows of bazaars dedicated to the | wants of the. Russian pilgrims, j where, amid groves of sacred piej tares and forests of gilded and I,painted candles, the soft-tongued | - goblin-men were busily fleecing the ! simple children of the steppes ; and j had traversed the great quadrangle called the court of the Holy Sepulchre. At rny first coming into the court T had been unable to notice details, for humanity seethed within it. A roar of voices went up. The pavement echoed with the ceaseless tramping of feet and tho grounding of muskets. The walls flung hack exclamations and cries : the winning and shrieking of beggar;:, the loud calling of sellers determined to compel attention to their wares, the vehement discussion of “those that bought ;” and —I had almost said the siicnca of the Russian pilgrims. For mystic Russia was there, mute at the threshold o£ Calvary. . The immense building at this moment was the core cl Iho heart o; the Christian World. People, multitudes of people, • were there adoring. This c.-ttraordinary labyrinth of vesi ihulcs. sacristies, chapels, shrines, balconies, . staircases. alcoves, crypts, and eaves in the living lock was swarming with pilgrims, with hundreds . upon hr-n-I dreds—crossing themselves, bowing, kneeling, kissing, rising, going onward ; standing rapt in the illumination cast from jewelled lamps by marble sanctuaries : sleeping in stalls oi ciabdrately-caned wood htß'alh glittering ikons ; lean'ng oveY the gilded rails of balconies far up in niches incrusled wilh gold and silver ; parsing like gloomy shadows under vaults of naked atone scarcely revealed by fluttering can-lies, accompanied by hollow echoes ; weeping by altars and columns, by fool prints in the rock : creeping to gaze through holes into the holy darkness : praying beneath, crosses ; singing sweetly, surrounded by Hi' immobile iigures .and the nniling faces of angels, laying out ros-nics, pictures, bits of silk, handkerchiefs, brue:hds, necklaces, on sacred stones,; j assiug their foreheads, their a’ms, iheir hands, to and fro over surfaces worn away by the passionate lips of dead multitudes. Wherever you look In this gorgeous and sombre labyrinth you see some h-.’y place, wiih pilgrims bowing daw n before it, crossing themselves, kneeling. p'T.c'ng iheir foreheads and ih-uT lip.-: ag.-o'u.-t it. '! hey rise, they move on. an-.l vani-h in!o the shadows, going upward, perhaps, to some- hidden shrine near the roof, or downward to some sacred stone in the caverns that are a part, of I hr; church---possibly past the. altar of the I-rr.it lin IMcf to the pi awe w 1 - -rt he K-rnpres:; I khnu disco er- '■<! Ihe crown of 1 horns and the three crosses. install Id y firm- j-luers are lakrn. aid vo i sc; ih.> same gestures ma le. Ibe same post ui es •: uuru.d, by others,,. ... bo ha ve aup.vgvd myslerio ;sly from some -winding j.if tho sacred maze.