CHAPTER XXIV.

Olivet.

WHEN JESUS turned away from the Temple court, leaving this holy mount for the last time, one of the Twelve, a Jew, and proud of the great works going on around him, bade the Lord look at the mason's art expended on wall and colonnade; at the huge stones of the foundations, twenty feet, thirty feet, long; at the columns and cloisters of pure white marble; at the halls and chambers, solid as the living rock. Crowds of artists were labouring on the pile; building the hhanoth, polishing the shafts, inlaying the floors, finishing the stairs. A nation's wealth was being lavished on the Temple hill; an offering of stone to One who required from the Jews the sacrifice of a regenerate life.

JESUS gazed on this goodly work, the pride of Herod, the glory of Annas, and then turning to his disciple, said:

"Seest thou these great buildings? There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down."

Quitting the Temple, the company went down from the city by the Sheep gate into the Cedron bed, and crossing the hollow near the garden of Gethsemane, they walked in the cool evening over the brow of Olivet, through the Galilean camp. On

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the hill-top, within sight of Moab, Zion, Ramah, and the Dead Sea, they sat down together for the last time on that sacred spot. They sat over against the Temple mount; that is to say, with their backs to the Dead Sea, their eyes turned towards Jerusalem.

The scene on which they gazed in the waning light, was one that, even apart from the interest derived from its sacred history, had no equal on the earth. Where else could they have sought a great city far from either sea or river and seated among the highest peaks of a mountain land? Where else could they have seen such heights as Zion and Moriah, populous with life, swept round by such grand ravines as Gihon, Hinnom, and Jehoshaphat? Where else could they have found this double spectacle of a festive city within the walls, and a second festive city encamped about it in booths and tents?

Low down at their feet lay the Cedron bed, dry and stony, flowing through ranges of graveyards into the desert, on its way into the Dead Sea; the ledges of hill dropping down to this dry brook being terraced for vineyards and olive woods, and dotted with men and herds. The ravine through which the Cedron flowed was dark, and the bare rock on its sides was shaped into the monuments of forgotten priests and kings. Midway down this ravine stood the little garden called Gethsemane, meaning Old Presses, in which grew some aged olives. A mile lower down, where the river bed opened and brightened into verdure, lay the busy fountain of Siloam and its ruined tower. Beyond the whole length of

this sombre valley, quick and high rose the scarp of Moriah, the Temple hill, with its magnificent breast of wall; a wall of which the stones could be seen from the opposite hill, so that a man might have counted the tiers and told off the mason's work; here the grand art of Solomon, marked with the Tyrian bevel; there the more hasty labour of Nehemiah, shewing columns of porphyry and serpentine flung into the mass; the whole riveted and topped with the less solid but more regular masonry of Herod the Great.

Above this strong line of wall stood Solomon's Porch; over which, tier on tier of marble, rose the Gentile court, the Israelite court, the Women's court, the Priest's court, with their colonnades, stairs, and chambers; and, crowning these terraces, stood the Temple proper, the Holy of Holies, with its front and cressets of burning gold.

Right of the Temple, joined to its courts by a colonnade, frowned the castle of Antonia; one of the two great centres of Roman power. Away to the right of Antonia, on the same ridge of hill as the sacred buildings, though divided from them by a natural dyke, spread the great suburb of Bezetha; already a city in the magnificence of its houses, palaces, and courts; conspicuous among which rose the palace of Antipas Herod, now swarming with his household and his guards. As yet this suburb lay beyond the walls. Behind this first ridge of the city, dropped the Cheesemongers' valley, parting it from the ridge of Zion; in which valley lay the Xystus, the great bridge, the Maccabean palace, with

mansions and gardens unseen from the place on which JESUS sat; but beyond this valley sprang the majestic hill of Zion, rising higher than the Temple roof, so that the inhabitants could glance down into the Israelite and the Gentile courts; being the first grand fastness, the City of David, covered by the oldest wall and defended by the strongest works; a mass of noble structures, palaces, walls, and towers, conspicuous amongst which stood the great Synagogue, the Roman Prætorium, the house of Caiaphas, the towers of Hippicus, Phasaelus and Mariamne, and beyond all these adornments and defences, rose the brow of Mount Gareb, a waste of gardens, tenement and tombs.

"There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down!"

Peter and Andrew, James and John, gathered around JESUS, saying, "When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign?" And JESUS sat with them on the Mount of Olives, discoursing of the fall of Jerusalem, the end of an old world, and the beginning of a new, until the sun went down.

Next day, Wednesday, he remained at Bethany, in seclusion, while Judas was arranging with Annas and the Nobles how he should be seized, so as to avoid creating an uproar among the common people, always the first consideration with the aristocrats and their high priest. On Thursday JESUS sent Peter and John into Jerusalem, to prepare the Passover, in the guest chamber; and at sunset of that day the Twelve sat down to the Last Supper. Judas left the room to see Annas, and after singing

the usual hymn of that feast, the other disciples rose from the table, and passing through the Sheep gate into the Cedron valley, came to the cluster of olive trees which marked the site of Gethsemane, the Old Presses. Here JESUS went apart, and while his disciples slept in the warm spring evening, he watched and prayed, until the betrayer came and delivered. him over to his enemies with a kiss.

In the dead watches of the night, the Sanhedrin were called together, not in the Lishcath ha-Gazith on the Temple hill, but in the Sagan's palace, near the great bridge over the Xystus. Those members who came early to the call, found Annas with his prisoner in the audience chamber, trying witness after witness as to His acts and words; but finding nothing to sustain a legal and open charge, such as could be laid before a Roman magistrate. Annas bade him speak for himself, but he answered not a word, until the High Priest said to him "Art thou the Christ?"

Then the Lord opened his lips, saying:
"I AM."

Then Annas bade him say who were his disciples and what were his doctrines; for the magnificent High Priest, the chief ruler in Zion for twenty years, had paid little attention to what must have seemed to him the youngest and obscurest of the Galilean sects. JESUS replied:

"I spake openly to the world; I taught in the synagogue and in the Temple, whither the Jews resort: in secret have I said nothing. Ask them which heard me. They know what I said.”