Gabbatha, in presence of the assembled priests and people.

Antipas Herod, having no longer a home in his father's magnificent house on Zion, yet wishing to stand well with the Jews, over whom he still dreamt that he should one day reign, built for himself a new palace in the city; not on the royal hill, not even within the walls; but in the open suburb of Bezetha, where the site of his modest home is still marked by a ruined mosque.

Near the three towers and the king's palace on Mount Zion stood a group of sacred buildings known as the Seven Synagogues, a mass of edifices loosely resembling the Seven Churches of Bologna: not far from these synagogues stood the palace of the Maccabees, the palace of the Archives, the palaces of Caiaphas, nominal high priest, and of Annas, real high priest.

All these structures, standing on the height and slope of Zion, looked down on the Xystus, the great bridge, and the opposing ridge of Moriah, crowned by the marble walls and golden turrets of the Temple, and displaying the broad white screens, the Corinthian gates, the double colonnades, and majestic halls of the Temple courts.

But Moriah demands a yet closer view.

CHAPTER IV.

The Temple.

AMONG the many warm debates which divide the Churches no doubt has ever been raised as to the site of Mount Moriah, the Temple hill. Bible, Talmud, Koran: Jewish classics, early Fathers, Greek and Latin pilgrims: Pagans, Christians, Moslems: all scholars, all ecclesiastics, all worshippers, all enemies, declare that this grand open space which the Arabs call Haram es Shereef, the sacred inclosure, was the Temple platform. It stood over against Olivet: looking down on one side into the gardens of Ophel, on the other side into the graveyards of Jehoshaphat.

The Haram is about the size of St. James's Park within the rails; much of it garden; a Syrian garden; that is to say, a place in which there are some green clumps, a few flowering plants, a little wild grass; and a good deal of cypress and prickly pear. Near the centre of this great square stands a marble daïs, having Saracenic screens and colonnades of singular beauty; from which daïs springs the Mosque of Omar, properly called the Dome of the Rock. South of this mosque lie the great fountains and tanks of water, washing of hands and feet being part of both the Moslem and the Jewish religious rite. Round about the mosque stand many kiosks and altars. Yet a

little farther south, on a lower level of the platform, rises the mosque el Aksa; beneath and beyond which pile rest the mighty foundations by means of which Solomon and Herod had levelled and enlarged the hill. The upper wall of the Haram is Saracenic art of the best period, having much of the solid picturesqueness seen in the walls of Granada and Seville; but the lower tiers of stone are of older date and more rugged strength. Saladin's sons tried to pull down the pyramids of Gizeh; a task as easy as any attempt to pluck out the stones from this Temple wall.

On this great natural platform, levelled and enlarged by art, the Temple stood; not filling it, even with its outer courts and double colonnades; for the . sacred buildings of the Jews were small when compared against an English abbey or a Roman church.

Every Hebrew pile, a house, a palace, a synagogue, a temple, was modelled on the outlines of a pastoral tent. A Jew was a man without art; one who could live without painting a picture, without modelling a bust, without striking a coin. Between Moses and Annas he had erected only two structures on which an Athenian would have deigned to smile -the two temples of Gerizim and Moriah; and these structures could pretend to no higher excellence than that of being pretty faithful copies in marble of a nomadic tent. A Hebrew of the golden age, whose eyes had not been dazzled by Greek and Babylonish architecture, had needed for his devotions no higher art. Driving their herds before them in

search of grass, the tribes had carried the ark of the covenant through the desert in a tabernacle of the same form with their common tents; the only difference being that the work was finer, the materials costlier, the pillars made of brass, the rods of acacia wood, the fillets of silver, the roof of camel's hair drawn and dyed. The shape of their simple tabernacle was an oblong, ten yards wide and twenty yards deep; parted into two rooms of equal size by rich hangings; one room being the Holy of Holies, in which were placed the ark, the cherubim, and the mercy seat; the other room being the Holy Place, in which were kept the candlestick, the altar of incense, and the table of shew-bread. The two chambers differed in uses, though not in form. Into the Holy of Holies, no man, not even the priest, could enter, except on rare occasions. In that adytum God was supposed to dwell. Into the outer room, the Holy Place, the porch of which stood open to the sun, the priests could always go, but no one save a priest could pass the tabernacle door. The laity stood without. Around this sacred oblong, and of like shape with it, stretched a screen of cloth, fifty yards long by twenty-five yards broad; enclosing a double square; of which the upper end contained the tabernacle, while the lower end formed an open court before the sacred door. In this area, called the Court of the Priests, stood the altar for burnt offerings, also the bronze laver or basin in which the priests washed their hands and feet before entering into the Holy Place.

When Solomon built a stone temple, as a sign

that Israel had ceased to be a wandering race, he erected a magnificent tent of marble; larger in dimensions than the tabernacle of Gibeon and of Zion, and of the finest work that his power and riches could command. A double square, a Holy of Holies, a Holy Place, an outer court, a surrounding screen, were all produced in limestone and cedar; also a second screen to enclose the first with an open space; making a Court of the People around the original and more sacred Court of the Priests.

The second temple copied the first; the third temple copied the second; except that the outer work of Herod was larger in size, nobler in material, higher in art, than the structures which it replaced.

Herod, as you may still see from the glorious vaults and passages, visible beneath the Aksa, employed on his works the masons of Athens and Antioch. Indeed, it may be said of Herod's temple, as of Herod himself, that in outward face and polish it displayed far less of the Hebrew genius than of the Greek; yet the core of his new edifice kept its original shape; and the Temple of Herod, like the Temple of Solomon, was a marble tent.

Deep in the heart of the mass of buildings on Moriah, on the highest level of the rock, the Temple proper, the tent of stone, had been raised by priestly hands. As the tread of any secular foot, whether of Jew or Greek, would have profaned the holy place, the Ionian builders were thrust aside from this inner range; enough for these heathens to labour on the

The Holy Land. II.

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