On the Sacred Hill Golgotha

       Arrived in Jerusalem, the first place we seek is Mount Calvary.

      This noonday hour on Golgotha is the most solemn and overwhelming hour of my life. I tried to read two of the Bible accounts of the Crucifixion, but it was done with many pauses. I defy any one on this spot to read with firm voice and consecutive utterance the description given by Luke and John of the mightiest scene of all the ages which was enacted here. Our group lying down on the place where the three crosses stood, I read to them, and I think the prayer of the penitent malefactor became the prayer of each one of us. "Lord, remember me." It was about this hour that the sun was darkened and midnight fell on midnoon. There can be no doubt that this hill above the place heretofore called "Jeremiah's Grotto," is the hill on which Christ was put to death. The late General Gordon has made a mold of this hill, and the opinion being adopted by Dearly all who visit Jerusalem in these days is that the hill on which we now sit was the place of the Great Tragedy. The New Testament calls the locality of execution, Golgotha, or the "Place of a skull" I care not from what direction you look at this hill, you recognize the shape of a human skull - you have but to feel of your own cranium to realize the contour of Calvary. The caverns a little way beneath the top suggest eyeless sockets. The grotto underneath is also the shape of the inside of a skull. This hill is the only hill anywhere near Jerusalem that corresponds with the Bible description of being skull-shaped. We have inspired authority for saying that Christ was crucified outside the gate. This hill is just outside the Damascus Gate. Moreover, all traditions agree that this hill I speak of was the place where malefactors in olden time were put to death, and Christ was executed as a malefactor. The Bible lets us know that the Hill of Calvary was near a great thoroughfare, the people passing by "wagging their heads." This hill was then, as it is now, beside a great thoroughfare. The arguments in behalf of this particular hill as the place of the Lord's violent death are conclusive. In pamphlets and books those arguments are now appearing, and all intelligent people will yet agree upon this "Place of a skull" as the centre from which continents have been touched and from which all the world will yet be moved . So certain am I of this that today with my own hands I have rolled down from this hill a stone which I shall take to America as a memorial stone for my new church now building. That stone placed on top of a stone from Mount Sinai, for the obtaining of which camels are now crossing the Desert, will, after all the lips now living shall have become speechless, preach with two lips of stone the Law and the Gospel.

       What a place of interest is Jerusalem, whichever way we look. It is the most sacred city of our planet. There is much squalor here now, but the present is, in my mind, overwhelmed with the past.

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