their shops, and there digest him, or his cash, at leisure. At times the excess of their servile annoyance makes the temper, even of him who is experienced in wandering, a thing very difficult to keep. It is rumoured that after a course of it even blameless and teetotal Deans have been known to express irritation in terms which would have vexed their Chapters.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE

THE best time to examine the Church of the Sepulchre, which for ages past a vast majority of the pilgrims to Jerusalem have considered its greatest and most impressive sight, is so soon as the doors are open in the morning, before the swarms of Russians have begun to gather there. On the day of the visit which I am about to describe, fortunately for us, beyond a few isolated individuals, none of these appeared. Probably the rest of them were engaged en masse in travelling to Jordan or some other distant spot. Thus it came about that for a long while we were practically alone in the place, to us a great advantage.

This church, or rather the rotunda which preceded it, was built in the year 336. In 614-I cull the dates from Baedeker—the Persians destroyed it. About 620 it was rebuilt with additions. This was the church which Arculf saw in or about the year 700. He says of it in the course of a long description :

"The church of the Holy Sepulchre is very large and round, encompassed with three walls, with a broad space between each, and containing three altars of wonderful workmanship in the middle wall, at three different points-on the south, on the north, on the west. It is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude; and it has eight doors or entrances through the three opposite walls, four fronting the north-east and four to the south-east. In the middle space of the inner circle is a round grotto cut in the solid rock, the interior of which is large enough to allow nine men to pray standing, and the roof

of which is about a foot and a half higher than a man of ordinary stature. The entrance is from the east side, and the whole of the exterior is covered with choice marble to the very top of the roof, which is adorned with gold, and supports a large golden cross. Within, on the north side, is the tomb of our Lord, hewn out of the same rock, seven feet in length, and rising three palms above the floor."

More than two centuries later fire twice did the place much damage, and in the year 1010 it was destroyed by the Moslems, to be reconstructed in 1075, and afterwards greatly added to by the Crusaders. In 1187 and 1244 the church was damaged or destroyed by various unbelievers. In 1310 it was rebuilt. In 1808 it was burnt down, to be raised up again as we see it now, in 1810. Such is the stormy and chequered history of this remarkable fane.

Formerly it had double doors facing south, with a considerable open space in front, but now one of these has been walled up. Passing through the other, almost the first object to be seen is the Stone of Anointment, whereon the body of Christ is supposed to have lain. It is not reassuring to the reverent traveller, especially if he chances never to have studied the subject for himself, and to believe that here was the unquestioned scene of our Lord's death and resurrection, to consult his faithful Baedeker, and to read therein that "the stone has often been changed." Yet even as he reads he may lift his eyes to see, as I did, two devout pilgrims, a man and a woman well on in years, with heaving breasts and tear-stained eyes, kneel down and kiss the relic with the utmost passion-that relic which "has often been changed."

Near by is another stone, where it is announced that the women stood while the anointing of the holy Body was in progress. A few steps, and we come to the rotunda beneath the great dome, in the centre of which stands the sepulchre, the reputed burial-place of Christ, containing a split slab of marble, where His body is said to have lain. Evidently, therefore, it has changed since the days of

Arculf, who told Adamnan that "This tomb is broad enough to hold one man lying on his back, and has a raised division in the stone to separate his legs." In the time of Felix Fabri, however, as now, it was "covered with a slab of polished white marble, on which mass can be celebrated." He says also:

"This cave has no window, nor is there any light in it save what comes from nineteen lamps which burn in it, which lamps hang above the Lord's Sepulchre; and inasmuch as the cave is small, the fire of the lamps make a smoke and stench, which greatly troubles those who enter the place and remain therein."

Baedeker says that in the crusading days the Sepulchre sanctuary was round, with a round tower, but already separated into the Angels' Chapel and the actual buryingplace as it is to-day. Afterwards it was polygonal, and in 1555 the nuisance which Felix notices was remedied by the piercing of holes in the roof to allow the smoke and smell to escape. To-day it is hexagonal in shape, and the pilgrim passes into the Sepulchre through the Angels' Chapel with its many lamps which belong to the different

sects.

On one side of the Sepulchre, the north, if I remember right, is a curious opening in the marble not unlike that out of which the anchor chain runs in the bow of a steamer. Through this hole at the Feast of the Greek Easter is exhibited the miracle of the Holy Fire, which is said by the Greeks-the Latins refusing to participate in the fraud after the sixteenth century-to descend annually from heaven, for what exact purpose I have been unable to discover from any authority within my reach. However, when it has descended-or when the priest has struck a match inside the Sepulchre-he thrusts a lighted torch through the hole, from which some privileged person lights his lamp or candle. From this again others take the fire, fighting and screaming to be the first, and burning their breasts to show that these flames are harmless

till at last the whole vast space is starred with the light of thousands of tapers.

The "miracle" is of old standing. is of old standing. Colonel Conder says of it in the article to which I have referred already: "The strange festival of the Holy Fire seems to have perpetuated the pagan fire-feasts of earlier days—perhaps once celebrated at the same spot." However this may be, when Bernard the Wise, who is, I think, the first to mention it, visited the Sepulchre in 867 the custom was already established. He says: "I must not, however, omit to state that on Holy Saturday, which is the eve of Easter, the office is begun in the morning in this church, and after it is ended the Kyrie Eleison is chanted, until an angel comes and lights the lamps which hang over the aforesaid Sepulchre, of which light the patriarch gives their share to the bishops and to the rest of the people, that each may illuminate his own house."

It was because of this "miracle" that the Caliph Hakim is said to have destroyed the church in 1010. The Jacobite writer, Gregory Abulfaragius, the author of the "Universal History from the Creation," who must have written about 1270, says:

"The author of this persecution (that of 1010) was some enemy of the Christians, who told Hakim that, when the Christians assembled in their temple at Jerusalem to celebrate Easter, the chaplains of the church, making use of a pious fraud, greased the chain of iron that held the lamp over the tomb with oil of balsam, and that when the Arab officer sealed up the door which led to the tomb, they applied a match through the roof to the other extremity of the chain, and the fire descended immediately to the wick of the lamp and lighted it. Then the worshippers burst into tears, and cried Kyrie Eleison,' supposing that it was fire from heaven that fell upon the tomb; and they were thus strengthened in their faith."

Really when he learnt the truth of the matter, it is not wonderful that in his turn the Caliph Hakim was