DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4592#0268
268
IMPRESSIONS.
liddle of it I noticed a kind of pillar, on the top of
which was marked " the centre of the world." ■ What
wise heads it must have taken, and what immense
labor of computation and calculation to arrive at this
fact! The centre of the world in the middle of a
Greek chapel in Jerusalem !! Why this turns Capt.
Symmes's philosophy all out of doors, besides blowing
up Copernicus, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton ! What
a marvellous discovery!
■; During my stay in Jerusalem, I visited the church
of the Holy Sepulchre several times. I witnessed the
procession of the Latin monks, dressed in their white
robes, with burning tapers in their hands, passing
round the church, stopping at each pretended holy
place, and there chanting hymns and saying prayers.
But to me the ceremonies were empty, unmeaning,
and destitute of those enlivening devotions which pure
spiritual Christianity infuses. I envied not the faith
of those who could believe the places there pointed
out to be as holy as represented. When I ascended
what they call Calvary, to me it bore no resemblance
to the Golgotha of Scripture. When I entered the
pretended sepulchre, I could but exclaim " surely, this
is not the place where the Lord lay." Every thing
around those pretended scenes indicated error and
delusion. I felt chagrined when I looked upon the
deception and chicanery that ignorant monks were
there playing off upon the more ignorant multitude of
deluded pilgrims flocking around them. I always
passed out of the church of the Holy Sepulchre with
feelings of disappointment, bordering on disgust. Cal-
vary and the Savior's Tomb are things too holy to
IMPRESSIONS.
liddle of it I noticed a kind of pillar, on the top of
which was marked " the centre of the world." ■ What
wise heads it must have taken, and what immense
labor of computation and calculation to arrive at this
fact! The centre of the world in the middle of a
Greek chapel in Jerusalem !! Why this turns Capt.
Symmes's philosophy all out of doors, besides blowing
up Copernicus, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton ! What
a marvellous discovery!
■; During my stay in Jerusalem, I visited the church
of the Holy Sepulchre several times. I witnessed the
procession of the Latin monks, dressed in their white
robes, with burning tapers in their hands, passing
round the church, stopping at each pretended holy
place, and there chanting hymns and saying prayers.
But to me the ceremonies were empty, unmeaning,
and destitute of those enlivening devotions which pure
spiritual Christianity infuses. I envied not the faith
of those who could believe the places there pointed
out to be as holy as represented. When I ascended
what they call Calvary, to me it bore no resemblance
to the Golgotha of Scripture. When I entered the
pretended sepulchre, I could but exclaim " surely, this
is not the place where the Lord lay." Every thing
around those pretended scenes indicated error and
delusion. I felt chagrined when I looked upon the
deception and chicanery that ignorant monks were
there playing off upon the more ignorant multitude of
deluded pilgrims flocking around them. I always
passed out of the church of the Holy Sepulchre with
feelings of disappointment, bordering on disgust. Cal-
vary and the Savior's Tomb are things too holy to