DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12665#0230
214
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
marble platform, is a crevice about three feet long
and three inches wide, having brass bars over it
and a cover of silk ; removing the covering, by the
aid of a lamp I saw beneath a fissure in a rock;
and this, say the monks, is the rock which was rent
asunder when our Saviour, in the agonies of death,
cried out from the cross, " My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ?" Descending to the floor
of the church, underneath is an iron grating which
shows more distinctly the fissure in the rock ; and
directly opposite is a large monument over the
head of—Adam.
The reader will probably think that all these
things are enough to be comprised under one roof;
and, having finished the tour of the church, I re-
turned to the great object of the pilgrimage to Je-
rusalem—the Holy Sepulchre. Taking off the
shoes on the marble platform in front, the visiter is
admitted by a low door, on entering which the
proudest head must needs do reverence. In the
centre of the first chamber is the stone which was
rolled away from the mouth of the sepulchre—a
square block of marble, cut and polished; and
though the Armenians have lately succeeded in
establishing the genuineness of the stone in their
chapel on Mount Zion (the admission by the other
monks, however, being always accompanied by
the assertion that they stole it), yet the infatuated
Greek still kisses and adores this block of marble
as the very stone on which the angel sat when he
announced to the women, " He is not dead ; he is
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL.
marble platform, is a crevice about three feet long
and three inches wide, having brass bars over it
and a cover of silk ; removing the covering, by the
aid of a lamp I saw beneath a fissure in a rock;
and this, say the monks, is the rock which was rent
asunder when our Saviour, in the agonies of death,
cried out from the cross, " My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me ?" Descending to the floor
of the church, underneath is an iron grating which
shows more distinctly the fissure in the rock ; and
directly opposite is a large monument over the
head of—Adam.
The reader will probably think that all these
things are enough to be comprised under one roof;
and, having finished the tour of the church, I re-
turned to the great object of the pilgrimage to Je-
rusalem—the Holy Sepulchre. Taking off the
shoes on the marble platform in front, the visiter is
admitted by a low door, on entering which the
proudest head must needs do reverence. In the
centre of the first chamber is the stone which was
rolled away from the mouth of the sepulchre—a
square block of marble, cut and polished; and
though the Armenians have lately succeeded in
establishing the genuineness of the stone in their
chapel on Mount Zion (the admission by the other
monks, however, being always accompanied by
the assertion that they stole it), yet the infatuated
Greek still kisses and adores this block of marble
as the very stone on which the angel sat when he
announced to the women, " He is not dead ; he is