One of the interesting things about these tombs is the rolling stone by which they were closed.  It is a round rock, resembling a millstone.  The height is a little over three feet and a half, and the thickness sixteen inches.  It stands in a channel cut for the purpose, but was rolled forward before the entrance when it was desirable to have the tombs closed.  When Jesus was buried, a “great stone” was rolled to the mouth of the sepulcher, and the women thought of this as they went to the tomb on the first day of the week, saying:  “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb?” (Mark 16:3.) They went on and found the tomb open; so, also, we may often find the stone rolled away if we will go forward in the discharge of our duties, instead of sitting down to mourn at the thought of something in the distance which seems too difficult.

On our way to the tombs just mentioned, we passed the American Colony, a small band of people living together in a rather peculiar manner, but they are not all Americans.  I understood that there had been no marriages among them for a long time until a short while before I was in Jerusalem.  Some of them conduct a good store near the Jaffa gate.  We passed an English church and college and St. Stephen’s Church on the way to Gordon’s Calvary.  This new location of the world’s greatest tragedy is a small hill outside the walls on the northern side of the city.  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands on ground which for fifteen hundred years has been regarded as the true site of our Lord’s death and burial, but since Korte, a German bookseller, visited the city in 1738, doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of the tradition.  Jesus “suffered without the gate” (Heb. 13:12), and “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new tomb wherein was man never yet laid” (John 19:41), and it appears to have been near a public road. (Mark 15:29.) In 1856 Edward Robinson, an American, offered proof that the site sustained by the old tradition was inside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion, and more recent discoveries, made in excavating, confirm his proof.  The new Calvary meets the requirements of the above mentioned scriptures, and gets its name “Gordon’s Calvary,” from the fact that General Gordon wrote and spoke in favor of this being the correct location, and a photographer attached his name to a view of the place.  In the garden adjoining the new Calvary I visited a tomb, which some suppose to be the place of our Lord’s burial.

On the way back to my lodging place we passed the Damascus gate, the most attractive of all the old city gates, and one often represented in books.  It was built or repaired in 1537, and stands near an older gateway that is almost entirely hidden by the accumulated rubbish of centuries, only the crown of the arch now showing.  As we went on we passed the French Hospice, a fine modern building, having two large statues on it.  The higher one represents the Virgin and her child, the other is a figure of the Savior.  The Catholic church already mentioned, where two sisters are to be seen in prayer at all times, is near the Hospice.  It is a rather impressive sight to stand in this beautiful but silent place, and see those women in white robes kneeling there almost as motionless as statues.