The Church of the Holy Sepulchre comprises very compendiously almost all the spots associated with the closing career of our Lord.  Just there, on your right, He stood and wept; by the pillar, on your left, He was scourged; on the spot, just before you, He was crowned with the crown of thorns; up there He was crucified, and down here He was buried.  A locality is assigned to every, the minutest, event connected with the recorded history of our Saviour; even the spot where the cock crew when Peter denied his Master is ascertained, and surrounded by the walls of an Armenian convent.  Many Protestants are wont to treat these traditions contemptuously, and those who distinguish themselves from their brethren by the appellation of “Bible Christians” are almost fierce in their denunciation of these supposed errors.

It is admitted, I believe, by everybody that the formal sanctification of these spots was the act of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, but I think it is fair to suppose that she was guided by a careful regard to the then prevailing traditions.  Now the nature of the ground upon which Jerusalem stands is such, that the localities belonging to the events there enacted might have been more easily, and permanently, ascertained by tradition than those of any city that I know of.  Jerusalem, whether ancient or modern, was built upon and surrounded by sharp, salient rocks intersected by deep ravines.  Up to the time of the siege Mount Calvary of course must have been well enough known to the people of Jerusalem; the destruction of the mere buildings could not have obliterated from any man’s memory the names of those steep rocks and narrow ravines in the midst of which the city had stood.  It seems to me, therefore, highly probable that in fixing the site of Calvary the Empress was rightly guided.  Recollect, too, that the voice of tradition at Jerusalem is quite unanimous, and that Romans, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, all hating each other sincerely, concur in assigning the same localities to the events told in the Gospel.  I concede, however, that the attempt of the Empress to ascertain the sites of the minor events cannot be safely relied upon.  With respect, for instance, to the certainty of the spot where the cock crew, I am far from being convinced.

Supposing that the Empress acted arbitrarily in fixing the holy sites, it would seem that she followed the Gospel of St. John, and that the geography sanctioned by her can be more easily reconciled with that history than with the accounts of the other Evangelists.

The authority exercised by the Mussulman Government in relation to the holy sites is in one view somewhat humbling to the Christians, for it is almost as an arbitrator between the contending sects (this always, of course, for the sake of pecuniary advantage) that the Mussulman lends his contemptuous aid; he not only grants, but enforces toleration.  All persons, of whatever religion, are allowed to go as they will