Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/341

Rh merely traditional. Nor does it matter. It is enough that they were in Bethany, of the identity of which there has never been a question. Somewhere, within a very short compass, they must have been; and as we move slowly along the road, we can see the Saviour approaching, met by a bowed form clinging to His knees, and hear a wail of agony: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died!

And now we rise to the summit, and the Holy City bursts upon our view, just as we expected to see it — its walls giving it the appearance of a fortress, with deep valleys encircling it like a castle moat, and the hills girdling it round like outer defences of a central citadel. To get this eastern view was one object which we had in making our detour to the Dead Sea and the Jordan, instead of entering Jerusalem directly from Bethlehem. Dean Stanley — the writer who has caught most perfectly the picturesqueness, as well as the overwhelming historical associations, of "Sinai and Palestine" — says "There is one approach which is really grand, namely, from Jericho and Bethany. It is the approach by which the army of Pompey advanced — the first European army that ever confronted it — and it is the approach of the triumphal entry of the Gospels. Probably the first impression of every one coming from the North, the West, and the South, may be summed up in the simple expression used by one of the modern travellers: 'I am strongly affected, but greatly disappointed.' But no human being could be disappointed who first saw Jerusalem from the east."

On the hill commanding this view, we now stood over against the city, separated only by the Valley of Jehoshaphat — a valley so deep and frowning in its rocky sides that in the terrified vision of the Prophet, it was to be the scene of final judgment. ["Multitudes, multitudes