CITIES OF OUR FAITH.

I. JERUSALEM.

Or the cities of our religion we begin with Jerusalem, for there the religion of Israel comes to its consummation and capital. And it was the religion of Israel which in time became the religion of Christ. The faith of Paul was only the faith of Abraham enlarged, the acorn become an oak. Christianity grew out of Judaism. It was not a rebellion, but an evolution. The earlier was germinal and prophetic of the later. Jesus was a son of David according to the flesh. His twelve apostles were Jews. His church began in Jerusalem. The New Testament has its roots in the Old. They are two volumes of the same book. Abraham rejoiced to see our Lord's day and was glad.

It is a far cry from Abraham to David; from Ur of the Chaldees to Jebus of the Canaanites, across a thousand years. The change from the fortress of the Jebusite to the Temple of Solomon, from the threshing-floor of Araunah to the Jerusalem of the Herods, still more from Jacob's stone in Bethel to the magnificent rituals of Caiphas, still more the transition from the simple faith of the fathers of the Jewish race to that of Hillel and Gamaliel, from the first seed of Judaism to its perfected fruit, covers a grand era in the history of mankind. It is the growth of a nation as well as a religion, of a national religion, of a theocracy into a monarchy.

It was a long time before Israel came to Jerusalem, and its religion found a capital. The progenitor of the He

brews dwelt in tents, though he looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. His successors were shepherds and nomads without a country. In Egypt they kept their Hebrew separateness, without becoming a nation, without losing themselves in the superior and dominant race. Always in their hearts was the tradition of the old home of their fathers, and the hope of their return to it. And so whatever they absorbed from that ancient civilization they carried away as seed for the new future in which their nationality was shaping itself. They fled into the wilderness; they spread over Canaan ; but they were still twelve tribes with separate interests, though with a certain community of religion. Their religion, born in the desert, growing up under sacerdotal influences, had its sanctuaries here and there, and its movable home and tabernacle, but only that, and no fixed, centralized seat till with David came monarchy and a metropolitan government, and Jerusalem, the city and temple of its religion for a thousand years to come. Here at last Israel gathered up its scattered life, its six centuries of preparatory history, all its elements of greatness, into a new period of power and splendor, and as well of division and ruin. Here began Jerusalem, small indeed among the great capitals, capital of a small nation, and yet, as Dean Milman says, "the scene of more extraordinary events, more strange and awful vicissitudes, than any city in the universe, not excepting Rome." Here David set his throne, and gave a permanent capital to his country.

For seven years and a half David had been king in the ancient city of Hebron,2 too far south for a strong hold upon the whole kingdom. He struck for a new capital, and instead of going to the old towns, like Bethel, or Shechem, or Samaria, he laid siege to the old fastness of Jebus, on the boundary between Judah and Benjamin, and by a bold stroke took it from the Jebusites, who had held 1 History of the Jews, i. 290. 2 2 Sam. v. 5.

it from the old days when the Canaanites ruled the land. It was a place hard to take, especially from the brave mountaineers who lost it at last from presumption rather than cowardice. They trusted to its natural strength, that even the blind and the lame could defend it against David. But he took it by assault on its steepest and most difficult side. For it was a bunch of hills, on the north running out into a plateau, but on the other sides falling off in deep, precipitous ravines with a descent of three or four hundred feet.1

The highest and southwesternmost of these hills was the one where the fortress stood, where David built his palace, where he and fourteen of his royal successors were buried, the Mount Sion which often gave name to Jerusalem itself. "Nevertheless David took the stronghold of Zion, and called it the City of David."2 It was the city of David, not by capture only, but by the beginnings which he gave to its sacredness and its greatness. He had the foresight to fix his capital on a spot which it held as long as any government held, and which has lasted longer almost than any city in the world. Here was his government. Here was his court. Here he consolidated the nation. Here he laid great foundations, not for architectural splendor only, but for a kingdom and a church. Here his successors ruled for almost four hundred years. Here at last came Jesus, "of the house and lineage of David," and set up a new, divine kingdom which shall know no end.

During the thirty-three years of David's reign the town had no great splendor. It grew, for the court was there; it was the headquarters of the army, and of the ecclesiastical establishment. There was friendship between the Tyrian king and David, and a house was built for him by architects brought from Tyre; but it was of wood, as probably were the other houses which David made. The ark was kept in a tent, though not the old one, which had

1 2 Sam. v. 7, 9.

2 2 Sam. v. 7-9.

8 1 Chron. xv. 1.

been left in Gibeon, very likely worn out, but a new one which David had set up. The ark, the wooden chest in which the tables of the Mosaic law were deposited, had been kept in different families here and there, until now David brings it out of its obscurity up to his new capital, and the occasion is made a great national festival. For more than four centuries the sanctuary of Israel had been movable. Now it is to have a permanent home. It is to be established in Mount Zion. This is David's first thought in its capture, "to find a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God of Jacob." "For the Lord hath chosen Zion, he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my resting-place forever. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it." It was a great event. It consecrated the city. It gave a new impulse to the religion of Israel. The priesthood was organized. And it started the conception of a house instead of a tent, of a stately temple for Jehovah, the God of Israel, which came to its splendid consummation after David slept with his fathers and Solomon reigned in his stead.

For Solomon was a great builder: David was a soldier. The thought was David's; the execution was with his son.2 The father's hand had been too bloody to be put to such a sacred work. The son, as a result of his father's victories, was to reign in prosperity and peace, and could spend what the father had collected. For David made great preparations to carry out the idea which had been growing in his mind in his later years. According to the chronicler he gathered millions of gold and silver, with bronze and iron, with marbles, costly woods, and precious stones in immense stores. On these Solomon set to work in the fourth year of his reign, and it was more than seven years before the Temple was completed. In silence its stones and beams were put together, no sound of axe or hammer 1 Psa. cxxxii. 13, 14. 2 1 Chron. xxviii. 11, 12, 19.

8 1 Chron. xxii. 14; xxix. 2.

being heard. "Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung," is the poetic conception of Bishop Heber. It cost an immense amount. Indeed, its splendor was not so much in its architecture as in its costly material. It was not large. Though in its dimensions exactly double the size of the tabernacle, it had none of the colossal magnitude, for instance, of the Egyptian temples, or the later Christian cathedrals, in one of which, it has been said, "the Jewish Temple would have been contained four times over." In fact, it was simply an enlarged and more costly and durable tabernacle; and like the Tabernacle, it was not built for a congregation and a multitude. Its Holy of Holies was visited but once a year, and then by the solitary High Priest. The Holy Place was open only to the officiating priests. Worship went on in the courts under the open sky, where stood the altar for sacrifice, and the tank and the lavers for ablution, all of molten brass. For four hundred and fifteen years it stood, though ten of the tribes forsook it as their sanctuary after the death of Solomon, to be followed by its successors a second and a third time, till eleven hundred years later it fell to rise no

more.

The Temple did not make all the magnificence of Jerusalem, though it was its great sacred edifice and gave it importance and renown. There was the great palace of Solomon, with its throne of ivory. There were the walls and the aqueducts, and the towers and the palaces and the gardens. Under Solomon Jerusalem was new, and its first splendor was its greatest. And yet the beauty of Jerusalem was hardly magnificence. For it was small of necessity, and, as the pilgrim in the one hundred and twentysecond Psalm says, "a city that is compact together." The deep valleys on the three sides, the fortifications on the fourth, shut it up within a small compass, and compelled compactness. Says Canon Liddon: "Possibly this

1 Stanley, Jewish Church, ii. 248.