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DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE CROSS.

buried in the ground; apart from them were three nails, with which the feet and hands of the Saviour had been pierced, and likewise the inscription as recorded by the evangelists. Heaven soon made known by a miracle which was the instrument of redemption. By the advice of Macarius, the body of a female sick unto death was touched by each of the crosses. The touch of the first two had no effect; that of the third instantly cured her. To this prodigy of divine mercy was added another still more striking, related by St. Paulinus and Sulpicius Severus when applied to a corpse, the true cross restored it to life.

St. Helena, happy in having found that treasure on which her heart set a higher value than on all the splendours of the world, hastened to adore in that sacred wood, as St. Ambrose tells us, not the wood itself, but the King of Glory who had been fastened to it. After this solemn homage, she lost no time in sending a large piece of it to her son, who received so precious a gift with as much joy as respect, and resolved to place the fragment beneath his helmet, to serve him for a safeguard in battle. She caused the other part to be enchased in silver, and committed the care of it to the bishop of Jerusalem. The practice was soon introduced of exhibiting it publicly, on Good Friday, to the veneration of the believers. On that day the bishop first went and prostrated himself before it; after him the clergy and the people; and it is from this custom that the ceremony performed annually on that day in all the catholic churches is derived - a ceremony in which the officiating minister, uncovering the cross, addresses the

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Christian congregation in these words, so calculated to fill them with grief, gratitude, and love: "Behold the wood of the cross on which was suspended the salvation of the world! Come, let us adore !"

I have been longer, my dear friend, than I intended, in describing to you, while treating of the chapel of St. Helena, all the objects at Jerusalem which so powerfully move the heart. I must not, however, omit to introduce here a fact which philosophic philanthropy would not have failed to publish and to blazon abroad by means of all the trumpets of Fame, had it belonged to a pagan or an infidel prince, but which it has feigned not so much as to perceive in the first of the Christian emperors. It is this that to Constantine is due the suppression of the most cruel as well as the most ignominious of punishments. Inspired by his reverence for the cross, he forbade the crucifixion of malefactors; the tribunals obeyed, and since that time this species of punishment has been excluded from the criminal code of every Christian nation I resume.

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In the same line, but ten paces farther than the chapel of St. Helena, you meet with another built on the very spot where the soldiers divided among them the garments of Christ. Every time I happen to pass it, my friend, a certain blended feeling of horror and fear thrills my whole being ... . . I represent to myself Mary, that kind and fond mother, at the foot of the cross, a prey to sorrows so much the keener, inasmuch as her heart alone is capable of comprehending, of feeling, all the outrages perpetrated on her son, all the afflictions which he endures; and I behold soldiers, at

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THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

the moment when they have just witnessed such poignant anguish, in presence of a concourse in which compassion has silenced hatred; when all Nature puts on mourning; when the rocks themselves appear to feel I behold soldiers, engrossed by a single thought, that of filthy lucre, disputing, with hideous eagerness, the possession of the bloody prize, throwing the dice, and leaving the lot to decide to which of them the tunic of the august victim shall belong! . . . . O, my God! . . . .

Forty paces farther, making a slight curve, you come to the spot where Christ appeared in the semblance of a gardener to Mary Magdalen, after his resurrection. An

altar has been erected there.

Opposite is the chapel of the Appearance, belonging to the Franciscan Fathers of the Holy Land. It is thus named, because, according to the traditions, it was there that our Saviour appeared to St. Mary for the first time after his resurrection.

On leaving this chapel you perceive a magnificent rotunda, surrounded by eighteen massive pilasters, which support a gallery and a majestic dome. In the centre, and beneath the dome, where the light which illumines the interior is admitted, rises a structure or mausoleum of yellow and white marble, in the form of a catafalque. Beneath this monument is the Sepulchre of Jesus Christ.

The entrance is towards the east. When you have passed the door, you find yourself in the chapel of the Angel, the inner walls of which are completely lined with marble. In the middle stands a pedestal, supporting a stone, eighteen inches square, upon which was seated the angel on the day of the resurrection, when the holy

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women came to embalm the body of Jesus, and he said to them: "He is risen, he is not here."

Does it not seem to you, my dear friend, that, by the very arrangement of this place, by the thoughts of joy and life which it excites, the goodness of God designed to temper the too painful impressions which the sudden sight of the tomb of Jesus would have produced? and is there not, as it were, an angel's voice heard there, saying to the Christian as to the holy women: "Be of good cheer; he is risen, he is not here."

Opposite to the pedestal you see an aperture, or door, that is very low and still narrower, whence proceeds a strong light. You cannot pass it without bending nearly double. It leads into a closet, about six feet square, and nearly eight high, lighted by forty lamps, the smoke from which escapes by three holes made in the vaulted roof.

On the right you see a marble table, as long as the closet, and half as wide, that is to say, six feet by three. This closet is the Holy Sepulchre; that table, the sepulchral table on which was laid the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the head turned towards the west, and the feet to the east. The tomb and table are chiselled out of the solid rock; they have been covered with marble, to preserve them from the indiscretion of the pilgrims, who sometimes used to take the pious liberty of breaking off and carrying away fragments of them.

The Franciscan Fathers, the Greeks, and the Armenians, perform mass daily in the Holy Sepulchre, each in turn, with great exactness and in perfect order. The Copts officiate behind the monument, in a chapel of

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GREEK AND ARMENIAN CHURCH.

wood, rudely constructed: all come several times a day to burn incense in the holy places with pomp and solemnity.

Opposite to the monument you perceive the church of the Greeks, which is extremely magnificent and in tolerably good taste, though gilding has been lavished upon it to excess. The stalls, of common wood, are scarcely in keeping with the riches by which they are surrounded the pictures are numerous, and in general bad, and the statues middling. The whole, however, is striking, and one cannot help admiring its beauty. You remark in the middle a circle of marble, in the centre of which is a little pillar that marks, according to them, the centre of the earth!

The church of the Armenians, built in the part of the arcades belonging to them, is likewise very beautiful.

Extraordinary circumstance! - the Catholics, the Greeks, the Armenians, who inhabit Lebanon, in short, all the Christian nations, have at Jerusalem representatives whose voices are incessantly rising with incense towards that God who sacrificed his only son to save the world. One single voice does not there murmur the name of Jesus Christ!.... It is that of the Protestant ! . . . .

Ever since I shut myself up in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, I have not ceased, my dear friend, to explore the different parts of this immense building. The soul, especially at first, is, as it were, overwhelmed with the grandeur and the sanctity of the objects which surround it. One must have lived some days here, and become, in a manner, accustomed to the place, to find one's self in such a tone of mind as to be able to observe things

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