and sudden closing of this door will be shut out in the dark night. And then shall be seen those, who have stood carelessly in the presence of an open door, through which they might have passed and would not, raising the clamour of a vain, because too late entreaty, at the door now closed against them for ever. In many instances it is the clang of that closing door which startles into attention those, who till then had been standing negligently without. The sound which awakens them to a sense of their need is caused by that judicial act of the Master of the house, the founder of the feast, which hopelessly and for ever excludes them from all the rich provisions of God's grace.

How impressively is all this set before us by Christ himself:-"Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye

are.

ACELDAMA; OR, THE FIELD OF BLOOD.

AMONGST all the places named in the Gospels, there are few to which a deeper or more painful interest belongs than "the field of blood," purchased by the proceeds of the traitor's guilt, and the scene of his suicide. Even Gethsemane and Calvary have their gloom and sadness alleviated, if not dispelled, by thoughts of the Divine love there displayed and the eternal blessings there secured. We glory in the cross; we rejoice in the thought of a Saviour's obedience unto death. But the scene of the traitor's death is relieved by no single ray of brightness. It is the end of a base career of treachery: the commencement of an eternal night of woe. The traditional site is pointed out on the steep southern slope of the valley of Hinnom, near its eastern end. Its modern name is Hak-ed-dam. A recent traveller, Dr. Wilde, in his "Narrative of a Voyage along the Shores of the Mediterranean," gives some interesting particulars respecting this memorable spot. Though the tomb pointed out as that bought with the thirty pieces of silver be spurious, there is no reason to doubt that the site

*Luke xiii. 24-30.

is a true and authentic one. The discovery of the "whited sepulchres" and the skulls of strangers is curious and interesting:

"At the foot of the eastern elevation of the Mountain of Offence, where it rises from the valley, is pointed out the Aceldama, or Field of Blood; said to be that purchased by the Jewish priests with the thirty pieces of silver that Judas had received for betraying his Master, but which he afterwards returned in remorse. The transaction is thus recorded by the Evangelist :-Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The Field of Blood, unto this day.' The same transaction is thus noticed in the Acts of the Apostles :- Now this man (Judas) purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The Field of Blood.'

“This field still retains its name, and is called in every language, and by every people within or about Jerusalem, Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, Aceldama. It is not far distant from the stream of Gihon; and at the period of our visit, there were still the marks and remains of bricks and pottery-ware in the adjoining ravine-a place likely to be used for their manufacture, as it contained the clay suited for such purposes, and was in the vicinity of a rivulet. Toward the upper end of this enclosure, the traveller is shown, among the many wonders to which tradition, ignorance, and credulity in this country attach the credence due only to historic record, a large square chamber, sunk in the earth, partly excavated in the rock upon the side of the hill, and partly built of masonry. It is arched at top, and there were formerly on the outside a

number of small cupolas, like the tops of furnaces, with a hole in the centre of each, through which were let down the dead bodies to the vault beneath; much in the samé manner as is practised in Naples at the present day. A tradition existed that the earth in the bottom of this cavern was possessed of some extraordinary destructive or corrosive power: for it was said to completely consume the bodies thrown into it in twenty-four hours; and on account of this supposed quality, ship-loads of it were, in former years, exported from Joppa to Europe. This tomb has been figured in the rare work of Sandys, who described it in 1610. The cupolas at top somewhat resembled those upon the Roman tomb, represented by Montfauçon as erected over the Curiatii at Albano. The dead continued to be interred in this vault up to the days of Maundrell, who says, 'Looking down through these holes, we could see many bodies under several degrees of decay, from which it may be conjectured that this grave does not make that quick dispatch with the corpses committed to it which is commonly reported.' Some few bodies were also to be seen in it at the time of Dr. Richardson's visit; but their condition proved how little reliance was to be placed upon the boasted properties of the place. It is now in a state of complete dilapidation; one side is a ruin; the cupolas have been demolished, and its only occupants, when we visited it, were owls, bats, and cockroaches.

"This tomb has been generally described as that which was bought with the blood-money that was returned by Judas Iscariot. It is pointed out as such by the priests and guides, and the belief in its identity seems to have gained strength from its having been permitted to remain uncontradicted; and traveller after traveller has repeated the tale, till it is believed by all. But the architecture, the small stones of which it is built, and the mortar with which they are connected, all prove that it cannot be coeval with the Christian era.

66

Having heard a rumour of a tomb that had been lately discovered and opened by the Arabs, in this vicinity, and it being reported that some human remains were found in it, I rode out one evening, during our sojourn in Jerusalem, to examine the place. A little higher up in the cliff that rises from the cavern erected by the Empress Helena, within the ground denominated Aceldama, and in the neighbourhood of the painted chambers, and that excava

tion called the tomb of Isaiah, some Arabs, when at work in the place, accidentally discovered the door-way of a tomb carved out of the solid rock, which had been concealed by a heap of rubbish, over which the soil had accumulated so as to completely conceal the entrance. Such was the account given to me by credible witnesses in Jerusalem. This entrance at the time of our visit was still partly concealed by brambles, stones, and dirt, so that but one half of the door-way was visible.

"It represents a Doric pediment, supported by rude pilasters, with some remains of floral embellishments carved upon the architrave, such as I have noticed as being characteristic of Hebrew sculpture; the whole hewn out of the rock, from which it stands out in good relief. The most remarkable circumstance connected with this façade, was its door, which struck me the moment I saw it as being totally different from that of any other tomb that I had ever seen or read of, except one at Petra. It is formed of a single slab of stone, and moves on horizontal pivots that run into sockets cut in the pilasters at top, in the manner of a swinging hinge, similar to that which is sometimes seen in the doors of cottages in this country. The lower part of it had been, as I was informed, broken off by the Arabs, in order to effect an entrance. It is the only outside door of a tomb that I have ever seen, and it differs from all others in not having been formed for concealment, or for being completely closed when the body was deposited within; but was evidently made for the purpose of being opened occasionally. Having entered beneath this ponderous portal, and lighted our candles, we were greatly surprised to find ourselves within a tolerably-sized hall of an oblong shape, cut with great precision out of the rock, but without ornament or adornment of any kind whatever.

"Curious to relate, the whole of this tomb afforded a most striking illustration of its appropriateness to describe the character of self-righteous scribes and Pharisees, and showed the forcible application of the language used by the Saviour when denouncing their hypocrisy: Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.' At the end, and on either side of the hall, a number of doors led into inner apartments. Each of these chambers was a small oblong crypt, about seven

feet long; on either side of which was a trough or sarcophagus, hewn like all the rest of the tomb out of the solid rock, and raised about three feet from the floor; and in all of them were quantities of human bones lying without order or regularity, but in a state of most astonishing preservation. The edges of these troughs were in many places chipped and broken, as if from long use; and the whitewash had not only coated these parts, but had actually spotted several of the bones that lay low down in the bottoms of the troughs. These bones were piled in layers; and as each trough contained several, the whitewash must have been used subsequently to some of the bodies being placed within them. This whitewash (which is the only instance of the kind that has yet been discovered of that ancient Jewish custom) was in a most extraordinary state of perfection; and from the number of layers that could be seen, on picking it off the wall, it was evident that it had been frequently renewed. Such was the appearance_that this tomb presented when we examined it; and such I was informed was its state when discovered.

"But the most remarkable feature in this catacomb was, that each set of crypts, that is, those on the three different sides, contained the remains of distinct and separate races of mankind, as shown by the skulls found in the trough: the skulls of one side were not in any instance mixed up with those of the other; all were perfectly distinct and separate from each other. Now, none of these curious heads belonged to the Jewish race, for not one single European or well-marked Caucasian head could I find among the numbers scattered in the chambers; and as all who did not belong to that family must have been strangers in Jerusalem,-and as these heads belonged to races of mankind that we know did not inhabit Judæa for the last two thousand years, they must have been foreigners; and this has led me to conjecture that this tomb, which is situated in the acknowledged Field of Blood, may be one of those sepulchres of the actual Aceldama that was purchased by the priests to bury strangers in.""