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went oat of the city to be crucified. He was condemned in tlie open air, and " went forth " cannot mean out of Pilate's house, but went outside of Jerusalem, without the gates. Trifling- as this incident may seem to a careless reader, it as a striking- fulfilment of one of the great types of the Mosaic law. Tiie sin offering on the great day of atonement was to be carried forth " without the camp," (Lev. xvi. 27.) Our Lord came to be the true sin offering, to give His soul an offering for our sins. Therefore it was divinely overruled of God, that, in or- der to fulfil the type perfectly. He should suffer outside the city. (See also Lev. vi. 12 — 21.) St. Paul specially refers to this when he tells the Hebrew Christians, who were familiar with the law of Moses, that " Jesus suffered without the gate." (Heb. xiii. 12.) The minutest details of our Lord's passion have a deep meaning.
[Into a place. ..skull. ..Golgotha.] The precise position of this place is not known certainly, and can only be conjectured. We only know (from verse twenty) that it was *' nigh to the city " that it was " outside " the walls of Jerusalem at the time of our Lord's crucifixion, and that it was near some public road, as there is mention in one Gospel of them " that passed by." (Matt, xxvii. 39.) So many changes have taken place, during the long period of 1800 years, in the boundary walls and the soil of Jerusalem, that no wise man will speak positively as to the exact whereabouts of Golgotha at this day. Though out- side the walls 1800 years ago, it is far from unlikely that it is within the walls at this time.
(a) Some maintain, as most probable, that Golgotha was a place between the then existing wall of Jerusalem, and the de- scent into the valley of the Kidron, oq the east side of the city, near the road leading to Bethany. In this case the cross must have been in full view of any one standing on the tower of Antonia, in the temple courts, on the Mount of Olives, or upon the eastern wall of the city. If this is correct, the crucifixion might have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people at once with perfect ease ; and from the sufferer being lifted up, as it were, in the air, must have been an event of extraordi- nary publicity. According to the advocates of this theory, the traditional site now assigned to the Holy Sepulchre is the true one.
(5) Others, however, who have carefully examined the topog- raphy of Jerusalem, and are extremely likely to be wise and impartial judges, are decidedly of opinion that Golgotha was on the north side of Jerusalem, near the Damascus gate; and they repudiate altogether the site commonly assigned to the holy sepulchre at the present time. An old and valued friend, who has walked repeatedly over this " debateable land," says, " 1 think the crucifixion took place on the north side of the city, near the present Damascus gate, on a platform of rock, just above a valley which runs on in endless tombs nearly two
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