2. Scr^ttural NoUees of the Locality, — ^The account in the evangelists touching the place of the crucifixion and burial of our Lord is as follows : Having been de- livered by Pilate to be crucified^ Jesus was led away, followed by a great company of people and women, who bewailed his fate. On the way the soldiers met one Simeon, a Cyrenian, conung out of the country, who was compelled to bear Jesus's cross. When they were come to the place which is called Calvar^^, there they crucified him. This place was nigh to the city ; and, sitting down, they watched him there. They that pass- ed by reviled him, wagging their heads and scoffing. Likewise also the chief priests mocked him, with the scribes and elders, and the people stood beholding. The soldiers, too, mocked him. There stood by the cross of Jesus his mother^ and hicT mother*s sister, and Maiy Magdalene; and idl his acquaintance, and the women that followed him from Gidilee, stood afiir off, beholding these things. In (he place t^iere he teas cru- cified ihere was a garden, and in the garden a new sep- ulchre hewn out in the rock ; there laid they JesuS) and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre. The writer of the Epistie to the Hebrews adds that Jesus sufi^sred toithout the gate, subjoining, *' Let us therefore go forth to him without the camp (or the city), bearing his reproach'* (Heb. xiii, 11, 18). We thus learn that the crucifixion and burial took place out of the city, and yet nigh to the city, apparently at the north-west, and probably just on the outer side of the second wall. It is also clear ti^at the place was one around which many persons could assemble, near which way&rers 'ere passing, and the suffiirers in which could be seen
or addressed by persons who were botli near end re- mote ; all which concurs in showing that die spot vai one of some elevation, and equally proves diat '^tka thing was not done in a comer,** but at a place and m- der circumstances likely to make Calvary well known and well remembered alike by the foes and the friends of our Lord.
8. Line of Tradition retpectmg the Spot.— WitB it like- ly that this recollection would perish ? Surely, of all spots, Calvary would become the moat sacred, the most endearing in the primitive Church. Nor did ^ Jew, with his warm gushing affections, fsel on such a point less vividly tiian his fellow-men. ** The tomla of the prophets,*** "the sepulchre of David," were, we read (MaU. xxiii, 29 ; Acts U, 29), reverentially regard- ed and religiously preserved from age to age. That of " David's Lord** would assuredly not be nef^lected. It was a season of public religious festivity when oar Lord suffered. Jerusalem was then crowded with vis- itors fhmi foreign parts. Such, too, was the fact at the time of the efl^ion of the Holy Sjnrit. These pfl- grims, however, soon returned home, and wherever they went many carried with them the news of th« crucifixion of Jesus, and told of the place where he had been executed. Perhaps no one spot on earth hsd ever so many to remember it and know its precise b- cality as the place where Jesus died and rose again. First in Jerusalem, and soon in all parts of the earth, were there hearts that held the recollection among their most valued treasures. Accordingly, we leara frt>m the passage in Hebrews that, fiu* on fai the fint century, the tradition was preserved in so living a form as to be made the subject of a figurative illustration of Christian doctrine. The memory of distingaished places is among the least perishable of earthly things. Fathers would convey their knowledge and their im- pressions to sons ; one generation and one Church to another. The passage in the Hebrews would tend to keep alive the recollection. Moreover, it was the fate of Jerusalem, after its capture by the Komans, to be- come a heathen city ; even its name was changed into Colonia ^lia Capitolina. In the excess of their tri- umphant joy, the conquerors made Jupiter its patron god, and erected statues of Jupiter and Venus on the place where Jesus had been crucified (Sozomen, xl, I). This was done perhaps not so much to insult as to oon- ciliate. New-comers in religion have always availed themselves of established feelings, and therefore erect- ed their sacred edifices on places already consecrated in the minds of the people. The mere £act of a tem- ple to Venus standing on Calvary suffices to show that Calvaiy was the place where Jesus suffered. Tlw temple thus takes up the tradition, and transmits it in stone and marble to coming ages. This continuation of the tradition is the more important, because it begins to operate at a time when the Christians were driven from Jerusalem. But the absence of the Christians from the Holy City was not of long duration, and even early in the third century we find pilgrimiages ttom distant places to the Holy Land had already begun for tiie express purpose of viewing the spots whkh the presence and sufferings of the Saviour had rendered sacred and memorsble (Bid, EieroaoL p. 591 ; Euseb. Hist, Eccke, vi, 11). A century later, Eusebins (A.D. 815) informs us that Christians visited Jerusalem fh>m all regions of the earth for the same object. Early in the fourth century, Eusebius and Jerome write down the tradition and fix the locality of Calvary in their writings. Eusebius was bom at CiBsarea in Ptelestine about A.D. 270. In 815 he became a bishop in his na- tive country, and died in 840. He was a learned man, and wrote a history of the Christian Church. About 880 he composed his Ononuuticon, which was expressly devoted to the business of determining and recording the sites of holy and other places in Palestine. Tills work of Eusebius, written in Greek, Jerome aiterwaxd translated into Latin, and thus added his authority to