New-York tribune., 1868-08-10
THE REcOTERY or THE HOLY CITY.

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THE RECOTERY or THE HOLY CITY.
The duestion who shall possess the sacred
places which our Lord trOd with his disciples,
and where he died for the redemption of the
world, has been of vast concern to ChristendOm,
especially since the rise of the MOsem power.
The Crusades were avowedly an attempt to
rescue the Holy Sepulchcr from the Turks,
though it is quite probable that this devout
purpose so touching TO the Imagination of
ChristendOm, was used merely as a prctext for
uniting the Christian Princes against the terrible
MOsem Empire, which was menacng the nascent
civilization of Europe. The Crusades accom-
plished indirectly, several objects highly inn
portant to the social development of the modern
world but Jerusalem remained substantially
what it was before, only perhaps more desolate
and impoverished. The question of the Holy
Places came up again in connection with the
Crimean war. and faint thrill ran through
portion of Christendom ut the idea of rescuing
the famous city from polluted hands, occupy
ing it with Christian institutions, recaiming 1t
from filth, and making it what the City of the
Great King should be-a noble center of
Christian power in the East The sentiment
was pleasing; the vision was attractive;
but the modern world has too many uses
for its money and its men to lavish either
on undertakings so fantastical and re-
mote. Meanwhile another enemy takes
possession of the city, who ray prove harder
to dislodge than beggar or Turk. That enemy
is oblivion Had the Christian Powers pursued
their enterprise TO its completion, they would
have achieved a barren victory, for the places
they occupied would not have been the Holy
Places at all Some Jealous Christians IN En-
land, thinking it great shame that the land in
which the Savior lived and died should be so
little known, have made up "a Palestine Explo-
ration Fund for the purpose of redcemng their
country from this disgrace The fund was
founded by Mr.. George Grove and has been
swelled by voluntary contributions to an eX-
tent which, the Archbishop of York said, in
rather ambiguous phrase, cit would be un
handsome not to acknowledge" The zeal of
these new champions of the Holy Places docs
not appear TO be excessive or inoXhaustblc
The cost of making excavations in jerusalem
is $500 per month, and the money in the
treasury will last but six months longer. The
results up to this time, so far from giving en-
couragement to the explorers, are calculated
rather to make the search look hopeless. a
quantity of pottery of various dates, few
bronze nails, some glass of the third and fourth
centuries, a small collection of Hebrew coins,
a seal supposed to be of the time of Ezra,
hold out the faintcst of hopes. The more in
vestigati0n is pushed, the more it is seen in
vestigatiOn is needed. The sites of places in
the Holy Land are very hard to discover 1t
is certain that Jaila stood here, that Jerusa-
lem stood there; but the ancient Jerusalem,
the genuine Jerusalem, the only city that is
Jerusalem, is buried so deep under ground that
shafts sunk to an enormous depth barely
succeed in touching it. Lieut.. Warren,
the enthusiastic engineer who has the
work in charge, may justly call it the
neither Jerusalem He declares that the cx-
plOrers have not a single fixed point for their
Investigations. The position of the Temple was
uncertain, and of course if that is, everything
else is. The precise location of so important
landmark as the Mount of Olives cannot be
fixed to perfect satisfaction. 1t is only probable
that the Valley of the kcdron can be traced.
Lieut. Warren uses the biblical names for
places but without any assurance of their cor
rectness or appropriateness. An immense task
is to be accomplished before there will be any
thing that can be called the City of Jerusalem.
Mr.. Layard who speaks with authority, begs
gentlemen to remember the arduous nature of
such an enterprisc-the difficulties thrown in
the way of progress by the climate, the indilcr-
ence or active hostility of the people, and other
inhuences-and warns them not to be too SAN
guine in regard to findings" Dean Stanley,
another authority, carefully avoids committing
himself to an opinion on the wisdom of carrying
on the work, but admits that it is interesting
to two classes of peOple-thOse who had pub
lished theories on the subject, and those who,
like himself, had not-and pleasantly aludes
to the stake which the historian Josephus
has in an undertaking which will either
redeem or leave forever unredeemed his
reputation for veracty. Christendom has
been so long absent from its birthplace it has
grown up in regions so unlike it, has become
so completely Westernizcd in Its habits of
thought and feeling, its very Imagination has
so entirely deserted history for mythology,
that it may be doubted whether the full dis
closure of ancient Jerusalem would excite a
profound emotion. 1t would be interesting to
antiquarians TO know what the old city was
like to dig to the bottom of the walls, whose
giddy hight Josephus mentions to uncover the
streets to lay bare the vast network of drains
and reservoirs; to identify the sites of public
buildings, harcms, palaces; to trace the famous
water-cOurses and historic valleys, KedrOn and
Tyropeum; to place where they belong the
springs and fountains so gracously spoken of
IN Scripture, to map out the ediiices that
covered the Temple Hill, and to assign their
proper uses to the large water tanks on the
Moriah Area, where millions of gallons could
be kept for sacred or other purposes But
discoveries of this kind, however curious and
instructive, could hardly be of practical value.