y grow like giants,
In their layers of shade a thousand years are sighing._

_How fair are the trees that befriend the home of man,
The oak, and the terebinth, and the sycamore,
The fruitful fig-tree and the silvery olive._

_In them the Lord is loving to his little birds,--
The linnets and the finches and the nightingales,--
They people his pavilions with nests and with music._

_The cattle are very glad of a great tree,
They chew the cud beneath it while the sun is burning,
There also the panting sheep lie down around their shepherd._

_He that planteth a tree is a servant of God,
He provideth a kindness for many generations,
And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him._

_Lord, when my spirit shall return to thee,
At the foot of a friendly tree let my body be buried,
That this dust may rise and rejoice among the branches._

VI

THE TEMPLE AND THE SEPULCHRE

I

THE DOME OF THE ROCK

There is an upward impulse in man that draws him to a hilltop for his
place of devotion and sanctuary of ascending thoughts. The purer air,
the wider outlook, the sense of freedom and elevation, help to release
his spirit from the weight that bends his forehead to the dust. A
traveller in Palestine, if he had wings, could easily pass through the
whole land by short flights from the summit of one holy hill to another,
and look down from a series of mountain-altars upon the wrinkled map of
sacred history without once descending into the valley or toiling over
the plain. But since there are no wings provided in the human outfit,
our journey from shrine to shrine must follow the common way of
men,--which is also a symbol,--the path of up-and-down, and many
windings, and weary steps.

The oldest of the shrines of Jerusalem is the threshing-floor of Araunah
the Jebusite, which David bought from him in order that it might be
made the site of the Temple of Jehovah. No doubt the King knew of the
traditions which connected the place with ancient and famous rites of
worship. But I think he was moved also by the commanding beauty of the
situation, on the very summit of Mount Moriah, looking down into the
deep Valley of the Kidron.

Our way to this venerable and sacred hill leads through the crooked
duskiness of David Street, and across the half-filled depression of the
Tyropoeon Valley which divides the city, and up through the dim,
deserted Bazaar of the Cotton Merchants