20 APRIL 1878, Page 14

MR. FERGUSSON'S "TEMPLES OF JERUS A LF.111."

[To THE EorrOB OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Your review last week of " Fergusson's Temples of Jerusalem" casts what I think is an undeserved slur upon the honesty or intelligence of the English Clergy. In charging them with a bigoted and unreasoning adherence to the traditional sites,. your reviewer would seem to suppose that such adherence is the only alternative to the acceptance en bloc of Mr. Ferguson's. theories. It need scarcely be said that such is not the case. I venture to assert that among a hundred intelligent Englishmen, lay or clerical, who reject Mr. Fergusson's theories, you will hardly find ten who accept the so-called "Church of the Holy Sepulchre" as the true site of our Lord's crucifixion and burial.

Mr. Fergusson may, or may not, have proved his case. That most students of Jerusalem topography differ from his conclu- sions, is a fact. That they have long agreed with him in rejecting the traditional site, is a fact also, and seems to refute the charge- which your reviewer has levied wholesale against "most of our