THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
• [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In your notice in the Spectator of January 25th of an anonymous pamphlet professing to be a reply to my article in last July's "Quarterly Statement" of the Palestine Explora- tion Fund, you say that "if we could reach the innermost mind of the average advocate of the Traditional Sites we should probably see that he really holds the matter to be de fide. No gaps or difficulties in the evidence really affect him, and he finds it as difficult to be charitable, or even courteous, to an adver- sary as he would be to a Eutychian or a Monothelite." Your readers will naturally apply that severe censure to me, and Jam sure, therefore, that you will admit a word of explanation from me. I have met Eutychians and Monothelites, and I am not conscious of any lack of charity or courtesy towards them. I have written several articles on the Traditional Sites, and I challenge any one to produce a sentence which, in either charity or courtesy, transgresses the limits of fair controversy. On the other hand, I have been assailed violently for defending a thesis which my assailants have denounced as worthy only of credulous fools. Now what are the facts? Here is a site for which there is an unbroken tradition from the beginning of the fourth century to this day, and good evidence that the tradition is well founded. This tradition and evidence are rejected by my critics as untenable and absurd. They demand, apparently, evidence which shall amount to a mathematical demonstration. If this were all, it would be somewhat strange. But the extra- ordinary thing is that these inflexible sceptics claim to have identified a particular tomb—which nobody ever heard of before the year 1867—as the true Holy Sepulchre. One of the most confident of them writes :—" I was so convinced that this was indeed 'the place where the Lord lay' that if an angel bad suddenly appeared I should not have been at all surbrised, but should have turned to him with eager con- fidence and exclaimed, That is where my Lord's body rested from Friday to the first day of the week, was it not?" &c. The balance of evidence and of authorities in favour of the Traditional Site is overwhelming. In favour of the new Holy Sepulchre—if I may use a paradox—there is not a single scrap of tangible evidence, or a single name of any reputation in the sphere of historical or archwological criticism. Its upholders have produced their alleged evidence, and it has been shattered in pieces repeatedly. Yet they go on repeating it as if it had never been ques- tioned. May I conclude with two illustrations from the pamphlet which you have noticed ? The writer says : "If the site was really well known, as Canon MacColl insists, why was a miracle invented to prove the truth of what ex laypothesi every one knew?" But I have proved that the story of a miracle in the recovery of the Sepulchre is a pure myth based on one of the many blunders of Robinson. To prove that there was no continuous Christian community in Jerusalem from the Crucifixion onwards, the writer of the pamphlet says that Eusebius "is careful to telI us that he could find no document in proof of what he reports from hearsay." Eusebius says nothing of the kind. I have challenged my critics to the proof, and they merely go on repeating this blunder, which also is borrowed from Robin- son's quarry of inaccuracies. Surely, then, it is those who insist, against plain evidence, on identifying with the Saviour's Sepulchre a tomb which was unearthed among a crowd of other tombs thirty-four years ago who "really hold the matter to be de fide," not those who rely on the ordinary canons of sane criticism. The Executive of the Palestine Exploration Fund have offered to test the authenticity of this novel site by thoroughly exploring the ground; but their offer has been refused on the plea that it would be desecrating holy
[Personally we hold that the weight of argument is strongly against Gordon's Tomb, and we have said so on several previous occasions. But that must not prevent us from protesting against the attempt to treat those who think dif- ferently almost as if they were criminals who deserved the most condign punishment. It is a matter on which opinion must be free. As to the Traditional Site, we see no ground at present for certainty. Proof in regard to the matter is impossible unless, perhaps, some millionaire will buy up a quarter of Jerusalem and lay it bare in order to trace the line of the city wall and see if the traditional Holy Sepulchre is or is not extra-mural. Meantime, we cannot help thinking that the whole subject is one for quiet controversy, not for fierce polemics. Probably Canon MacColl, like many contro- versialists, does not quite realise how very hard he often bits. —En. Spectator.]
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