Money is the one thing Jerusalem sucks in as a thirsty soul does water when it comes, and many well-meaning people find there a living prepared for them who would otherwise have to starve. As to the real state of the people you never hear a word. The Turkish tax-gatherer may grind them down. The wild Bedouin of the desert may come and take what the tax-gatherer has left. But you hear nothing of that, and the daily topic of conversation among the European settlers is the repetition of dogma and the fulfilment of prophecy. It is not till you have cleared out, taken the rail to Jaffa, and sail along the blue waters of the Mediterranean, that you get rid of the nightmare, have done with cant, and once more breathe free.
The fact is, the Holy City is one gigantic fraud. All we know is that there Christ lived and laboured and suffered and died. Not a stone remains of the Jerusalem over whose impending fate He shed bitter tears. The cunning of an interested priesthood has done all the rest, from the discovery of the true cross by the mother of Constantine, to the holy fire which is seen at Easter by a panting, perspiring crowd in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The town itself covers an area of more than 209 acres, of which thirty-five are occupied by the Haram-esh-Sherif. The remaining space is occupied by Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews.
The Greek Church is the strongest branch of the Christians in Jerusalem, having eighteen monasteries, with schools, churches, a hospital, hospice, and a printing press. The Russian church on the Mount of Olives is the grandest ecclesiastical building in the city of the modern type. The Roman Catholics have fine churches, monasteries, and convents. The Armenian Patriarch resides in his convent between the Jaffa and Zion gates. The Latins, Abyssinians, and Copts are also well represented. The Knights Templars of the Holy Sepulchre, a Roman Catholic body under the patronage of the Emperor of Austria, have a fine convent just outside the walls. Priests, and nuns, and sisters of mercy, and devotees, meet you at every turn.
One ought to go to Jerusalem if only to see what priests can build up on small foundations, and to what length superstition can be carried, even in what are termed days of light and progress. In this respect the Turk is as great a sinner as the Christian, and tells you how at the resurrection the risen will have to cross the Valley of Jehosaphat by a bridge of the Prophet’s hair, from which the wicked will fall straight to Gehenna, while to the righteous heaven, with its houris, will open its diamond gates. You see in Jerusalem what you see nowhere else, a city built up by religion, true or false.