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The guide said it was because this was one of "the very stones of
Jerusalem" that Christ mentioned when he was reproved for permitting the
people to cry "Hosannah!" when he made his memorable entry into the
city upon an ass. One of the pilgrims said, "But there is no evidence
that the stones did cry out--Christ said that if the people stopped from
shouting Hosannah, the very stones would do it." The guide was perfectly
serene. He said, calmly, "This is one of the stones that would have
cried out." It was of little use to try to shake this fellow's simple
faith--it was easy to see that.
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding interest
--the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has been
celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years as the
Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood in this
old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the struggling mob
that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would have sat down
and
rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said, "Move on!" The
Lord said, "Move on, thou, likewise," and the command has never been
revoked from that day to this. All men know how that the miscreant upon
whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down the wide world,
for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding it--courting death but
always in vain--longing to stop, in city, in wilderness, in desert
solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless warning to march--march on!
They say--do these hoary traditions--that when Titus sacked Jerusalem and
slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in her streets and by-ways, the
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