The prophecy of our Lord, “ Verily, I say unto you. There shall not be left 
one stone upon another,” was literally fulfilled: the Temple was utterly ruined and 
has never been restored. 
In the sixth century Justinian built a superb church to the Virgin Mary, which stood 
on the site of the present Mosque El-Aksa. A hundred years after, the Khalif Omar took 
Jerusalem (a.ii. 036), and was the founder of the mosque standing on the site of the 
Temple, and which still bears his name. 
In 1099, the Crusaders took the city by storm. The mosque was then consecrated as 
a Christian church; but on the capture of this most unfortunate city again by the Saracens 
(a.d. 1187), the crescent was restored. Jerusalem has since fallen successively into the 
hands of the Turks and the Egyptians, and is now a Turkish possession. But the eyes of 
Europe have been directed to it in our day, with an interest unfelt since the age of the 
Crusades, and founded on higher principles than those of worldly ambition. At this hour, 
the whole Christian world, by a new and nobler impulse, “prays for the peace of 
Jerusalem.” 
THE EXTERIOR OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 
The first and most interesting object within the walls of the Holy City, the spot to which 
every pilgrim first directs his steps, is the Holy Sepulchre: but the traveller finds his 
expectation strangely disappointed when, approaching the hallowed tomb, he sees 
around him the tottering houses of a ruined city, and is conducted to the door of a 
gigantic church. 
Though the handsome cupola is visible from most parts of the town, yet, there 
being no peristyle, the access to this, the principal monument of the piety of the Empress 
Helena, is difficult, being nearly surrounded by buildings which at various periods have 
been allowed to be run up against it. It can be entered only from the south. 
With the exception of the facade (represented in the vignette title-page), there is 
nothing remai’kable in the external architecture or decoration of this mass of buildings, 
which is necessarily irregular from an attempt to bring under one roof the events 
of the Gospel history—the Golgotha and the Tomb, now shown in the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. 
The ruined tower to the left was anciently the belfry. 
