good that
pretension.

"So many hands being employed, you may be sure it could not be long before
innumerable tapers were lighted. The whole church, galleries and every
place, seemed instantly to be in a flame, and with this illumination the
ceremony ended.

"It must be owned that those two within the sepulchre performed their part
with great quickness and dexterity; but the behaviour of the rabble
without very much discredited the miracle. The Latins take a great deal of
pains to expose this ceremony as a most shameful imposture, and a scandal
to the Christian religion, perhaps out of envy that others should be
masters of so gainful a business; but the Greeks and Armenians pin their
faith upon it, and make their pilgrimages chiefly upon this motive; and it
is the deplorable unhappiness of their priests, that having acted the
cheat so long already, they are forced now to stand to it, for fear of
endangering the apostasy of their people.

"Going out of the church after the event was over, we saw several people
gathered about the stone of unction, who, having got a good store of
candles lighted with the holy fire, were employed in daubing pieces of
linen with the wicks of them and the melting wax, which pieces of linen
were designed for winding sheets; and it is the opinion of these poor
people that if they can but have the happiness to be buried in a shroud
smutted with this celestial fire, it will certainly secure them from the
flames of hell."--(P. 127, _et seq._, eighth edition, 1810.)

Many people may, however, believe that scenes of such an outrageous
description as that witnessed by Maundrell might have happened in his
time, viz., 1697, but that their repetition is quite impossible in our own
enlightened age. The following account of the same scenes by Mr Calman,
whose veracity is attested by a high authority, and who had an opportunity
of seeing it only a few years ago, which has been reproduced in a little,
and now particularly interesting book, "The Shrines of the Holy
Land,"(122) may enable my readers to judge of the influence which the
boasted march of intellect has produced on the Graeco-Russian pilgrims, who
assemble every Easter at Jerusalem.

"To notice all that was passing," says Mr Calman, "within the church of
the Holy Sepulchre during the space of twenty-four hours, would be next to
impossible, because it was one continuation of shameless madness and
rioting, which would have been a disgrace to G