From that time all the chief powers of this world have professed
to be Christian, and the Church has been owned as the great means
appointed by God of leading His people to Himself. Constantine's mother,
Helena, though in her eightieth year, set off to the ruins of Jerusalem
to try to trace out the places hallowed by our Saviour's suffering. All
was waste and desolate, and no one lived there save a few very poor Jews
and Christians in wretched huts. The latter had never lost the memory of
the places where the holy events of the Passion had taken place; and the
empress set men to dig among the ruins on Mount Calvary, till she found
the Holy Sepulchre, and not far from it, three crosses, and the nails
belonging to them. She built a most beautiful church, so large as to
cover the whole of Golgotha. The sepulchre itself formed a round vault
within, crusted over with marble, and lighted with silver lamps. The
true Cross was kept in the church, but the nails she brought home as the
most precious gift she could carry to her son. She also beautified and
made into a church the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, and she built
another church on Mount Carmel in memory of Elijah.
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