reference to the siege, to have stood in the holy place, because both Jerusalem and the surrounding district were esteemed holy-and it was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, in the ninth and eleventh chapters of his writings. The armies of this abomination of desolation encompassed Jerusalem, and they actually cast a trench around that devoted and miserable city. They surrounded the whole place with a wall, which although thirty-nine furlongs in length, was, by the indefatigable exertions of the whole Roman army, completed within the space of three days. Then all hope of escape from the city was destroyed, no supplies of provisions could be furnished to its wretched inhabitants, and unparalleled distress and misery ensued.

CHRIST SAID, "Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no nor ever shall be." Matt. xxiv. 21. "But woe unto them that are with child, and to them which give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people; such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created, unto this time, no nor ever shall be. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations." Luke xxi. 23, 24.

THE FULFILMENT. It will be sufficient to refer the reader to the narrative which is given in the preceding pages, to show how awfully this prediction was fulfilled. In the anticipation of these unrivalled calamities, our blessed Lord himself wept; and no one possessed of the common feelings of humanity, can peruse their melancholy history without tears. The famine, the contentions, the massacres within the city -the torments inflicted upon them who attempted to escape without-the horrors of the final storm, and of the conflagration of the city and temple, altogether render the siege of Jerusalem the most disastrous in its progress, and the most dreadful in its consummation, of any similar event recorded in the annals of the world. "If the misfortunes," exclaims Josephus, "of all from the beginning of the world, were compared with those of the Jews, they would appear much inferior upon the comparison...... To speak in

brief, no other city ever suffered such things, as no other generation from the beginning of the world was ever more fruitful of wickedness.' Terribly indeed was the imprecation of the miserable murderers of Jesus fulfilled, when they cried, "His blood be upon us, and upon children!"

To the details which have been given in this work of the siege of Jerusalem, may be added the description of the deeds of the Romans when the city was finally taken. "Rushing into every lane, they slew whomsoever they found without distinction, and burnt the houses and all the people who fled into them. And when they entered for the sake of plunder, they found whole families of dead persons, and houses full of carcasses destroyed by famine; then they came out with their hands empty. And though they thus pitied the dead, they did not feel the same emotion for the living, but killed all they met, whereby they filled the lanes with dead bodies. The whole city ran with blood, insomuch that many things which were burning were extinguished with blood." Is it possible that any prophecies could be more exactly fulfilled, than the predictions of Christ relative to the siege of Jerusalem ?

CHRIST SAID, "Then if any man shall say unto you, lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." Matt. xxiv. 23, 24.

THE FULFILMENT.-This prediction is not to be confounded with that which our Lord had already imparted upon the same subject, but relates to the false prophets who appeared during the actual progress of the siege. In fact, up to the very fall of Jerusalem, impostors were suborned by the tyrants who presided in the city, to encourage the people by delusive promises of miraculous deliverance, and to prevent the soldiers from deserting to the enemy.

In

this manner wicked men, abusing the sacred name of God, deluded the unhappy multitude, who like infatuated men, who have neither eyes to see, nor reason to judge, regarded neither the infallible denuncia

tions pronounced by the ancient prophets, nor the clear prodigies which indicated the approaching dissolution.' The reader is here particularly referred to the incident mentioned in page 424 of the preceding history.

CHRIST SAID of Jerusalem, they " shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” Luke xix. 44.

THE FULFILMENT.-So literally was this prophecy accomplished, that Eleazer one of the principal Jews exclaimed to his countrymen who were besieged in the fortress of Massada, "What is become of our city which we believed to be inhabited by God? It is now demolished to its very foundations; and the only monument of it that is left is the camp of those who destroyed it, which is still pitched upon its remains. Some unhappy old men sit over the ashes of the temple, and some women reserved for the basest of injuries." Terentius Rufus, an officer in the army of Titus, to show how utterly the destruction of the city had been achieved, tore up the foundations of the temple with a ploughshare. Thus he unconsciously fulfilled the prophecy of Micah, "Therefore shall Zion be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places in the forest." Titus himself, when he considered the prodigious strength of the walls, of the towers, and of the temple, and surveyed the utter desolation and destruction of the whole, confessed that an agency superior to that of man had effected the demolition of the city. "We have fought," he said, "with God on our side, and it is God who hath pulled the Jews out of their strong-holds."

CHRIST SAID, "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles he fulfilled." Luke xxi. 24.

THE FULFILMENT.-This prophecy not only means, that until the period here pointed out Jerusalem should be in the possession of the Gentiles, but that by the Gentiles it should be oppressed and despised. And

how remarkably has this prediction been accomplished! After the destruction of the city, the emperor Vespasian ordered all the lands of the Jews to be sold for his own use, and commanded each man to pay the same sum to the Capitol at Rome, which he had before paid to the temple. Forty-seven years after its destruction, the emperor Elius Adrian, who visited the site of Jerusalem, founded there a Roman colony, though not exactly on the same spot, called it Ælia after himself, and dedicated a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus in the place which had formerly been consecrated to the worship of God. The Jews were so incensed by this profanation, that they broke into open rebellion under the celebrated Barchochebas (see p. 431.) and made themselves masters of the new city which they consumed. It was afterwards rebuilt by the Romans, the statue of a hog was placed over the gate which led to Bethlehem, and by an imperial edict every Jew was forbidden to enter, or even to behold, the city. When Constantine the Great became the first Christian emperor of Rome, he enlarged and beautified Jerusalem with many stately edifices and churches, and restored its ancient name. When the Jews attempted to gain possession of it, the emperor opposed them with his troops, cut off the ears of the assailants, branded their bodies as rebels, and dispersed them over his dominions as so many fugitives and slaves. The laws of Constantine, as well as those of his son and successor Constantius, were very severe against the Jews. The attempt of Julian the apostate to rebuild the temple, and its miraculous frustration have already been narrated, (p. 435.) Jovian who followed Julian upon the throne, and his successors, revived the edict of Adrian, guards were posted to prevent the Jews from approaching Jerusalem, and that wretched people were accustomed to bribe the soldiers, that, especially on the anniversary of the day when it was taken by the Romans, they might contemplate and mourn over the ruins of the temple. Chosroes the king of Persia, took and plundered Jerusalem in the reign of Heraclius, the greatest cruelties were inflicted upon its inhabitants, and ninety thousand Christians were sold or sacrificed to the malice of the Jews. But the emperor soon recovered it, and the Jews were forbidden to approach within

Four hundred

three miles of the city. Very shortly after this event, Jerusalem was taken by the Saracens under A. D. 637. their caliph Omar, who built a mosque on the site of the temple of Solomon. years afterwards, the Seljukian Turks drove out the Saracens, and retained possession of the city until they were expelled by the Crusaders. But the A. D. 1099. reign of the Christians in Palestine was short; not a hundred years had elapsed when the famous Salah-ed-din restored the dominion of the Mohammedans. Jerusalem was afterwards for a time in the possession of the Mamelucs, but in the A. D. 1516. beginning of the sixteenth century, it was taken by the Ottoman Turks, under whose authority it has ever since remained.

The following description of the present state of the Jews in Jerusalem, by a celebrated living French traveller, is eloquent, and his conclusion is both striking and correct. While the new or modern Jerusalem is seen shining in the midst of the desert, you may observe between Mount Sion and the temple another spectacle of almost equal interest. It is that of the remnant of another people, distinct from the rest of the inhabitants, a people individually the objects of universal contempt, who suffer the most wanton outrages without a murmur, who endure wounds and blows without a sigh, who, when the sacrifice of their life is demanded, unhesitatingly stretch forth their neck to the sabre. If a member of the community thus cruelly proscribed and abused, happen to die, his companions bury him clandestinely during the night in the valley of Jehoshaphat, within the purlieus of the temple of Solomon. Enter their habitations, and you find them in the most squalid misery, occupied for the most part in reading a mysterious book to their children, with whom again it becomes a manual for the instruction of succeeding generations. What these wretched outlaws from the justice and compassion of mankind, did in the first ages, they do still. Six times they have witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, and are not yet discouraged. Nothing can operate to divert their looks from Sion. We are surprised no doubt when we observe the Jews scattered over the face of the earth, but to experience an astonishment more lively, we have