soldiers, and 6,000 unarmed people, with women and children, were destroyed in it, who had been led up to the Temple shortly before by a false prophet, confident that a great deliverer was at hand. But the actual destruction of the Temple-not one stone left upon another-was a death-blow; the spirit of the wildest was now effectually broken. The upper city (the stronghold of Zion) still, indeed, resisted. There Simon had been joined by his rival John. Some time was necessarily lost before the Romans could raise their works against the steep bank of the valley of the Tyropæon. When they did commence the assault, they found that the defenders had lost their wonted courage; when, on the 7th of September, the Romans burst, with shouts of triumph, into the last stronghold of their enemies, they found little but silent streets, and houses full of dead bodies; while John and Simon long baffled all search, being concealed amidst the ruins and in the subterranean passages.

"Thus Jerusalem was utterly cast down. A portion of the western wall and three great towers (p. 144) were left standing, to shelter the Roman soldiers; but all the city, Zion, Akra, and the Temple, was left in a mass of scarcely distinguishable ruins.

The fearful catalogue which Josephus has preserved of those who lost their lives in the siege and the massacres which had preceded it in this war, tells us that they exceeded 1,300,000. And even if this be supposed to be an exaggeration, no one can read the account of the horrors of the war, and especially of its last struggle, without seeing that it well called for that terrific imagery with which its approach had been announced in our Lord's prophecy."

The Bible events and allusions in connection with Jerusalem are so numerous, that it is impossible in the

limited space of a Handbook to enumerate them. "The name Jerusalem is used eight hundred and eighteen times in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments" (Osborn). Moreover, most of the principal events are still associated by tradition with certain spots pointed out to the traveller, and they will be referred to in the descriptions of those places. No one reading the brief summary of the history of Jerusalem, or the pathetic details of its fall, can help recalling some of those touching voices of prophecy which, like a long wail through the ages, have mourned for Zion. This is the burden of the Old Testament:

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"How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks She dwelleth among

.

the heathen, she findeth no rest
daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed.

and from the

Zion spreadeth forth her hands and there is none to comfort her" (Lam. i. 1, 3, 6).

And this, more pathetic still, is the burden of the New Testament:

"O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate."

Situation of Jerusalem.-David describes it thus: "Jerusalem is builded as a city that is compact together.

Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces" (Ps. cxxii., cxxv.) And of Zion he says: "Walk about Zion and go round about her; tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces;

that ye may tell it to the generations following" (Ps. xlviii. 12). Solomon can find no metaphor stronger than, "Comely as Jerusalem" (Sol. Song. vi. 4).

MODERN JERUSALEM.

Most travellers have a feeling of disappointment on first seeing Jerusalem, its magnitude is so much less than the imagination had pictured. Associated as it is with the grandest and most sacred events of history, it is difficult to feel that this little town, around whose walls you may walk in an hour, is the Holy City. And, indeed, it is not; for the city whose streets Jesus trod was vastly larger. Then Zion, a large part of which is now a ploughed field, was covered with palaces; and on every side, where now the husbandman pursues his toil, or desolation reigns, were magnificent structures befitting a great capital.

One is surprised, also to find how little remains of the ancient city. The present walls were built in the sixteenth century—only a few courses of stone in them belonged to the ancient walls. Its buildings are all new, except that here and there a foundation course indicates the ancient period. The ancient rock crops out in the Temple area, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and on the brow of Mount Zion. But the gorgeous City of Solomon lies buried under the débris of sixteen sieges and captures of Jerusalem. You must dig from thirty to a hundred feet to find it. Jerusalem that was, on heaps," ," "wasted and without inhabitant." Excavations have shown that the foundations of the ancient walls are, in some places, 130 feet below the surface. In digging for the foundation of new buildings, the workmen sometimes dig through a series of buildings, one above another, showing that one city has literally been built upon the ruins

is

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of another; and the present city is standing upon the accumulated ruins of several preceding ones (p. 114).

All this throws great doubt on many of the sacred places of Jerusalem; the real localities lie buried far beneath the surface of the present city. But the natural features of the country remain substantially unchanged. "The mountains round about Jerusalem," which were of old her bulwarks, are still there. Here are Olivet and the brook Kidron; and the city still crowns Zion and Moriah. Kings and prophets and holy men looked on these scenes, and the feet of the Son of God trod the very ground on which we here walk. Somewhere in the buried city under our feet He did bear his cross; and these hills we tread trembled by the earthquake's power when He expired.

Jerusalem stands on four hills, once separated by deep valleys, which are now partially filled by the débris of successive destructions of the city. Zion, the most celebrated of these, is on the south-west, rising on its southern declivity 300 feet above the valley of Hinnom, and on the southeast 500 feet above the Kidron. The Tyropæon sweeps around its northern and eastern bases, separating it from Akra and Moriah. Zion was the old citadel of the Jebusites, and "the city of David." Mount Moriah is on the southeast, separated from Zion by the Tyropæon, and from Olivet by the deep gorge of the Kidron. This is much lower than Zion. It was the site of the ancient Temple, and is now crowned by the Mosque of Omar. On the north-east is Mount Bezetha, a hill higher than Moriah, which was enclosed within the walls, after the time of Christ, by Herod Agrippa. Mount Akra, the highest point of the city, is on the north-west. It is separated from Zion by the Tyropæon, and from Bezetha by a broad valley running northward into the Tyropæon, as it sweeps around the foot of Zion southward. It

will be seen,therefore, that the city slopes down from the northwest to the south-east; and standing on the north-west angle of the wall, you are at the highest point, and see Moriah far below on the south-east, with the Tyropæon on the west of it, running down between it and Zion to the junction of the Kidron with Hinnom. The wall of the city is irregular, conformed to the hills over which it passes, but substantially "the city lieth foursquare." A walk around the outside of the wall commands a view of all the exterior objects of interest (p. 163).

EXCAVATIONS IN JERUSALEM.

The difficulties connected with exploration in Jerusalem are enormous, and it is impossible to sufficiently praise *the unparalleled labours of Captains Wilson and Warren, Lieutenant Condor, and others, through whose undaunted courage and untiring effort so many important discoveries have been brought to light. See "Palestine Exploration Fund" (p. 56).

The accumulation of the rubbish of ages has had to be dug through, so that in one part-the north-east wall of the Temple-the débris was 125 feet in depth. It must be remembered that the Jerusalem of to-day is built upon a heap of buried cities. "One city literally lies heaped upon another. For Jerusalem stood no fewer than twenty-seven sieges from Jebusites and Israelites, Egyptians and Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, Mahomedans and Christians. The last, and twenty-seventh, siege took place in 1244 at the hands of the wild Karezmian hordes, who plundered the city and slaughtered the priests and monks. The explorers have thus to do not with one city, but with many. The Jerusalem of our day may be considered the eighth, for even before the time of David there was a city there.