inconceivable labour, but also an immense loss of life. The prediction that such a work would be undertaken and carried to completion was one not at all likely to be fulfilled. Josephus informs us that when the Romans had made several unsuccessful assaults upon the city, and had suffered considerable loss, Titus held a consultation with his generals. "Those that were of the warmest tempers thought he should bring the whole army against the city, and storm the walls." "But of those that were for a more cautious management, some were for raising their banks (platforms for their battering-rams) again. Others advised to let the banks alone, but to lie still before the city, to guard against the coming out of the Jews, and against their carrying provisions into the city, and so to leave the enemy to the famine. . . . However, Titus did not think it fit for so great an army to lie entirely idle." He also showed them "how impracticable it was to cast up any more banks, for want of materials, and to guard against the Jews coming out still more impracticable; as also to encompass the whole city round with his army was not very easy, by reason of its magnitude and the difficulty of the situation, and on other accounts dangerous from the sallies which the Jews might make out of the city. For although they might guard the known passes out of the place, yet would the Jews, when they found themselves under the greatest distress, contrive secret passages out, as being well acquainted with all such places; and if any provisions were carried in by stealth, the siege

would thereby be longer delayed. He also owned that he was afraid that the length of time thus to be spent would diminish the glory of his success. Therefore his opinion was that, if they aimed at quickness, joined with security, they must build a wall round about the whole city, which was, he thought, the only way to prevent the Jews from coming out, and that then they would either entirely despair of saving the city, and so surrender it up to him, or be still more easily conquered when the famine had further weakened them. . . . But if any one should think such a work to be too great, and not to be finished without much difficulty, he ought to consider that it is not fit for Romans to undertake any small work, and that none but God Himself could with ease accomplish any great thing whatever. . . . So Titus gave order that the army should be distributed to their several shares of the work; and indeed there now came upon the soldiers a certain divine fury, so that they did not only part (divide) the whole wall that was to be built among them, nor did only one legion strive with another, but the lesser divisions of the army did the same, insomuch that each soldier was ambitious to please his officer. . . . Now the length of the wall was forty furlongs, one only abated;" that is, about five miles. Connected with this wall "were thirteen places to keep garrisons in, and whose circumference put together amounted to ten furlongs;" that is, about one mile and a half,— making the length of this whole structure about six and one half miles. Josephus further tells us that this entire wall, with its ten

towers, or places for garrisons, was completed in the short space of three days!

The word translated "trench" means a military palisade, or rampart, made from the earth thrown out of the ditch, and stuck with sharp stakes. The time spent is not incredible when we remember that it was not a stone wall, but an earthen structure, and that Titus employed the whole army of sixty thousand men. We learn from Nehemiah vi. 15 that the stone wall, then built in troublous times, was completed in fifty-two days. By means of the wall thus constructed, the city could be easily guarded by a small force, for what were sixty thousand Roman soldiers against the immense masses of the Jews! It was so completely closed in on every side that no persons could escape out of it, and no provisions could be brought into it. The boldness of this project, and the suddenness with which it was executed, are very remarkable. It was done in three days, when, Josephus says, " many were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army." "This vast multitude," he adds, "was indeed. collected out of remote places, but the entire nation. was now shut up by fate as in a prison, and the Roman army encompassed the city when it was crowded with inhabitants, who by the law were required thrice a year to come to Jerusalem." By "entire nation " he means the males. There is one fact connected with which is worthy of particular notice.

this transaction From the days

of Moses, through all the wars in which the Jews were engaged, for a period of more than fifteen hundred years, no nation ever came to attack them at any of their religious festivals. The days of their solemn convocations were days of peace; for “when a man's ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." Through all these centuries the promise of the Lord was made sure: "Neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year." But when this nation, which God had chosen for Himself, to whom He gave the keeping of His law and the revelations of His will; this nation, for which He had wrought such wonders and deliverances, and over whom the shield of His protection had been spread, apostatised and rejected Jesus, the true Messiah, and declared to be the Son of God by miracles on earth and answering voices from heaven, then the protective power of every promise is withheld, then all restraints are taken off, and then the harpy nation rushes upon them, and at the very time of their solemnities are erecting a strong wall, and shuts them up to miseries unparalleled, and to deaths the most fearful.

What awful preparation is here for the fulfilment of the remaining predictions, loaded as they are with vengeance and terror! The abomination of desolation is now firmly planted on holy ground. The Roman standards wave insultingly to the breeze. Their wall throws its arm around the doomed city,

1 Exod. xxxiv. 24.

and shuts in her crowded people to famine and pestilence, to fire and sword. This is the predicted day of vengeance, when all the fearful things which God hath written concerning this nation must be fulfilled in agony and blood; "for these be the days of vengeance, for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon the people."