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the voice of prayer and praise, now reverberated with the vociferations of an enraged soldiery, and with the clang of mortal fight. Its fate was soon decided.

SECTION IV.

THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.

HOW did the Romans assault the temple?

TITUS determined that the temple should immediately be assaulted. From every hundred men in the army, thirty were selected; of this number, every thousand was commanded by a military tribune; Cerealis commanded the whole, and Titus stationed himself upon one of the highest parts of fort Antonia, that he might contemplate the conduct of his men, punish the cowardly, and reward the brave. The attack was made in the darkness of night, and the Romans found that the Jews were fully prepared. The utmost confusion at first prevailed, and many of the Jews fell by the swords of their countrymen. But when, by the light of the morning, the combatants were enabled to distinguish each other, they engaged with equal animosity, with equal valour, and with equal success; after a battle of eight hours' duration, the Romans retreated to Antonia, and they were not pursued by the Jews. Titus now ordered his engines to be brought forward, and a level way was made through the fortress of Antonia, that they might be brought near enough to operate with success. The Jews sternly resisted the approaches of the Romans, they made a desperate sally on the guards who were posted near the Mount of Olives, they set fire to the galleries which communicated with the temple and the fortress of Antonia, and when the Romans two days afterwards attempted to completely consume the same portico, the Jews arrested the progress of the flames and prevented the design of the besiegers, by pulling down that part of the building which was im mediately connected with their position. The Jews soon afterwards formed a stratagem which was fol

lowed with complete success. They filled the whole upper part of the western gallery, between the roof and the rafters, with the most fiercely inflammable com bustibles, and then contending with the Romans they retreated in apparent confusion; some of the assailants, more suspicious or more cautious than the rest, held back, but a considerable number eagerly pursued the pretended fugitives, and ascended the fatal roof; the torch was applied; the flames ascended; the conflagration could only be escaped by leaping down the precipices or falling among the exulting Jews; many of the Romans were burnt to death, others were slain, others killed themselves, and others were dashed in pieces upon the rocks. Josephus says, that on this occasion Artorius, a soldier, called to one of his companions below, and offered to make him his heir if he would consent to catch him in his arms, the man acquiesced, Artorius threw himself down, the soldier was killed, but Artorius was uninjured by the fall.

Give an instance of the horrible effects of the famine in the city.

66

The famine in the city had now become so aggravated, that all the dearest relations which bind human beings together were dissolved, and the tenderest affections were blasted. The husband forgot the wife of his bosom, the father his children, the sister her brother, the son his parent, and the mother her babe. Blessed," said the Son of God in his description of the miseries connected with the fall of Jerusalem, 66 are the barren, and the wombs that never bare." The following individual fact will not only demonstrate the accomplishment of this prediction, but will far more impressively evince, than any general description, the unparalleled wretchedness to which the inhabitants of Jerusalem were reduced. A woman whose name was Mary, of respectable birth and of considerable wealth, came from the district beyond Jordan to Jerusalem. The Zealots were aware of her wealth, and by their ruthless violence she was soon plundered of the whole. She had concealed her jewels to obtain supplies of food, but this was often torn from her grasp by the robbers. On the verge of utter starvation, in the last stage of emaciation and decay, she looked upon her

infant at her bosom unable to obtain its usual aliment from her exhausted frame. Hunger, rage, indignation, and despair, obliterated every emotion of maternal tenderness; "Wretched child of my womb!" she cried, "for whom have I reserved thee in these miserable times of war, tyranny, and famine? since thou must perish, thou shalt serve to prolong thy mother's life." She took the helpless babe, killed it, divided it, roasted part of it, and ate of it, reserving the rest for another opportunity. Some of the armed followers of the tyrants, passing along the neighbouring streets, soon recognized the smell of the cooking, burst into the apartment, and commanded her with dreadful menaces instantly to supply their craving hunger. She "It produced the fragments of her unnatural repast. is my own child," she said, "I have been eating of it, are you more dainty than a woman, or more affectionate than a mother? or if you are too religious for such a repast, I have eaten part, leave me the rest." The horror-struck soldiers retired in dismay, the intelligence rapidly spread, it reached the camp of the Romans, who with all their pity for such a case of individual distress, detested a people among which such a crime was committed. Titus declared, that he would never allow the operations of the siege to terminate, until he had buried the remembrance of that most execrable deed beneath the ruins of the city in which it was committed."

Relate the continued operations of Titus against the temple.

Having obtained possession of the outer court of the temple, by the partial destruction of the galleries and cloisters, Titus now assailed the inner court, containing the temple itself. But all the force of the battering-rams, all attempts to sap the foundations, were frustrated by the amazingly solid masonry of the building; and a vigorous assault by escalade was successfully opposed with signal and desperate valour by the Jews. The temple therefore could not be saved, and the great gates were set on fire; the flames rapidly communicated to the adjoining piazzas or cloisters; the sight of the dreadful conflagration completely paralized the Jews; they regarded the progress of the fire with

silent consternation, and made no attempt to rescue their matchless edifice from inevitable ruin. The whole building would certainly have been consumed, had not Titus commanded his men to extinguish the flames, and clear a commodious way through the ruins for the advance of the soldiers. A council was then held to decide upon the fate of this illustrious temple. Some of the officers were for its utter destruction; others were for sparing it on condition of the submission of the Jews, otherwise they recommended its annihilation. Titus however declared, that it would be an act both of impolicy and baseness to ruin a temple of such matchless magnificence and beauty; that if it could be preserved, it would remain for ages one of the fairest ornaments of the empire. The opinion of the prince was embraced by the whole council, and it was resolved that the temple should be saved. But the determinations of man cannot prevail against the will of God; Christ had declared that the edifice which had once witnessed his miracles of mercy, should be swept away from the face of the earth; the design of its erection was accomplished; the divine presence was withdrawn from its walls; and its very foundations were for ever to be eradicated.

How was the temple of Jerusalem destroyed?

It was a remarkable coincidence, that the very next day was the anniversary of the destruction of the temple of Solomon by Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babyion. The Jews had made a sally upon the Roman soldiers stationed in the inner court, and so frantic was their rage, that it required the interposition of Titus himself to drive them back again into the body of the temple. When he had retired to rest himself after the fatigue of the battle, some of the Jews again rushed upon the troops who were employed in completely extinguishing the flames, which were yet burning in the cloisters. The Jews were repulsed and the Romans pursued them to the very gates of the temple. In this moment of bloodshed and confusion, a common soldier, without orders, and as Josephus justly observed, by an inspiration from above, took a flaming torch, clambered upon the shoulders of one of his comrades, and hurled it through a window into one of the

chambers adjoining the sanctuary on the north side of the edifice. The effect was instantaneous, the flames burst out with irresistible fury; the legionaries, instead of quenching, did all in their power to accelerate the progress of the flames; the voice of Titus could not be heard in the midst of the confusion; the Romans with insatiable fury put to the sword the armed and unarmed, the citizens and the soldiers without distinction; the carnage was immense, the flaming edifice was filled with the bodies of the slain, and the Holy of Holies and the altar of God were covered with blood. When Titus found that all his efforts for the preservation of the building were fruitless, and that its destruction was inevitable, he entered the temple with some of his generals; the wonderful magnificence and riches of the sanctuary, filled him with amazement; and as the flames had not yet reached that part of the structure, he again attempted to save so noble an edifice-to form the monument of his victory for the admiration of posterity. But the soldiers were insensible to the voice of command; the rich booty which they found in the external apartments excited the most exaggerated expectations of the inestimable plunder in the sanctuary; one of them pushed a torch within the doors; the whole building became a sheet of fire; Titus was compelled to leave it to its fate; the bright glare of the conflagration lighted up the surrounding hills with its ominous and appalling splendour; the shrieks and groans of the despairing Jews mingled with the shouts and acclamations of the Romans; one part of the building fell in after another, until the whole became a black and smouldering mass of shapeless ruins; the national worship of the Jews ceased; and it was proved that the dispensation which God instituted, which Moses proclaimed, which a long line of prophets advocated, which the adorable Redeemer completed, was

no more.

How long was the destruction of the temple from its foundation?

The temple was burnt six hundred and thirty years after its erection, and eleven hundred and thirty after the foundation of the edifice of Solomon.

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