and aqueducts. Last of all, it is related by the Jewish Talmud and Maimonides, that a captain of the army of Titus, Terentius Rufus, "did with a ploughshare tear up the foundations of the temple."* "A ploughshare," says Gibbon, "was drawn over the consecrated ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction." Thus literally fulfilling that prophecy of Micah, "Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest."+ How forcibly is the perfect fulfilment of the Saviour's prediction illustrated in the speech of Eleazer to a remnant of Jews in the city of Masada: "Where is now that great city, fortified by so many walls and fortresses and towers, which could hardly contain the instruments prepared for the war, and had so many ten thousands of men to defend it? Demolished to the very foundations, and hath nothing left but the camp of the destroyers among its ruins; some unfortunate old men also lie upon the ashes of the temple, and a few women are there preserved alive by the enemy for our bitter shame and reproach."+

12. But the prophecy of our Lord did not end with the destruction of the city and of the civil and ecclesiastical polity of the Jews. His omniscient eye followed the unhappy race in their subsequent dispersions and afflictions. "They shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations." How many fell by the edge of the sword, Whitby on Matt. 24 : 2. + Wars, b. 7, ch. 8, sec. 7.

*

† Micah 3:12.

Luke 21:24.

Blood

in fulfilment of these words, I need not state.
flowed through the streets of Jerusalem like a river.
But many who escaped the sword were led away
captive into various parts of the earth. Before the
city was taken, it is related that an "immense num-
ber" of deserters, having fallen into the hands of the
besiegers, were sold, "with their wives and children."*
Besides ninety-seven thousand, who went into slavery
from Jerusalem alone, there were sent from Tarichea
to Nero six thousand choice young men, while thirty
thousand, from the same place, were sold. Similar
convoys of slaves were marched from many other
desolated towns. Of the captives from Jerusalem,
the tall and handsome were carried to Rome to grace
the triumphal entry of Titus. Of the remainder,
many were sent as slaves to the public works in
Egypt; but the greater number were distributed
through the Roman provinces, literally "into all na-
tions," to be slain by gladiators, or exposed to wild
beasts in the shows of the amphitheatre. From that
time to the present, the history of all the nations of
Europe, Asia, and Africa is filled with testimonies to
the prophetic spirit of Him who, when Jerusalem was
in peace and strength, predicted the approaching and
yet existing calamities of her sons. In what country
of the world, as then known, have they not been per-
secuted and enslaved?

But in addition to the captivity of the people, $15 "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." It is

* Wars, b. 6, ch. 8, sec. 2.

well ascertained, by corresponding passages of the Bible, that by this expression, the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled, was intended the universal ingathering of the nations to the faith of Christ. This has not yet arrived. Jerusalem is therefore still trodden down of the Gentiles, just as she has ever been since the ploughshare of the Roman desolation was first driven over the ruins of her temple. The hand of Providence, in the uninterrupted fulfilment of this prediction down to the present time, is wonderfully manifest. Two things are specially to be noted in the prophecy first, that the Jews were never to be reëstablished in Jerusalem; and secondly, that it was not only to be in possession of, but to be "trodden down of the Gentiles," until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled. That the Jews have never been reëstablished in Jerusalem since its destruction, has not been owing to any want of desperate effort on their part, nor because the power of the Gentiles has not been vigorously employed in their behalf. In about sixty-four years after their almost total expulsion from Judea, under the conquest of Titus, Jerusalem was partially rebuilt by the emperor Adrian. A Roman colony was settled there, and all Jews were forbidden, on pain of death, to enter therein, or even to look at the city from a distance. Soon after this the Jews revolted with great fury, and made a powerful effort to recover their city from the heathen. They were not subdued again without great loss to the Romans, and immense slaughter among themselves.

In the reign of Constantine the Great their effort was repeated, and terminated as before in perfect defeat, with increased massacre and oppression. But in the person of the nephew of Constantine, their zeal for the rebuilding of their temple was associated with the determination of the emperor Julian to overthrow Christianity; and between the power of a Roman sovereign with a victorious army at his feet and the exulting enthusiasm of the whole remnant of the Jewish people, a union was formed for the single object of rearing up the temple with its ancient ritual and of planting around it a numerous colony of Jews, which, to all human judgment, bore the assurance of complete success. The grand object of Julian was to convert "the success of his undertaking into a specious argument against the faith of prophecy, and the truth of revelation."* A decree was issued to his friend Alypius, that the temple of Jerusalem should be restored in its pristine beauty. To the energies of Alypius was joined the support of the governor of Palestine. At the call of the emperor, the Jews from all the provinces of the empire assembled in triumphant exultation on the hills of Zion. Their wealth, strength, time, even their most delicate females, were devoted with the utmost enthusiasm to the preparation of the ground, covered then with rubbish and ruins. But was the temple rebuilt? The foundations were not entirely laid. Why? Was force deficient; or zeal, or wealth, or perseverance, when Roman power and Jewish desperation were

associated? Nothing was lacking. "Yet," says Gibbon, "the joint efforts of power and enthusiasm were unsuccessful, and the ground of the Jewish temple still continued to exhibit the same edifying spectacle of ruin and desolation." There was an unseen hand, which neither Jews nor emperors could overcome. The simple account of the defeat of this threatening enterprise of infidelity is thus given by a heathen historian of the day, a soldier in the service, and a philosopher in the principles of Julian. "While Alypius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged with vigor and diligence the execution of the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the foundation, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place from time to time inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing in this manner obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the undertaking was abandoned."*"Such authority should satisfy a believing, and must astonish an incredulous mind," acknowledges even the sceptical Gibbon. He cannot but own that "an earthquake, a whirlwind, and a fiery eruption, which overturned and scattered the new foundations of the temple, are attested with some variations, by contemporary and respectable evidence." One writer, who published an account of this wonderful catastrophe in the very year of its occurrence, boldly declared, says Gibbon, that its preternatural character was not disputed, even by the infidels of the day. Another speaks of + Gibbon, vol. 3. ch. 23.

* Ammianus Marcellinus.