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will I dwell, for I have desired it."

"Behold, I

have graven thee upon the palms of my hands, thy walls are continually before me."

If we would escape a worse destruction than that which befel the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and flee from the wrath to come, let us seek to Christ the Saviour of sinners, that he may be our refuge in that day when not only the cities of the earth shall be consumed, but the elements themselves shall melt with fervent heat, and the heavens and the earth pass away. Let us, by prayer and supplication, seek of God those graces of the Spirit, which shall make us meet to become inhabitants of that New Jerusalem which cometh down out of heaven, whose walls are salvation, and her gates praise.

CHAP. XIII.

"Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations ?"

HAVING brought the account of the siege of the devoted city to a conclusion, we intend not to fol. low the triumph of Cæsar, or describe the pompous manner in which, from a tribunal planted amid the ashes of Jerusalem, he distributed rewards, and conferred honours on his legions. Neither do we mean to accompany him to Cesarea, where he celebrated the birth-days of his imperial father and brother; and to enrich the magnificent spectacle, gave two thousand five hundred captive Jews to be slain, burned, and torn in pieces by wild beasts, and gladiators. Such splendid sports became a heathen conqueror, the executioner of the vengeance of Jehovah, but

are utterly abominable in the view of any who know that God hath made of one blood all the dwellers upon earth; or who have received, with any measure of faith and love, that heavenly precept, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." Neither would we trace the steps of the imperial victor to the capitol, or seek to engage the admiration of our reader for him, by presenting him clothed in purple, and crowned with laurel,-greeted by the acclamations of an unarmed and vain-glorious soldiery,—decked in silken vestures, and wreathed with garlands of flowers, offering vain oblations to the gods of the Gate of Pomp-"Gods of silver and of gold, the work of men's hands." Neither would we enumerate the sacred spoils that graced the triumph: Such pageants, on such occasions, are like insult added to sorrow; and perhaps of all the pangs that wrung the heart of the wretched Jew, beholding the golden table, and the golden candlestick-the lamps of the temple, and the book of the law, carried in such a procession-brought into his bosom its last, most exquisite, and most unutterable agony !

But as the whole circumstances of the history already detailed, are of a nature so painfully dishonourable to the Jewish nation, and as we would rather wish to leave upon the mind of the reader an affectionate feeling of sympathy and tenderness for the posterity of Abraham, and the descendants of the patriarchs; we propose, in a rapid and brief sketch, to exhibit such particulars of the sufferings of this devoted people, since their exile from their holy city, as may well excite emotions of pity and compassion even in the hardest heart.

While we are aware that the destruction of Jerusalem and the misery of the Jews, their dis persion and degradation, were foretold by the prophets, and have since been accomplished in their experience, so also their return to God, their future usefulness in the church, and their future glory, are no less distinctly predicted, and will as assuredly be fulfilled. Let us then strain every effort to bring about, by the use of all legitimate means, this merciful purpose of our common Father; and by our prayers, influence, wealth, or talents, endeavour to become far more honoured as the instruments of their restoration,

than the imperial Titus, in all his pride of pagan glory, was as their destroyer.

When the Roman had at last sheathed his glittering but blood-stained sword, he commanded the whole city to be razed to its foundations, preserving only the towers built by Herod the Great, as a memorial at once of the magnificence of his conquest, and the strength which had been opposed to him. The walls of the temple were

also demolished for the sake of the treasures which were buried under their ruins, and Zion was at length literally ploughed as a field, by order of Terentius Rufus; and, in the words of the prophet, "Jerusalem became as heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." "For," says Gibbon, "after the final destruction of the temple by Titus and Hadrian, a ploughshare was drawn over the consecrated ground, as a sign of perpetual interdiction. was deserted, and the vacant space of the lower city was filled with the public and private edifices of the Ælian colony, which spread themselves over the adjacent hill of Calvary.”*

Sion

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. IV. p. 150.

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