overpowered the tenderest and finest affections in nature, that a woman, descended from a rich and respectable family, even killed, boiled, and ate, her own child, a son in all the artless and endearing simplicity of infancy! Well may the British mother tremble at the horrid sound, and pity the wretched Israelitish female, thus sunk below the brute. Pestilence now stalked abroad, for the air was tainted by the dead though no less than six hundred thousand dead bodies were carried out of the city during the time Titus encamped before the walls, yet there was an incredible number who had no friends to bury them, and their bodies were enclosed in large buildings, or laid in heaps in the open air. "O Jerusalem, thou didst drink at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out" even desolation, destruction, famine and sword, "thy houses rifled, thy women ravished" by Jewish ruffians, and the city at length taken by the Roman general. Titus had again and again offered the Jews honourable terms of capitulation; but they rejected all his overtures with proud disdain, and when his soldiers took the city, exasperated at the hardships they had endured, they spared neither sex, age, or rank. Sword and fire destroyed

Jerusalem and her children, and closed this horrid war, in which one million one hundred thousand Jews were slain, and ninety-seven thousand made prisoners.

CHAPTER LXVII.

The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young.-Deut. xxviii. 49, 50.

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.Luke xix. 41-44.

JUDEA was not conquered by the neighbouring Asiatic states, but by the Roman, Europeans of a "fierce and warlike countenance," who knew not the Jewish language, and regarded not "the persons of the old, nor showed favour to the young." It will not be difficult to trace the Roman soldiers in this

eloquently descriptive character. No nation excelled them in their military prowess, or in the rapidity of their conquests. In comparatively a very short period of time, they extended their empire over all the then civilised part of the globe. The insignia of their legions was not more descriptive of their valour, than of the unexampled rapidity of their movements. The celebrated motto of Cæsar, "I came, I saw, I conquered," was neither of a doubtful, or boasting, character. Their career was indeed 66 as swift as the eagle flieth." No nation or people did long withstand the fierceness of their attacks, or the persevering energy of their generals. In their triumphs over their enemies, they frequently displayed a ferocity happily unknown in modern warfare. The most distinguished of their captives, without regard to age or sex, were dragged in triumph, amidst the shouts of the conquerors, and the insults of the rabble. Often, when exasperated by the protracted defence of a brave people struggling for their existence, instead of respecting such patriotic efforts, they inflicted the most horrid barbarities upon the unresisting and unhappy objects of their vengeance; and a slaughter, indiscriminating in its fury, and dreadful in its results, marked the blood-stained progress of the licentious

M

soldiery, who "regarded not the person of the old, nor showed favour to the young." History informs us, that the Romans, under Titus and Vespasian, after a protracted siege, unparalleled in horror, and sanguinary beyond example, at length became masters of this once-favoured spot; and if we compare the predictions of Christ with the events which occurred, and followed at the taking of this devoted city, we sahll be struck with the coincidence of the declaration, and its awful fulfilment.

His foreknowledge of the dreadful calamities which should precede and accompany the destruction of Jerusalem, caused our blessed Saviour, when he beheld the city, to weep over it: and, surely, if this oncefavoured race had then known the day of its visitation, the Lord would have turned from his fierce anger; but these things" were hid from their eyes." Having rejected the Lord of Glory, they were given over to judicial blindness, and the Lord brought upon them 66 a nation from afar " to execute his vengeance. Jerusalem was "trodden down by the Gentiles," and there was 66 great distress upon the land, and wrath upon the people." The sword and the spear from without, and famine and pestilence and civil discord within, were indeed unto them "the beginning of

sorrows." The predicted day was now come, when their "enemies should cast a trench about them, and compass them round, and keep them in on every side." Their walls of strength, their beautiful palaces, and their magnificent temple, were laid even with the ground." Not" one stone was left upon another that was not thrown down; and all the princes and the nobles, the ruler and the ruled, the priest and the people, and "the children within thee," either "fell by the edge of the sword," or were "led away captive into all nations," for there was great

66

distress in the land, and wrath upon

the people."

CHAPTER LXVIII.

Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.-Micah iii. 12.

"WALK about Zion, and go round about her, tell the towers thereof, mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces," are they still "beautiful for situation?" Is Jerusalem yet the "joy of the whole earth?" Within "her walls peace once reigned, and prosperity within her palaces." But how