Page:SermonsFromTheLatins.djvu/616

 salem fain  would  have  offered  Him  their  sympathy, He replied:  "  Daughters,  weep  not  for  Me,  but  for yourselves  and  for  your  children."

Thus many  times  and  often  did  Christ  prophesy Jerusalem's impending  doom. For well-nigh  forty years God  chose  to  bide  His  time,  the  city  meanwhile ripening  for  His  vengeance."  The  historian Josephus  relates  that  fully  three  millions  of  Jews  had come  for  the  feast  of  the  Passover  and  were  housed within  the  city  walls,  when  suddenly  the  Roman  legions swooped  down  on  them  and  surrounded  them. For  three  whole  years  the  war  had  lasted,  the  Roman objective  point  ever  being  Jerusalem.  During  the siege,  battles  were  daily  fought  between  the  Jew  and Roman  without,  and  between  Jew  and  Jew  within. Internal  dissensions,  war,  famine,  and  pestilence — a very  avalanche  of  woes — fell  on  the  fated  city.  The streets  were  blocked  with  dead  and  dying,  while  the living  fought  like  dogs  for  the  little  food  there  was. Nay,  horrible  to  relate,  famished  mothers  even  slew and  ate  their  babes. Not more  awful  in  their  miserable destruction  were  Sodom  and  Gomorrha,  and  not less visible  in  Jerusalem's  fall  was  the  hand  of  an angry  God. He had  purposely  fostered  the  power of Rome,  Pagan  though  it  was,  to  be  the  instrument of His  vengeance,  and  when  the  Romans  would  have stayed their  hand,  He  urged  them  on. For, when finally the  city  fell  and  the  enemy  rushed  in  with  fire and sword,  Titus,  then  in  command, — Vespasian  having gone  to  Rome  to  succeed  the  banished  Nero, — Titus gave  orders  that  the  Jewish  Temple  should  be