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166 the Forum of the destruction of the other shrine, he may have said to himself: 'the pride of a barbarous and superstitious people is humbled for ever; but the glory of Jupiter, best and greatest, will always endure. From the fane of the Jews, the gods have departed, but the pontifex and the silent virgin will never cease to climb the Capitoline Hill.' "The destruction," says Dean Merivale, "never to be repaired, of the material temple of the Hebrews, cut the cords which bound the Christian faith to its local habitation, and launched it, under the hand of Providence, on its career of spiritual conquest; while the boasted reputation of the Capitol was a vain attempt to retain hold of the past, to revive the lost or perishing, to reattach to new conditions of thought an outworn creed of antiquity."