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LL was over!

XXXIX.

Conclusion.

Roman perseverance had triumphed over Jewish fanaticism. The Holy House lay in ashes. The Roman triumphed upon the ruins of Zion. The Jewish nation lost its ancient seat, and began the long exile of ages.

The Roman army occupied themselves with completing their work, with gathering the wretched remnants of a people, and sending them into captivity. The Jews who remained in the country were forced to seek out hiding-places-to cower in the recesses of the mountains-and wait till this calamity might be overpast.

Month succeeded to month.

Gradually a change took place. The forlorn and miserable people began to venture back to their loved Jerusalem, and rebuild their fallen houses.

Among those who thus returned were the Christians, to whom Jerusalem was as dear as to the Jews. They had fled at the first approach of the storm, for they knew what the end would be. Now that the end had come, they sought once more the place which had been so hallowed in their eyes by the presence of their Lord.

Labeo and Cineas looked upon Jerusalem with feelings that no other place could excite.

Here once dwelt that wondrous Being whom they had learned to regard as their hope, their comfort, and the end of all their search.

Here lay the traces of his footsteps; the shadow of his presence seemed to remain; and the sound of his words seemed still to linger in the air.

All around was desolation. The few people that tried to make their home here only increased the mournful aspect of the place. The walls lay prostrate. The houses were in heaps. The bodies of the dead had been buried; but whenever Cineas looked down into the deep valleys around Jerusalem, he thought of that scene which he had once beheld when thousands of corpses lay there.

As they looked around upon all this, they recalled the words of Christ, uttered by him as he wept over Jerusalem.

Jerusalem! well did it need tears; even the tears of the Divine One.

So the Christians came back to live once more in the presence of their old haunts, and seek once more those places so dear in their eyes. Among these Cineas and Labeo found many who could give to each spot its own charm, and make the life of the Divine One come back again before them with all its unutterable pathos.

Here they saw the Mount of Olives; here they saw Gethsemane; and here, above all, they saw the hill-Calvary.

All these things and many more the friends saw, as they wandered humbly, reverentially, and with chastened hearts, amid these scenes, listening to the traditions of the meek Christian men, who so lovingly traced the footsteps of their Lord about the city which he loved, and in which he had died. In the ruins of that city they could see something which spoke of his divinity; in the awful catastrophe which had occurred before their eyes, they beheld the close of that ancient revelation which was to be succeeded by the new one. The Deliverer

whom the Jews expected had indeed come. He had fulfilled his work. He had departed. But the Jews knew not this. They had blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts; and in their obstinate persistency in the expectation of material glory for their nation, they had flung themselves into an abyss of woe.

To these two, as the time passed by, it seemed, at length, that of all objects which could engage their minds, only this one thing was worthy of their search, and that was to find Him for whom they longed now with constant desire, to know him, to love him, to give to him all their affections, and all their lives.

At length the Roman armies were ordered to stations elsewhere, and Cineas and Labeo, who thus far had been forced to remain, now found themselves at liberty to return and follow their own desires. And for that they desired nothing more than to know Jesus Christ and him crucified.

At Pergamos they found a teacher who could tell them all that they desired to know.

At his feet they sat, content to listen to him, and receive from him the story of that DIVINE WORD, of whom Cineas had once read in the books of the philosophers, when the name was used to express the wants of man. Now they learned that the WORD had become flesh, and man had seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

From this teacher they heard a greater doctrine and a diviner teaching than any which had ever been heard at Athens.

And all was summed up in the one sublime truth, loves!"

"God

God loves! This was the end of all revelation. The allmighty is also the all-loving. O divine and infinite truth! to give this to man needed God himself.

Pergamos seemed like a holy place, as they listened there to the story of Christ-Christ in his acts, in his words, in his prayers; Christ in his power and his mercy; Christ in his wisdom and his knowledge; above all, Christ in his love.

And they learned that Christ, when he departed, left not his people comfortless.

He had gone, but there remained and should remain, through all the ages, till the end, One who is the essence of divine love and pity; One who in himself comprehends all the depths of infinite compassion; whose mission is to bring man to God; to open the way to pardon and to heaven; to speak peace to the mourner, and make hope cast out despair: the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

There to these men all desire seemed to centre. Content to dwell here, they could gladly have forgotten all else, and passed their lives in holy meditation.

But this was not for them.

Other things than quiet meditation were needed. Their duty was different.

That duty was, above all, to follow Christ; and as he sought, most of all, to call man to God and holiness, even so ought all his disciples, each in his own way.

And so it was that Cineas and Labeo were impelled to carry to other men the truth which they had learned.

Cineas went to Athens, and there, in the midst of students and teachers of philosophy, he passed his life in making known sublimer doctrines than those of Plato. He, out of his own experience, could best show where philosopy failed; and where Plato faltered, he could show that Christ was allsufficient.

This became the work of his life: there, in the centre of thought, the intellectual capital of the ancient world, to stand forth among men and proclaim Christ crucified. He thought,

and rightly too, that all his past life, his varied feelings, his wide experience in other forms of doctrine, both philosophical and Jewish, his extensive observation of the world, all pointed to Athens as the proper place for him.

His labours were not in vain. He went abroad among all classes, talking, preaching, discussing, exhorting, till the Athenians gave him the nickname of "The New Socrates;" but Cineas had a model very different from Socrates, and sought to mould all his life after the pattern of Jesus.

He met with much opposition and much ridicule. Many were the sneers which he encountered, and for years men did not cease to wonder how a Megacleid, and a man of genius, who was familiar with all Greek art and literature and philosophy, could ever have brought his mind to a belief in a crucified Barbarian.

Yet all were not scoffers. Many there were who had the same feelings which he once had. Among these his mission was successful, and he had the joy of seeing many hearts receive the consolation which Christ alone can bring.

Labeo had a different sphere. He was not adapted either by nature or by training to a career among sneering sophists and argumentative philosophers. He wished to tell the simple story of the cross to simple men.

For what else had he in life than this? The memory of one great sorrow was over him, and nothing that the world could offer had any charm. He had found peace, and his only desire was to give up his life to the proclamation of the gospel of peace.

But before he set out to that place which he had chosen as the one where he would pass the remainder of his life, he paid a final visit to Rome.

A letter had come from Julius, informing him that his venerable mother was now at the point of death.

In her life with Lydia, and in her association with her, the

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