These were the words that were heard by the Jews, as, haggard and emaciated and despairing, they looked and listened,

"LET US LEAVE THIS PLACE!"

And the rush of this multitude grew mightier, and all the air, and all the holy hill seemed filled with their presence. At last they became manifest to sight as well as hearing. On a sudden, in the dim twilight, there appeared innumerable phantom forms, filling the sky, moving on in long procession, with heads bowed like mourners, and faces hidden in robes, and still the cry wailed forth from all.

Then in shadowy outline were revealed the sacred symbols of those things which were used in the temple service, the table of shew-bread, the golden candlestick, and, more than all, that Holy Ark, which once stood in the ancient Temple, over whose mercy-seat was the shadow of the Most High. All these were revealed. And the senses of the Jews, disordered by long vigil and fasting, descried them as they seemed to move through the air.

At last all faded away, and the sun rose and illuminated the faces of horror that stood gazing at the place where the vision had vanished.

A cry of despair escaped from all. They knew that their hour had come.

The Romans rushed to the attack. All the available strength of the army was brought forward, to make this assault final and irresistible. Vast masses of men moved up the slope and poured into the openings which the flames had made.

The Jews knew that all was lost, but they fought as they had never fought before. Each man wished to die, but had determined to make a Roman life pay for his own.

Backward and still backward they were borne, but still they fought on. At last the advancing Romans stood before the Holy House. Around it the fight raged. The Jews wished most of all to die beside it.

Cineas and Labeo were there, in the midst of this conflict, and marked the despair of the Jews, and all their devotion. Suddenly a Roman soldier seized a brand and rushed to the Temple. He held it up against one of the windows. The flames caught. They darted along the woodwork, and the rich hangings, with inconceivable rapidity. The light of the conflagration arrested all.

A groan of horror burst from the Jews. With one common impulse they rushed to the Holy House.

The Romans themselves paused for a moment.

The flames shot up, enveloping all, till all one side was covered. The Jews lifted up their hands in despair. They rushed in and out, some calling wildly on others to save the place.

At last a sight appeared which arrested the attention of all.

Upon the roof stood a man, holding a sword in his hand, stained with the blood of the battle, and the smoke of the burning house. He stood for a moment motionless, standing on one side where the fire had not yet reached, and looking upon the flames that tossed themselves up to the skies from the other.

Cineas, as he looked up from the crowd below, recognized that face. It was Isaac.

For a few moments Isaac stood motionless. Then he walked forward and threw his sword into the flames.

Then he raised his clenched fist to the skies, and looking up, cried out, in a loud and piercing voice,

"O God of Abraham! How hast thou mocked the people who trusted in thee!"

The next instant he rushed forward, and sprang into the raging flames.

CONCLUSION.

LL was over!

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 hidingplaces; 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 vallies 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, — Cal

vary.

A short distance from the city they could see the ruins of Bethany, which had perished in the siege. All the houses here had been laid low, but the Christians showed the two friends the site of that house to which Christ had once loved to resort; they showed them the tomb on the hill-side where he had once summoned the dead back from death, and the dead obeyed. In that tomb the body of Lazarus now lay. He had died before the outbreak of the war, and had entered forever that bright world of which he once before had caught a glimpse. He had heard once more the voice of his Lord calling him from the tomb, not to earth, but to heaven.

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, "God loves!"