Titus destroyed
the temple. The religion of Judaea has in turn subverted the fanes which
were raised to his father and to himself in their imperial capital;
and the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob is now worshipped before
every altar in Rome.
Jerusalem by moonlight! 'Tis a fine spectacle, apart from all its
indissoluble associations of awe and beauty. The mitigating hour softens
the austerity of a mountain landscape magnificent in outline, however
harsh and severe in detail; and, while it retains all its sublimity,
removes much of the savage sternness of the strange and unrivalled
scene. A fortified city, almost surrounded by ravines, and rising in the
centre of chains of far-spreading hills, occasionally offering, through
their rocky glens, the gleams of a distant and richer land!
The moon has sunk behind the Mount of Olives, and the stars in the
darker sky shine doubly bright over the sacred city. The all-pervading
stillness is broken by a breeze that seems to have travelled over the
plain of Sharon from the sea. It wails among the tombs, and sighs among
the cypress groves. The palm-tree trembles as it passes, as if it were
a spirit of woe. Is it the breeze that has travelled over the plain of
Sharon from the sea?
Or is it the haunting voice of prophets mourning over the city that
they could not save? Their spirits surely would linger on the land
where their Creator had deigned to dwell, and over whose impending fate
Omnipotence had shed human tears.
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