pilgrim had seen Damascus, straggling out amid the beautiful oasis which surrounds it in the plain of the Abana; or he had seen Memphis, a long string of buildings, thickly populated, extending for some twelve or fourteen miles. along the west bank of the Nile. Compared with these Jerusalem had the compact beauty of a highland fortress, its buildings as seen from below standing out against the clear Syrian sky, and conveying an impression of grace and strength that would long linger in the memory." It had no commercial splendor, no site on a navigable river, or by the sea. Isaiah rejoices in Jehovah "as in the place of broad rivers and streams," while Jerusalem is "a quiet habitation," "wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby." 2 It was secluded, away from the highways of the world, and insignificant in size or population, beside the great capitals of material civilization which have far less to do with the higher life, and the final destiny of the human race. And in this royal magnificence was the seed of future trouble, and destruction at last. During the reigns of twenty kings Jerusalem went through all vicissitudes of prosperity and disaster. The vast treasures of the Temple were the temptation now of the Egyptian, and now of the Assyrian; as the Temple itself was now defiled and now purged by the alternation of bad kings and good ones, till at last, some four centuries and a half after, and five hundred and eighty-six years before Christ, it fell before the arms of Nebuchadnezzar, who wiped it out as a man wipeth a dish. The walls fell, palaces and the Temple were burned, and the population itself was swept off into the land of the conqueror.3 It seemed as if it were the end of Jerusalem, and even of the Hebrew race. No king, no temple, no city, the old glory a pathetic memory, the old magnificence a ruin. It was the mournful elegy of Jeremiah: "How doth the city sit 1 Sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral, Sunday, August 22, 1886. 2 Isa. xxxiii. 20, 21. 3 Psa. lxxiv. 79.

solitary that was full of people! How is she a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces. From the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed." 1

But out of the land of the waster restoration was to come. In the ashes of exile still lived their wonted fires. The bitter discipline of captivity could not extinguish the desire of the Jew for his old home, and it prepared him to go back to it with something better than he carried away. The Persian had taken the place of the Assyrian, and the great Cyrus was ready to encourage the aspirations of Daniel and Zerubbabel; was, without being aware of it, to fulfill the confident expectation of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that their countrymen would come back, and Jerusalem be built again. With fifty thousand people, the grandson of Jehoiachin, the nineteenth king, was sent back as governor of Judea; and seventy years after the destruction of the Temple it was rebuilt and dedicated, not indeed with the old stateliness and pomp, but with a faith and a zeal not unworthy of the ancient time. Seventy years later came Nehemiah from the court of Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls, as he expressed it, of "the city of his fathers' sepulchres." There was a Jerusalem again, but it was no longer the city of David. There was no restoration of the royal line. There was a High Priest, but no King. There was an intense Judaism, a hatred for other races and religions, the new-kindled hope of a Messiah even knitting closer the national pride. After Nehemiah, for more than two hundred years, — a period (as Dean Milman says) as long as from the death of Queen Elizabeth to the accession of Queen Victoria, the Jews remain in historical silence and darkness. The Persian gave back Jerusalem to the Jews, and the Greek and the Roman became in their turn its conquerors and rulers. For a hundred and fifty years and more, Alexander and the Ptolemies, and then the 2 Neh. ii. 5.

2

1 Lam. i. 1, 6.

Seleucids, were masters of Judea, till a race of native heroes, the Maccabees, arose, recovered Jerusalem, rededicated the Temple, and founded the Asmonean dynasty. The rule of the Alexandrian kings was in the main pacific and beneficent. But with the kings of Antioch Judea was in sullen or overt antagonism, till at last provoked to insurrection, and then the sword of the Maccabees won independence.

For a hundred and thirty years their descendants ruled, but not in the spirit of the founders of their line. For sixty years they were content to be priests, and the government was pontifical. And then for seventy years, beginning with the first Aristobulus, the royal title was resumed, and a monarchy established. But the Herodian family succeeded to the Asmonean through Antipater, an Idumean by birth, a sort of Mayor of the Palace, and minister to the Maccabean kings, who prepared the way to the throne for his son Herod, called the Great. In the last years of his reign the Christian era began (37 B. C.-4 a. D.). For over sixty years, since Pompey the Great invaded the country and marched into Jerusalem itself, Judea came more and more under the power of Rome, and Herod was king by imperial permission. His reign was foreign enough to be detested, and yet Jewish enough to be maintained. Great works in architecture, the increase of commerce, the influx of foreigners, the introduction of the two pagan languages, made a great outward change, while the national temper continued unchanged, enduring Rome and the Herods while it hated them. Then, if ever, the old glory of Jerusalem came back, but with the difference which belonged to the lapse of a thousand years. There was a king, the last, but not of the house of David. David's true heir was a little child just born in Bethlehem, waiting for another and larger and holier kingdom than that of Herod or Solomon. The king was an Idumean, and it seemed as if Esau had come back to his

stolen birthright and to the place of Israel. He had splendid powers, shrewdness, energy, persistency. And he was guilty of great crimes. He was cruel, whether from disposition or from policy, even to the murder of his own children, as of the Asmoneans whom he supplanted. He was politic, and so was a Jew in faith. He believed with the Jews, and governed with the Romans. He left Jerusalem as Jesus found it, as we read about it in the gospels. In his reign it was more splendid and prosperous than ever. It covered three hundred acres, and had a population of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand. Travelers and pilgrims resorted to it from all parts of the world. Herod had rebuilt the Temple, perhaps because he had also built an amphitheatre for foreign games, and it was larger and more magnificent than in the days of Solomon. The sanctuary itself was of the same dimensions as the first Temple, and was probably built upon the old foundations; but he added courts, and porches, and cloisters, and great gates, and so immensely enlarged the area as well as the magnificence of the sacred building. Greek marble and Greek art added to its splendor, so that when the rustic Galilean disciples went into it with our Lord they could but call his admiring attention: "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here." Says Mr. Ferguson, one of the most competent students of its architecture: "It may be safely asserted that the triple Temple of Jerusalem the lower court standing on its magnificent terraces, the inner court raised on its platform in the centre of this, and the Temple itself, with snow-white walls and glittering pinnacles of gold, rising out of this group and crowning the whole-must have formed, when combined with the beauty of its situation, one of the most splendid architectural combinations of the ancient world."1 The words of Dr. Edersheim give us a picture in outline 1 Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 1464.

of the city itself; "Passing through 'the Royal Porch, and out by the western gate of the Temple, we stand on the immense bridge which spans the valley of the cheesemongers,' or the Tyropean, and connects the eastern with the western hills of the city. On the right, as we look northward, are (on the eastern hill) Ophel, the Priest quarter, and the Temple, wondrously beautified and enlarged, and rising terrace upon terrace, surmounted by massive walls; a palace, a fortress, a sanctuary of shining marble and glittering gold. And beyond it frowns the old fortress of Baris, rebuilt by Herod, and named after his patron, Antonia. This is the hill of Zion. Right below is the cleft of the Tyropean, and here creeps up northward the Lower City,' or Acra, in the form of a crescent, widening into an almost square suburb. Across the Tyropean westward rises the Upper City.' If the Lower City and suburb form the business quarter, with its markets, bazaars, and streets of trades and guilds, the Upper City is that of palaces. Here, at the other end of the great bridge which connects the Temple with the Upper City, is the palace of the Maccabees; beyond it the Xystos, or vast colonnaded enclosure, where popular assemblies are held; there the palace of Ananias, the High Priest; and nearest to the Temple the Council Chamber and public archives. Behind it, westward, rise, terrace upon terrace, the stately mansions of the Upper City, till quite in the northwest corner of the old city we reach the palace which Herod had built for himself, almost a city and fortress, flanked by three high towers, and enclosing spacious gardens. Beyond it again, and outside the city walls, both of the first and the second, stretches all north of the city the new suburb of Bezetha, or New Town. Here on every side are gardens and villas; here passes the great northern road, by which Jesus went to the place of crucifixion." 1 "The hill of Zion is a fair place and the

1 Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, i. 112.