SWORD, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2369, 27 July 1899, Page 63

SWORD, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE.

(By a Banker.)

Throughout the whole course of the history of the present race of mankind, the one event which, with the exception of the Noachian flood (and also one or two floods in China), has entailed the greatest and most appalling sacrifice of human life within a given time, must unquestionably have been the Siege of Jerusalem. At the time when the Roman army surrounded the Holy City, practically the whole of the population, of Palestine were within the walls (it being the feast of the Passover), excepting, however, the entire body of the Christians, of whojn even then, according to Pliny, there were vast numbers, who in compliance with their Divine Master's command had fled into the mountains when they saw His prediction about to "be fulfilled;' the estimated number entrapped by the wily Romans being no less than two million seven hundred thousand souls. And as the city was not, compared with modern conceptions, of very great extent, being less than five miles in circumference, it can be readily imagined that this vast aggregation of human beings .must have crowded every house in tho place from basement to roof. In a very short time after the serried ranks of the Roman armies had closed round the doomed city, an impenetrable phalanx of veteran warriors,, the food »ujppiies commenced

! to fail, and the gaunt horrors of famine quickly overspread the ill-fated Judean metropolis. The finer instincts of humanity rapidly vanished, and right gave place to might. Mobs of starving marauders forced their way into every house in search of food, inflicting the most horrible tortures upon the miserable inhabitants if they refused to divulge the hiding place where their food was concealed, and ruthlessly slaughtered if the torture were unavailing. Every day intensified the horrors of the famine, and the most loathsome garbage was devoured with avidity, while other sickening and revolting abominations, too dreadful to allude to, were practised by the famished and inhuman victims of the siege. And to add to the terrors, constant fighting was proceeding between the several factions day by day. Men, woman, and children were slaughtered in thousands ; the streets, the houses, even the Temple, were choked with corpses; vast numbers were cast from the walls, forming great festering mounds of human remains, beyond which was a horried background of crosses completely encircling the wretched city, upon which the Romans had crucified those who endeavoured to escape from its miseries. So thickly were these crosses set that eventually there was no more wood with which to make them. Moreover, after a time it was found that most of those who were endeavouring to escape had swallowed a number of the small gold coins then current, and it is stated that in one day the Romans killed more than, two thousand of these fugitives for the sake of their concealed riches. • And now the sword, the famine, and the pestilence held full sway. A flaming sword hung over the city; and other 'rriighty portents, which must surely have indicated the Divine wrath, appeared in the heavens. (This is narrated by J.osephus, and is confirmed by the Roman historian Tacitus.) A man, who was regarded as a prophet, paced round the ' walls crying out in a dirge-like tone '" Woe, woe to Jerusalem." Strange sounds proceeded from the Temple like the voices of a multitude. Great stones, shot -from the enemy's engines, ploughed their way through the living and dead. And all the time grim Death was immolating his victims, until the city was one vast and hideous charnel-house. At length the Romans made a great final aesault; the city was taken, and the glorious Temple destroyed; that magnificent structure, more costly and more celebrated than any erection which the world had ever seen (except perhaps its predecessor), or will ever -sec ; its gates 60ft high and more than 20ft wide, covered with solid gold; its sumptuous and priceless enrichments, and its Holies of Holies, in which rested the Ark of the Covenant, and in which, until that Covenant was fulfilled, when the veil which' concealed the holy place was rent in twain, the overpowering glory of the Shekinah was manifested — all now no more; razed with the level of the ground; not one stone left upon another; not one vestige of its gorgeous splendour left, but all obliterated ; all, with more than a millions of the Jewish race swept off the face of the earth as with a besom of desolation. And why this display of the^ Divine wrath? Why this awful immolation of the chosen . race I— Because they knew not the time of their visitation. Because they deliberately ejected the King of Glory who came tb save thorn. And because they enacted the most awful tragedy ! which has taken place in all the Universes r throughout air past eternity, 'or can take place throughout the eternity which is to come, by insulting and torturing, and crucifying the Eternal Son of God. But .happily that death j_is_our life. Unless, alas! we too, like those Jews, also reject Him,- and, as., partakers in their sins, must also be partakers in . their punishment.