They were Jews that thus looked out, the leader and the followers, Hebrews of Hebrews, and they loved the land of their birth and the city of their nation’s boast. Every affection of the human heart was enlisted for the beautiful towns and sacred edifices, and all the outspread loveliness of the country’s hills and valleys; and as the sun seemed to pour surpassing splendor upon the place, and as youth and beauty went forth to seek their pleasures, and age toiled upward toward the temple for the evening sacrifice, and all that was seen, and all that the heart suggested, appealed to the patriotic affection of the four—they looked to see whether the loveliness of the scene would not light up an unwonted smile upon the face of their Master, who was looking intently upon the city. But there was no smile. The deep thought that rested on his brow, and the tear that glistened in his eye, showed that the past and the future were with him. That all the blessings which had been pronounced upon Jerusalem, and all the promises made in her behalf, all the sins which she had committed, and which God had pardoned, and all the negligence against which she had been warned, and for which pardon had been presented; all her thoughtlessness now, and all the uncomprehended miseries which were in her path, were in one group in his mind—and the sound of the destroyer and the desolation of the conquered stood before him—the famine that wasted the people and the fire that destroyed the temple were there, and as he remembered how He would have sheltered them from the consequences of their own follies, and how they despised his love; how he would have shielded and comforted the sons and daughters of that city of his love, but they refused, _He wept_—wept human tears—wept tears of earthly fondness, that came bursting up from his heart—deep agony marked his face when gathering the recollection of all the promises which had accompanied their probation, the glories by which they had been invited to goodness—he exclaimed, “But now they are forever hidden from thine eyes.”