The pitiable state of existing affairs crushed down all joyful feelings as to the prospective dominion of Judaism. A veil of sadness had for the last twenty years been spread over the nation, and no joyful feelings could exist beneath it. The last decades exhibit the nation as a captive who, continually tormented and goaded on by his jailer, tugs at his fetters, with the strength of despair, until he wrenches them asunder. The bloody contest between Rome, strong in arms and fertile in stratagem, and Judæa, poor in outward means of warfare and powerful only through indomitable will, inspires the deepest interest because, in spite of the disproportion between the combatants, the weak daughter of Zion would probably have gained the victory had she not been torn by conflicting parties and surrounded by treachery. Perhaps, had she awaited a more favorable moment, success might have been hers; but Providence had decreed the destruction of her national life. This great combat, to which few struggles in the history of the world are comparable, was waged not merely for liberty, like the wars in which the Gauls, Germans, and Britons were engaged against Rome, but had likewise a religious character. The Judæan people were daily wounded in their religious sentiments by the arbitrary rule of Rome, and desired to gain their independence in order to acquire and maintain the free exercise of their religion. Such being their aim, the frequent reverses they sustained could not abate the ardent longing they felt to be free; on the contrary, it rose with each fresh disaster, and in the most trivial circumstances they saw and resented an attack upon their most sacred convictions. It was seldom, indeed, that Rome outraged the religious feelings of the Judæans as she had done under Caligula; on the contrary, she rather indulged their susceptibilities, but she often wounded them unintentionally through her despotic and jealous supervision.