it all away, within the short lives of those who heard him. Well might such words sink deep into their hearts,――words coming from lips whose perfect and divine truth they could not doubt, though the things now foretold must have gone wofully against all the dreams of glory, in which they had made that sacred pile the scene of the future triumphs of the faith and followers of Christ. This sublime prophecy, which need not here be repeated or descanted upon, is given at great length by all the first three evangelists, and is found in Matthew xxiv. Mark xiii. and Luke xxi. _The view of the temple._――I can find no description by any writer, ancient or modern, which gives so clear an account of the original shape of Mount Moriah, and of the modifications it underwent to fit it to support the temple, as that given by Josephus. (Jewish War, book V. chapter v.) In speaking of the original founding of the temple by Solomon, (Antiquities book VIII. chapter iii. section 2,) he says, “The king laid the foundations of the temple in the very depths, (at the bottom of the descent,) using stones of a firm structure, and able to hold out against the attacks of time, so that growing into a union, as it were, with the ground, they might be the basis and support of the pile that was to be reared above, and through their strength below, easily bear the vast mass of the great superstructure, and the immense weight of ornament also; for the weight of those things which were contrived for beauty and magnificence was not less than that of the materials which contributed to the highth and lateral dimension.” In the full description which he afterwards gives in the place first quoted, of the later temple as perfected by Herod, which is the building to which the account in the text refers, he enters more fully into the mode of shaping the ground to the temple. “The temple was founded upon a steep hill, but in the first beginning of the structure there was scarcely flat ground enough on the top for the sanctuary and the altar, for it was abrupt and precipitous all around. And king Solomon, when he built the sanctuary, having _walled it out_ on the eastern side, (εκτειχισαντος, that is, ‘having built _out_ a wall on that side’ for a terrace,) then reared upon the terraced earth a colonnade; but on the other sides the sanctuary was _naked_,――(that is, the wall was unsupported and unornamented by colonnades as it was on the east.) But in the course of ages, the people all the while beating down the terraced earth with their footsteps, the hill thus growing flat, was made broader on the top; and having taken down the wall on the north, they gained considerable ground which was afterwards inclosed within the outer court of the temple. Finally, having walled the hill entirely around with three terraces, and having advanced the work far beyond any hope