=6. The Destruction of the Temple.=――As befitted a kingdom of priests, their Temple had become to the Jews, in literal truth, their stronghold and their tower of defence. If only they had worshipped within those ‘borders of precious stones’ with half the fervour that they fought there, the end might have been very different. On the 7th of Ab, 3830 of the Jewish era (corresponding to the year 70 C.E.), fire was set to the cloisters of the Temple. All that day and all the next the flames smouldered, and the people, faint with hunger and sick with misery, looked on with dull eyes, unregarding. Then again their mood changed, and on the morning of the 9th, with desperate, despairing effort, they rushed forth on the Roman swords. They were driven back, and Titus, seeing the crisis had come, summoned a hasty council of war to decide upon the fate of the Temple. His generals, smarting under their repulses, voted for its complete destruction. Titus had some touch of human feeling, some sympathy with that passion of defence. He would have spared the Jews their Temple, and have been content to plant the Roman eagle on its walls. It was saved that last degradation. On that same evening a detachment of Roman soldiers was told off to put out the smouldering cinders of the blackened cloisters. The pent-up people, faint with famine and restless with misery, burst out once more in ineffectual fury. Once more they were driven back to the very door of the Temple, and a Roman soldier, in careless wrath, took up a burning brand and tossed it after the retreating crowd. It fell on some inflammable stuff in a porchway, and quickly the Temple itself was on fire. Titus rushed to the spot, and tried with hand and voice to stay the work of destruction. It was too late. The shadow of the sword was lifted in the light of the flames. Then that too faded and died out, and darkness closed in upon the Jews, a thick darkness that could be felt. BOOK II. 70 TO 1600. DARKNESS. וַיְהִי חשֶׁךְ־אֲפֵלָה EXOD x. 22. ‘A fifteen hundred years’ tragedy.’ CHAPTER XII. AFTER THE WAR.