The Jewish historian gives a serious account of the preternatural portents which warned the Jews of the approaching fall of Jerusalem, and he laments the infatuation of the people, who disregarded these Divine denunciations. A star in the shape of a sword, and also a comet, stood over the doomed city for the space of a whole year. Then, at the feast of unleavened bread, before the rebellion of the Jews which preceded the war, at the ninth hour of the night a {121} great light shone round the altar and the Temple, so that for half an hour it seemed as though it were brilliant daylight. At the same festival other supernatural warnings were given. A heifer, as she was led by the high-priest to be sacrificed, brought forth a lamb in the Temple; moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court of the Temple, which was of brass, and so ponderous that twenty men had much difficulty in closing it, and which was fastened by heavy bolts descending deep into the solid stone floor, was seen to open of its own accord, about the sixth hour of the night. The ignorant considered some of these events good omens, but the priests interpreted them as portents of evil. Another prodigious phenomenon occurred, which Josephus supposes would be considered incredible were it not reported by those who saw it, and were the subsequent events not of sufficient importance to merit such portents: before sunset, chariots and troops of soldieis in armour were seen among the clouds, moving about, and surrounding cities. And further, at the feast of Pentecost, as the priests were entering the inner court of the Temple to perform their sacred duties, they felt an earthquake, and heard a great noise, and then the sound as of a great multitude saying: "Let us remove hence."(l) There is not a shadow of doubt in the mind of Josephus as to the reality of any of these wonders. If we turn to patristic literature, we find, everywhere, the same superstitions and the same theories of angelic agency and demoniacal interference in cosmical phenomena. According to Justin Martyr, after God had made the world and duly regulated the elements and the rotation of the seasons, he committed man and all {122}