time when Vespasian's son, Titus, was leading his forces to the siege. It was the year 70, thirty-seven years since that true Passover, when the Jews had slain the true Lamb, and had cried, "His Blood be on us and our children!" What a Passover was that, when one raging multitude pursued another into the Temple, and stained the courts with the blood of numbers! Meanwhile, Titus came up to the valleys around the crowned hill, and shut the city in on every side, digging a trench, and guarding it closely, that no food might be carried in, and hunger might waste away the strength of those within. Then began the utmost fulfilment of the curses laid up in the Law for the miserable race. The chiefs and their parties tore each other to pieces whenever they were not fighting with the enemy; blood flowed everywhere, and robbers rushed through the streets, snatching away every fragment of food from the weak. The famine was so deadly, that the miserable creatures preyed on the carcases of the dead; nay, "the tender and delicate woman" was found who, in the straits of hunger, killed her own babe, roasted, and fed upon him. So many corpses were thrown over the walls, that the narrow valleys were choked, and Titus, in horror, cried out that the Jews, not himself, must be accountable for this destruction. For the sake of the Christian fugitives in the mountains, these dreadful days were shortened, and were not in the winter; and in August Titus's soldiers were enabled to make an entrance into the Temple. For the sake of its glorious beauty, he bade that the building should be spared; but it was under the sentence of our Lord, and his command was in vain. A soldier threw a torch through a golden window, and the flames spread fast while the fight raged; the space round the Altar was heaped with corpses, and streams of blood flowed like rivers. Ere the flames reached the Sanctuary, Titus went into it, and was so much struck with its beauty, that he did his utmost to save it, but all in vain; and the whole was burnt, with 6,000 poor creatures, whom a false prophet had led to the Temple, promising that a wonder should there be worked for their deliverance. The city still held out for twenty more days of untold misery; but at last the Romans broke in amid flames quenched in blood, and slaughter raged everywhere. Yet it was a still sadder sight to find the upper rooms of the houses filled with corpses of women and children, dead of hunger; and indeed, no less than a million of persons had perished in the siege, while there were 97,000 miserable captives, 12,000 of whom died at once from hunger. As Titus looked at the walls and towers, he cried out that God Himself must have been against the Jews, since he himself could never have driven them from such fortresses. He commanded the whole, especially the Temple, to be leveled with the ground, no two stones left standing, and the foundation to be sown with salt; and he carried off the Candlestick, Shewbread Table, and