the rejected Messianic King, closed his public ministry. Then, attended by his few disciples, he left the Temple, never to return. This was a great decisive act, and a terminal epoch in the history of Israel. The Jews have a tradition that forty years before the final destruction of Jerusalem, the lamp which constantly burned in the Sanctuary went out, and was never relighted. We understand that better than they. Tacitus tells us that before the ruin of the Temple a sound of the departing gods was heard; and Josephus adds that a voice as of a great multitude proclaimed, Let us go hence. The legend has a basis in truth; for when the nation rejected his proffer of kingship, the Shechinah of the Second Temple abandoned it forever, saying: "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." T XXV THE PROPHECY HE final departure from the Temple was marked by two events, simple but memorable. On leaving the Court of Priests, Jesus passed through the great Nicanor Gate into the adjoining Court of Women. Here he sat down to rest after the wearying conflicts and exhausting emotions of the day. In this Court were ranged thirteen bronze, trumpet-mouthed money jars, to receive contributions, each jar labeled for a specific object. Hence this Court of Women was called also The Treasury. Jesus observed rich men coming and making large gifts of coins, dropping them in ostentatiously one by one, so that all might hear the ring on the bottom of the jar. Among them came also one poor widow, timidly, bashfully, unnoticed by any save one, and as secretly as possible, and with a blush, dropped in two mites. Only one ear besides her own heard the slight ring. As she hurried furtively away, Jesus, pleased and touched with sympathy, called the attention of his disciples to her gift, and said: "Verily, this poor widow cast in more than they all; for it was all the living she had.” 127 So the poor widow must fast to-day and to-morrow. Had she kept back one of the mites, it would have bought her a slice of bread. Gifts are to be measured, says Ambrose, not by how much is given, but by how much remains behind. The value of the two mites was less than half a cent. Nevertheless, had they been put at compound interest at only one per cent. per annum, they would to-day have amounted to a sum greater than all the Christian contributions of the past century. And have they not been at interest? Under the approbation of Jesus, what has not been their multiplying influence for eighteen centuries, and when will it cease to multiply? The poor widow, however, knew nothing of that-so long as she lived. Shortly after this charming incident, the little company, on its way out, was passing through the Court of Gentiles. The disciples had witnessed his rejection, they had heard the avalanche of woes falling with mighty impetus from so great height, and the wail that followed it, and their hearts were full of sad presentiment. They loved their people, and felt a patriotic pride in their great Temple. Its stately colonnades and cloisters of snowy marble, its Beautiful Gate of Corinthian brass, its tessellated pavements, its ponderous masonry, its central shrine of sculptured stone made glorious within by carved cedar overlain by gold and studded with gems, these and its history, these and its fame, these and its holiness, they thought upon with dread of an impending doom. One of them, perhaps Simon Peter, would plead for the Temple. "Master, behold, what manner of stones, and what manner of buildings!" 128 "Seest thou these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down." His eye was not dazzled by its splendor. He knew it was a whited sepulchre. Late in the afternoon of this eventful day, the little band of Galileans ascended the western slope of Olivet to a point overlooking the city. Dividing there, the greater part went forward beyond the ridge to the Galilean camps, while Peter and Andrew his brother, James and John his brother, lingered behind with the Master, he having stopped and seated himself on a rock-ledge by the wayside to await the going down of the sun. Two days before this he had paused near the same place, and wept over Jerusalem, and foretold its doom. Then it was lighted brilliantly by the morning rays of a risen sun, the Temple reflecting his beams with a rival radiance. Now the sun was declining. The towers and palaces of Jerusalem cast lengthening shadows over the homes of the people. The radiance of the Temple was gone, its dark side met the eye, the sombre hues of night were creeping through its marble courts, a tide of gloom was rising among its gilded columns, and nigh at hand, in the dark shadow of its lofty wall, down in the valley, lay Gethsemane. As the prophet Prince gazed on the fading glories of his abandoned palace, a vision of the coming retribution and ruin transfigured the scene. his eyes, and his features furrowed by sorrow. companions, mindful of his recent sayings, and oppressed with sympathetic forebodings, ventured to ask: Sad were Then his Master, tell us, when shall these things be, and what the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? 129 Assenting to their request, Jesus delivered in the hearing of these favored apostles his great eschatological discourse. It separates into two principal parts. The first is apocalyptic in style, and we note that St. John was a listener. It predicts times of trouble and distress as forerunners and signs of the end of Jerusalem, typical of his second advent and the end of the world. This prophecy, together with that spoken an hour before concerning the Temple, and that spoken two days before concerning Jerusalem, within less than fifty years became history. Disasters accumulated, and culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem. Even to-day some columns of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus are standing, the Parthenon is almost entire, the temples of the sun at Heliopolis and at Persepolis are not wholly ruined, and travellers still wander through the gigantic halls of Luxor; but the great contemporary Temple of Herod, in less than a century from its beginning, vanished like a dream. Not one stone was left upon another. The whole city was so utterly destroyed that for several ages its very site was uncertain. Other nations of antiquity have either wholly disappeared, or else their descendants still occupy their country; but the Jewish people were perpetuated yet scattered over the face of the earth. "For they must wander whitheringly, In other lands to die, And where their father's ashes be, Their Temple hath not left a stone, And mockery sits on Salem's throne." Only divine eyes could foresee these strange inversions of historical order; and the exact fulfillment thus far of the prophecy confirms the remainder. The second part of the prophecy is parabolic in style. It begins, however, with a mention of signs in the heavens and the earth that shall portend his second coming and the end of the world. This is followed by a warning to prepare and watch for the advent whose date is unknown to all save the Father. The warning is |