of disaster, there -were also predictions of triumph. If Jesus, whom a few called Christ, had prophesied the coming fall of the city, there were others who had announced the fall of the enemy. Omens could be read either way. If a sword-shaped comet hung in the sky, who could deny that the sword impended over the heads of the Eomans ? And when the gate of the Temple flew open, did it not announce the opening of the gates for the triumph of the faithful ? In that wild, unsettled time, when there was nothing certain, nothing stable, the very faith of the people would be intensified by these prophecies of disaster ; their courage would be strengthened by the gloomy foretellers of defeat ; and, as the Trojans fought none the worse because Cassandra was with them, so the Jews fought none the worse because voices were whispering among them about the prophecies of him whom some recognised as the Messiah. Let us, at least, award them the meed of praise for a courage which has never been equalled. Let us acknowledge that, in all the history, of the world, if there has been no siege more bloody and tragic, so there has been no city more fiercely contested, more obstinately defended ; and though we may believe that the fall of Jerusalem had been distinctly prophesied by our Lord, we must not therefore look on the Jews as the blind and fated victims of prophecy. The city fell, not in order to fulfil prophecy, but because the Jews were, as they ever had been, a turbulent, self-willed race; because they were undisciplined, because they loved freedom above everything else in the world except their religion; and their religion was the ritual and the Temple.