“WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?”
Night, still and beautiful, rested upon the temple-courts; in the
immeasurable depths of a purple sky the stars were burning with the
brilliancy peculiar to southern latitudes.
The battle-toil of the day had given place to a strange quiet; both
sides seemed bent on taking rest as a preparation for the greater
struggle of the morrow.
No sound came from the Sanctuary; its unseen sentinels moved with
silent tread.
Within the circumjacent cloisters, and hidden by the shadows, lay the
Roman troops, sleeping on their arms, yet ready at the first blast of
the trumpet to spring into life and action.
Crispus and Rufus paced softly to and fro over the pavement of the
Court of the Gentiles, seldom, if ever, removing their eyes from the
Sanctuary, lest a sudden rush on the part of the enemy should take
their troops by surprise.
Crispus was thinking of the fate of the Roman Capitol which, nine
months previously, in the civil war between the Vespasians and the
Vitellians, had been destroyed by fire.
Now the Capitol was the temple of sovereign Jupiter, and hence its fall
had sent a profound sensation through the pagan world. It would be a
fact more significant still, if, within the same year and by similar
means, the great Jewish temple should fall. To minds intent on studying
the signs of the times, the two events would seem as if foreshadowing
the doom of two religions, that of heathendom, and that of Jewry.
And doomed they were! They had played their preparatory part in the
history of human progress, and were now to give place to a loftier and
more spiritual faith.
“Titus holds high council to-night,” remarked Rufus, suddenly breaking
in upon Crispus’ thoughts. “He is for preserving the temple. Every
man knows why. He is moved by love for the new Cleopatra. She and her
brother Agrippa visited his quarters yesterday, and remained there for
some time. We can guess what their talk was about. Now if this temple
be permitted to stand, we shall continue to have the annual gatherings
of treasonable Jews breathing defiance to Roman rule. The result will
be another war, and we shall have all our work over again. And what a
work it has been! Was there ever in all history a siege like this?”
“And it is by no means over yet,” commented Crispus. “All our previous
work will appear but as child’s play when we come to deal with the
taking of Zion.”
“My fear, too,” responded Rufus moodily. “This stubborn people,
refusing to see that they are beaten, will go on fighting to the end.
But as to this temple, my opinion is that since the Jews choose to
turn it into a fortress it should be treated as such, and razed to the
ground. If I were Titus,” he added emphatically, “I would destroy both
city and temple, exclude all Jews from Judæa, and colonize it with
Romans. Thus only shall we have peace.”
Crispus fell into a reverie.
He had, when a pagan, seen reasons to wish the temple at an end, and
now, as a Christian, he could add to his reasons.
It was thus that he argued within himself.
The existence of the temple was a perpetual affront to the living
Christ, since its daily sacrifices were a tacit denial of the great
fact that the True Sacrifice had been offered once and for all. With
the death of Christ Judaism had come to an end, but what Jew would
ever believe this until he saw that the God who had ordered the temple
to be built now permitted it to be destroyed? Add to this, that the
sure word of prophecy had said that the Messiah would come while the
Second Temple was standing; if this--the Second Temple--should fall, it
would be a proof to the Jewish nation that the Messiah _had_ come--and
gone!--and that those were wrong who looked for Him in the future.
Another point worth noting: so long as the temple stood--that temple in
which the apostles themselves were wont to meet for worship--so long
would there be on the part of Christianity a temptation to revert to
the precepts and rites of the Law. As a matter of fact, in spite of
all the writings and labors of Saint Paul to the contrary, a hybrid
belief, a Christianized form of Judaism, the heresy called at a later
day Ebionism, was already in existence, threatening the purity of the
Church’s faith. The development of Christianity required that it should
be freed from the bondage of the Law, and how could that freedom be
more effectively attained than by the fall of the edifice, which was,
as it were, the actual embodiment of that Law?
Moreover, had not the Saviour said that some of His own generation
should not taste of death till they had seen the fall of the temple?
Forty years had now passed since that utterance. If its fall were
delayed much longer, would not the Saviour appear as a false prophet?
But, unless a miracle were going to happen, must not the destruction of
the temple be brought about by human instrumentality? Why not by his
own? Was it impious to imagine that he was the agent foreordained to
carry out the Divine purpose?
He thought of the vision of the flaming torch, and of the Divine voice,
crying, “_Burn!_” and he doubted no longer.
Rufus put the finishing touch to his determination by a significant
remark.
“Now if Titus could be persuaded to destroy the temple, to-day would be
an appropriate date for it.”
“How so?”
“By the Jewish calendar to-day is the ninth of the month Ab. On this
very day exactly 658 years ago the Chaldeans burnt the first temple.”
The very date seemed to be inviting him to the deed!
Scarcely had this thought passed through his mind when Rufus exclaimed:
“Ah! what light is that? By the gods, a sortie!”
His remark was caused by the sight of an immense body of Jews, who,
having opened one of the half-burned gates, were issuing noiselessly
forth.
They were seen, however, not only by Crispus and Rufus, but by the
vigilant Roman sentinels. Instantly, the shrill trumpet blast rang out
the call to arms, and the legionaries, starting from sleep, grasped
their weapons and stood ready for the conflict.
Heedless of the fact that they were discovered the Jews poured down
the steps of the gateway and raced across the court towards the wooden
synagogue, from whose roof Titus had directed his operations against
the Sanctuary. They ran amid a blaze of light cast by torches, the
object of the Jews being evidently to fire the synagogue in the hope of
burning such of the enemy as lay sleeping within.
They failed in their purpose, however. Both from the nearer synagogue
itself and from the more distant cloisters, the Romans poured forth
with clanging buckler and flashing broadsword; a desperate hand-to-hand
combat took place, lasting for a brief space only, inasmuch as the
Zealots, seeing the number of their foes increasing moment by
moment, turned tail and fled, pursued by the shouting, triumphant
legionaries.
[Illustration: Moved by a Divine impulse]
Crispus and Rufus, who had taken an active part in the fray, joined
also in the pursuit.
Suddenly, while Rufus ran on, Crispus stopped, attracted by the sight
of a flaming torch dropped probably by a flying Zealot. Moved by some
unaccountable prompting he picked it up, and as he did so he caught
sight of something above that sent a strange thrill through him; all
unconsciously he had checked his footsteps beneath the golden window of
the room Gazith, that judgment-hall in which the Saviour of the world
had received His sentence of condemnation at the mouth of the Sanhedrim.
Something light and cool stirred the hair of Crispus; it was a faint
wind coming from the north, the very direction required to carry the
flames throughout the building!
Let others regard these things as mere coincidences; to Crispus they
were signs that the hour, long predestined, had come.
“Marcus,” said he, stopping one of his own soldiers who was running
past at that moment, “lift me up to yon window.”
Without a word the man clasping his tribune’s ankles, reared him aloft,
and set his feet upon his own shoulders.
For a moment Crispus hesitated; then, as the historian of the event
testifies, “MOVED BY A DIVINE IMPULSE,” he thrust the flambeau through
the golden lattices, and, having effectively kindled the woodwork of
the interior, sprang to the ground again.
So little time had he taken that it was doubtful whether any other
Roman besides Marcus had witnessed his act; certain it was that none of
the Zealots suspected that there was kindling a fire whose flames were
destined to sweep the temple from end to end.
Crispus glanced at the gate from which the Zealots had issued but
a few minutes previously; having retreated to it they were now
endeavoring with might and main to stay the entering of the Romans.
He turned his eyes again to the golden window, and laughed to see that
the light within was increasing in brightness; the whole room must soon
be in a blaze, and the hall that had once reverberated with the unjust
cry, “He is guilty of death,” would be the first of the temple-chambers
to perish.
As yet no one either within or without the building seemed to be aware
of what was going on; so much the better! the fire would gain such a
hold that human efforts must fail to extinguish it.
The room above the hall Gazith was now burning, burning with a hidden
glow. Then, all in a moment, with a snap and a crackle, there leaped
skywards a dazzling sheet of flame accompanied by a wave of black smoke
and a fierce shower of red sparks that, carried by the northern wind,
swept southwards over the Sanctuary.
That startling glare, lighting up the dusk of night with the sudden
brightness of noontide, caused the fighting at the gate to cease for a
moment; Roman and Zealot alike turned their eyes to ascertain the cause.
A moment afterwards there ran through the length and breadth of the
Sanctuary one thrilling simultaneous shout:
“_The temple is on fire!_”
By this time the whole Roman force that had lain within the cloisters
had gathered round the Sanctuary. Their feeling was one of dismay, for
the fire was destroying their hopes of plunder. Behind those walls
there lay stores of wealth greater far than were ever contained in
the palace of the Cæsars; the gold and silver utensils used in the
sacrifices; the rich offerings--accumulations of centuries--made by
pious Jews throughout the world; the jeweled vestments of the priests;
the hoards of costly spices; the countless shekels plundered from the
citizens by the Zealots.
For several days previously the Roman soldiery had talked of little
else but the temple-treasures with which they were hoping to enrich
themselves as a recompense after their many weeks of toil.
And now must they lose their reward?
If they should wait till the morning, the time fixed by Titus for the
final assault upon the Sanctuary, the riches would be consumed. Why
tarry?
A moment they stood, irresolute, murmuring; then, with a simultaneous
shout, “On to the gold of the temple!” each soldier firmly grasping
blade and shield, and disregarding the remonstrations of his officer,
rushed forward to whichever gate of the nine happened to be nearest.
The Zealots, massed in dense bodies at each entrance, fought with
fanatical fury, animated by no other desire than that of revenging
themselves upon their enemies and of perishing amid the blazing ruins
of the temple.
Those Romans who attacked the great Corinthian Gate were the first to
fight their way in. Headed by Terentius Rufus, who, finding himself
unable to check his men, determined to lead them, they entered the
quadrangle known as the Court of the Women, so called because thus far
women might enter to worship, but not farther.
This court contained, among other things, the twelve chests with
funnel-shaped openings into which pious Jews were wont to drop their
free-will offerings.
While some of the Romans were breaking open these treasury boxes and
others were dispersing into the chambers around in search of plunder,
a third and more numerous party, led by Rufus, continued the fight,
driving the Zealots before them across the Court of the Women, and up
the semicircular ascent of twelve stairs that fronted the great brazen
gate of Nicanor, which led to the inner court, or Court of Israel.
Twining around the sides and above the entablature of this entrance
was an object attractive to the eyes of plunderers--the celebrated vine
whose branches, leaves, and grape-clusters were all of pure gold.
“Close the gate!” shouted Simon.
Vain the command!
Like some moving wall of bronze, buckler touching buckler, the front
rank of the legionaries pushed its way forward inch by inch up the
stairs and into the interior court.
“Way there for Cæsar!” shouted Rufus as, standing on the topmost of the
twelve stairs, he caught sight of Titus, who, surrounded by his chief
officers, was seeking to clear a path through the throng of surging,
shouting Romans.
Consternation was written on the face of Titus. Though not troubling to
communicate the fact to his council, he had pledged his word both to
Berenice and to Agrippa that the temple should be preserved; and now,
to his confusion, there was fast spreading along the northern cloister
of the Sanctuary a fire that, unless immediately checked, would consume
the whole edifice.
Many of the soldiers, possessed by the frenzy for destruction that is
apt to come upon man at such wild times, were helping to spread the
conflagration by hurling lighted joists into the surrounding chambers
and cloisters.
Standing on the stairs of the Nicanor Gate so that he might the more
plainly be seen, Titus, shouting his loudest and making signals with
his hand, gave orders to the soldiers to extinguish the fire.
But so great was the roaring of the flames and the din of the combat
that few could hear him, and those that did affected not to understand,
but went on with the double work of carnage and plunder.
“’Tis useless to restrain them,” said Tiberius Alexander. “They are
drunk with delight at having come as they think to the end of their
labors. Discipline is at an end for this night at least. The soldier
will acknowledge no master but his own will.”
“Must we let the temple burn to the ground?” asked Titus in despair.
Alexander shrugged his shoulders. Secretly he was not at all displeased
by the turn events were taking.
“Let us try at least to save the Golden House,” said Titus, commanding
his bodyguard to open a way for him into the inner court.
The Sanctuary formed a series of terraces, and upon the highest of
all, within the Court of the Priests, stood the world-famed Golden
House--the shrine containing the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies--now
lovely in the firelight and flashing with a splendor that dazzled the
eyes.
Driven from all other parts of the Sanctuary the Zealots gathered about
this golden shrine, determined that it should not be profaned by the
foot of the heathen Gentile.
The triumphant Romans followed to the attack, and a desperate fight
ensued.
Sword in hand the furious Zealots fell by hundreds, and at last Simon
and John, seeing that all was lost, massed the survivors at one point,
and charging at their head, succeeded in cutting their way through
the Roman ranks out into the Court of the Gentiles, and thence by the
bridge that spanned the Tyropæon they made their way into the Upper
City.
The flight of the Zealots was followed by a terrible carnage around
the great brazen altar of sacrifice, a sort of truncated pyramid,
forty-eight feet square at the base, standing directly in front of the
Golden House. Hither, upon the first entering of the Romans, had fled
a helpless, trembling crowd of children, women, and aged men, thinking
that the sanctity of the spot would stay the sword of the conqueror.
Vain hope!
The foe, made cruel by the long duration of the siege, stabbed and slew
without distinction of age or sex; the bodies of the dead lay piled
like hecatombs upon the sacrificial altar; upon the pavement around
the red blood spread in a quickly widening circle, till, reaching the
marble stairs, it rolled in sullen streams into the courts below.
Though isolated groups of desperate Jews continued here and there to
fight Titus was now practically master of the temple, but the victory
gave him little pleasure when he noticed the progress made by the
fire, which, fanned by the wind, had reached one end of the northern
cloister, and, having turned the angle, was now fast advancing along
the western cloister, and would soon be on a line parallel with the
western wall of the Golden House; true, a space separated the cloister
from the shrine, but the space was, perhaps, not too wide for the
flames to leap across; already sparks and fragments of fiery matter,
floated by the wind, were beginning to patter upon the fretted and
pinnacled roof.
Moved by Titus’ look of despair, Alexander put forth a suggestion.
“We can perhaps preserve it by drenching its roof with water.”
“But whence the water?”
“There is a draw-well on the southern side of the Sanctuary.”
Springing upon one of the many marble tables where sacrificial
victims were laid prior to their being offered upon the brazen altar,
Titus, trying to make his voice heard above the noise of fire and
vociferation, shouted that the soldiers should bring water for the
preserving of the Golden House.
But none would put hand to the work, for the sides and western end of
this house were set about with treasury vaults, and the fool who spent
his time like a slave in fetching water would lose the chance of
enriching himself.
“Urge them to the work, Liberalis!” cried Titus, addressing a
centurion. “Threaten them! Strike them with your staff!”
Liberalis did so, but all in vain; respect for Cæsar gave way to the
insatiable desire for plunder.
“Let us see the interior of the Golden House, ere it perish forever,”
said Alexander.
Speaking thus, he led the way; Titus and his staff followed, walking
ankle-deep in blood.
Entering the Propyleon, a magnificent porch with wings on each hand
extending far beyond the width of the shrine, they stood before the
great golden gate, and found it barred from within.
“’Twill require a battering-ram to force it,” said Titus, hesitating at
such a measure. There came into his mind tales told him by Berenice of
Gentiles who had fallen dead for profaning a place sacred to the Jewish
priesthood only.
“There is a little wicket at the side by which the priest enters to
unbar the door in the morning,” said Alexander. “The noble Agrippa will
perhaps lead the way?” he added, addressing that king, who stood beside
Titus.
But Agrippa declined the honor.
“Nay, I’ll give thee the precedency,” he answered.
“Thy face is pale, Agrippa. Thou fearest,” sneered Alexander.
What no orthodox Jew durst do, and what even the Roman hesitated at,
was done by the apostate Alexander.
Putting his shoulder to the little wicket he forced it wide, passed
boldly within, and, having first drawn aside the Babylonian curtain, he
unbarred the double doors, and flung open the Holy Place to the profane
gaze of the Romans, who saw what they had never before seen, what no
man would ever see again.
A low murmur of admiration broke from Titus and his staff at the beauty
of the golden interior all radiant in the wild light of the leaping
flames.
On the right or north side was seen the golden table, but without the
twelve loaves of shewbread; on the left the seven-branched golden
candlestick, unlighted; at the far end rose the golden altar of
incense, standing in front of the solemn “veil,” a curtain of linen
finely twined; in color an admirable mingling of blue, and scarlet, and
purple, and wrought in golden thread with the figures of cherubim.
“Let these things be brought forth and kept against the day of my
triumph,” said Titus.
Emboldened by the example of Alexander he passed into the Holy Place
and came to the veil that hung at its far end.
This Alexander lifted, and Titus gazed with curious eye upon the Holy
of Holies, the place where the Shechinah had once dwelt. But the Divine
Presence had long since departed; the place was empty save for an
oblong stone upon which rested a golden ark with two golden cherubim,
one on each side, having their faces bent downwards and their wings
expanded. The stone itself was not without interest, seeing that, in
Hebrew opinion, it marked the very center of the earth’s surface.
Directing that the ark and the cherubim, with the other sacred
furniture, should be carried to his own quarters, Titus came forth
again.
The imagination of Dante could scarcely conceive a scene more wild and
weird than that now taking place.
A wind blowing from the north carried into the temple-courts whirling
clouds of smoke and intermittent gusts of heat that came and went like
the breath of a fiery furnace.
Amid the roaring of the flames could be heard the shrieks of victims
cut off from escape, intermingled with the crackling of cedar roofs
and the crash of falling masonry.
The shouting legionaries, fierce with the lust for gold, were running
hither and thither like madmen, ransacking first this chamber and
then that. Here and there some priest, detected in hiding, would find
himself surrounded by fierce-eyed soldiers, and with the keen edge of
a sword laid across his windpipe, he would be addressed with the cry,
“Show us gold, and you shall live!” And wild were scenes that occurred
when some new vault was discovered glittering with treasure, the
plunderers trampling each other down in their eagerness to be first at
the spoil.
On all sides were to be seen men carrying off vessels of gold
and silver, ingots of the same precious metals, bags of shekels,
jewel-hilted weapons, myrrhine vases, caskets of ivory, ebony,
and alabaster filled with spices, ointments, and perfumes, costly
vestments, and ten thousand other objects of spoil. Never in all the
world’s history did riches so vast fall to the lot of a conquering army
as fell to those who plundered the temple--riches that were destined
within a week to send down the price of gold in the markets of Syria to
one-half of its former value!
The attention of Titus was attracted by two men who were dragging along
a heavy cedar chest which they had just rescued from the flames; but on
breaking it open, they found within, not gold, as they had hoped, but
books merely--historic writings, temple records, genealogical rolls,
and the like. In their disappointment the two were about to set fire to
the whole, but were checked by Titus.
“Hold! Let these be kept for Josephus. I doubt not that he will esteem
them more highly than gold. Carry this chest to my tent.”
But though Titus might save the sacred books of the temple, the Golden
House he could not save.
Unperceived by him a soldier, moved by a frenzy to destroy, held a
lighted torch between the hinges of the golden door; a flame sprang up
which, from lack of water to quench it, spread rapidly over the whole,
a sight viewed with satisfaction by the soldiery.
“Where is now the God of the Jews?” they cried.
Numerous figures, clad in priestly vestments, now appeared upon the
burning roof.
“Who are these?” asked Titus.
“Priests,” replied Alexander, “forced by the heat from the secret
chambers, of which there are many about the Golden House.”
“Surrender, and your lives shall be spared,” shouted Titus.
But to this invitation the priests replied by a flood of curses.
Wrenching from the roof the gilded spikes, with their leaden sockets,
they hurled them as missiles against the foe.
The eddying flames, the blinding smoke, the overpowering heat, now
forced Titus and every other Roman, not only from the vicinity of the
Golden House, but from the Sanctuary itself; for the outer circle of
fire, having traversed both the western and eastern cloisters, had now
seized upon the southern side, threatening to cut off the retreat of
all who lingered within.
As there was still abundant pillage left, the soldiers quitted the
burning building with reluctance; some lingering too long were
overtaken by the flames, and did not quit it at all, while others by
their scorched clothing, singed eyebrows, and half-burnt beards showed
how narrowly they had escaped death.
Withdrawing to a safe distance Titus and his staff continued to watch
the appalling spectacle, the like of which they had not seen since the
burning of Rome by Nero.
“The whole summit of the hill blazed like a volcano. One after another
the buildings fell in with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up
in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flame; the
gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light. The gate towers sent
up tall columns of flame and smoke.”[34]
But if it were an appalling spectacle to the Roman what was it to the
Jew?
All along the northern ramparts of Mount Zion was gathered a vast
multitude (for though myriads had died of famine, there were still
myriads left)--a countless host of gaunt, famishing specters, who
looked fearfully into each other’s eyes as if asking whether what they
saw could be real.
Must they let go the great hope that had so long sustained them? During
the space of four years, ever since the outbreak of the war, they
had lived in hope of the immediate advent of the Messiah, who should
overturn the empire of the wicked Romans and establish a glorious
kingdom for Israel.
And this was the end of it all--to know that the fiery star in the
sky had been but mocking them all this time; to learn that their own
Jehovah had taken the side of the heathen enemy! to see the temple,
which they had supposed eternal, sinking in the flames! to be so
near the realization of the grandest of visions, and to be forced to
renounce it when their tutelary angel had already partially withdrawn
the cloud! to be compelled to accept the soul-shaking alternative that
either their holy scriptures had lied in stating that the Messiah
should come during the time of the Second Temple, or that He must have
already appeared, only to be rejected by them! to see all their bright
hopes vanish into space! Was ever nation so fearfully deceived as this
nation?
They gazed again and again in doubt and bewilderment; and when, at
last, they were forced to realize that the temple was actually blazing,
and that angelic powers would NOT descend from the skies to help them,
there pealed forth into the infinity of night long shrieks, terrible
in their pathos and despair; the shrieks of a dying nation; shrieks so
piercingly loud that they were echoed and re-echoed from all the hills
that surrounded the city.
Slowly the leaping flames sank and died out, to be followed here and
there by intermittent flashes and flickerings; and then, at last, the
darkness of night fell over the smoking, smoldering, blackened ruins.
* * * * *
Three centuries later the heathen emperor Julian, resolving to show
that Christ was a false prophet, called upon the Jews to rebuild their
temple.
The supernatural circumstances attending the defeat of this project
on the part of him, whose last, dying cry was, “Thou hast conquered,
O Galilæan!” are attested alike by pagan and by Christian writer. The
lesson of history is clear: THE ABOLITION OF THE TEMPLE WAS THE ACT OF
GOD!