CHAPTER XXIV

“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!