Page 135 - Third Book of Reading Lessons

134 THIRD BOOK OF
3. When the thirst of the Romans r blood and plunder had been sated, the still standing walls of the temple were cast down, and the undations were uprooted om the earth. The city was razed, and the plough passed over it, as a sign that never should a city or a temple be'built there again. Three gates were left standing, to proclaim where Jerusalem once had been.
· 4. Thus, after a siege unparalleled in the history of war, ll this noble city, the beloved Jerusalem, after it had ourished under the protection of Heav­ en, more than two thousand years.
5. The miserable citizens who had not been car­ rie away in chains, or cruci ed around the walls of Jerusa1em, wandered rlorn over their once happy land. Their descendants, after a vain attempt, in the reign of Adrian, to rebuild their city, were scat­ tered amongst the nations of the earth, where their children may, to this day, be seen distinct om the nations with whom they live. The seat of the Jew­ ish religion had fallen; the city of sacri ce had been destroyed; that implacable enemy of Christ, the sanhedrim, had been annihilated ; it_ had become evident, even to the most darkened eye, that the time had arrived, in which the Church should spring rth,
as the young plant, om the dead seed of Judaism, and should, in a -short time, become the vast tree, spreading its branches over the whole earth.
DoLLINGER.