The offended majesty of Rome to mercy.”
Milman.
It is a wonderful city, wonderful in its origin, in its history, in its present character; strange events, too, have been foretelling its doom, and terrible is to be its downfall.
A flaming sword was seen night after night, for the space of a year, suspended over the city; the inhabitants crowded to the Temple, they offered sacrifices, but still that bloody sword was over them; the timid buried themselves in their chambers and wept; the gay tried to forget it in debauch, but still it hung above the city, and the hearts of the stoutest at length quailed before it. It has lately disappeared, but they do not know whether to consider this as an omen for good or for evil.
Also the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, which requires twenty men to move it, one night, though secured by heavy bolts, opened of its own accord, as if to show that the spirits which had been keeping guard in the Temple were leaving it.
Also one night at Pentecost, as the priests were going to their duties in the inner court of the Temple, they felt a quaking of the earth, and then, as they stood to recover from their dread, they heard a whispering noise as of a multitude of people, saying, “Let us go hence.”
Even now, as we have been sitting here, a lonely and mournful, but loud voice, has been repeating in the lanes and in the high streets of the city, “Wo, wo to Jerusalem!” And for four years, by day and in the deep stillness of night, that melancholy cry has been unceasingly heard denouncing wo to the affrighted and cowering inhabitants. A plain countryman came up to the Feast of Tabernacles four years ago while the country was prosperous and at peace; and while engaged in the duties of this occasion became suddenly a changed man, and before the multitudes cried aloud, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the Holy House, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!” A dead weight of fear has ever since lain upon the spirits of the inhabitants, crushing the timid, and oppressing even the boldest. They have tried by every means to stop his mournful cry; they have beaten him till his bones were laid bare, but he made no supplication and shed no tears; they have carried him before the rulers, but he has not been awed to silence, nor to their queries and threats has he made any reply; he has associated with no one, but in the crowded city has made himself a solitary and a lonely man; he has not complained when ill treated and abused from day to day; he has not thanked those who gave him food; to each he has replied only by his usual exclamation of, wo to the city; the channels of all feeling, except a deep and dreadful horror, seem to have been frozen up. He rests but little; something within him hath murdered sleep. At midnight, when all nature is hushed in death-like repose, from amid the deep darkness his mournful voice is heard; and the mother starts and draws her infant to her breast, and the sentry on his post trembles at the prolonged and melancholy cry, “Wo, wo, wo to Jerusalem!”
The wo hath been poured out upon the unhappy city.