Then food failed in the city; men fought like demons in the streets for a tiny loaf of barley-bread; so frantic were the people with hunger that mothers even snatched the bread from their own children's mouths!
'Look over the walls, O people of Jerusalem; the Roman soldiers are crucifying all the prisoners they have taken, and the line of crosses is as long as our city is wide!'
Hard, merciless as was the Roman general, even he grew sick with horror at last, and he sent his Jewish prisoner, Josephus, to the Jews, promising them their lives if they would give up the city. But a furious madness had possessed the people, and they refused to yield.
Josephus pleaded in vain. He was not a Christian, but he could see plainly enough that God was no longer with His people.
'Ah, my countrymen,' he cried, 'we did nothing without God in the past, but now you are fighting against Him. Had God judged you worthy of freedom, He would have punished the Romans as He did the Assyrians long ago. God is fled out of your holy place, and stands on the side of those against whom you fight!'[[1]]
It is strange and wonderful to read these words in the old history. Even a Jew who had no faith in Jesus Christ could see plainly that the ancient power and glory of his nation had gone.
At last the end came. The first wall fell, then the second and the third, until the Roman soldiers, now as mad as the Jews themselves, burst into the Holy City, hewing down the defenceless people at every step.
And so they came to the Temple—that beautiful Temple of white marble and gold, which still glittered like a hill of snow in the morning sunshine, or sparkled as though wrapped in flame when the sunbeams struck full on its golden roof.
Then redder flames than ever the sunshine made leapt above the golden roof; pillars fell, beams crumbled to ashes, while round the altar of sacrifice the people of Jerusalem lay heaped together, slain in such numbers in the Holy Place that their blood flowed down the broad marble steps in a heavy crimson stream.
And the golden candlestick and the Book of the Law were carried away in triumph into heathen Rome.