God grant that we may be amongst the number of those who go forth with a smiling face amongst the people who willingly offer themselves!
CHAPTER XII.
The Holy City.
In the time of the terrible siege of Jerusalem, when the Roman armies surrounded the city, when famine was killing the Jews by hundreds, and when every day the enemy seemed more likely to take the city, a strange thing happened. Some priests were watching, as was their custom, in the temple courts at dead of night. They had passed through the Beautiful Gate, crossed the Court of the Women, and had ascended the steps leading into the inner court, which was close to the Temple itself. Suddenly they stopped, for the earth shook beneath them, whilst overhead came a noise as of the rushing of many wings, and a multitude of voices was heard saying, again and again, the solemn words, 'Let us depart, let us depart.'
The angels of God were leaving the doomed city to its fate.
For centuries Jerusalem had been known as the Holy City. Why was it so called? Not because of its inhabitants, for, instead of being holy, many of them were sunk in wickedness and impurity. Jerusalem was called the Holy City simply because of one inhabitant; it was the dwelling-place of God, and His presence there made it what no other city of the earth was, the Holy City.
'In Salem also is His tabernacle, and His dwelling, place in Zion,' Psalm lxxvi. 2.
'Blessed be the Lord out of Zion, which dwelleth at Jerusalem,' Psalm cxxxv. 21.