The procession lingered on the summit. The thunder pealed, and they rose at the command, diffusing waves of light over the expanse of heaven. Then the thunder roared again; the cloudy temple was scattered on the winds; and darkness, the omen of her grave, settled upon Jerusalem.
IV.--The Hour of Doom
I was roused by the voice of a man. "What!" said he, "poring over the faces of dead men, when you should be foremost among the living? All Jerusalem in arms, and yet you scorn your time to gain laurels?" I sprang up, and drew my scimitar, for the man was--Roman.
"You should know me," he said calmly; "it is some years since we met, but we have not been often asunder."
"Are you not a Roman?" I exclaimed. He denied that nationality, and offered me his Roman trappings, cuirass and falchion, saying they would help me to money, riot, violence, and vice in the doomed city; "and," said he, "what else do nine-tenths of mankind ask for in their souls?"
He tore his helmet from his forehead, and, with a start of inward pain, flung it to a measureless distance in the air. I beheld--Epiphanes! "I told you," he said, "that this day would come. One grand hope was given to your countrymen; they cast it from them! Ages on ages shall pass before they learn the loftiness of that hope, or fulfill the punishment of that rejection. Yet, in the fullness of time, light shall break upon their darkness. They shall ask: Why are barbarians and civilised alike our oppressors? Why do contending faiths join in crushing us alone? Why do realms, distant as the ends of the earth, unite in scorn of us?"
"Man of terrible knowledge," I demanded, "tell me for what crime this judgment comes?"
"There is no name for it," he said, with solemn fear.
"Is there no hope?" said I, trembling.
"Look to that mountain," was the answer, as he pointed to Moriah. "It is now covered with war and slaughter. But upon that mountain shall yet be enthroned a Sovereign, before whom the sun shall hide his head. From that mountain shall light flow to the ends of the universe, and the government shall be of the everlasting."