though in reality the inhabitants were then but poorly provided with means to resist him. His retreat, however, gave them a chance to prepare themselves very completely for the desperate struggle which, as they could see, was completely begun, and from which there could now be no retraction. This interval of repose, after such a terrible premonition, also gave opportunity to the Christians to withdraw from the city, on which, as they most plainly saw, the awful ruin foretold by their Lord, was now about to fall. Cestius Gallas, taking his stand on the hills around the city, had planted the Roman eagle-standards on the highths of Zophim, on the north, where he fortified his camp, and thence pushed the assault against Bezetha, or the upper part of the city. These were signs which the apostles of Jesus, who had heard his prophecy of the city's ruin, could not misunderstand. Here was now "the abomination of desolation, standing in the holy place where it ought not;" and as Matthew records the words of Jesus, this was one great sign of coming ruin. "When they should see Jerusalem encompassed with armies, they were to know that the desolation thereof was nigh;" for so Luke records the warning. "Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them who are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in other countries enter into it. For these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." The apostles, therefore, reading in all these signs the literal fulfilment of the prophetic warning of their Lord, gathered around them the flock of the faithful; and turning their faces to the mountains of the northwest, to seek refuge beyond the Jordan,—
—"Their backs they turned
On those proud towers, to swift destruction doomed."
Nor were they alone; for as the Jewish historian, who was an eye-witness of the sad events of those times, records, "many of the respectable persons among the Jews, after the alarming attack of Cestius, left the city, like passengers from a sinking ship." And this fruitless attack of the Romans, he considers to have been so arranged by a divine decree, to make the final ruin fall with the more certainty on the truly guilty.
THE REFUGE IN PELLA.
A tradition, entitled to more than usual respect, from its serious and reasonable air, commemorates the circumstance that the Christians, on leaving Jerusalem, took refuge in the city of Pella, which
