But Roman majesty was not to be won to mercy.  To the Twelve, Christ had foretold the destruction of the city.  And now when the four were alone with Him, they “asked Him privately, tell us when shall these things be.”  For wise reasons Jesus did not tell.  But one of them at least would learn both when and what these things would be.  This was John.  His tender and loving heart was to bleed with the horrible story of the fall of Jerusalem.  There hunger and famine would be so dire that mothers would slay and devour their own children.  Multitudes would die of disease and pestilence.  Rage and madness would make the city like a cage of wild beasts.  Thousands would be carried away into captivity.  The most beautiful youths would be kept to show the triumph of their conqueror.  Some of them would be doomed to work in chains in Egyptian mines.  Young boys and girls would be sold as slaves.  Many would be slain by wild beasts and gladiators.  Saddest of all would be the Temple scenes.  Though Titus command its preservation his infuriated soldiery will not spare it.  On its altar there would be no sacrifice because no priest to offer it.  That altar would be heaped with the slain.  Streams of blood would flow through the temple courts, and thousands of women perish in its blazing corridors.  The time was to come when John, recalling his question on Olivet and his Lord’s prophecy concerning Jerusalem, could say,

    “All is o’er, Her grandeur and her guilt.”

Was he the one of the disciples who hailed the Master, saying, “Behold what manner of stones, and what manner of buildings!”?  If so, with what emotions he must have recalled his exclamation after the prophecy of their destruction had been fulfilled.  Outliving all his fellow-apostles the time came when he could stand alone where once he stood with Peter and James and Andrew, not asking questions “When shall these things be?” and, “What shall be the sign when these things are all about to be accomplished?” but repeating the lament of Bishop Heber over Jerusalem in ruins: 

    “Reft of thy son, amid thy foes forlorn,
     Mourn, widow’d Queen; forgotten Zion, mourn. 
     Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,
     Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone;
     Where suns unblessed their angry luster fling,
     And way-worn pilgrims seek the scanty spring? 
     Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy viewed? 
     Where now thy might which all those kings subdued? 
     No martial myriads muster in thy gate;
     No suppliant nations in thy temple wait;
     No prophet bards, thy glittering courts among,
     Wake the full lyre, and swell the tide of song: 
     But lawless force and meagre want are there,
     And the quick-darting eye of restless fear,
     While cold oblivion, ’mid thy ruins laid,
     Folds its dank wing beneath the ivy shade.”

CHAPTER XXII