"The God of Israel be praised! Long aforetime the eyes of thy servant rested upon thy Holy Hill, and now, once more, behold the Glory of the Whole Earth is spread before me."
He then arose, and looking up to heaven, repeated from the Psalms of David,--
"In Salem also is his tabernacle, And his dwelling-place in Zion. My covenant will I not break, Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness; I will not lie unto David; His seed shall endure forever, And his throne as the sun before me."
He ceased, and again fastened his gaze upon the Holy Hill. But anon a tremor shook his frame, his eyes became fixed, and he was as one in a deep trance. His countenance changed, his lips seemed moved by some mysterious power, and a message which was like a prophecy came out of his mouth. Even the voice was not that of Abdiel.
"Behold, little ones are born already whose eyes shall see Jerusalem as a heap of ruins. Sons of Israel will arise against each other, and strife and famine among thy people ravage thee within, while Roman cohorts invest thee from without. Battering rams will cause thy bulwarks to crumble; thy palaces shall be sacked, thy towers crushed, and thy Temple destroyed by fire. Pestilence, famine, and war shall bring thee to utter desolation, until thou lie in heaps. Thy glory shall vanish, thy name become a reproach and a hissing, and the Gentiles shall level thy ruins and dwell upon them."
Again the frame of Abdiel was shaken, and he came to himself.
"Behold, O Benoni, I have seen an exceeding calamitous vision!"
"O Rabbi Abdiel! we have heard thee prophesy evil concerning the Holy City!"
"I wot not that I had spoken; but oh, the vision! Here where Jerusalem lieth stretched out before me, lo! I beheld a mighty battle. Famine, sword, and fire prevailed, and then anon I saw but an ash-heap!"
"Behold, O Rabbi Abdiel, peradventure a lying spirit hath possessed thee, and used thy lips!"
The day of the great and most joyous of the Jewish festivals opened bright but sultry. The early morning sun was pouring his warm beams over Mount Olivet, and gilding tower and roof, as Serenus wended his way toward a large upper chamber which was just below the westerly slope of the Holy Hill. This was where the disciples of the prophet of Nazareth were wont to gather, day by day, before the third hour. It was his first visit, and he was unknown to the followers of the Nazarene. From his youth in Alexandria, where he had been instructed by the great teacher Philo, he had been free in spirit from the traditions of the elders. He had learned somewhat of the Greek philosophy, and also dwelt for a season among the devoted Jewish sects of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. Being of a singularly pure and religious nature, he found the best in each, and attained to much wisdom and discernment, even before he came to Jerusalem. While a Jew by birth, and yet an observer of the more simple forms of the Hebrew worship, he had gradually found them burdensome, until his free declarations concerning the Spirit of Truth made it expedient even for the tolerant Gamaliel to part with him. He had long accounted the kingdom of God as a spiritual kingdom, having no connection with the government of the Jewish nation. He felt that its seat was within, and that its coming would be without observation.