row of Olivet, where the city came into view, and burst
into a flood of tears, accompanied with such a lyric cry of affection
as has never been addressed to any other city on earth. Subsequently,
sitting with His disciples over against the temple, He showed how well
He foreknew the terrible fate which hung over the capital of His
country, and how poignantly He felt it. The city's doom was nigh at
hand: less than half a century distant: and it was to be unparalleled
in its horror. The secular historian of it, himself a Jew, says in his
narrative: "There has never been a race on earth, and there never will
be one, whose sufferings can be matched with those of Jerusalem in the
days of the siege." It was the foresight of this which made Jesus now
say, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves
and for your children."

His words, still further, reveal His consideration for women and
children. The tears of the women displayed an appreciation and
sympathy for Him such as the men were incapable of; but well did He
deserve them, for His words show that He had a comprehension of women
and a sympathy with them such as had never before existed in the world.
With the force of the imagination and the heart He realised how, in the
approaching siege, the heaviest end of the misery would fall on the
female portion of the population, and how the mothers would be wounded
through their children. In that country, where children were regarded
as the crown and glory of womanhood, the currents of nature would be so
completely reversed by the madness of hunger and pain that barrenness
would be esteemed fortunate; and in a country where length of days had
been considered the supreme blessing of life they would long and cry
for sudden and early death.

So it actually turned out. An outstanding feature of the siege of
Jerusalem, according to the secular historian, was the suffering of the
women and children. Besides using every other device of warfare, the
Romans deliberately resorted to starvation, and the inhabitants endured
the uttermost extremities of hunger. So frenzied did the men become at
last that every extra mouth requiring to be filled became an object of
delirious suspicion, and the last morsels were snatched from the lips
of the women and children. One is tempted to quote some of the stories
of Josephus about this, but they are so awful that it would be scarcely
decent to repeat them.

This was what