s of men are charged with
excitement, even slight accidents may assume remarkable
significance.[2] Such incidents occur at turning-points of the life
even of individuals.[3] They derive their significance from the
emotion with which the minds of observers happen at the time to be
filled. No doubt the rending of the temple veil might appear to some a
pure accident, while in the minds of others it crystallised a hundred
surging thoughts. But we must ascribe to it a higher dignity and a
divine intention.

Like the pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness, it had a double
face--one of judgment and another of mercy.

It betokened the desecration of the shrine and the exodus of the Deity
from the temple whose day of opportunity and usefulness was over. And
it is curious to note how at the time not only the Christian but even
the Jewish mind was big with this thought. There is a Jewish legend in
Josephus, which is referred to also by the Roman historian Tacitus,
that at the Passover some years after this the east door of the inner
court of the temple, which was so heavy that twenty men were required
to close it, and was, besides, at the moment strongly locked and
barred, suddenly at midnight flew open; and, the following Pentecost,
the priests whose duty it was to guard the court by night, heard first
a rushing noise as of hurrying feet and then a loud cry, as of many
voices, saying, "Let us depart from hence."

Nor was it only in Palestine that in that age the air was charged with
the impression that a turning-point in history had been reached, and
that the ancient world was passing away. Plutarch[4] heard a singular
story of one Epitherses from the rhetorician Aemilianus, who had it
from the man's father. On a certain occasion this Epitherses happened
to be a passenger on board a ship which got becalmed among the
Echinades. As it stood near one of the islands, suddenly there came
from the shore a voice, loud and clear, calling Thamus, the pilot, an
Egyptian, by his name. Twice he kept silence; but, when the call came
the third time, he replied; whereupon the voice cried still louder,
"When you come to the Paludes, proclaim that the great Pan is dead."
Pan being the god of nature in that ancient world, all who heard were
terrified, and they debated whether or not they should obey the
command. At last it was agreed that if, when they came to the Paludes,
it was windy, they were not to obey, but, if calm, they w