illumination on the myriads below. It stopped above the city, and
exploded in thunder, flashing over the whole horizon, but covering the
Temple with a blaze which gave it the aspect of metal glowing in a
furnace. Every pillar and pinnacle was seen with a lurid and terrible
distinctness. The light vanished. I heard the roar of earthquake; the
ground rose and heaved under my feet. I heard the crash of buildings,
the fall of fragments of the hills and, louder than both, the groans of
the multitude. The next moment the earth gave way, and I was caught up
in a whirlwind of dust and ashes.

_II.--The Son of Misfortune_

It was in Samaria I woke. Miriam, my wife, was at my side. A troop of
our kinsmen, returning from the city, where terror suffered few to
remain, had discovered us, and brought us with them on their journey.

On this pilgrimage to Naphtali, my native home, my absence from prayer
and my sadness struck all our kinsmen; and Eleazer, brother of Miriam,
questioned me thereon. In my bitterness I said to him that I had
renounced my career among the rulers of Israel. Instead of anger or
surprise, his face expressed joy. He pointed out to me the tomb of
Isaiah, to which we were approaching. "There lies," said he, "the heart
which neither the desert nor the dungeon, nor the teeth of the lion, nor
the saw of Manasseh could tame--the denouncer of our crimes, the scourge
of our apostasy, the prophet of that desolation which was to bow the
grandeur of Judah to the grave."

He drew a copy of the Scriptures from his bosom, and read the famous
Haphtorah. "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as
a root out of a dry ground; he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we
shall see him, there is no beauty, that we should desire him. He is
despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows!" He stopped, laid his
hand upon my arm, and asked, "Of whom hath the prophet spoken? Him that
_is to come_, still _to come?_" Then he left me.

Some years passed away; the burden remained upon my soul. One day, as I
dwelt among my kinsmen in Naphtali, I was watching a great storm, when
suddenly there stood before me a spirit, accursed and evil, Epiphanes,
one of those spirits of the evil dead who are allowed from time to time
to reappear on earth.

"Power you shall have, and hate it," he announced; "wealth and life, and
hate them. You shall be the worm