led with
the debris and ruins of ancient palaces. The city was indeed fortified,
but the strong walls and lofty towers which made it almost impregnable
were not again restored as in the times of the old monarchy. It took no
great force to capture the city and demolish the fortifications. The
vast and unnumbered treasures which David, Solomon, and Hezekiah had
accumulated in the Temple and the palaces formed no inconsiderable part
of the gold and silver that finally enriched Babylonian and Persian
kings. The wealth of one of the richest countries of antiquity had been
dispersed and re-collected at Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana, and other cities,
to be again seized by Alexander in his conquest of the East, then again
to be hoarded or spent by the Syrian and Egyptian kings who descended
from Alexander's generals, and finally to be deposited in the treasuries
of the Romans and the Byzantine Greeks. Whatever ruin warriors may make,
whatever temples and palaces they may destroy, they always spare and
seize the precious metals, and keep them until they spend them, or are
robbed of them in their turn.

Not only was the Holy City a desolation on the return of the Jews, but
the rich vineyards and olive-grounds and wheat-fields had run to waste,
and there were but few to till and improve them. The few who returned
felt their helpless condition, and were quiet and peaceable. Moreover,
they had learned during their seventy years' exile to have an intense
hatred of everything like idolatry,--a hatred amounting to fanatical
fierceness, such as the Puritan Colonists of New England had toward
Catholicism. In their dreary and humiliating captivity they at length
perceived that idolatry was the great cause of all their calamities;
that no national prosperity was possible for them, as the chosen people,
except by sincere allegiance to Jehovah. At no period of their history
were they more truly religious and loyal to their invisible King than
for two hundred years after their return to the land of their ancestors.
The terrible lesson of exile and sorrow was not lost on them. It is true
that they were only a "remnant" of the nation, as Isaiah had predicted,
but they believed that they were selected and saved for a great end.
This end they seemed to appreciate now more than ever, and the idea that
a great Deliverer was to arise among them, whose reign was to be
permanent and glorious, was henceforth devoutly cherished.

A severe morality was pract