University of Virginia Library

JULIAN.

Praise to the God of Abraham. The locusts
are flown. The land which they found flourishing
and verdant as a garden, they have
changed to the barrenness of a desert. The
cities and the villages, but now so full of people,
are become the region of desolation and
death. Even the very city and house of God
are level with the dust, and the ploughshare
has gone over them. And here, upon the hill
of Olives, I sit, a living witness of the ruin.
By reason of the wonderful compassions of God,
which never fail, I am escaped as a bird from
the net of the fowler. Yet I take little joy in
this. For why should the days of one like me
be lengthened out, when the mighty and excellent
of the land are cut off? I rather rejoice
in this, that the spoiler is gone; the armies of
the alien have ceased to devour; and they
who are fled, and hidden in caves and dens

of the rocks, may come forth again to inhabit
the land and build up the waste places.
A multitude, which no man could number, have
fallen before the edge of the sword, or by famine,
and the air is full of the pestilential vapors
that steam up from their rotting carcases. But
a greater multitude remains; and it may well
be that ere many years have passed, they shall
fill the land as before, and gathered into one by
him who, though long delaying, will come, pay
back, and more, the measure they have received.
That time will surely come. Even as the
Assyrian could not finally destroy, but the hand
of the Almighty was put forth, and the city
and the temple grew again from their ruins
to a greater glory than before, so shall it be now.
The Roman triumph shall be short. Messiah
shall yet appear; and Jerusalem clothed in her
beautiful garments shall sit upon her hills, the
joy and crown of the whole earth.

But for me, my eyes shall not behold it. Before
that day these aged limbs shall rest in the
sepulchres of Beth-Harem, and these walls will
have fallen and mingled with the common
earth. It is not to-morrow, nor the day after,
that the kingdom shall come. Impatient Israel
will not wait the appointed hour; she will not
remember that with the Lord a thousand years
are as a day, and a day as a thousand years. She

will reign to-day or never. It is her mad haste
has drawn upon her this wide destruction. Deceivers,
and they who have deceived themselves,
fools and wicked men, have led her
to the precipice, down which she hath fallen,
and now lies, as a potter's vessel, broken in
fragments. And I, alas, am not clear in the
great transgression. The rage which filled the
people was in my heart also. I too gave heed
to lying words, and bent my knee before him
who, in my darkness, seemed to me as in very
truth the King of Israel, and bound myself to
his chariot wheels. May he whose compassions
are infinite pity and forgive his servant. It is
with my soul low in the dust before him, that
I turn to the long past, and remember the early
errors of my life.

And why will ye of Rome press upon me the
unwelcome task? My kinsmen might well
forego any pleasure they may reap, for the pain
that will be my only harvest. Yet not my
only harvest. The memory of the days spent
where Judith and Onias dwelt will bring
with it pleasant thoughts, — if many bitter
and self-reproachful also. Happily, of this
portion of my life, of which you are chiefly desirous
to hear, the record already exists; from
which I need but draw in such fragments as
shall impart all that I may care to reveal. That

record lies before me just as it went forth from
my full heart, and was poured into the bosom
of that more than woman, — my protecting
angel, rather, — Naomi the blessed. As the
scenes of my earlier life rise before me out of
these leaves, distinct as the outlines of these
barren hills, so too does the image of my mother
come up out of the obscurity of the past,
and stand before me, clear and beautiful to the
eye as when clothed in flesh. It was to thee,
thou true mother in Israel, that I made myself
visible and plain to read as a parchment scroll,
and from thee in return received those holy
counsels, charged with a divine wisdom, which
were a pillar of light to my path; and, had I
heeded them, had saved me from every error,
as they did from more than I can now remember
or recount.

Concerning my birth and childhood in Rome,
and the years which preceded my departure for
the East, it needs not that I speak; for of that
part of my life enough is known, and I can
take no pleasure in re-perusing it. From the
letters and other writings transmitted to me long
since by my mother from Rome, I now draw
what shall give you a somewhat living picture
of those days in Judea, about which you are
chiefly desirous to hear.