Letters

⁴ You have long been anxious to break forth into speech; the very letters we have formed perceive it, and our paper already understands the question you are going to put. You will reply to us by saying: it was so of old, when “the Lord loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob,” and when her foundations were in the holy mountains. Even these verses, however, are susceptible of a deeper interpretation. But things are changed since then. The risen Lord has proclaimed in tones of thunder: “Your house is left unto you desolate.”

With tears He has prophesied its downfall: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that killest the prophets, and stone them which are sent unto you; how often would I have gathered your children together even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” The veil of the temple has been rent; an army has encompassed Jerusalem, it has been stained by the blood of the Lord. Now, therefore, its guardian angels have forsaken it and the grace of Christ has been withdrawn.

Josephus, himself a Jewish writer, asserts that at the Lord's crucifixion there broke from the temple voices of heavenly powers, saying: “Let us depart hence.” These and other considerations show that where grace abounded there did sin much more abound. Again, when the apostles received the command: “Go ye and teach all nations,” and when they said themselves: “It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you, but seeing ye put it from you...lo we turn to the Gentiles,” then all the spiritual importance of Judæa and its old intimacy with God were transferred by the apostles to the nations.