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The Desire of Ages
officiated, and the pomp of symbol and ceremony had gone on for
ages. But all this must have an end.
Jesus raised His hand,—that had so often blessed the sick and
suffering,—and waving it toward the doomed city, in broken utter-
ances of grief exclaimed: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least
in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!—” Here the
Saviour paused, and left unsaid what might have been the condition of
Jerusalem had she accepted the help that God desired to give her,—the
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gift of His beloved Son. If Jerusalem had known what it was her
privilege to know, and had heeded the light which Heaven had sent
her, she might have stood forth in the pride of prosperity, the queen of
kingdoms, free in the strength of her God-given power. There would
have been no armed soldiers standing at her gates, no Roman ban-
ners waving from her walls. The glorious destiny that might have
blessed Jerusalem had she accepted her Redeemer rose before the
Son of God. He saw that she might through Him have been healed
of her grievous malady, liberated from bondage, and established as
the mighty metropolis of the earth. From her walls the dove of peace
would have gone forth to all nations. She would have been the world’s
diadem of glory.
But the bright picture of what Jerusalem might have been fades
from the Saviour’s sight. He realizes what she now is under the Roman
yoke, bearing the frown of God, doomed to His retributive judgment.
He takes up the broken thread of His lamentation: “But now they are
hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine
enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and
keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground,
and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone
upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”
Christ came to save Jerusalem with her children; but Pharisaical
pride, hypocrisy, jealousy, and malice had prevented Him from ac-
complishing His purpose. Jesus knew the terrible retribution which
would be visited upon the doomed city. He saw Jerusalem encom-
passed with armies, the besieged inhabitants driven to starvation and
death, mothers feeding upon the dead bodies of their own children,
and both parents and children snatching the last morsel of food from
one another, natural affection being destroyed by the gnawing pangs
of hunger. He saw that the stubbornness of the Jews, as evinced in