yet quite so readily in summer's heat for Pentecost. But now, in the delicious cool of

early autumn, when all harvest-operations, the gathering in of luscious fruit and the

vintage were past, and the first streaks of gold were tinting the foliage, strangers from

afar off, and countrymen from Judæ , P e r æ , and Galilee, would mingle in the streets

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of Jerusalem, under the ever-present shadow of that glorious Sanctuary of marble,

cedarwood, and gold, up there on high Moriah, symbol of the infinitely more glorious

overshadowing Presence of Him, Who was the Holy One in the midst of Israel. How all

day long, even till the stars lit up the deep blue canopy over head, the smoke of t he

burning, smouldering sacrifices rose in slowly-widening column, and hung between the

Mount of Olives and Zion; how the chant of Levites, and the solemn responses of the

Hallel were borne on the breeze, or the clear blast of the Priests silver trumpets seemed

to waken the echoes far away! And then, at night, how all these vast Temple -buildings

stood out, illuminated by the great Candelabras that burned in the Court of the Women,

and by the glare of torches, when strange sound of mystic hymns and dances ca me

floating over the intervening darkness! Truly, well might Israel designate the Feast of

Tabernacles as 'the Feast' (haChag), and the Jewish historian describe it as 'the holiest

and greatest.'3 4

Early on the 14th Tishri (corresponding to our September or early October), a ll the

festive pilgrims had arrived. Then it was, indeed, a scene of bustle and activity.

Hospitality had to be sought and found; guests to be welcomed and entertained; all

things required for the feast to be got ready. Above all, booths must be erected

everywhere - in court and on housetop, in street and square, for the lodgment and

entertainment of that vast multitude; leafy dwellings everywhere, to remind of the

wilderness-journey, and now of the goodly land. Only that fierce castle, Antonia, which

frowned above the Temple, was undecked by the festive spring into which the land had

burst. To the Jew it must have been a hateful sight, that castle, which guarded and

dominated his own City and Temple - hateful sight and sounds, that Roman garrison,

with its foreign, heathen, ribald speech and manners. Yet, for all this, Israel could not

read on the lowering sky the signs of the times, nor yet knew the day of their merciful

visitation. And this, although of all festivals, that of Tabernacles should have most

clearly pointed them to the future.

Indeed, the whole symbolism of the Feast, beginning with the completed harvest, for

which it was a thanksgiving, pointed to the future. The Rabbis themselves admitted this.

The strange number of sacrificial bullocks - seventy in all - they regarded as referring to

'the seventy nations' of heathendom.5 The ceremony of the outpouring of water, which

was considered of such vital importance as to give to the whole festival the name of

'House of Outpouring,'6 was symbolical o f the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.7 As the brief

night of the great Temple -illumination closed, there was solemn testimony made before

Jehovah against heathenism. It must have been a stirring scene, when from out of the