At length the doors of that dome were
burst open, and upon the priests rushed fair-faced, stately-looking men,
clad in white mail and bearing upon their shields and breastplates
the symbol of the Cross. They slaughtered the votaries of the strange
worship, and once more the rock was red with blood. Now they were gone
in turn and other priests moved beneath the dome, but the Cross had
vanished thence, and its pinnacles were crowned with crescents.
That vision passed, and there came another of dim, undistinguishable
hordes that tore down the crescents and slaughtered the ministers of the
strange faith, and gave the domed temple to the flames.
That vision passed, and once more the summit of Mount Moriah was as it
had been in the beginning: the wild olive and the wild fig flourished
among its desolate terraces, the wild boar roamed beneath their shade,
and there were none to hunt him. Only the sunlight and the moonlight
still beat upon the ancient Rock of Sacrifice.
That vision passed, and lo! around the rock, filling the Valley of
Jehoshaphat and the valleys beyond, and the Mount of Olives and the
mountains above, yes, and the empty air between earth and sky, further
than the eye could reach, stood, rank upon rank, all the countless
million millions of mankind, all the millions that had been and were yet
to be, gazing, every one of them, anxiously and in utter silence upon
the scarred and naked Rock of Sacrifice.
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