MANY  "ZIONS."

The  Jew  who  was  taken  captive  to  Rome  did  not
regard  that  city  as  his  "  Zion."  His  mind  conceived
only  one  Zion — and  so  did  all  his  descendants  for
many  ages.  That  which  he  knew  was  in  Palestine,
and  two  generations  after  he  lost  it,  in  130  C.E.,  he
made  a  gallant  effort  to  regain  it.  These  men,  who
for  more  than  a  year  organised  a  dangerous  conspiracy,
who  gathered  amid  many  risks  in  the  Palestinean
fastnesses,  who  spent  treasure  to  collect  arms,  who
retook  Jerusalem,  and  who  fell  in  the  supreme
struggle  at  Bethar,  who  yielded  life  as  no  race  has
yielded  it  since,  stood  nearer  the  fount  of  Jewish
ideality  than  our  generation,  and  it  had  no  con-
ception of  Zions  in  London,  Washington,  or  Paris.
They  thought  of  no  vague  Mission  to  the  world,  but
they  knew  a  great  deal  as  to  desire  for  national  life,
and  national  polity,  tradition,  and  history.
The  idea  did  not  die  with  that  defeat.  There  was
humanely  more  need  for  a  hope  than  ever,  and  it  had
been  provided  for.  For  more  than  a  century  prior  to
the  defeat  of  Israel,  the  single  spiritual  idea  of  Israel
had  been  edged  round  by  a  fence,  secular  or  national
practices  gradually  changing  to  religious  ordinances.
