A LESSON FROM THE PAST

White Ribbon, Volume 19, Issue 6, 1 July 1947, Page 6

A LESSON FROM THE PAST

£, F. W. TATE.

In certa.n much-prized books are picture: iMustratmg the occasion when the Roman armies under Titus besieged the anoent city of Jerusalem, and finally overthrew it in A.D. 70. Historians tell us that in the prolonged siege and the fall of Jerusalem over one million Jews were slain, a great number being crucified on the hillsides surrounding the city, and that the captives were dispersed as slaves to the various parts of the old Roman Empire. It is their descendants who are even now seeking to return to the home of them forefathers.

l,ne of these pictures shows the city in flames and the Roman soldiers*ftghting their way through the broken walls in the last stage of the siege. The other picture always fascinates me: it shows the siege in progress; the great stone walls with the Jewish soldiers manning the battlements and seeking, with the crude weaj>ons of their day, to ward off every attempt to scale the walls or to breach them. In the foreground are the armies of Rome, with huge catapults throwing hefty rocks against the .walls, or over the walls to come crashing down among the Jews; towers, mounted on rollers, with archers at different levels and protected by wooden walling, l>eing rolled closer and closer to the w alls; and most interesting of all, the old batterin'rams—a huge wooden beam, with a heavy head shaped like a ram’s head, protruding from a covering protecting the crew from the arrow’s and rocks, and sometimes boiling oil, cast upon them by the defending soldiers upon the para|»et above.

1 read that these battering rams were suspended from the top of the shelter and when drawn hack and released, their own weight carried the head with great force against the wall. Some were so ►eavy as to need up to a hundred men to operate them. But then look at the great strength of those ancient walls, and the comparative insignificance of a wooden beam, even with a metal head. One blow would be quite useless, but after a number of blows i.i the same spot, the strongest stone began to crumble a little, later to crack, and eventually a breach would be made. That is, provided it could be kept operating long enough in the face of all the opposition directed at it by the defenders above. L’i»on the success of such devices the fate of many a mighty ancient fortresscity has hinged. And so today, let us apply this picture from the past to certain great forces each seeking to overthrow the other. Who are they? On one side the combined forces of Temperance, with its organisations and co-operating bodies such as the Churches, opposed to that great enemy of all that is good, the drink traffic, walled in as it is, with all the protection that money and craft and graft can secure. Let us remember how men with comparatively puny weapons would breach the walls and destroy the strongest and the proudest strongholds of the past. But it meant constant battering, without giving up, without giving the enemy a rest, even though the walls towering above seemed absolutely impreg-

liable. How many ruins of ancient fortresses throughout the old world bear mute, but enduring testimony to the success of constant unflagging effort ?

And m this war in which we are engaged we have not only confidence in our weapons, but the certain knowledge that we do not fight alone. We know that (iod is with us, and that He is vitally concerned over the salvation of ever, one victim from the clutches of Satan and his agencies. So with prayer, let us make full and constant use of every available weapon, whether it be I >ooks, pa|K*rs, Circulars, stickers or seals, etc., hacking up the spoken word and the living example, and so reaching those places where the sjioken word cannot always enter, but the printed call to temperance may.

Scripture says: “And let us not lie weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” This promise surely applies to this work.