midnight
Or is it the haunting voice of prophets mourning over the city that they could not save ? Their spirits surely would linger on the land where their Creator had deigned to dwell , and over whose impending fate Omnipotence had shed human tears . From this Mount ! Who can but believe that , at the midnight hour , from the summit of the Ascension , the great departed of Israel assemble to gaze upon the battlements of their mystic city ? There might be counted heroes and sages , who need shrink from no rivalry with the brightest and the wisest of other lands ; but the lawgiver of the time of the Pharaohs , whose laws are still obeyed ; the monarch , whose reign has ceased for three thousand years , but whose wisdom is a proverb in all nations of the earth ; the teacher , whose doctrines have modelled civilised Europe ; the greatest of legislators , the greatest of administrators , and the greatest of reformers ; what race , extinct or living , can produce three such men as these ? The last light is extinguished in the village of Bethany . The wailing breeze has become a moaning wind ; a white film spreads over the purple sky ; the stars are veiled , the stars are hid ; all becomes as dark as the waters of Kedron and the valley of Jehosha-phat .