Out of the mouth of Volney the Lord has caused to be declared the fulfilment of his word. Of Egypt, that most unwilling agent in establishing the truth of Scripture writes, "Deprived, twenty-three centuries ago, of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartars, distinguished by the name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power, and elected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary. They are replaced by slaves brought from their original country. The system of oppression is methodical. Every thing the traveller sees or hears reminds him he is in the country of slavery and tyranny."* Among the most interesting fulfilments of prophecy are those discovered in the present condition of the country and cities of Judea. For a very striking view of them the reader is referred to Keith on Prophecy, a valuable work lately republished in this country. But there is one prediction in this department which I cannot pass over. After describing the divine judgments upon the land, the prophet adds, "The generation to come of your children, and the stranger that shall come from a far land, shall say, when they see the plagues of that land, and the sicknesses which the Lord hath laid upon it, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? What * Travels, ch. 2, p. 74, 103, 110, 198. meaneth the heat of this great anger ???* About three thousand years after these words were written, a famous traveller, a scoffer at the Scriptures, walks through this smitten country. He is a stranger from a far land. Deeply impressed with the aspect of all things around him, and in all probability entirely ignorant of the prophecy he is about to fulfil, he exclaims, "Good God! from whence proceed such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed? Why are so many cities destroyed? Why is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated?" "] wandered over the country. I traversed the provinces. I enumerated the kingdoms of Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. This Syria, said I to myself, now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What are become of so many productions of the hands of man?" etc. No prophecies deserve more of the attention of the student of Scripture than those concerning the Jews, which are scattered from one end of the Bible to the other. Their wonderful accomplishment is in every one's view. We can only glance at some of the many particulars which they embrace. Three thousand two hundred years ago it was written by Moses, "The Lord shall scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; and ↑ Volney's Ruins, ch. 2, p. 8. * Deut. 29: 22. 24. thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed always; and the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance." But notwithstanding all this, the Jews were not to be destroyed without recovery. "Yet for all that," saith the prophecy, "when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly." "I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee, but I will not make a full end of thee."‡ "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God and David their king; and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.” There is nothing in the history of nations so unaccountable on human principles, as the destruction and the preservation of the Jews. "Scattered arnong all nations," where are they not? Citizens of the world, and yet citizens of no country in the world, in what habitable part of the world is not the Jew familiarly known? He has wandered everywhere, and is still everywhere a wanderer. One characteristic of this wonderful race is written over *Deut. ch. 28. ↑ Lev. 26: 44. Hosea 3: 4, 5. all their history, from their dispersion to the present time. Among the nations they have found no ease, nor rest to the soles of their feet. Banished from city to city, and from country to country-always insecure in their dwelling-places, and liable to be suddenly driven away, whenever the bigotry or avarice or cruelty of rulers demanded a sacrifice, a late decree of the Russian empire has proclaimed to the world that their banishments have not yet ceased. Never certain of permission to remain, it is the notorious peculiarity of this people, as a body, that they live in habitual readiness to remove. In this condition of universal affliction, how singular it is that among all people the Jew is "an astonishment, a proverb, a byword." Such is not the case with any other people. Among Christians, heathens, and Mohammedans, from England to China, and thence to America, the cunning, the avarice, the riches of the Jew, are proverbial. And how wonderful have been their plagues. The heart sickens at the history of their persecutions and massacres and imprisonments and slavery. All nations have united to oppress them. All means have been employed to exterminate them. Robbed of property, bereaved of children, buried in the dungeons of the inquisition, or burned at the stake of deplorable bigotry, no people ever suffered the hundredth part of their calamities, and still they live. It was prophesied that, as a nation, they should be restored; consequently they were not only to be kept alive, but unmingled with the nations, everywhere a distinct race, and capable of being selected and gathered out of all the world, when the time for their restoration should arrive. The fulfil ment of this forms the most astonishing part of the whole prophecy. For nearly eighteen hundred years they have been scattered and mixed up among all people; they have had no temple, no sacrifice, no prince, no genealogies, no certain dwelling-places. Forbidden to be governed by their own laws to choose their own magistrates, to maintain any com mon policy, every ordinary bond of national union and preservation has been wanting; whatever influ ences of local attachment, or of language, or man ners, or government, have been found necessary to the preservation of other nations, have been denied to them; all the influences of internal depression and outward violence which have ever destroyed and blotted out the nations of the earth, have been at work with unprecedented strength for nearly eighteen centuries upon the nation of Israel; and still the Jews are a people, a distinct people, a numerous people, unassimilated with any nation, though mixed up with all nations. Their peculiarities are undiminished. Their national identity is unbroken. Though scattered upon all winds, they are perfectly capable of being again gathered into one mass Though divided into the smallest particles by numerous solvents, they have resisted all affinities, and may be traced, unchanged, in the most confused mixtures of human beings. The laws of nature have been suspended in their case. It is not merely that a stream has held on its way through the waters of |