cultivated by the husbandman (and nearly all were of this occupation) was his own; it had belonged to his family for centuries; he was surrounded by the homesteads of his immediate relatives; from father to son were transmitted a thousand little traditions (about) every stone and stream; and all that affection treasured up in the memory was more or less connected with the sphere of his daily occupations "In relative situation the Holy Land had many advantages, as it was at no great distance from any of the kingdoms most celebrated in ancient times, and yet not so necessarily connected with them as to make its position dangerous. It had enough of mountain, and stream, and lake, and sea, to render it complete in its own resources. It admitted of easy defence against invasion, either by sea or land. Nor must it be forgotten, that its position, almost in the centre of the three great continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, was the most desirable that could have been chosen, when the fulness of time was come, and the blessings of revelation and redemption were to be scattered among all the dwellers upon earth. 6 "The relative appearance of the country has been most accurately described by Moses. The land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedst thy seed, and wateredst it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven.'* . . . . The valleys are composed of a deep rich soil, free from stones. The rocks are principally of grey limestone, and they contributed greatly towards the sustenance of a large population, as they were terraced in all directions with embankments built up with loose stones, on which grew melons, cucumbers, and other creeping plants, as well as the vine, the fig, and the olive . . . . There are no rivers worthy of the name besides the Jordan. The towns are nearly all built upon the hills, partly for defence, and partly for the more convenient growth of the vegetables most used as food by the people. . . . The plains are open, not separated by hedges or walls. The roads are carried through the cornfields; and it may frequently happen, that, in the sowing of grain, different portions of the same handful may fall by the way-side, and upon stony places, and among thorns, and into good ground. . . . . (See Matt. xiii. 5.) "It would be wrong to argue the former capabilities of the Holy Land from its present appearance, as it is now under the curse of God, and its general barrenness is in full accordance with prophetic denunciation. The Israelite in our street, whose appearance was delineated with graphic precision by Moses in the fifteenth century before Christ, is not a surer evidence of the inspiration of the holy volume, than the land as it now exists, cursed as it is in all its products, its heaven shut up, and comparatively without rain.† The prophecies concerning Canaan are numerous, and have been so literally fulfilled, that they may now be used as actual history."-HARDY's Notices of the Holy Land, pp. 275-283. The observation of Mr. Hardy, that the prophecies concerning Canaan have been so exactly accomplished, that they may now be used as actual history, is strictly correct, and a very slight sketch (such as alone can be given in a work like this) will show its propriety. Thus the Israelites were told that their land should be desolate, enjoying its sabbaths (i. e. being untilled, and at rest) while they were in the land of their enemies ;that briers and thorns should come upon it, and that they that pass by should * Deut. xi. 10, 11. † Deut. xi. 17. be astonished. These predictions are fulfilled to the letter. We are told that the art of cultivation is in the most deplorable state; and that, in this desolate country, the traveller in his route every day finds fields abandoned by the plough; the earth produces only briers and thorns in many parts, and the condition of the peasants is misery and wretchedness; so that the feebleness of the population in so excellent a country may well excite our astonishment. "The vine languisheth," for it goes unpruned; 66 the new wine mourneth," neither do they "drink wine with a song;" "strong drink is bitter to them that drink it," for to indulge in good cheer would expose the people to extortion, and wine to a corporal punishment. The wines of Jerusalem, too, are execrable. Their The prophet Isaiah declares, "all the merry-hearted do sigh. shouting shall be no shouting. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth ;-the joy of the harp ceaseth." And we are told that the melancholy and plaintive tones of the Arab in singing affect the listener almost to tears,-while of musical instruments the people have none, or such as are worse than none. "Your land, strangers devour it in your presence," writes the same prophet; "and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers." And Jeremiah and Ezekiel proclaim, "Destruction upon destruction is cried-mischief shall come upon mischief." How exactly this has come to pass, ten invasions, which have introduced into Syria a succession of foreign nations, and the successive conquests of the Romans, Arabians, Turks, Europeans, Egyptians, and Tartars, bear witness; and thus has it been given into the hands of strangers for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a spoil; for when the Ottomans took Syria from the Mamlouks of Egypt, they considered it only as the spoil of a vanquished enemy. According to the law, the life and property of the vanquished belong to the conquerors. The traveller (Volney) here quoted remarks, that the government is far from disapproving a system of robbery and plunder; that precautions against robbers are most necessary in Palestine and the whole frontier of the desert; and that war, famine, and pestilence assail them at every turn. They sow in anguish, and reap vexation and care. They would not be permitted to reap the fruit of their labours. Reduced to a little flat cake of barley or doora, to onions, lentils, and water-dread prevails throughout the villages; for extortion, and the tyranny of all its governors, are everywhere fatal to agriculture, arts, commerce, and population. From the same writer we learn that the roads in the mountains are extremely bad—that nobody travels alone-and that great roads, canals, and bridges, in the interior parts of the country, there are none; in short, the barbarism of Syria is complete-the most simple arts are in a state of barbarism-the sciences are totally unknown. In all this, as with a sunbeam, the accomplishment of the Divine threatenings is written. "The robbers shall enter into it, and defile it. The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness. No flesh shall have peace. They have sown wheat, but they shall reap thorns; they have put themselves to pain, but shall not profit. They shall eat their bread with carefulness, and drink their water with astonishment; that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of all them that dwell therein. The highways lie waste.... the wayfaring man ceaseth. ... the earth is defiled under the inhabitants thereof... the worst of the heathen possess their houses. ... it is a people of no understanding." Again, the annual sum paid by the different divisions of Syria, into the treasury of the Sultan, amounts to 2345 purses; but Palestine, one of these divisions, returns nothing. "They shall be ashamed of your revenues." The pastoral or wandering tribes overrun Syria. The Turkmen, Curds, and Bedouins have no fixed habitations, but keep perpetually wandering with their tents and herds. "Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness."t As he peruses the numerous works written by the many travellers who have visited the Holy Land, the reader will hardly fail to notice the frequent repetition of the word ruins; ruined cities; villages; forts; where now wild animals or birds and scorpions lurk: for "the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever; the multitude of the city shall be left; the defenced city shall be desolate; and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness; your cities are burned with fire, and the cities that are inhabited shall be laid waste." Again, we find continually that, where once the land was fertile and productive, it now lies desert; where once, in well-watered plains, the stately tree and fruitful shrub abounded (see JERICHO), barrenness now reigns; so that scarce a tree is to be seen throughout the perished and dusty country. Here and there only we find a few lovely and verdant spots to tell what once the land of promise was. The remains of cisterns are to be found, in which they collected the rain-water; and traces of the canals by which these waters were distributed on the fields,--but now, even the plentiful fountain gushes forth in vain, for there are none to direct its waters; and it has come to pass which was written, "Ye shall be as a garden that hath no water. How long shall the land and the herbs of every field wither, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein ?" Many of the foregoing passages are taken from the travels of an acute and accurate observer, whose testimony is the more valuable, since it is that of an enemy, for he was himself an unbeliever in that very word of prophecy which his own narrative continually (though to himself unconsciously) proves to be very " sure." Mr. Keith observes, that in one single sentence he shows the fulfilment of not less than six predictions. They are as follows: 66 "I will destroy your high places, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation."-Lev. xxvi. 30, 31; Amos ii. 5. "The palaces shall be forsaken."-Isaiah xxxii. 14. "I will... destroy the remnant of the sea-coast." -Ezek. xxv. 16. "I will make your cities waste."-Lev. xxvi. 31. "Few men left."-Isaiah xxiv. 6. "So will I... make the land desolate; yea, more desolate than the wilderness towards Diblath, in all their habitations."-Ezek. vi. 14. MR. VOLNEY WRITES- The palaces demolished, The towns destroyed, And the earth, stripped of its inhabitants, Seems a dreary buryingplace."+ The preceding extracts may serve to give a slight sketch of the past and present state of Judæa, and to point out briefly the fulfilment of prophecy *Jer. xii. 13. † Jer. xii. 10. For some of the principal prophecies alluded to concerning Judæa, see Lev. xxvi.; Deut. xxix. 22-24; Isa. i. vi. xxiv. xxxii. 9, &c., xxxiii. 8; Jer. iv. 20, &c.; xii. xviii. 6; Ezek. vii. 21, &c., xii. 17-20; Dan. ix. 27. Keith's Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion, pp. 19, 20. in the latter. It may not be amiss to close the chapter with a more cheering theme, and to allude to those prophecies which promise brighter and happier days to this desolate and afflicted land, and her despised and wandering sons. "The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. . . . And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it. . . . Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows? And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations. Ye, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel; . . . and I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it; and the cities shall be inhabited. . . . For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall be no more pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God." (See Deut. xxx. 3-5; Isa. lx. 8, &c.; Ixi. 4, &c.; Ezek. xxxvi. 8, &c.; Amos ix. 13, 15, &c.)* He was a clergyman eminent for humility, piety, and learning, and the celebrated author of the work called "Ecclesiastical Polity," wherein he judiciously set forth and defended the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. About the year 1600 he fell into a long and sharp sickness, occasioned by a cold taken in his passage by water betwixt London and Gravesend, *For a fuller view of the fulfilment of prophecy in the present state of Judæa, the reader is referred to Keith's Evidence of Prophecy,' and the same author's 'Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion:' from which sources much of the preeeding matter is derived. from the malignity of which he never recovered; for after that time till his death he was never free from thoughtful days and restless nights. But a submission to His will that makes the sick man's bed easy by giving rest to his soul, made his very languishment comfortable: and yet all this time he was solicitous in his study, and said often to Dr. Saravia, (who saw him daily, and was the chief comfort of his life,) "that he did not beg a long life of God for any other reason but to live to finish his three remaining books of Ecclesiastical Polity, and then, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace," which was his usual expression. And God heard his prayers, though he denied the Church the benefit of those books, as completed by himself; and it is thought he hastened his own death, by hastening to give life to his own books: but this is certain, that the nearer he was to his death, the more he grew in humility, in holy thoughts and resolutions. About a month before his death, this good man, that never knew, or at least that never considered the pleasures of the palate, began first to lose his appetite, and then to have an averseness to all food, insomuch that he seemed to live some intermitted weeks by the smell of food only, and yet still studied and writ. And now his guardian angel seemed to foretell him that the day of his dissolution drew near, for which his vigorous soul appeared to thirst. In this time of his sickness, and not many days before his death, his house was robbed; of which he having notice, his question "Are was, my books and written papers safe?" and being answered "that they were," his reply was, "Then it matters not, for no other loss can trouble me." About one day before his death, Dr. Saravia, who knew the very secrets of his soul, came to him, and after a conference of the benefit, the necessity, and safety of the Church's absolution, it was resolved that the doctor should give him both that and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper on the following day. To which end the doctor came, and after a short retirement and privacy they two returned to the company; and then the doctor gave him, and some of those friends which were with him, the blessed sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus. Which being performed, the doctor thought he saw a reverend gaiety and joy in his face. But it lasted not long; for his bodily infirmities did return suddenly, and became more visible, insomuch that the doctor apprehended death ready to seize him; yet after some amendment, left him at night with a promise to return early the day following, which he did; and then found him better in appearance, deep in contemplation, and not inclinable to discourse, which gave the doctor occasion to require his present thoughts, to the which he replied, that "he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven; and, oh, that it might be so on earth!" After which words he said, "I have lived to see this world is made up of perturbations, and I have long been preparing to leave it, and gathering comfort for the dreadful hour of making my account with God, which I now apprehend to be near. And though I have, by his grace, loved Him in my youth, and feared him in my age, and laboured to have a conscience void of offence to Him and to all men, yet if Thou, O Lord, be extreme to mark what I have done amiss, who can abide it? and therefore, where I have failed, Lord, show mercy unto me; for I plead not my righteousness, but the forgiveness of my unrighteousness, for His merits who died to purchase pardon for penitent sinners; and since I owe Thee a death, |