astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among all the nations whither the Lord shall lead thee; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway; and the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plague 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 prophet), 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: afterwards 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 among 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 every where, and is still every where a wanderer. One characteristic of this wonderful race is written over 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 Deut. xxviii. + Lev. xxvi. 44. Jer. xlvi. 27, 28. 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 by-word." 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 im prisonments, 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 prophecied that, as a nation, they should be restored; consequently they were not only to be kept alive, but unmingled with the nations, every where a distinct race, and capable of being selected and gathered out of all the world, when the time for their restoration should arrive. The fulfilment 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 common policy; every ordinary bond of national union and preservation has been wanting; whatever influences of local attachment, or of language, or manners, 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 unprece dented 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 peculiarites 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 a lake, without losing the colour and characteristic marks of its own current; but that a mighty river, having plunged from a mountain height into the depth of the ocean, and been separated into its component drops, and thus scattered to the ends of the world, and blown about by all winds, during almost eighteen centuries, is still capable of being disunited from the waters of the ocean; its minutest drops, having never been assimilated to any other, are still distinct, unchanged, and ready to be gathered, waiting the voice that shall call again the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah. Mean while, where are the nations among whom the Jews were scattered? Has not the Lord, according to his word, made a full end of them?* While Israel has stood unconsumed in the fiery furnace, where are the nations that kindled its flames? Where the Assyrians and the Chaldeans? Their name is almost forgotten. Their existence is known only to history. Where is the empire of the Egyptians? The Macedonians destroyed it, and a descendant of its ancient race cannot be distinguished among the strangers that have ever since possessed its territory. Where are they of Macedon? The Roman sword subdued their kingdom, and their posterity * Jer. xlvi. 28. are mingled inseparably among the confused population of Greece and Turkey. Where is the nation of ancient Rome, the last conquerors of the Jews, and the proud destroyers of Jerusalem? The Goths rolled their flood over its pride. Another nation inhabits the ancient city. Even the language of her former people is dead. The Goths! where are they? The Jews! where are they not? They witnessed the glory of Egypt, and of Babylon, and of Nineveh; they were in mature age at the birth of Macedon and of Rome; mighty kingdoms have risen and perished since they began to be scattered and enslaved; and now they traverse the ruins of all, the same people as when they left Judea, preserving in themselves a monument of the days of Moses and the Pharaohs, as unchanged as the pyramids of Memphis, which they are reputed to have built. You may call upon the ends of the earth, and will call in vain for one living representative of those powerful nations of antiquity, by whom the people of Israel were successively oppressed; but should the voice which is hereafter to gather that people out of all lands, be now heard from Mount Zion, calling for the children of Abraham, no less than four millions would instantly answer to the name, each bearing in himself unquestionable proofs of that noble lineage. What is this but miracle? Connected with the prophecy which it fulfils, it is double miracle. Whether testimony can ever establish the credibility of a miracle, is of no importance here. This one is obvious to every man's senses. nations are its eye-witnesses. All Among the most striking and comprehensive, and yet particular prophecies, are those of Daniel. The history of the four great empires of Chaldea, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, is embraced in his predictions. We mention these, not that we intend to trace out their fulfilment, but merely, in passing, to insert a remarkable testimony concerning them from one of the most learned expositors of the prophetic scriptures, and another from the most learned and acute of the ancient opposers of christianity. Bishop Newton, speaking of that portion of Daniel's prophecies which relates to the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, from the death of Alexander the Great to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, a period of 148 years, remarks: "There is not so complete and regular a series of their kings-there is not so concise and comprehensive an account of their affairs-to be found in any author of those times. The prophecy is really more perfect than any history. No one historian hath related so many circumstances, and in such exact order of time, as the prophet hath foretold them; so that it was necessary to have recourse to several authors, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian, and to collect here something from one, and to collect there something from another, for the better explaining and illustrating the great variety of particulars contained in this prophecy." Thus far, the testimony of a learned friend of Christianity. The corresponding testimony of a learned enemy, we have in the celebrated Porphyry, of the third century, to whom the exact correspondence between the predictions and the events was so convincing, that he could not pretend to deny it. He rather laboured to confirm it; and from the very exactness of the fulfilment, forged his only weapon of defence, in the assertion that the prophecy could not have been written by Daniel, but must have been written by some one in Judea, in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.† Others after him have asserted the same thing, not only without any proof, but contrary to all the proofs which can be had in cases of this nature. They preferred the denial of the plainest historical evidence of the time when the prophecy was written, to the acknowledgment that its author must have written "by inspiration of God." Paine, however, whose willing * Newton on Prophecy, ii. 149. + Lardner, iv. 215. |