shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces." "I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." These words were uttered when Babylon was "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldee's excellency," about one hundred and sixty years before she was brought down. "How hath the golden city ceased!" "Her pomp is brought down to the grave." Sixteen centuries have passed since her foundations were inhabited by a human being. Deterred by superstitious fears of evil spirits, which are said to haunt the place where she stood, and by the more rational dread of reptiles and wild beasts, the wandering Arab never pitches his tent there. In a plain once famous for the richness of its pasture, the shepherds make no fold. Reptiles, bats, and "doleful creatures"-jackals, hyenas, and lions— inhabit the holes and caverns and marshes of the desolate city. In the fourth century, Babylon was a hunting-ground for the Persian monarchs. By the annual overflowing of the Euphrates, pools of stag nant water are left in the hollow places of the ancient site, by which morasses have been formed, so that Babylon has indeed become a "possession for the bittern, and pools of water." It has been swept "with the besom of destruction." The fertile plain of Shinar, renowned for its ancient abundance, is an uninterrupted desert, strewed with the confused ruins of Grecian, Roman, and Arabian towns. A modern * Isa. 13: 20, 21, 22. traveller, in his "search after the walls of Babylon," describes "a mass of solid wall, about thirty feet in length, by twelve or fifteen in thickness," as the only part of them that can now be discovered. Thus, according to the words of the prophet, is she cast up as heaps, destroyed utterly; nothing of her is left.t * Tyre was once the emporium of the world, "the theatre of an immense commerce and navigation, the nursery of arts and science, and the city of perhaps the most industrious and active people ever known." Situate at the entry of the sea, she was a merchant of the people for many isles. All nations were her merchants in all sorts of things. The ships of Tarshish did sing of her in the market; and she was replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas. It was of this mistress of princes that Ezekiel prophesied, in the name of the Lord, "I will scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." How singularly particular! She was not only to be utterly destroyed, but the use that would be made of her site, and the kind of men who would inhabit it, were pointed out more than a thousand years before her complete destruction. How precise the fulfilment! Shaw, in his book of travels, describes the port of Tyre as so choked up that the boats of the fishermen, who now and then come to the place and dry their nets upon *Buckingham's Travels. ↑ Jer. 1 26. Ezek. ch. 27. its rocks and ruins, can hardly enter.* Bruce describes the site of Tyre as "a rock whereon fishers dry their nets." But the testimony of the infidel Volney is more valuable. "The whole village of Tyre contains only fifty or sixty poor families, who live obscurely on the produce of their little ground and a trifling fishery."t Egypt, the most ancient, was also the most powerful and wealthy of kingdoms. But a prophecy went forth against her while yet she was in all her pomp and pride, that the pride of her power should come down; that her land and all that was therein should be made waste by the hand of strangers; that there should be no more a prince of the land of Egypt, and the sceptre of Egypt should depart away. How universally this once fertile country, the granary of the world, has been wasted, and her innumerable cities have been buried; how remarkably the hand of strangers has done it, and how deplorably the remnant of this populous nation is now, and has been for many centuries, under slavery and ignorance and poverty and rapine and every crime, I need not describe. The most remarkable portion of the prophecy is that which declares that there shall be "no more a prince of the land of Egypt." From the conquest of the Persians, about 350 years before Christ, to the present day, the sceptre of Egypt has been broken; she has been governed by strangers; every effort to raise an Egyptian to the throne has been defeated. * Shaw's Travels, ch. 2, p. 31. + Travels, ch. 2, p. 212. Ezek. 30: 6, 12, 13; Zech. 10:11. 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 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?" "I 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 *Deut. 29: 22, 24. + Volney's Ruins, ch. 2, p. 8. |