times or events to which it referred. I only assert, that while many of the prophecies remain unfulfilled because the times they relate to have not arrived, a very great number must have either been fulfilled already, or have utterly failed; and yet no unbeliever could ever put his hand on that portion of history which contradicted the truth of any. I ask you to remember this important and undeniable fact, and then say whether it is not most impressive evidence that another mind than that of man was the author of the prophecies of the Bible-whether it can be supposed possible in the nature of things that human ingenuity could have contrived a volume of predictions reaching so far, extending so widely, telling so much, assuming such particularity, without having been contradicted by a single event in the history of nearly six thousand years. We now enter upon the question of FULFILMent. I undertake to show that the history of the world has wonderfully responded to the prophecies of the Bible, and echoed back to the holy men who uttered them, a complete assurance that they "spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." But where shall I begin? It were easier to write a volume on this one subject than to compress the matter within our necessary limits, so as to do it any tolerable justice. Selecting some insulated portions of the train of prophecy, we must content ourselves with exhibiting their accom plishment as specimens of the whole. To this, the remainder of the present lecture, and the whole of the next, will be devoted As an example of minute prediction and singular fulfilment, compare Jeremiah 34: 2, 3, with Ezekiel 12:13. In the former scripture, it was foretold by one prophet, B. C. 590, that Zedekiah the king of Judah should be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and behold his eyes, and speak with him mouth to mouth, and go to Babylon. In the latter, it was foretold by another prophet, B. C. 594, that Zedekiah should not see Babylon, though he should die there. But is there not a contradiction here? How could Zedekiah be taken to Babylon and behold her king and die there, and yet never see the city? The history of the kings of Judah, written without any design of pointing out the fulfilment of prophecy fully explains the difficulty. Zedekiah was delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon, and beheld his eyes, and spoke with him mouth to mouth—not, however, at Babylon, but at Riblah. There his eyes were put out by command of his captor, B. C. 588. In this state he went to Babylon and died there, having never seen the city of his captivity. Another example of wonderful minuteness is found in the prophecies of the fall and destruction of Babylon. We can notice only a small part of them. "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shal. lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the islands 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 lionsinhabit 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.' 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 de. scribes 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 |