we do not know, though tradition says in Susa. The extraordinary honour in which he was held in life is shewn, as you noticed before, by the fact of his name being placed by his contemporary, Ezekiel, between those of Noah and Job; and it is said that after his death men strove for the possession of his remains."

"But, mamma," Janet said, "I have been wondering what had become of the land of Palestine during all those seventy years. Had no nation taken possession of such a lovely fertile land in all that time? It seems to me that we might have expected to read of battles again, and of a second conquest like that achieved under Joshua. But we don't."

"No; for God ordained it otherwise," Mrs. Conway said. "The Babylonians and then the Persians evidently regarded the country as their conquered territory all the time; but clearly it was never really possessed or inhabited during that period. The land was left to enjoy her Sabbaths in fulfilment of a very striking old prophecy in Leviticus, to which I have not yet directed your attention. Turn to chapter xxvi., and you will see that it very much resembles the one in Deuteronomy, which we have talked so much about. Now look especially at verses 33-35, and see how it says that while the people were scattered among their enemies their land was to rest and enjoy her Sabbaths, because it did not so rest while they dwelt therein. Compare this with the twentyfirst verse of the last chapter of 2 Chron., and you will see that the whole carrying away was to fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, UNTIL THE LAND HAD FULFILLED HER SABBATHS,' etc. Very few, no doubt, of the rightful inhabitants were left after the great carrying away; for when Gedaliah was slain by conspirators (Jer. xli.), all the people, great and small, arose and went to Egypt, fearing the vengeance of the Chaldeans. Still,

probably many of the poorer sort, and perhaps the dwellers in the remote parts of the country, who may have fled and hidden themselves during the earlier troubles, would return when all was quiet, and so form a scattered population over the country. There are some verses in the end of the seventh of Isaiah which favour this idea, I think. The prophet begins at verse 17 to speak of the Assyrian invasion; and then, after dwelling on the desolation, he says, 'And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow and two sheep; and it shall come to pass, that for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.' And he goes on to describe how all the land should become briars and thorns,' and how it should be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.' In fact, it was unoccupied, and therefore the very poorest could pasture their flocks anywhere at will; and of course the pasturage for those few flocks would be abundant; so that those who, perhaps, had been oppressed and downtrodden, those who had been kept in bondage, even after the legal seven years, and Jeremiah tells us that there were many such, and that this treatment of the poor was one of the crying sins of those bad times,— that these people might now live in comfort and luxury. And then in the northern parts there were the descendants of those whom Esarhaddon had sent to replace the ten tribes,—a mixed race now, called by some the Cutheans, who worshipped the true God, as well as many false ones, the ancestors probably of the more modern Samaritans, of whom we soon hear more.

"The land was reserved, it was kept by God's overruling providence for its rightful owners; no enemies opposed their progress, no rivals disputed their claims; and so, when the edict of Cyrus was proclaimed, and the

forty-two thousand, three hundred and sixty Jews, comprising, I suppose, the most pious and patriotic of the captive nation, set forth to reclaim the inheritance of their fathers. (Ezra ii. 64—70), it seems that they had nothing to do but to march in and establish themselves once more in their old cities.

"Now is not this a wonderful thing? For seventy years the country had been, as we may say, empty. It had just waited for its true proprietors; and when the time came, so, sure enough, in came again this large company, with their servants, their horses, their mules, and their camels; and quietly and unopposed, at least at first, they settled down in the land which the older ones had left in their childhood, and of which the younger had heard tell as their very own, all their lives long!

"Yes, it was a wonderful thing, indeed," Martin said, thoughtfully; "but," he added, smiling, "I shall have a question to ask you about that return, which I won't put now, because my father wants me home early."

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CHAPTER XVI.

RETURN.

"That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus."-2 CHRON. xxxvi. 22; Ezra i. 1.

"WEL

ELL, Martin, and now for your question; I am quite curious to hear it," said Mrs. Conway, next time they met to talk.

"Oh! it was about the number of those who went back, which does not strike me as large at all.”

"No, in one sense it certainly was not large, that is, considering the size of the nation," Mrs. Conway said. "I suppose, after all, the bulk of the people stayed behind in the land of their captivity. Many, no doubt, had taken root there. They had their positions, their houses, their possessions in that land; and they did not care to leave these things for a land which perhaps their own eyes had never seen, or their own feet trodden. Others, again, would be too old or too frail to undertake such a journey, with all its attendant dangers. These waited, perhaps, until things were more settled, still, I daresay, entertaining a hope of joining their friends some day."

66

Amongst whom I should say was Daniel," said Martin, with emphasis.

"Very likely; but he was very aged by that time; and in his old age, as we saw, his mind was filled with visions

so vast and so far-stretching, that I think he would be able to wait with patience for a yet more glorious future," replied Mrs. Conway. "See it was in Belshazzar's time, when Nebuchadnezzar's reign of forty-three years had ended, and his immediate successors had passed away too; for there were three not mentioned in Scripture, between him and Belshazzar,-it was in that wicked and profane king's reign that God began to make known to Daniel a sort of outline of the future history of our world. He saw the Persian, the Greek, and Roman empires laid out as it were before him, and then that kingdom of Messiah set up, which should eclipse all their glories, and in which his own lot was secured."

keep their counand I can fancy poring over the

"Yes; how would any one feel who had seen such visions?" said Martin, earnestly. "Of course, he and Ezekiel had done their best all along to trymen from forgetting their own land; how some of the people would often be writings of their prophets, and how they would count the years, and I should think often wonder which siege they were to date from."

"Yes; and that point they could not settle until other edicts came, especially the last, which enabled them to reckon backwards. Prophecies fixing certain periods have been generally thus far uncertain. But now, as you have pictured to yourselves these pious groups, can't you imagine multitudes of others who didn't care, and were altogether indifferent about the matter, and how much sorrow and vexation their worldliness and indifference would cause to their more righteous brethren ?"

"Oh, yes, indeed; they must have been vexed with those grovelling, sordid fellow-countrymen of theirs, who thought they might as well stay where they were!" Martin replied. "I know I should have been."

"But after all, this was only the first company who