tion; and, having the testimony of Volney to all the facts, and also indisputable evidence of the great priority of the predictions to the events, what more complete or clearer proof could there be, that each and all of them emanated from the prescience of Heaven?

The remaining boundary of Judea was the mountains of LEBANON on the north. Lebanon was celebrated for the extent of its forests, and particularly for the size and excellency of its cedars. It abounded also with the pine, the cypress, and the vine, &c. But, describing what it now is, Volney says, "Towards Lebanon the mountains are lofty, but they are covered in many places with as much earth as fits them for cultivation by industry and labour. There, amid the crags of the rocks, may be seen the no very magnificent remains of the boasted cedars.' The words of the prophets of Israel answer the sarcasm,

and con

4 Relandi Palæst. pp. 320, 379. Tacit. Hist. lib. v. cap. vi. r Travels, vol. i. p. 292. Volney remarks, in a note, that there are but four or five of those trees which deserve any notice; and in a note, it may be added, from the words of Isaiah, the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them. (Ch. x. 19.) Could not the infidel write a brief note, or state a minute fact, without illustrating a prophecy? Maundrell, who visited Lebanon in the end of the seventeenth century, and to whose accuracy in other matters all subsequent travellers who refer to him bear witness, describes some of the cedars near the top of the mountain as 66 very old, and of a prodigious bulk, and others younger of a smaller size." Of the former he could reckon up only sixteen. He measured the largest, and found it above twelve yards in girth. Such trees, however few in number, shew that the cedars of Lebanon had once been no vain boast. But after the lapse of more than a century, not a single tree of such dimensions is now to be seen. Of those which now remain, as visited by Captains Irby and Mangles, there are about fifty in whole on a single small eminence, from which spot the cedars are the only trees to be seen in Lebanon. (P. 209.)

vert it into a testimony of the truth:

Lebanon is

ashamed and hewn down. The high ones of stature shall be hewn down: Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one." "Upon the mountains, and in all the valleys, branches are fallen; to the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height, neither shoot up their top among the thick boughs." "Open thy doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour thy cedars. The cedar is fallen; the forest of the vintage is come down.""

Such are the prophecies which explicitly and avowedly referred to the land of Judea, and to the surrounding states. And such are the facts drawn from the narratives of travellers, and given, in general, in their own words, which substantiate their truth; though without any allusion, but in a few solitary instances, to the predictions which they amply verify. The most unsuspected evidence has been selected; and the far greater part is so fully corroborated, and illustrated by other testimony, as to bid defiance to scepticism. The prophecies and the proofs of their fulfilment are so numerous, that it is impossible to concentrate them in a single view, without the exclusion of many; and they are, upon a simple comparison, so obvious and striking, that any attempt at their farther elucidation must hazard the obscuring of their clearness, and the enfeebling of their force. There is no ambiguity in the prophecies themselves, for they can bear no other interpretation but what is descriptive of the actual events. There can be no question of their genuineness or antiquity, for the countries whose future history they unveiled contained several millions of inhabitants, and numerous

s Isa. xxxiii. 9; x. 33, 34. u Zech. xi. 1, 2.

t Ezek. xxxi. 12, 14.

flourishing cities, at a period centuries subsequent to the delivery, the translation, and publication of the prophecies, and when the regular and public perusal of their Scriptures was the law and the practice of the Israelites; and they have only gradually been reduced to their existing state of long-prophecied desolation. There could not possibly have been any human means of the foresight of facts so many and so marvellous; for every natural appearance contradicted, and every historical fact condemned the supposition; and nothing but continued oppression and a succession of worse than Gothic desolators,- -no government on earth but the Turkish,-no spoliators but the Arabs, -could have converted such natural fertility into such utter and permanent desolation. Could it have been foreseen, that after the lapse of some hundred years, no interval of prosperity or peaceful security would occur throughout many ensuing generations, to revive its deadened energies, or to rescue from uninterrupted desolation one of the richest, and one of the most salubrious regions of the world, which the greater part of these territories naturally is? Could the present aspect of any country, with every alterable feature changed, and with every altered feature marked, have been delineated by different uninspired mortals, in various ages from 2200 to 3300 years past? And there could not, so far as all researches have hitherto reached, be a more triumphant demonstration, from existing facts, of the truth of manifold prophecies. In reference to the complete historical truth of the predictions respecting the successive kings of Syria and Egypt, Bishop Newton emphatically remarks, (as Sir Isaac Newton's observations had previously proved,) that there is not so concise and comprehensive an account of their affairs to be found in any author of these times; that the prophecy is really more perfect than any single history, and that no one

historian hath related so many circumstances as the prophet has foretold: so that "it was necessary to have recourse to several authors for the better explaining and illustrating the great variety of particulars contained in the prophecy." The same remark, in the same words, may, more obviously and with equal truth, be now applied to the geographical, as well as to the historical proof of the truth of prophecy. Judea, which, before the age of the prophets, had, from the uniformity and peculiarity of its government and laws, remained unvaried in a manner and to a degree unusual among nations, has since undergone many convulsions, and has for many generations been unceasingly subjected to reiterated spoliation. And now, after the lapse of more than twenty centuries, travellers see what prophets foretold. Each prediction is fulfilled in all its particulars, so far as the facts have (and in almost every case they have) been made known. But while the recent discoveries of many travellers have disclosed the state of these countries, each of their accounts presents only an imperfect delineation; and a variety of these must be combined before they bring fully into view all those diversified, discriminating, and characteristic features of the extensive scene, which were vividly depicted of old, in all their minute lines and varied shades, by the pencil of prophecy, and which set before us, as it were, the history, the land, and the people of Palestine.

Judea trodden down by successive desolators,―remaining uncultivated from generation to generation,the general devastation of the country,-the mouldering ruins of its many cities, the cheerless solitude of its once happy plains,―the wild produce of its luxuriant mountains,-the land covered with thorns, -the highways waste and untrodden,-its ancient possessors scattered abroad,-the inhabitants thereof depraved in character, few in number, eating their

bread with carefulness, or in constant dread of the spoiler or oppressor,-the insecurity of property,the uselessness of labour,-the poverty of their revenues, the land emptied and despoiled,-instrumental music ceased from among them,-the mirth of the land gone, the use of wine prohibited in a land of vines, and the wine itself bitter unto them that drink it-some very partial exceptions from universal desolation, some rescued remnants, like the gleanings of a field, and emblems of the departed glory of Judea, the devastation of the land of Ammon,-the extinction of the Ammonites,-the destruction of all their cities, their country a spoil to the heathen, -and a perpetual desolation ;-the desolation of Moab, its cities without any to dwell therein, and no city escaped,-the valley perished, the plain destroyed, the wanderers that have come up against it, and that cause its inhabitants to wander,—the manner of the spoliation of the dwellers in Moab, their danger and insecurity in the plain country, and flying to the rocks for a refuge and a home, while flocks lie down among the ruins of the citiesnone there to make them afraid,-and the despoiled and impoverished condition of some of its wretched wanderers ;—Idumea untrodden and unvisited by travellers, the scene of an unparalleled and irrecoverable desolation,-its cities utterly abandoned and destroyed,-of the greater part of them no trace left,-a desolate wilderness, over which the line of confusion is stretched out,-the country bare,—no kingdom there, its princes and nobles nothing, and empty sepulchres their only memorials,-thistles and thorns in its palaces,—a border of wickedness, and yet greatly despised,-wisdom perished from Teman, and understanding out of the mount of Esau,-abandoned to birds and beasts and reptiles, specified by name, its ancient possessors cut off for ever, and