man to come quite near them, and seem almost to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the mountains spread themselves out with more harmony or inspire higher thoughts. Jesus seems to have had a peculiar love for them. The most important acts of His Divine career took place upon the mountains. It was there that He was the most inspired; it was there that He held secret communion with the ancient prophets; and it was there that His disciples witnessed His transfiguration.

"This beautiful country has now become sad and gloomy through the ever-impoverishing influence of Islamism. But still everything which man cannot destroy breathes an air of freedom, mildness, and tenderness, and at the time of Jesus it overflowed with happiness and prosperity." And in a

note he adds: "The horrible state to which the country is reduced, especially near Lake Tiberias, ought not to deceive

us.

These countries, now scorched, were formerly terrestrial paradises. The baths of Tiberias, which are now a frightful abode, were formerly the most beautiful places in Galilee. Josephus extols the beautiful trees of the plain of Genesareth, where there is no longer a single one."

Of "the valley in which the Lake of Tiberias is situated," Renan further remarks: "Let us run over it step by step, and endeavour to raise the mantle of aridity and mourning with which it has been covered by the demon of Islamism. . . The lake, the horizon, the shrubs, the flowers, are all that remain of the little canton, three or four leagues in extent, where Jesus founded His Divine work. The trees have totally disappeared. In this country, in which the vegetation was formerly so brilliant that Josephus saw in it a kind of miracle--Nature, according to him, being pleased to bring hither side by side the plants of cold countries, the 1 Pp. 75, 76.

productions of the torrid zone, and the trees of temperate climates, laden all the year with flowers and fruits,-in this country travellers are obliged now to calculate a day beforehand the place where they will the next day find a shady resting-place. The lake has become deserted. A single boat, in the most miserable condition, now ploughs the waves once so rich in life and joy. But the waters are always clear and transparent. . . . The heat on the shore is now very oppressive. The lake lies in a hollow 650 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and this participates in the torrid conditions of the Dead Sea. An abundant vegetation formerly tempered those excessive heats. Josephus considered the country very temperate. No doubt there has been here, as in the Campagna of Rome, a change of climate introduced by historical causes. It is Islamism, and especially the Mussulman reaction against the Crusades, which has withered as with a blast of death the district preferred by Jesus. The beautiful country of Genesareth never suspected that beneath the brow of this peaceful wayfarer its highest destinies lay hidden. Dangerous countryman ! Jesus had been fatal to the country which had the formidable honour of bearing Him. Having become a universal object of love or of hate, coveted by two rival fanaticisms, Galilee, as the price of its glory, has been changed to a desert."

M. Renan was, perhaps, not aware that in thus describing from personal observation the very remarkable change that had taken place in that once beautiful and fertile country, as described by ancient authors, he was in reality writing in confirmation of ancient prophecies relating thereto -prophecies many hundreds of years before recorded in the Bible, and now literally fulfilled, and their fulfilment confirmed by the observation and researches of a man who is an openly

avowed enemy to all revealed religion, and who regards the prophecies of Scripture relative to the Jewish nation and the world's Redeemer as nothing more nor less than " a gigantic dream!"

"The

It is to mutable "nature" and " Islamism," says M. Renan, that this wonderful change in the general aspect of things in that once-favoured land is traceable, It is to "Islamism" only as the secondary cause, say we. cities shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate," was the repeated declaration of the Most High respecting it.1 Primarily, therefore, it is to the curse of God, as predicted by its own prophets. It is the verification of Scripture, the fulfilment of prophecy, and an earnest of what is yet to take place in that land of "unequalled desolation." Sin-stricken and crushed to the earth as for generations that down-trodden people has been, there is yet hope for them. It gleams through the prophecies of Holy Scripture, and is, therefore, in the mind and purpose of their Divine Author. "God can create, and He can destroy." God can "break down; He also can "build up." And when "the fulness of the Gentiles" shall have come in, further predictions relative to the Jewish nation will, before a wondering world, and to the eternal confusion of the "discreet doubters alluded to by M. Renan, be literally fulfilled. Although now dispersed among the Gentiles" over the entire face of the earth, as was predicted of them thousands of years ago, when God threatened to visit them for their sins and punish them for their iniquities, in this widely-scattered state they are, by the special providence of God, unlike all other scattered nations of the past, preserved as distinct and peculiar a people as when having a national existence in their own land-their national character, enthusiasm, 1 See Ezek. xii. 20; Isa. vi. II; Lev. xxvi. 33; Deut. xxviii. 64.

religion, and national hopes still the same.

Their history is perfectly unique in the history of nations, and affords a living demonstration of the truth of the Bible in general, and of the prophecies relating to themselves in particular.

Renan, however, as he can by no means entertain the notion of a special providence, and the fulfilment of prophecy in their case, with his accustomed penetration, thanks the "synagogues" for their preservation as a distinct people for so lengthened a period, notwithstanding the prolonged and severe persecutions they have had to encounter even to a very recent date. His words are: "Thanks to the synagogues, Judaism has been able to sustain intact eighteen centuries of persecution. They were like so many little separate worlds, in which the national spirit was preserved."1 To this we reply, that both their dispersion and their distinct preservation were the direct result of the Divine purpose' respecting them, as we gather from the many prophecies in Holy Scripture of which they were made the subject. In the very beginning of their history as a nation, Moses forewarned them of what would be the consequence were they to rebel against God, and refuse to obey His commandments. Thus, in Deut. iii. 29 we read the following prediction as delivered by Moses to the Israelites previous to their having entered into the possession of the land which by promise and prediction was theirs, in accordance with the terms of God's covenant with Abraham, "I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God," 2-in Deut. iii. 29, we read: "For I know that after my death ye will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days; because ye will do 1 Page 118.

2 Gen. xvii. 8.

evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands." Again we read: “But if ye will not hearken unto Me, and will not do all these commandments; and if ye shall despise My statutes, or if your soul abhor My judgments, so that ye will not do all My commandments, but that ye break My covenant; I also will do this unto you. . . . I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of My covenant; and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy. And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation . . . And your enemies which shall dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste." In this same chapter 1 we read also of a particular providence exercised in their preservation. And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break My covenant with them; for I am the Lord their God ... If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against Me, and that also they have walked contrary unto Me; and that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity, then will I remember My covenant with Jacob, and also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land."

1

No, Renan, the extraordinary preservation of this people in full possession of all their distinguishing characteristics, is

1 Lev. xxvi.