A Remarkable Prophecy

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out on the long and interesting journey from Jericho, away and up to Jerusalem-away nearly twenty miles, and up over four thousand feet. By and by they reached Bethany, after leaving which, there on the slopes of Olivet, Jerusalem came into view, as it still comes into view, for the topography has not changed. The scene, with its associations, was too much for this sympathetic and patriotic Jew. Tears came into his eyes as he affectionately beheld the Holy City, and he then gave utterance to

A Remarkable Prophecy.

Looking intently upon the city, he exclaimed:

"If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation" (Luke xix. 41-46).

All the world knows how that prophecy was fulfilled to the very letter, under Titus and Vespasian, by the Romans, when over a million Jews were slain, and hundreds of thousands taken captive. We know, too, how that terrible work was repeated 65 years later, when the Jews, having recovered themselves, waged rebellion in their endeavour to remove the Roman yoke. It was in the reign of Hadrian, when they were led by one Bar-cochba,

or

Son of the Star," as he was called-one of the many false Christs. Historians place the awful sequel as second only to the horrible work under the Titus invasion. The desolation of the Holy Land generally, and Jerusalem in particular, was then complete, and the prophecies uttered by Moses, 1,600 years previously, were fulfilled absolutely.

Fifty Curses.

The curses God had threatened against Israel in the event of disobedience all came to pass. They are to be found in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter xxviii. There, in verse 15, God said :

'It shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee."

Among those curses we note, in verse 25 :—

The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies; thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them; and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth."

In verse 37,

too

'Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee."

Jesus Christ gives us what might be called a

Hadrian's Edict

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microscopic, albeit comprehensive, digest of that chapter of Deuteronomy in Luke xxi. 24 :

They shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

That twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy contains fifty distinct curses, not one of which remains unfulfilled. The Romans did the main portion of the work under Titus, Vespasian, and Hadrian; and the cost of quelling the Bar-cochba rebellion by the last-named Emperor, both in life and money, was so enormous that he vowed the Jewish people should never again be allowed to assert themselves in Palestine. He sought to carry out his determination by expelling all the Jews from the Land. He razed their venerated city to the ground, and built thereupon the new Roman city,、 Aelia Capitolina.

Hadrian's Edict.

He issued an Edict about the year A.D. 135, forbidding any Jew to settle in the Land. And that Edict held good for over 1,700 years.

The reality of the Hadrian Edict will be better realized when we note that even so recently as 1827, when Sir Moses Montefiore visited the Land, he could not find more than 500 Jews there. And they were the scum of the race, the poorest of the poor; mere nomads, pilgrims-and even they were only there on sufferance. It cut Sir Moses Montefiore

to the quick to behold so lamentable a condition of affairs in the Land of Promise. The diary which he compiled of his visit to Palestine, written for private circulation, is now before us, and is painful reading. He sought the permission of the Porte at Constantinople to erect alms-houses where the poor old Jews might, at any rate, end their days in peace; for, of course, in those days especially, the permission of the Turkish authorities was absolutely necessary before any building could be erected for Jewish purposes. The Edict of Hadrian had never been repealed, though it was, in some respects, obsolete. He did ultimately obtain a firman from the Porte, as a result of which he had built outside the south-west walls of Jerusalem twenty-seven tworoomed cottages, and a windmill for corn-grinding purposes. The firman had been obtained in 1838, and Sir Moses Montefiore was granted an audience with the Sultan in 1854, but owing to obstacles existing at the time the consent was obtained, the buildings were not erected till 1856.

But this condition of things' was not always to obtain. Christ said, as recorded in the text last quoted, it was only to be

"Until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

The Dying Turk.

Not the least among the Gentiles to tread down Jerusalem and all she represents has been the Turk. For many a long century he has parted God's Land among his Pashas for gain. In the book of Revelation the Ottoman Power is referred to as the