Hidden as the history and state of Edom has been for ages, every recent disclosure, being an echo of the prophecies, amply corroborates the truth, that the word of the Lord does not return unto him void, but ever fulfils the purpose for which he hath sent it. But the whole of its work is not yet wrought in Edom, which has further testimony in store: and while the evidence is not yet complete, so neither is the time of the final judgments on the land yet fully come. Judea, Ammon, and Moab, according to the word of prophecy, shall revive from their desolation, and the wild animals who have conjoined their depredations with those of barbarous men, in perpetuating the desolation of these countries, shall find a refuge and undisturbed possession in Edom, when, the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion being past, it shall be divided unto them by line, when they shall possess it for ever, and from generation to generation shall dwell therein. But without looking into futurity, a retrospect may here warrant, before leaving the subject, a concluding clause. That man is a bold believer, and must with whatever reluctance forego the name of skeptic, who possesses such redundant credulity as to think that all the predictions respecting Edom, and all others recorded in Scripture, and realized by facts, were the mere haphazard results of fortuitous conjectures. And he who thus, without reflecting how incongruous it is to "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel," can deliberately, and with an unruffled mind, place such an opinion among the articles of his faith, may indeed be pitied by those who know in whom they have believed, but, if he forfeit not thereby all right of ever appealing to reason, niust at least renounce all title to stigmatize, in others, even the most preposterous belief. Or if such, after all, must needs be his philosophical creed, and his rational conviction! what can hinder him from believing also that other chance words-such as truly marked the fate of Edom, but more numerous and clear, and which, were he to "seek out and read," he would find in the selfsame "book of the Lord"-may also prove equally true to the spirit, if not to the letter, against all the enemies of the gospel, whether hypocrites or unbelievers? May not his belief in the latter instance be strengthened by the experience that many averments of Scripture, in respect to times then future, and to facts then unknown, have already proved true? And may he not here find some analogy, at least, on which to rest his faith, whereas the conviction which, in the former case, he so readily cherishes is totally destitute of any semblance whatever to warrant the possibility of its truth? Or is this indeed the sum of his boasted wisdom, to hold to the conviction of the fallacy of all the coming judgments denounced in Scripture till "experience," personal though it should be, prove them to be as true as the past, and a compulsory and unchangeable but unredeeming faith be grafted on despair? Or if less proof can possibly suffice, let him timely read and examine, and disprove also, all the credentials of revelation, before he account the believer credulous, or the unbeliever wise; or else let him abandon the thought that the unrepentant iniquity and wilful perversity of man and an evil heart of unbelief (all proof derided, all offered mercy rejected, all meetness for an inheritance among them that are sanctified unattained, and all warning lost) shall not finally forbid that Edom stand alone-the seared and blasted monument of the judgments of Heaven. A word may here be spoken even to the wise. Were any of the sons of men to be uninstructed in the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, and in the knowledge of his word, which maketh wise unto salvation, and to be thus ignorant of the truths and precepts of the gospel, which should all tell upon every deed done in the body; what in such a case-if all their superior knowledge were unaccompanied by religious principles-would all mechanical and physical science eventually prove but the same, in kind, as the wisdom of the wise men of Edom? And were they to perfect in astronomy, navigation, and mechanics what, according to Sir Isaac Newton, the Edomites began, what would the moulding of matter to their will avail them, as moral and accountable beings, if their own hearts were not conformed to the Divine will; and what would all their labour be at last but strength spent for naught? For were they to raise column above column, and again to hew a city out of the cliffs of the rock, let but such another word of that God whom they seek not to know go forth against it, and all their mechanical ingenuity and labour would just end in forming--that which Petra is, and which Rome itself is destined to be-" a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." The experiment has already been made; it may well and wisely be trusted to, as much as those which mortals make; and it is set before us that, instead of provoking the Lord to far worse than its repetition in personal judgments against ourselves, we may be warned by the spirit of prophecy, which is the testimony of Jesus, to hear and obey the words of Him-" even of Jesus, who delivereth from the wrath to come." For how much greater than any degradation to which hewn but unfeeling rocks can be reduced, is that of a soul, which while in the body might have been formed anew after the image of an all holy God, and made meet for beholding His face in glory, passing from spiritual darkness into a spiritual state, where all knowledge of earthly things shall cease to be power-where all the riches of this world shall cease to be gain-where the want of religious principles and of Christian virtues shall leave the soul naked, as the bare and empty dwellings in the clefts of the rocks-where the thoughts of worldly wisdom, to which it was inured before, shall haunt it still, and be more unworthy and hateful occupants of the immortal spirit than are the owls amid the palaces of Edom-and where all those sinful passions which rested on the things that were seen shall be like unto the scorpions which hold Edom as their heritage for ever, and which none can now scare away from among the wild vines that are there entwined around the broken altars where false gods were worshipped! PHILISTIA. THE land of the Philistines bordered on the west and south-west of Judea, and lies on the south-east point of the Mediterranean Sea. The country to the north of Gaza is very fertile, and long after the Christian era it possessed a very numerous population, and strongly fortified cities. No human probability could possibly have existed in the time of the prophets, or at a much more recent date, of its eventual desolation. But it has belied, for many ages, every promise which the fertility of its soil and the excellence both of its climate and situation gave, for many preceding centuries, of its permanency, as a rich and well-cultivated region. And the voice of prophecy, which was not silent respecting it, proclaimed the fate that awaited it, in terms as contradictory, at the time, to every natural suggestion, as they are descriptive of what Philistia now actually is. "I will stretch out my hand upon the Philistines, and destroy the remnant of the seacoasts."* "Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley." "Thus saith the Lord, for three transgressions of Gaza, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza which shall devour the palaces thereof. And I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holdeth the sceptre from Ashkelon; and I will turn my hand against Ekron; and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, saith the Lord God."‡ "For Ashkelon shall be a desolation; it shall be cut off with the remnant of the valley; and Ekron shall be rooted up-O Canaan, the land of the Philistines, I will even destroy you, that there shall be no inhabitant; and the seacoast shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks." "The king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited."|| The land of the Philistines was to be destroyed. It partakes of the general desolation common to it with Judea and other neighbouring states. While ruins are to be found in all Syria, they are particularly abundant along the seacoast, which formed, on the south, the realm of the Philistines. But its aspect presents some existing peculiarities, which travellers fail not to particularize, and which, in reference both to the state of the country, and the fate of its different cities, the prophets failed not to discriminate as justly as if their description had been drawn both with all the accuracy which ocular observation and all the certainty which authenticated history could give. And the authority so often quoted may here be again appealed to. Volney (though, like one who in ancient times was instrumental to the fulfilment of a special prediction," he meant not so, neither did his heart think so"), from the manner in which he generalizes his observations, and marks the peculiar features of the different districts of Syria, with greater acuteness and perspicuity than any other traveller whatever, is the everready purveyor of evidence in all the cases which came within the range of his topographical description of the * Ezekiel xxv. 16. † Jeremiah xlvii. 5. Amos i. 6, 7, 8 Zechariah ix. 5. wide field of prophecy-while, at the same time, from his known, open, and zealous hostility to the Christian cause, his testimony is alike decisive and unquestionable: and the vindication of the truth of the following predictions may safely be committed to this redoubted champion of infidelity. The seacoasts shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. The remnant of the Philistines shall perish. Baldness is come upon Gaza; it shall be forsaken. The king shall perish from Gaza. I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod. Ashkelon shall be a desolation, it shall be cut off with the remnant of the valley; it shall not be inhabited. "In the plain between Ramla and Gaza" (the very plain of the Philistines along the seacoast) "we met with a number of villages badly built, of dried mud, and which, like the inhabitants, exhibit every mark of poverty and wretchedness. The houses, on a nearer view, are only so many huts (cottages) sometimes detached, at others ranged in the form of cells around a courtyard, enclosed by a mud wall. In winter, they and their cattle may be said to live together, the part of the dwelling allotted to themselves being only raised two feet above that in which they lodge their beasts"—(dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks). "Except the environs of these villages, all the rest of the country is a desert, and abandoned to the Bedouin Arabs, who feed their flocks on it.”* The remnant shall perish; the land of the Philistines shall be destroyed, that there shall be no inhabitant, and the seacoasts shall be dwellings and cottages for shepherds, and folds for flocks. "The ruins of white marble sometimes found at Gaza prove that it was formerly the abode of luxury and opuence. It has shared in the general destruction: and, notwithstanding its proud title of the capital of Palestine, it is now no more than a defenceless village" (baldness has come upon it), "peopled by, at most, only two thousand inhabitants." It is forsaken and bereaved of its king. "The seacoast, by which it was formerly washed, is every day removing farther from the deserted ruins of Ashkelon." It shall be a desolation. Ashkelon shall not be inhabited. "Amid the various successive ruins, those of Edzoud (Ashdod), so powerful under the Philistines, *Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 335, 336. |