history, there are innumerable monuments which depose in favour of the fact. Such are the prodigious quantity of ruins dispersed over the plains, and even in the mountains, at this day deserted. On the remote parts of Carmel are found wild vines and olive-trees which must have been conveyed thither by the hand of man; and in the Lebanon of the Druses and Maronites, the rocks, now abandoned to fir-trees and brambles, present us in a thousand places with terraces, which prove that they were anciently better cultivated, and consequently much more populous, than in our days."* 66 Syria," says Gibbon, "one of the countries that have been improved by the most early cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference. The heat of the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the sea and mountains,-by the plenty of wood and water; and the produce of a fertile soil affords the subsistence and encourages the propagation of men and animals. From the age of David to that of Heraclius the country was overspread with ancient and flourishing cities; the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy." Such evidence has merely been selected as the most unsuspicious, though that of many others might also be adduced. The country in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem is indeed rocky, as Strabo represents it, and apparently sterile; and is now, in general, perfectly barren; but "even the sides of the most barren mountains in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem had been rendered fertile by being divided into terraces, like steps rising one above another, where soil has been accumulated with astonishing labour."† "In any part of Judea," Dr. Clarke adds, "the effects of a beneficial change of government are soon witnessed, in the conversion of desolated plains into fertile fields. Under a wise and beneficent government the produce of the Holy Land would exceed all calculation. Its perennial harvest, the salubrity of its air, its limpid springs, its rivers, lakes, and matchless plains, its hills and vales, all these, added to the serenity of the climate, prove this to be indeed a field which the Lord hath blessed." But the facts of the former fertility, as well as of the present desolation of Judea are established beyond contradiction; and, in attempting, in this respect, * Volney's Travels in Egypt and Syria, vol. ii. p. 368. 66 † Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 520. General Straton describes these terraces as resembling the gradus of a theatre; and particularly marked them as vestiges of ancient "luxuriance." +Ibid. p. 521. to invalidate the truth of sacred history, infidels have either been driven, or have reluctantly retired, from the defenceless ground which they themselves had once assumed, and have given room whereon to rest an argument against their want of faith as well as of veracity. For, in conclusion of this matter, it surely may, without any infringement of truth or of justice, be remarked, that the extent of the present and long-fixed desolation, the very allegation on which they would discredit the Scriptural narrative of the ancient glory of Judea, being itself a clearly-predicted truth, then the greater the difficulty of reconciling the knowledge of what it was to the fact of what it is, and the greater the difficulty of believing the possibility of so "astonishing" a contrast, the more wonderful are the prophecies which revealed it all, the more completely are they accredited as a voice from heaven, and the argument of the infidel leads the more directly to proof against himself. Such is "the positive testimony of history," and such the subsisting proofs of the former grandeur and fertility of Palestine, that we are now left without a cavil to the calm investigation of the change in that country from one extreme to another, and of the consonance of that change with the dictates of prophecy. Under any regular and permanent government, a region so favoured by climate, so diversified in surface, so rich in soil, and which had been so luxuriant for ages, would naturally have resumed its opulence and power; and its permanent desolation, alike contradictory to every suggestion of experience and of reason, must have been altogether inconceivable by man. But the land was to be overthrown by strangers, to be trodden down, mischief was to come upon mischief, and destruction upon destruction, and the land was to be desolate. The Chaldeans devastated Judea, and led the inhabitants into temporary captivity. The kings of Syria and Egypt, by their extortions and oppression, impoverished the country; the Romans held it long in subjection to their iron yoke; and the Persians contended for the possession of it. But in succeeding ages still greater destroyers than any of the former appeared upon the scene to perfect the work of devastation. "In the year 622 (636), the Arabian tribes, collected under the banners of Mahomet, seized, or rather laid it waste. Since that period, torn to pieces by the civil wars of the Fatimites and the Ommiades; wrested from the califs by their rebellious governors; taken from them by the Turkmen soldiery; invaded by the European crusaders; retaken by the Mamelouks of Egypt; and ravaged by Tamerlane and his Tartars-it has at length fallen into the hands of the Ottoman Turks."* It has been overthrown by strangers,-trodden under foot,—destruction has come upon destruction. The cities were to be laid waste. By the concurring testimony of all travellers, Judea may now be called a field of ruins. Columns, the memorials of ancient magnificence, now covered with rubbish, and buried under ruins, may be found in all Syria. From Mount Tabor is beheld an immensity of plains, interspersed with hamlets, fortresses, and heaps of ruins. The buildings on that mountain were destroyed and laid waste by the Sultan of Egypt in 1290, and the accumulated vestiges of successive forts and ruins are now mingled in one common and extensive desolation. Of the celebrated cities Capernaum, Bethsaida, Gadara, Tarichea, and Chorazin, nothing remains but shapeless ruins. Some vestiges of Emmaus may still be seen. Cana is a very paltry village. The ruins of Tekoa present only the foundations of some considerable buildings. The city of Naim is now a hamlet. The ruins of the ancient Sapphura announce the previous existence of a large city, and its name is still preserved in the appellation of a miserable village called Sephoury. Loudd, the ancient Lydda and Diospolis, appears like a place lately ravaged by fire and sword, and is one continued heap of rubbish and ruins.** Ramla, the ancient Arimathea, is in almost as ruinous a state. Nothing but rubbish is to be found within its boundaries. In the adjacent country there are found at every step dry wells, cisterns fallen in, and vast vaulted reservoirs, which prove that in ancient times this town must have been upwards of a league and a half in circumference.†† Cæsarea can no longer excite the envy of a conqueror, and has long been abandoned to silent desolation. The city of Tiberias is now almost abandoned, and its subsistence precarious; of the towns that bordered on its lake there are no traces left.§§ * Volney's Travels, vol. i. p. 357. † Mariti's Travels, vol. ii. p. 141: Buckingham's Travels in Palestine, p. 107. Mariti's Travels, vol. ii. p. 177. Ib. Wilson's Travels, p. 227. Macmichael's Journey to Constantinople, p. 196. T Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 401. ** Volney's Travels, vol. ii. p. 332-334. tt Ibid. p. 334. Captain Light's Travels, p: 204. Buckingham's Travels, p. 126. 9 Captain Light's Travels p 204. Zabulon, once the rival of Tyre and Sidon, is a heap of ruins. A few shapeless stones, unworthy the attention of the traveller, mark the site of the Saffre.* The ruins of Jericho, covering no less than a square mile, are surrounded with complete desolation; and there is not a tree of any description, either of palm or balsam, and scarcely any verdure or bushes to be seen about the site of this abandoned city.† Bethel is not to be found. The ruins of Sarepta, and of several large cities in its vicinity, are now "mere rubbish, and are only distinguishable as the sites of towns by heaps of dilapidated stones and fragments of columns." But at Djerash (supposed to be the ruins of Gerasa) are the magnificent remains of a splendid city. The form of streets, once lined with a double row of columns and covered with pavement still nearly entire, in which are the marks of the chariot-wheels, and on each side of which is an elevated pathway-two theatres and two grand temples, built of marble, and others of inferior note-bathsbridges a cemetery with many sarcophagi, which surrounded the city-a triumphal arch-a large cistern-a picturesque tomb fronted with columns, and an aqueduct overgrown with wood-and upwards of two hundred and thirty columns still standing amid deserted ruins, without a city to adorn-all combine in presenting to the view of the traveller, in the estimation of those who were successively eyewitnesses of them both, a much finer mass of ruins" than even that of the boasted Palmyra. But how marvellously are the predictions of their desolation verified, when in general nothing but ruined ruins form the most distinguished remnants of the cities of Israel; and when the multitude of its towns are almost all left, with many a vestige to testify of their number, but without a mark to tell their name. 66 And your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the * Mariti's Travels, vol. ii. p. 158-169. ↑ Buckingham's Travels, p. 300. Captains Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 199. Irby and Mangles's Travels, p. 317, 318. The ruins of Djerash were first discovered by Seetzen, in 1806. They have since been visited by Sheikh Ibrahim (Burckhardt), Sir William Chatterton, Mr. Bankes, the Hon. Captain Irby, Captain Mangles, Mr. Legh, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Buckingham. Both Burckhardt and Mr. Buckingham have also given a description of them. Many of the edifices were built long after the period of the prediction; yet they are not excluded from the sentence of desolation. land rest and enjoy her Sabbaths, &c. A single reference to the Mosaic law respecting the Sabbatical year renders the full purport of this prediction perfectly intelligible and obvious. "But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, thou shalt neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard." And the land of Judea hath even thus enjoyed its Sabbaths so long as it hath lain desolate. In that country, where every spot was cultivated like a garden by its patrimonial possessor, where every little hill rejoiced in its abundance, where every steep acclivity was terraced by the labour of man, and where the very rocks were covered thick with mould, and rendered fertile; even in that selfsame land, with a climate the same,* and with a soil unchanged, save only by neglect, a dire contrast is now, and has for a lengthened period of time been displayed by fields untilled and unsown, and by waste and desolated plains. Never since the expatriated descendants of Abraham were driven from its borders has the land of Canaan been so "plenteous in goods," or so abundant in population, as once it was; never, as it did for ages unto them, has it vindicated to any other people a right to its possession, or its own title of the land of promise-it has rested from century to century; and while that marked, and stricken, and scattered race, who possess the recorded promise of the God of Israel, as their charter to its final and everlasting possession, still "be in the land of their enemies, so long their land lieth desolate." There may thus almost be said to be the semblance of a sympathetic feeling between this bereaved country and banished people, as if the land of Israel felt the miseries of its absent children, awaited their return, and responded to the undying love they bear it by the refusal to yield to other possessors the rich harvest of those fruits, with which, in the days of their allegiance to the Most High, it abundantly blessed them. And striking and peculiar, without the shadow of even a semblance upon earth, as is this accordance between the fate of Judea and of the Jews, it assimilates as closely, and, may we not add, as miraculously, to those predictions respecting both, which Moses uttered and recorded ere the tribes of Israel had ever set a foot in Canaan. The land shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her rest while she lieth desolate without them. See Brewster's Philosophical Journal, No. XVI. p. 227. |