dred thousand, and out of Benjamin, that later historian, the country people used as a bare shields and drew bows, two hundred beverage, mixing it with water. Pliny also and fourscore thousand, mighty men of celebrates the palm trees, and the oil and valour !" balsam; and other writers enthusiastically speak of the land as xúpav sidaípova, "the fortunate country," xúpav süßorav, "the country abounding in pasture."+

They describe the two Galilees as covered with all sorts of trees, and the soil as everywhere so rich and fertile, that the most lazy were encouraged to cultivate it from its fruitfulness. Samaria is celebrated for its kind and genial soil, its sweet waters, its abundance of trees, fruit, and cattle, and also for the delicious milk it produced, in consequence of the quantity of grass. Gennesareth, too, is spoken of as a delightful region, in which all kinds of trees flourished, the nut, the palm, the fig, the olive, and the vine; and the valley of the Jordan has been widely celebrated as "a garden environed with hills," cov xpiov, a celestial region," delightful for its trees, fruits, and odoriferous balsam.

In later times we have frequent testimonies to the power and population of the country. "The single districts of Jamnia and Joppa alone," says the geographer Strabo, "could arm forty thousand men," a number to the fourth of which their entire population does not now amount. In the Itineraries of Antonius, forty-two viæ publicæ, or high roads, are enumerated; and Reland gives several inscriptions that were found on Roman milestones, marking the distance between different spots. The great geographical work of Claudius Ptolemæus, written about the middle of the second century, in the time of Antoninus Pius, enumerates, with great precision, cities and villages that once existed in Galilee, Judea, and other parts of the country, giving their latitude and longitude; but the sites of most of them are now no longer known, and their very names have perished from the memory of the present At a subsequent period, a. D. 313, when inhabitants. the country had much declined from its flourIn modern times, the decline of the coun-ishing state under the Jews, it is still celetry in population and wealth has been most brated by Eusebius for its oil, corn,, wine, extraordinary and startling. It is palpably vegetables of all kinds, honey, palms, fruit manifest from the recollection and experi-trees, cattle and beasts of burthen; and later ence of all the aged inhabitants, but is best still, towards the close of the fourth century, shown by the def'tars, or registers of im- Hieronymus, a native of Palestine, observes, ports, kept by the officers charged with the "That the celebrated land of Judea excels collection of the miri, or land tax, imposed all lands in fertility, no one can doubt, who by Sultan Selim when he conquered Pales- hath marked well the country from Rhinocotine and Syria. These contain registries of rura to Mount Taurus and the river Eularge districts of land now waste and uncul- phrates, the power of the cities, and the pleativated, and of villages no longer in ex- santness of the climate." istence !

When we survey the present bare and treeless aspect of the landscape, the gloomy and rugged districts destitute of vegetation, and the poverty of the scanty population, we can scarcely believe that this is the land once poetically described as " flowing with milk and honey," as "a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and of honey," -"a place where there is no want of any thing in the earth."

The productions of the country in times past have been lavishly praised and celebrated as most abundant. "In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine-presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves and lading asses; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens.'

Hecatæus, a Greek historian, who flourished 549 years B. C., speaks of the great fertility of the land belonging to the Jews; and Polybius, B. c. 170, states that the eastern part of the country, about Tyre, furnished abundant supplies to the army of Antiochus. Diodorus describes the inhabitants, fifty years B. C., as generally living upon flesh and milk; he speaks also of the pepper which was produced upon the trees, and of the abundance of honey which, according to a

* Nehemiah.

A faithful description of the state and appearance of the land at this day will present a picture exactly the reverse of that sketched above. There are now no chariots of iron nor of wood, nor carriages of any description, not even carts upon wheels, throughout the country. There is no such thing either as a carriage road, or any made road at all. In the mountains and rocky districts, the marks of horses' hoofs worn into the surface of the hard stone alone point out to the traveller the direction of his route; and in the plains, the devious tracks and bridle-paths, except where the vegetation is strong and vigorous, are entirely obliterated after high winds and heavy rains, and the course of the traveller is then entirely directed by some bold mountain or well-known eminence.

Instead of the country covered with all sorts of trees, and the genial soil refreshed with sweet waters, and clothed with an abundance of grass, the eye now wanders either across wide and cheerless plains, parched and dusty, and unrefreshed by one single solitary tree, or across rugged and desolate districts of naked rock and loose shingle, where neither a drop of water nor a blade of grass is found to relieve the monotony and nakedness of the surrounding desolation.

* Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. ix. c. 104. Josephus. Tacitus. Ammianus Marcellinus.

The footsteps of the traveller are ever and anon conducted across wide and fertile plains, covered with a fine black mould; but except in the immediate neighbourhood of a few solitary hamlets, perched by the side of a scanty rivulet, at wide distances from each other, the whole surface of the soil is left neglected and totally uncultivated. During six months in the year it is covered with thistles and rank herbs; the earth is parched and cracked into wide fissures, and not a single drop of water can often be found for half a day's journey, and yet the land was once described as a land of brooks and of water, of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills."

gions of the north, the wild deserts of Syria, and the vast stony and sandy plains of Africa and Arabia, there can scarce be a more solitary, deserted, and poverty-stricken country in the old world, than Palestine as it now exists. From Damascus to Gaza, a journey of a fortnight, Jerusalem, Naplous, and Jaffa, can alone be said to maintain the rank of towns. Nazareth, Tiberias, and D'jenneen are no more than large villages of mud houses; and Tyre and Sidon, and the seaports, destitute of wealth and commerce, cannot be placed in the same rank with the most miserable fishing town in the island of Great Britain.

The present condition of this interesting country is most remarkable, and well worthy of deep consideration, when taken in connection with the history of the Jews and the language of prophecy.

The country being unenclosed and unapIn the winter season, when the rains fall propriated, the right of ownership exists in and moisten the dry seeds which have been the sheikh or chief of the nearest village, as a scattered in the dust by the ripened vegeta-sort of lord of the manor, who exacts a tribtion of the preceding summer, these wide ute, when he is strong enough to do so, from plains begin to assume some appearance of the Bedouin Arabs and wandering tribes of freshness and of green; but ere the young Turcomans, who, during their migratory exand vigorous vegetation of the new year has cursions, feed their dromedaries and goats well made its way through the dead and rot-upon the rank herbs. In all the villages and ting stocks of the preceding season, it is in scattered hamlets which here and there diits turn brought to maturity, and soon after versify the monotonous surface of the treekilled and dried up by the burning rays of less solitude, the houses are alike destitute the summer sun. A stream of water in this of furniture, of even the commonest domesthirsty country is an almost invaluable trea- tic utensils. The people are clothed in tatsure, and wherever a brook refreshes the tered garments, and the sickly children, with soil, there a small hamlet is found to be pale and bloated countenances, in many plaperched, and the water is exhausted in irri- ces, present a sad aspect of want and gating the adjacent land, and supporting the misery. few radishes, turnips, and other roots, which, with unleavened bread, or roasted Indian corn, constitute the food of the inhabitants. The milk of the goat, or of the dromedary, is the only milk now procurable, and the eye searches in vain for the rich pastures, the Xav eßorav, and the abundance of cattle described by the old writers. The ground in the neighbourhood of the villages and towns, with one or two solitary exceptions, is cultivated only for a mere subsistence; there is no valuable produce growing on the soil, and no accumulation of wealth and capital upon the surface of the country. The vineyards are all wasted and destroyed, excepting here and there a vineyard belonging to the convents, and wine is no where to be met with, "I record against you this day," says Moexcept in the houses of some of the Chris-ses, "that I have set before you life and tians, or in the cellars of the monks. The delightful groves of all sorts of trees, so lavishly praised in times past, no longer extend their shade over the bald and naked country; and, excepting the fruit trees in the gardens of the villages, and the few olives, which at Samaria and in some other places afford an agreeable relief to the eye, the whole landscape is entirely treeless.

When we hear of the "store cities" of times past, of the "cities great and fenced up to heaven," and of the strong and populous towns with glittering towers, "turribus in cœlum nitentibus," ""* we can scarcely believe that this thinly-peopled, poor, and soli. tary country can be the one so celebrated by ancient writers. Excepting the icy re

*Rufus Avienus.

After the promulgation of the law and commandments to the children of Israel in the wilderness, a solemn warning was recorded in the books of the law by Moses against their disobedience. If they obeyed not the law and the commandments, they were to be plucked from off the land they went in to possess-were to be scattered among all people from one end of the earth even unto the other, and the land was to become desolate and the cities waste.

death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

The curse was to alight upon the people, and upon the land; and all the denunciations of calamity and misfortune seem, in case of the continued disobedience of the Jews, to be directed to the consummation of three great catastrophes,-the destruction of Jerusalem -the dispersion of the Jews-and the desolation of the land of promise. The prophecies connected with the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews have been often dwelt upon, but those more immediately relating to the desolation of the Holy Land, "which was to be for a sign and a wonder," appear not to have attracted the same degree of attention.

66

Behold, saith the Lord, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire,

that bringeth forth an instrument for his distinctly foretold that this wasting and desowork, and I have created the waster to des-lation are only to be terminated by the restroy. toration of the Jews, when the "waste cities shall be builded, and the desolate places inhabited."

The desolation is spoken of as a continuing desolation, following upon the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the Jews. It is described as "the desolation of many And Isaiah says, "Awake, awake, stand generations," whilst the Jews are scattered up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the "in their enemies' land;" and it seems to be hand of the Lord the cup of his fury.

"Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O| Elijah the prophet, who would be sent to Zion, put on thy beautiful garments, O them, before the great and dreadful day of Jerusalem, the holy city; for henceforth the Lord," to turn the hearts of the fathers there shall no more come unto thee the to the children, and the hearts of the uncircumcised and the unclean.

"Thy children shall make haste, thy destroyers, and they that made thee waste, shall go forth of thee.

"No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.

children to the fathers," the Lord would come and smite the earth with a curse.

The history of the country since the death of our Saviour, and the present desolate and wasted state of the land of promise, certainly appear to be a standing evidence of the gradual fulfilment of the prophecies. The land, since that period, has "And they that shall be of thee shall build been the constant theatre of foreign war or the old waste places; thou shalt raise up of domestic disorder. It has been succesthe foundations of many generations; and sively the prey of the Romans, the Isaurian thou shalt be called, The repairer of the robbers, the Persians, the Tartars, the breach, The restorer of the paths to dwell in. wild Turcoman hordes, the fierce ArabiThey shall raise up the former deso-ans, the Carmathians, the Seljukian Turks, lations, and they shall repair the waste the Crusaders, the Carizmians, and a host cities, the desolation of many generations. of the petty tribes and princes, who lived Thou shalt no more be termed forsaken; by plunder and confiscation. Into whatneither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate."

And according to Jeremiah:-" Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring again the captivity of Jacob's tents, and have mercy on his dwelling-places; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after the manner thereof.

"Thus saith the Lord, Again there shall be heard in this place, which ye say shall be desolate, without man and without beast... the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the Lord of Hosts, and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise unto the house of the Lord: for I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at first, saith the Lord!

"Fields shall be bought in the land whereof ye say, It is desolate, without man or beast. Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valley, and in the cities of the south; for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the Lord.

ever hands the country has fallen from the time of its first occupation by the Romans, to the period of the late conquest by Mohamed Ali, we can trace no lengthened interval of prosperity and peace. Whenever the fate and fortunes of Palestine occupy a place in the page of history, it will be found that the pen of the historian has been employed to record some deed of blood or some national calamity. Our attention is drawn to the land, only to listen to the recital of hostile incursions or civil dissensions, or to witness a state of society unnaturally divided and disorganised by religious feuds and fanatical superstition.

As we have been considering the present condition of the land as compared with its past state, it may not be altogether uninteresting to throw a glance at some of the principal events which have befallen the country since the death of Christ.

In the great siege of Jerusalem, which took place thirty-seven years after that memorable event, two hundred thousand persons are said to have died of hunger, and one million one hundred thousand to have perished in the assault. And such was the degree of hunger suffered by the besieged, that a Jewess of the name of Mary, the daughter of Eleazer, roasted and ate her own child!* "The tender and delicate woman among you, which should not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards her young one, and towards her children she shall bear, for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straightness where with thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates!"

"In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale, and in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah,shall the flocks pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, saith the Lord!" Public attention has of late been much attracted to the language of prophecy by various able commentators; and certainly the warnings and predictions as to the future fate and fortunes of the Jewish people, and the land of their inheritance, are very remarkable, when taken in connection with the past history and present condition of both the one and the other. says Eusebius," a great commotion among The prophecies close with the remarkable the Jews, which brought about the destrucdenunciation of Malachi, that, in case of tion of a great number of them. Their the continued disobedience of the Jews, and their refusal at the last to listen to

Forty-six years after the destruction of Je rusalem, the terror inspired by the success and severity of the Roman arms appears to have worn off. "There arose again,

*Josephus, lib. i. book 3.

calamities were augmented by continual ny and the erection of the Temple of Jupimischiefs following one upon another.ter were the cause of it. Being stirred up by some violent and contentious spirit, they raised seditions against the Greeks and Gentiles with whom they dwelt."*

We are told too by Josephus that Jerusalem was totally destroyed by Titus, and the Hebrew temple so effectually overthrown that the site on which it stood was ploughed. The new colony of Elia Capitolina, no doubt, formed the head-quarters of the Romans, and, being in their hands, it was neither sacked nor ravaged, and is therefore in no wise alluded to by Dion.

The Emperor Hadrian, on his journey through the East, in the commencement of his reign, halted in Palestine, and, for the purpose of awing the disaffected Jews and keeping them in subjection, he determined to found a Roman colony upon the ruins Hadrian, in contempt of, and in indignaof Jerusalem. In A. D. 130, a portion of the tion at, the religious opinions and prejudisite of the old city was enclosed, and set ces of the Jews, which had provoked this apart for the public and private buildings second rebellion, desecrated all the Jewish of the new settlement. On the site of Solo-sanctuaries by the erection thereon of mon's Temple the emperor directed the idolatrous temples and statues of the dif erection of a pagan temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, and called the colony, on that account, Elia Capitolina, joining in this appellation his own family name and the surname of Jupiter. This profanation of the site of" the holy Zion," and of the Temple, by the Romans, was the immediate cause of the second great rebellion of the Jews against the Roman power, which ended in their utter destruction as a nation, and in their dispersion "among all the kingdoms of the earth, for their hurt, to be a reproach, a proverb, a taunt, and a curse, in all places whither the Lord should drive them."

In the siege of Bitther, which terminated the war, and which Eusebius places in the eighteenth year of Hadrian's reign, the besieged were subjected to all the horrors of famine, and hundreds died of hunger and thirst. All were at last put to the sword, together with their leader Barchochebas. “Five hundred of their principal fortresses," says Dion," and nine hundred and eighty-five of their chief villages, were ut terly destroyed. In skirmishes and battles five hundred and eighty thousand men were slaughtered, and the multitude of those who died by hunger, by disease, and by fire, cannot be traced out; but when the war was finished, "all Judea was left almost a desert."t

A great many of the Romans perished, so that Hadrian, when he wrote to the senate, did not make use of the flourishing exordium customary with the emperors, but of the following pithy commencement: "Si vos liberique vestri valetis, bene est ; ego quidem et exercitus valemus !"

ferent heathen divinities; and as the few Christians of that period adhered to the ceremonial law of Moses, and followed the same rites and observances as the Jews, they were confounded with them in the general persecution. A temple and statue of Venus were erected on the spot where, according to tradition, our Saviour was crucified; in that where he arose from the dead, a statue of Jupiter; while in the grottos of Bethlehem the worship of Adonis was established, and over the gate of the city, looking towards that place, the emperor placed a marble hog!* All the Jews were forbidden to come within sight of the city, except on one day in the year, which was appointed to be the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.†

After the repression of this second great rebellion, Palestine descended to the rank of a distant and obscure province of the Roman empire. The name Jerusalem disappears from the page of history, and the occurrences connected with the colony of Elia Capitolina no longer attract the notice of the historian.

After an interval of two centuries, during which Elia Capitolina appears to have existed as the principal city of the province, and to have been inhabited by a considerable number of persons who had adopted the christian faith, our attention is again attracted to Palestine by the important and interesting occurrences connected with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity.

When the christian church became legally established by the edicts of Constantine, the attention of all Christians was naturally directed to the Holy Land. About the year of our Lord 330, the famous order

Dion makes no mention of Jerusalem in his account of this great rebellion. It is plain, therefore, that Eusebius, who flourished a century later, is in error when he * Tillemont, Hist. des Empereurs, tom. i. 2. speaks of the second destruction of Jeru+ Hieronymus, or St. Jerome, an eye-witness, salem and of the Temple; and he is clear- thus describes the mournful assemblage on that ly mistaken in supposing that Elia Capi-day: "Videas in die quo capta est Jerusalem a tolina was built by Hadrian after the conclusion of this war, when it is evident from Dion Cassius that the founding of the colo

*Hist. Sac. lib. xii.

Romanis, venire populum lugubrem, confluére de.
crepitas mulierculas, et senes pannis annisque obsi-
tos, in corporibus et, in habitu suo viam Domini
coruscante, ac radiante avaσáos ejus, plangére
ruinas templi sui, populum miserum.
fletus in genis, et livida brachia, et sparsi crines: et

Adhuc

† ὥστε πᾶσαν ολιγου δεὶν τήν Ιουδαίαν ερημοθῆναι — miles mercedem postulat, ut illis fére plus liceat.” Dion Cassius, 1162.

-Hieronym. in Sophron. c. ii.