commenced the instruction of all this congregation: it appears that they continue favourable to their first impulse.

"LXXVII. [420] The attention of all good Catholics, and especially of the holy congregation of the Propaganda of the Faith, cannot be sufficiently excited to the state of the English church, in consequence of the new doctrines propagated with such force and so much success by Messrs. N., P., and K. With arguments drawn from the works of the Holy Fathers, of which they have already undertaken a new edition in English, they labour for the restoration of the ancient Catholic liturgy, of the breviary (which many of them recite each day regularly) of fasts, of the monastic life, and of many other religious practices. They also teach the insufficiency of the Bible as a rule of faith, the necessity of traditions, and of ecclesiastic authority, the real presence, prayer for the dead, the use of images, the power of absolution in the priesthood, the sacrifice of the Eucharist, devotion to the most holy Madonna, and many other Catholic doctrines, so that but very little separates them from the true faith, and this little decreases every day. Believers multiply dispositions so precious, by multiplying

your prayers.

"LXXVIII. The English theologians of Oxford draw daily nearer to us. See now E- (a most zealous Protestant minister) has desired a return to union with us, and proposed it in a manner so beautiful, that I was obliged to turn my head to hide the tears of pleasure that filled my eyes. Let us thank God and pray."

The reader is also referred to two very valuable articles in the Quarterly Review: No. 125, on the Archbishop of Cologne; and No. 127, on the Exiles of Zillerthal.

VIII.

DRYING UP OF THE EUPHRATES.

As Mr. Alison's History of the French Revolution furnishes illustrations of the first four vials, so the Rev. R. Walsh's Letters, and his Residence in Constantinople, just published (1836), in two volumes octavo, furnish illustrations of the sixth vial. They contain authentic accounts of the Greek and Turkish revolutions, the [421] destruction of the Janissaries, and the fires devastating Constantinople.

Some extracts will shew the desolation of these countries. He thus describes it, on the shores of the Hellespont:"Here it was that the first picture of Turkish desolation presented itself to me. While those smiling prospects which a

good Providence seems to have formed for the delight of man, invite him to fix his dwelling among them, all is desert and desolate as the prairies of Missouri. In a journey of nearly fifteen miles along the coast, and for half the length of the Hellespont, I did not meet a single human habitation, and this is the finest climate, the most fertile soil, and once the most populous country in the world."-Vol. i. 212.

Again, vol. ii. 228. "As I approached Constantinople, there was no cheering appearance of a dense population; no increase of houses, or villages to intimate the vicinity of a large city. For the last ten miles we did not pass a house, nor meet a man; and we suddenly found ourselves under the walls before I was aware that I was approaching the town. We passed through the Silyvria gate, and the desolation within was worse, because less expected than that without. As our horses' hoofs clattered over the rugged pavement, the noise was startling, so desolate and silent were the streets."

Again, vol. ii. 136. The island of Plate "strongly reminded me of some of those solitary islands in Arctic and other remote regions, seldom visited by man, of which birds alone keep an undisturbed possession: but this was within a few miles of an immense city, the noise of whose population could be heard, if it was not drowned in the scream of those birds. We left this island, from which we were in some measure driven by its wild inhabitants (the sea-fowl), feeling it another evidence of the exceeding solitude and depopulation of every place around this great Turkish capital."

Once more, vol. ii. 188, he thus speaks of Nicæa: "So late as the year 1677, it was a flourishing and populous town. It then contained a population of 10,000 Christian Greeks, and many precious remains of antiquity to attest its former splendour. But the desolating hand of the Turks has since effaced every trace of this; and it is a melancholy contemplation now to behold it, the shadowy [422] phantom of a magnificent city, on a beautiful and fertile spot, where bountiful nature has provided every thing necessary for human life; an extensive plain exuberant with fertility, sloping lawns verdant with pasture, wooded hills covered with the finest timber, and a climate the most bland and delicious that ever refreshed a mortal frame. Yet here human life is actually extinguished, human habitations totally obliterated, and the solitude rendered more striking by the irrefragable testimonies of its former splendour, and the visible evidences of what it recently was, and what it still might be. . . . . The next morning at daylight we left this most inter esting, but melancholy spot, where there is a lovely and fertile VOL. II.-75

plain fifteen miles long, and no one to cultivate it, a lake like an inland sea, full of fish, and no one to eat them, and the magnificent walls of a city more than eight miles in circumference, and no one to inhabit it."

Not only the acts of the Government, but documents given by Mr. Walsh in his Appendix, shew that Turkey still retains its cruelty and oppression, its poisonous doctrines and its hostility to the word of God. This may be seen in the Fetva and warning issued at Constantinople, in February, 1823, and the Firman, published in June, 1824, prohibiting the buying or selling of the Turkish Bible.

The following extract of a statement, given in the German Courier, August 10, 1836, from Constantinople, will show that the awful dispensations connected with the sixth vial continue towards the Turkish empire. "The town of the Dardanelles, which has just been almost totally burnt, contained a population of 20,000 souls; it is unknown whether the fire originated in evil design or not. From the moment of its first breaking out the greatest efforts were made to save the powder magazines which contained an immense quantity of combustible materials. The last batteries have fallen a prey to the flames." Thus every thing seems to conspire to render Turkey defenceless. -Record, Sept. 8, 1836.

In the midst of these scenes of desolation and misery, what a cheering and steady light does the blessed and sure word of prophecy present to our minds. Isaiah lviii. 12; lxi. 4.

Every thing respecting the Turkish empire that has taken place since the earlier editions of this work exhibits the same drying up of the Euphrates. The intelligent Paris correspondent of the Record [423] gives the following statement, date July 2, 1839, "In a recent debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the speech of M. La Martine is stated to be to this effect: The Ottoman empire, he declares, exists no more, that it is a mere phantom, that to attempt to re-establish it, or to prop it up into a temporary feeble strength would be labour lost; that the idea of substituting for it an Arabian power, an Egyptian dynasty, having Mahomet Ali for its founder, is an equally vain thought; that the pasha and Ibrahim are but splendid transitory meteors of the eastern sky, and their performances but mirages of the desert; that the whole territory, whether belonging to the Porte or to the Viceroy of Egypt, should be regarded as a waste in the political world, awaiting the incursions of European civilization; that instead, therefore, of deprecating war in the east, that event should be hailed as a signal to civilized Europe, meaning France, to regenerate the race who inhabit

that region, that the Anglo-Russian system of the status quo should be totally abjured, and that a new empire should be aimed at, whether by the conquest of one western power or by the division of Turkey and Egypt, between several powers he does not say. "I am not," he says, "a Revolutionist, I am not a political adventurer, but I declare without hesitation that France, Europe, Asia, civilization, humanity, will all gain by a war in the east, which will precipitate us into an unknown career; nous appellerons tous dans la carriere de l'inconnu."

The word of God has distinctly enough pointed out that career, in the day of tribulation and the final triumph, not of any human kingdom, but of the kingdom of Christ, and his only.

The Journal des Debats has noticed that the Sultan had seen some of the largest and fairest provinces of his immense empire wrested from him by conquest, or partly alienated by treaty and usurpation of his sovereign rights, instancing Moldavia, Wallachia, Greece, Egypt, and Syria.

While these sheets have been passing through the press, the position of Turkey and Egypt has become increasingly interesting to every mind alive to the times in which we are living. The vigorous, energetic, and determined Sultan Mahmoud Khan II. died about July 1, 1839, and has been succeeded by, it is said, a feeble-minded youth of 16. The war has been renewed in Syria, and the Turks defeated by the Egyptian army under Ibrahim, [424] between Bir and Aintab, on the right bank of the Euphrates. The correspondent of the Standard observes: "The days of the Turkish empire are numbered. Worldly wisdom boasted much of Mahmoud. Mahomedanism, like Popery, must be overthrown. Prophecy must be accomplished. All diplomatic attempts to prop up the Turkish empire must fail, against the positive declarations of the word of God."

IX.

RESTORATION OF THE JEWS TO THEIR OWN LAND.

It will be observed that the author considers this event likely to commence within a few years. See pages 214-217. We may then expect some symptoms even now of the preparing of the way. And not to speak of movements among the Jews themselves, and the assurance of the considerable increase of the number of the Jews in the Holy Land in the last twenty years, political events have tended very materially to direct the attention of all nations to the east, and to furnish,

it may be, vast facilities for this event. The public attention in this country was powerfully called to this by an able article in the Quarterly Review, on the present state of the Jews; and recent political events, (August, 1839,) speeches in the French Chambers, the death of the Sultan, the victory of Ibrahim Pacha, the defection of the Turkish admiral, rapidly followed each other, and have justly excited the attention of all Europe. It is a delightful fact that our government have appointed a British Vice-Consul, W. T. Young, Esq., at Jerusalem, not only for commercial purposes but also for the protection of the Jews returning from our country to Judea. He entered Jeru

sałem on the 10th of April, 1839, and in a letter received from him by the author, he says, "The Chief Rabbi came out to meet me about half a mile from the city gate. It certainly was a most interesting and affecting thought that our beloved country had been permitted to be the first publicly to shew her consideration for the law of Israel. Much movement is going on among the Jews here. It has pleased our heavenly Father to bless in a remarkable manner the labours of his servants; two Sundays ago we had the [425] first baptism of the Infant Protestant church at Jerusalem. There are other three waiting the opportunity publicly to avow their belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, men of influence and consequence in the Synagogue, besides other earnest enquirers." He justly asks, "Why does the church of England lock up her acknowledged superiority in a little island like Great Britain? What ground our beloved country might and ought to occupy! The influence she ought to have, and might have through that appointed means, her simple and dignified and spiritual form of worship, connected with the good she might do in establishing sound Scriptural truths, and thereby bursting asunder the chains of slavery both in body and soul that entwine around millions, is truly exciting!

"The Jews are here in the most interesting state, like some timid animal that has found its liberty, looking round to see which road to take. We must now soon be called upon to rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad; a nation is about to be born in a day. Every thing here is evidently in a political way preparing for the great conflict, and in the meanwhile Israel is making ready and gaining favour in the sight of the nations, that they may go forth as from Egypt with the spoil of the Gentiles."

Another recent event is thus recorded in the Standard, of August 6, 1839, in a letter, dated Alexandria, July 17: "Sir Moses Montefiore arrived here on the 12th inst. from Syria.