"tain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he "will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: "for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the "Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the na“tions, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat "their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning"hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither "shall they learn war any more.” *

The great prophecy describing most compendiously, but at the same time most clearly, the fortune of the house of Israel, is that pronounced by their inspired Lawgiver on his last address to the assembled tribes, at the close of their forty years journeying in the Wilderness, and before they had entered upon the land of their inheritance. On this solemn occasion, the Legislator assures the assembled nation, "It shall come to pass "if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord “ thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which "I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set "thee on high above all nations of the earth: and all these "blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee, if thou "shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God."+ The Lawgiver then enumerates every species of prosperity which could bless a people, in their persons, their goods, the fruit of their cattle, and the fruit of their ground: security from all enemies; "and all the people of the earth shall see that thou "art called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid "of thee:" security even from the apparently inevitable contingencies of unfavourable seasons, parching heats, or excessive rains, so common in such a climate; "The Lord shall

open unto thee his good treasure," says the Prophet, "the "heaven to give thee rain into thy land in his season, and to "bless all the work of thine hand.”

It is obvious to remark, how entirely unconnected are such blessings, as security from warlike enemies, and the enjoyment of rain from heaven, with the observance of a religious code; and how idle and unmeaning such promises would have appeared, to any people not deeply impressed, by immediate and clear experience, with the conviction, that a supernatural power

* Isaiah, ii. 2—4.

dictated, and would certainly execute, the promises thus held out. The sacred history records the enjoyment of such prosperity as is thus predicted, during that period of the Jewish state when the divine Law was most zealously observed, the latter part of the reign of David, and the entire reign of Solomon. But unhappily, the intervals of pious obedience and its attendant blessings have been far exceeded, as the prophetic Lawgiver foresaw, by the calamitous periods of disobedience and its attendant punishments. Let us then direct our attention to the nature and extent of these prophetic menaces, and observe their wonderful accomplishment.

The first circumstance which strikes the mind on reviewing these menaces, is their great extent and variety. There is no circumstance of distress, no aggravation of sorrow, applicable to the nation collectively, or to the individuals who compose it, which is not included in the prophetic denunciation: "It shall come to pass," says their Lawgiver to the Jewish nation, "if "thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to "observe and do all his commandments, and his statutes, which "I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come 66 upon thee, and overtake thee.” * He then enumerates a fearful catalogue of evils which should overwhelm them, in the city and field; on their persons by disease; in their property, whether the produce of their flocks, or of the earth: "The "Lord (says he) shall send upon thee vexation and rebuke, in "all that thou settest thine hand unto to do it, until thou be "destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the "wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me." + Nor were their calamities to stop here; they were to be inflicted also by the operation of the elements, which, obedient to the will of the Great Jehovah, were to combine in punishing this rebellious race: "The pestilence, and the consumption, "the fever, and blasting, and mildew," were to pursue them until they should perish. "Thy heaven (says the Prophet) "that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is "under thee shall be iron; and the Lord shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed." Even this was not yet

* Deut. xxviii. 15 to the end.

+Ib. xxviii. 20-24.

the worst; their punishment was to be compelled by the instru mentality of man; their enemies were to be resistless and destructive: "The Lord (says their legislator) 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." These enemies were not to be found only amongst their immediate neighbours, whose hostility might naturally be expected: "The Lord (says the Prophet) "shall bring a nation against thee from afar, "from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a na"tion whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of "fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the “old, nor shew favour to the young." A description so exactly correspondent, first to the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, and still more to the legions of Rome: “And he shall besiege "thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come "down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land." The miseries thus to be inflicted, it was foretold, should exceed in severity the ordinary measure of human calamities. Almost unparalleled sufferings from war and famine are predicted with an exactness, which the narrative of history, while it exactly accords with, cannot exceed: "Thou shalt eat (says the Pro"phet) the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and "of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, "in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies "shall distress thee." A prediction so dreadfully verified at the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and still more dreadfully at its final destruction by the Romans.

Another most signal feature in the prophetic picture, is the universal and protracted dispersion of the nation; the scorn and cruelty they were to experience in the various lands whither they were to go into captivity, and the keenness of their sensa tions under this maltreatment: "Ye shall be plucked from the "land whither thou goest to possess it. And the Lord shall "scatter thee among all people from the one end of the earth even unto the other; and among these nations thou shalt find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the "Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of

66

*Deut. xxviii. 49 to the end.

eyes, and sorrow of mind: And thy life shall hang in doubt "before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt

"have none assurance of thy life. In the morning thou shalt say, Would to God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, "Would to God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart "wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes " which thou shalt see.'

Another circumstance in the manifestation of the divine displeasure against his offending people, more extraordinary still, if any thing can be more extraordinary, is to be found in the signal and permanent alteration which God would produce in the face of the very country they were then preparing to inhabit, and the very nature of the soil they were about to cultivate, at the moment their Legislator invited them to go up and possess it, as being the land the Lord had promised their fathers, "a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.” He predicted, that if they despised the statutes, and departed from the worship of their God, that land should become barren and desolate to such a degree, says the Lawgiver, "that the genera"tions to come of their children, and the stranger that shall "come from a far land, when they shall see the plagues of that "land, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth "therein, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, even "all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto "this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then 66 men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of "the Lord God of their fathers, made with them when he "brought them forth out of the land of Egypt: For they went "and served other gods: and the Lord rooted them out of their “land in anger, and cast them into another land, as it is this "day." +

But however severe and signal the chastisements of this wayward people, they were not to terminate in a final and irreme diable destruction: "Yet for all that (says their God) whenń

they be in the land of their enemies I will not cast them away, "neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to "break my covenant with them: for I am the Lord their

*Deut. xxviii. 63 to the end.

† Ib. xxix. 22-28.

"God." * Thus the divine truth is pledged for the perpetual preservation of some remnant at least of the Jewish race as a distinct people, however apparently dispersed and abandoned; and this promise has been hitherto accomplished during 3,000 years from its delivery, a duration of distinct existence unparal leled in the history of any other nation.

There are some circumstances necessary to establish the full force of the evidence by prophecy-even that the prediction preceded the event, and that it is accurately applicable to it— of which no possible doubt can in the present instance exist. The predictions of the Jewish Lawgiver were certainly delivered above 3,000 years ago; and they are as directly descriptive of the present desolation of Judea, the present wide-spread dispersion and miserable sufferings of the Jews, and at the same time their preservation as a distinct nation, notwithstanding that dispersion and those sufferings, as any historical narrative is descriptive of the scenes which it relates.

It now remains to inquire, whether the particulars predicted can be supposed to have been predicted at hazard, and to have occurred in the common course of events, so as to preclude the necessity of a divine foreknowledge in the Prophet, and a providential arrangement in the event. This, it may be said, is not an improbable case; it is not difficult to conceive that these predictions may have been dictated by mere human sagacity, collecting from past experience the general causes which influence national prosperity or decay, and applying these principles to the particular situation and circumstances of the nation, whose fortunes the Lawgiver, who assumed the character of a prophet, wished to influence, by appearing to predict. And it may be urged, that instances of this kind are not wanting in history; even the lawgiver of Sparta employed a similar expedient, when he procured an oracle to sanction his laws, by declaring, that while the Spartans continued to obey them, they would be happy.

It might further be asserted, that if any man foretells the destruction of any city, or the ruin of any nation, as an event certainly to take place in the indefinite lapse of ages, it is highly probable the prediction would at some period be verified: And

* Levit. xxvi. 44.