be appropriated to the dispersion of the Jews. But the introduction of a feature hitherto somewhat novel to our pages, in a direct appeal to a prediction still in course of actual fulfilment, may give an opportunity of digressing for a moment, to notice and reply to an objection which has been sometimes raised, on the ground that the evidence of miracles ought to have been continued. It will be seen that in fulfilling prophecy we actually possess a contemporary proof of the truth of the Christian revelation.

If, then, any be inclined to ask: why was not the full flood of evidence with which Christianity is said to have been ushered in, continued in each successive age, so that all might enjoy a like profusion of proof? I remark that it ought to be received as a sufficient answer, that no such deficiency of evidence does, in fact, exist; for that of testimony is fully competent to carry us back, with absolute certainty, to the very profusion of proof which it is implied in the objection we do not possess. But admitting that there were some degree of inferiority in the kind of external proof, and it must on all hands be admitted that it is less obvious, and less accessible to mankind in general, than that which is actually submitted to the senses, I further answer that universally, the first development of any system, political, scientific, or religious, requires, not perhaps more clearness of thought, or greater precision of language; (for these are alway essential;) but certainly more elaborate prolixity of illustration, and more careful elucidation of proofs, than will be needed when the system has been thoroughly understood, and is fairly settled on a solid basis: just as the foundation of a building is wider than the superstructure; or its first internal fittings more costly than any which are likely to be called for hereafter; not because the importance of the machinery has diminished, or its work become less valuable; but because the first outlay has accomplished its end; and the ordinary routine of business can henceforward be carried on at a smaller expenditure of money and of labour. When a new scheme of faith was first introduced, the worthiness of the end inview called for an ostensibly supernatural interposition; more ordinary means were afterwards sufficient to carry on the work; and, as in other concomitant particulars, when human custody was available, under providence and grace, to undertake the

charge of the dispensation entrusted to its care, the work was left to man, uninterrupted by any open and visible interposition from above.

Once more, miracles perpetually recurring, would cease to be miracles; or, more properly, they would loose the peculiar value of miracles; for they would cease to attract attention; and thus the object of their exhibition would be defeated. And in fact, the case is actually such as I have represented it. For though, for the reasons just given, miracles of a particular class are not now in actual exercise, and prophecies are not now anew in course of delivery, the perpetual fulfilment of by-gone prophecies, is a present miracle, of a different kind, in the course of continued performance; and the man who cannot satisfy himself without the actual exhibition of a miracle, should not go unreminded that he may behold in many of the subjects of prophecy, all that the veriest scepticism can demand. The facts in which the fulfilment is seen are certified by the universal consent of every witness; some of them, peradventure, may be brought home to his very door; and they are such as can leave no doubt of genuine and superhuman foresight in the enunciation of the prophecy.

I resume, then, with this in view, the point at which we broke off;-the dispersion of the Jews; constituting as it does the most universally known of all the fulfilling prophecies. The fact itself is without precedent in the history of the world. No very profound research is needed to discover instances without number of petty or powerful principalities which have risen, and lived their day, and sunk to rise no more. And in all probability, since time began, thousands of prosperous states have run their short career and perished;-each swallowing up its predecessors; and being in turn absorbed by others; and history has taken no note of their splendour or decay. Where, we ask in astonishment, are the mighty Empires of Assyria, of Greece, of Persia, of Rome? Where is the power of the once invincible Saracen; of the haughty caliphate; or of the bloody Turk? Where are the legendary or the substantial thrones of the Hindu monarchs; and the countless legions which owned the sway of the Mogul? The state of these great potentates has passed away; and scarce a vestige remains to signify that it has existed; far less to

perpetuate a remnant of their dominion or their power. The soil of their countries has been parcelled out to strangers, or become a desert; and the inhabitants have lost all purity of native blood; so that the Italian cannot say "I am a Roman;" nor the Greek, "my fathers fought at Marathon." Throughout central Asia race has been confounded with race; and conquerer and conquered have become one people. Even in India, if caste have tended to perpetuate religious distinctions, it has never been tried by an exile of nearly two thousand years; and it has neither secured Hinduism from extensive changes, (see pp. 199, &c.) nor preserved the nationality of its several subdivisions by recording an unbroken descent from one universally acknowledged father.

But the history of Israel's children presents a tissue of strange peculiarities. Their principality was small; and their circumscribed borders lay between incomparably more extensive kingdoms, to one or other of which they were often in subjection; and the armies of which perpetually occupied, or traversed, or found a battle field before their towns and on their plains. They have been twice driven from the home of their fathers, and have languished away the last eighteen hundred years, exiles in every clime. Yet whether as a conquered tributary kingdom, or a wandering race of persecuted outcasts, they are still a separate people. They have been trampled under foot by persecutors avowedly labouring to exterminate either their religion or their race: driven from country to country, they have been compelled to disguise their name, and deny their faith; dungeons, torture, extortions, and proverbial contempt have awaited them in the city and in the field; rights conceded to all else, have been and are, to this day, withheld from them; yet they have never purchased ease by forswearing their country's badge; they have clung tenaciously to their national creed; and when constrained, in a moment of more unendurable oppression, to conceal their attachment to it, they have cursed in secret a profession reluctantly worn before the world. Nor is it only here and there that a scanty remnant drags on a precarious existence. Occasional stragglers are to be met with every where; for they are a people of a wandering foot, as well as of a weary breast; but they have more permanent settlements in every country which has been visited by the most enterprizing of modern

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travellers, and are known to exist, in numbers, in remote regions which European travellers have never trod. every country of Europe, in the various provinces of Asia, in Persia, Tartary, India, and China; in Egypt and the unexplored districts of central Africa; and in America, thousands of this singular people still preserve all the peculiarities of their race. Their attachment to the land of their fathers, their confident expectation of its eventual recovery from the usurpation of its infidel possessors, their avarice, their dejection, their hatred of Christianity, and their longing for Messiah's advent, nay, their very physiognomy are the same. In short, to borrow an idea which I am unable, at this moment, to assign to its rightful author, or to give in its author's words, go north, go south, go east go west, in the wealthiest cities, and in the lowliest hamlet, on the inhospitable mountain, and in the trackless forest, from the equator to the frozen wilds of the arctic zone, there may meet you some melancholy face, bearing living testimony to the nationality of the Jew. Other nations may have distinctive marks of ancient standing; other people may be full of enterprise, and bold in their efforts to explore the surface of our globe: but none have characteristics so many, so decisive, so peculiar as those of the Israelite; none are so widely scattered, and yet so free from commixture; and what is more remarkable than all, none which approach them in the number and distance of their settlements, are without a central bond of union, in a powerful parent state, whence they have emigrated, and in whose protection their safety finds a guarantee.

But while we maintain that the world furnishes no second example of a people "without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice," (Hos. iii. 4.) that is, without a civil polity, or the constituted ceremonial of their religion; who have abode "many days" separate from the nations among whom they have been scattered; it must not be forgotten that this alone is not the most material point. For it is not simply their dispersion, but their dispersion as predicted many centuries before it began, which, at the same time that it presents a phenomenon unexampled in history, is a standing proof of the inspiration of their Scriptures. Admit that others have preserved their nationality, it remains to be shown that this has been fore

told, and that the predicton has been given and fulfilled under circumstances which can justly entitle it to a rank among genuine instances of unequivocal prophecy.

For a general prophecy, either of the continuance or of the downfall of any kingdom, may be boldly given and yet possess but little worth. In the first case, as long as the prosperity, or existence of the kingdom in question is prolonged, the prediction is so far fulfilled, or rather it is fulfilling but no one can say, till time is at an end, that it has never failed. The past history of the world makes such a continuance of power in a very high degree improbable; and the lapse of thousands of years would lend a continual accession of strength to the reality of the prescience which dictated the announcement. Yet the cessation of such continuance cannot, a priori, be shown to be impossible. Hence the simple fact that the Jews have continued a distinct nation; or that the Christian Church has enjoyed an uninterrupted existence of nearly two thousand years, cannot alone be urged as any thing more than a very strong presumption of the truth of those prophecies which make both perpetual; and no one can allege their unequivocal completion, till the use of prophecy, so far, at least, as relates to the world in which we live, has passed away. Perhaps men would be more backward now to hazard an augury of the permanency of an empire, except indeed for the purpose of ephemeral flattery, than to predict its approaching decay: for their reputation would, by this latter course, be far more likely to stand its ground in after ages, when the vigour of the government had passed away; or some such crash of nations had occurred as those which have furnished to history her more ordinary, I might add, her best prized materials. It may be questioned, however, whether a similar choice would have been made in the ages of remote antiquity, when the reasons for it were less broadly displayed; and kingdoms, yet scarce grown into maturity, had not begun to indicate the stealthy ravages of decay. But, be this may, in every case that is brought before us, the circumstantiality of the prophecy will be the best criterion which we can apply; and if there be sufficient indications of details, the concurrence of which it is manifestly beyond the powers of human foresight to discern, or of chance to effect, we may safely admit the prescience to have been divine.

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