candle shall shine no more at all,' in the city that triumphed over Jerusalem and Palmyra, and gloried greatly in the day of their fall.

Palmyra not only lay within the borders of Solomon's kingdom, or of the proper heritage of Israel, but was also a city which he built. And when the kingdom shall return, it doubtless shall be raised again. Its ruins, well known, need not be described. But having heard much from many a traveller of hewn stones in heaps, where the cities of Israel stood, we may see them as they lie uncovered in Palmyra, or still reposing in its walls, as in those of the gate of Antioch. The cities of Israel, whether cast down by earthquakes or by the hand of man, fell not like fractured walls in useless pieces, in whose fragments the stones are imbedded as before, and unfit to be built up again; but the uncemented stones lie singly, ready for the builder's hand.

But the Lord will do better to Israel than at the beginning; and better than He did to Greeks or Romans in a land not theirs. A Protestant king, but of late, ignorant or forgetful perhaps, that far more than a hundred cathedrals lie in ruins in Syria, boasted that the quarry would be opened again to renew the building of the cathedral of Cologne, suspended since the days of the Reformation. But though that shall be in vain, if experience deceive not, the owls and the bats shall not be scared in vain by the echoes awakened by many a resounding hammer breaking the long silence that has rested in all the quarries from end to end of the land of Israel, wherever ruins yield not hewn stones in sufficient abundance and perfection, for the raising again of one and all of the cities that have fallen, and for enlarging ten-fold those that still remain.

True it is concerning the cities as concerning the

1 Rev. xviii. 23.

land, that the glory of Jacob has been made thin, and the fatness of his flesh has become lean. Yet gleaning grapes have been left in it, as the shaking of an olivetree, two or three berries in the top of the uttermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, as said the Lord God of Israel. True it is that the strong cities have become as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch which they left, and there is a desolation. Yet however cursorily we have surveyed the ruined cities within the chartered bounds of Israel's inheritance, in these very ruins there is as the gleaning of grapes when the harvest is done,-two or three berries on the top of the uttermost bough, four or five in the outmost branches thereof. And even thus, comparing some remnants of ruins, in Gerasa, Kanouat, Baalbec, and Palmyra, with the streets or edifices of the cities of any modern kingdom, may we not say, that the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim is better than the vintage of Eliezer. And may we not ask, where on any olive-tree, fresh and in full bearing, are four or five berries to be seen, like those which hang on the outmost branches of the shaken olive of Israel? And what shall Israel be when the good olive-tree shall again blossom and bud, and bear fruit far richer than before,-not for the renovation of cities only, but for the healing of the nations, and Israel's God shall be Israel's glory. Then the monuments of a departed paganism and popery, first reared by those who trusted in the gods that could not save or in the intercessors that could not hear, shall be the antique ornaments of the renovated cities of Israel, and Immanuel's land for ever bear the trophies of his victory over the gods of the heathen, and over that wicked one whom He will yet destroy with the word of His mouth, and with the brightness of His coming.1

Isa. xvii. 6.

CHAPTER XII.

NATURAL FERTILITY OF JUDEA, AND OF THE NORTH OF SYRIA.

When the Israelites were in the wilderness of Paran, Moses, at the command of the Lord, sent twelve men, one from each tribe, who were the heads of the children of Israel, to spy out the land; and he said unto them, Get you this way southward, and go up into the mountain; and see the land what it is; and the people that dwell therein, whether they be weak or strong, few or many, and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents or in strongholds; and what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood therein or not; and bring of the fruit of the land. They came again, two of the men bearing upon a staff one cluster of grapes, and they brought of the pomegranates and figs, and they all testified that the land flowed with milk and honey, and that the cities were walled and very great.'

In the preceding pages, we have seen something of the intermediate history and state of the land from that day to this; and coming at last to espy the land from south to north, it is not, as an appropriate emblem of it all, that one cluster of grapes has to be cut down and to be borne on a staff between two. But single gleaning grapes, left after the vintage, may everywhere be

1 Numbers xiii. 1, 2, 17–28.

gathered to show, bare and desolate as it is, what fruit the land has borne, and may yet bear again.

The various features of its desolation, according to each and all of the predicted judgments or curses of a broken covenant, which have come upon the land, the writer has elsewhere shown. The subject is now familiar to many, and the truth of the prophetic word is attested by each succeeding traveller who visits it.

As connected with the Abrahamic covenant respecting the everlasting possession by his seed of their promised inheritance, our proper theme here is, the natural fertility and capability of high cultivation-notwithstanding the existing desolation-of the land west of the Jordan and north of Dan, as previously we viewed that of the regions east of the Jordan.

The hill country of Judea,' which has been waste for ages past, as seen from the plain, with the face of bare rocks presented to view, seems not only utterly desolate as soon as the summer's sun has scorched any partial vernal verdure, but absolutely sterile; and great, as the author can testify, is the traveller's astonishment on contemplating the wild scene; and he marvels how they could ever have been covered with the shadow of the vine. They are as desolate or waste as the cities of Judah. The curse has lighted fearfully indeed, but equally on both. These hills want the grandeur of precipitous mountains, whose bare peaks and towering ridges set forth the sublimity of the works of God, till the mind is elevated as the mountain top penetrates the sky, and may well feel a trace of its own higher nature in the rising thought of Him who hath laid the foundations of the everlasting hills. The sublime in such a scene may fairly take the place of the beautiful, and awe, if it can

1 Luke i. 39, 65.