dent testimony, to the antiquity and authenticity of the Mosaic records and prophecies; most certainly to the authenticity of those portions of the Pentateuch which are, in the very tenour of its text, explicitly ascribed to Moses as their author. Such are all those connected with the publication of the Law.

The first condition therefore is largely secured in our inquiry.

II. The second qualification of the prophecy can as little be denied. The notorious facts of history open to all the world, bespeak the eminent and palpable accomplishment of the several heads of its prediction. Following the prophecy as it is set forth in the Pentateuch, we are carried through an extraordinary state of long and aggravated national calamity: turning to history, old and recent, we see its narrative holding an equal pace with every denunciation of the prophet. The comparison has often been made between this chapter of prophecy and the accomplishment of it. It formed a subject of illustration and argument in the apologies of the Fathers, and in their popular discourses: as may be seen in the writings of Justin, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and others; the forcible delineation of the prophecy, on the one hand, the strange and singular fate of the Jewish people, on the other, furnishing such images as arrested observation, and such media of conviction as every understanding

might apply. Among other writers, Bishop Newton is one who has drawn out the comparison, and to his Dissertations I refer for the detail of the historic evidence, so far as the general notoriety of the principal points of it can leave the occasion for a more complete information.

III. But the considerable question in this case is not, whether the things foretold have been fulfilled, of which there can be no doubt, but whether the prediction of them did not exceed the powers of human foresight; and to that question, which brings us to the third condition of the criterion laid down, I shall direct my attention.

It is freely admitted that a general prophecy of the future ruin and desolation of any given people or kingdom, to take place at a distant period, is, if it should be fulfilled, no test of a prescience more than human; because the desolations of conquest, and other rude vicissitudes of kingdoms and communities, are among the ordinary materials of history. Something distinctive, something of a special characteristic kind, must be introduced in the prediction, to guard it against the suspicion of having been drawn from the usual beaten course of human affairs. Prophecy, in our present instance of it, furnishes more than one such distinctive and appropriate mark. It is part of the prediction in Deuteronomy*; "The Lord shall scatter thee among all

Chap. xxviii. 64.

people, from the one end of the earth even unto the “other. And among these nations shalt thou find no

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ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; but "the Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and "failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind."" I will "I bring your land unto desolation, and your ene"mies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it " and I will scatter you among the heathen, and draw "out a sword after you*." Add to which that in the prophecies of Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, the doom of scattering, or removal into the uttermost parts of the earth, is pronounced upon the Jewish race not less than six times, prophecy thereby denoting that dispersion was a special plague ordained for God's visitation upon this people.

On this point the argument takes its stand, and challenges our assent to the inspiration of the prophecy. Dispersion has been the fate of the Jewish people in a manner and degree in which it has befallen no other people. From the period of their first overthrow, or rather from the first mutation and decline of their commonwealth, it has pursued them to the present day. It has been the habit under which they have existed, in ten of their Tribes, or in all, for seventeen hundred years, or for twentyfive hundred.

The infliction of this national calamity began with the Assyrian conquest, when their Ten Tribes

* Chap. xxvi. 32, 33.

were swept into a captivity and exile in the East, from which, in any public strength, they never returned. The second infliction of it befell the surviving kingdom of Judah, in the Babylonian conquest, when the main body of the population of Judæa was broken up, their king, their nobles, and other draughts of their fugitive inhabitants, were carried to bondage in Babylon, whilst a second part of them, the force of their military population, fled into Egypt*, there to experience only a later capture, and a wider dispersion, in as many as survived the sword, through the provinces of the Babylonian empire. But when this Tribe, which was reserved for a destiny of its own, and that a destiny already foreshewn by prophecy, was, for the fulfilment of that intermediate prophecy, restored, and though not without a great loss and severance of its people left behind, replanted in its own land again, and had there passed through the period of its appointed and foretold continuance to the days of the Messiah and the Gospel, then the last catastrophe of its fate, dealt by the Roman arms, extended and aggravated the calamity of dispersion beyond the example of any former period of the like suffering, and the final scattering of this devoted people, which then ensued, when the sword and captivity divided between them their whole stock and race, has continued a lasting phenomenon even now fresh in the eyes of

* Jerem. xliii.

men, a phenomenon attesting, with an importunate energy, the prescience, and the veracity, of Prophecy.

Yet this Tribe was once exempted, as we see, from the most natural consequence of a seventy years' captivity in a foreign land. Subjugation and captivity did not always lead to irrevocable dispersion. This broken Tribe could be preserved and restored, when prophecy had predicted to it the precise term of its bondage, and the subsequent repossession of its own land. During this its temporary bondage, it was sealed up, rather than dissipated; it had from prophecy a principle of vitality and preservation; for there remained predictions to be fulfilled in that Tribe, and by it, in its own proper place of abode, and in its public character. But in the fulness of time, the extreme measure of predicted punishment by dispersion overtook this remaining member of the Hebrew people, as it had the rest. The advent of the Messiah announced the departure of the sceptre from Judah, and released, if I may so speak, the last obligations of prophecy, which stood pledged for the continuance of that sceptre no longer. Then it was that the threats of penal prediction took their full effect, when the Almighty was seen accomplishing his word, which had long been suspended over the last remains of his people, and bidding all the plagues of desolation to chase them from the land which he had originally bestowed upon them, and, by his gift, made their