were much surprised to hear her avow that she had cast away the Bible. When asked her reasons, she said that those of the brightest minds and highest attainments the land contained, spoke even deridingly of it as they sat at her table. She considered them much abler to judge in such cases than she was, and refused all further love or reverence for the man of Gethsemane! We quit for a time the history of Babylon, but we have not done with it. We must proceed to notice other cities and their fate, and then to call these different cases up severally, as so many steps by which we ascend to the summit of an interesting consideration.

CHAPTER IX.

SCOFFERS ARE UNACQUAINTED WITH THAT AT WHICH THEY

MOCK.

ITEM III. The city of Tyre.-If the reader will consult the prophets of the Old Testament, he will find the overthrow of this city foretold, the manner of the siege, the name of the conqueror, the number of years before it should resume its former splendour, and its second fall. But these things we will not dwell upon; we attend to those particulars which belong to more modern times, or which took place as it were but yesterday.

1. When a city subsisting by commerce is overthrown, if the many streams of her lucrative trade shall cause a speedy elevation to more than ancient magnificence, the mind of calculating shrewdness might conjecture that if spoiled again, the winds of traffic might blow wealth

and power once more into her ports. The ships of Tyre floated over the seas, and her second growth almost resembled magic. The Lord said she should be destroyed and never built again. Two thousand years are passed, and Tyre has been sinking never to rise again. 2. The Lord ordered Ezekiel to say, "I will scrape her dust from off her, and make her like the top of a rock," &c. For more than a thousand years, whilst Tyre was sinking lower and lower, and after infidels had derided the book of Ezekiel, one might still have continued to ask with wondering curiosity, "What shall ever scrape the earth away on which the declining city stands? Even should her trade never revive, and should her walls crumble, still who shall carry off her soil?" It would seem, from the account of modern travellers, that either the driving billows of the Mediterranean, or the tempests of heaven have raked the dust, until Tyre is a naked rock.

3. It was declared by the prophet, more than twentythree centuries since, "It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." Should the desola

tion be as complete as that of Babylon, who shall carry their nets there to dry them? Enough of decayed houses stand there to accomplish what the Lord has declared. Fishermen are not to be wanting where God has use for them. We believe it was Chateaubriand who, in 1811, found the rock of Tyre covered with these nets.

We ask the reader once more to treasure up these facts until we shall have mentioned others, so as at last to bring them all into one view.

CHAPTER X.

ITEM IV. -Damascus- "It shall be a ruinous heap.' If the reader will visit Damascus at the present day, he will be led to remember this language of Isaiah with singular interest. Damascus is not gone, so that no one dwells there; it is not a naked rock; it is not pools of water; it is not peopled by wolves and foxes. This is not the way in which Damascus was mentioned in the Book of books. But when travellers stand in those streets and look round them, they behold the once lofty edifice fallen in, the lower rooms inhabited, but the upper apartments crumbled. When they see this, and other buildings crushed entirely, a few miserable wretches creeping out from the cellars, they feel that no other expression would answer in the room of " a ruinous heap," to give a brief but accurate account of Damascus.

For several chapters we have been preparing to exhibit the truth that scoffers of the latter days are unacquainted with Bible facts. We are now almost ready to

make the application.

If you will go to any number of judges, legislators, physicians, counsellors. &c. &c., who speak against the sacred book, and ask them some such questions as we are about to specify, you will be able at once to understand the strange assertion, that the learned are included in the class of the wilfully ignorant.

We will here ask the reader some questions, such as he may ask any who now live, and who now deride the Bible.

Questions.-The Hebrew prophets were ordered to utter their denunciations against all the nations round about for their wickedness. They spake of their hills,

rivers, villages, cities and governments. If these prophets only conjectured or guessed that the events they foretold might or would come to pass, then may we not ask, with some degree of wonder at least, Suppose it had been said of some other city beside Babylon, that it should become pools of water and never more inhabited? May not our curiosity be somewhat excited when we notice that of the thousand proud and wicked cities around, the prophet did not happen to write these things of any, Babylon excepted? And had they been written of any other one city, town or village, that was or has been upon the face of the earth, we know of none where their truth could be seen. These, and the other particulars we have noticed, came to pass many centuries after these books of prophecy were written, (according to infidel authority,) or after unbelievers wrote against them.

May we not inquire, with some degree of wonder, Suppose some writer of the Old Testament had happened to conjecture and write concerning Damascus, Sidon, Jerusalem, Jerico, Nineveh, or any city, town or village, except Tyre, that the soil on which it stood should be scraped away, and fishermen's nets rest upon its nakedness, who could point to its accomplishment? On the broad surface of the earth, or along the protracted shores of ocean, the prophet was surely fortunate, to hit upon the only spot where these things did happen. Long and dreadful calamities were promised to Jerusalem; but suppose it had been said that owls and tigers should inhabit pleasant palaces there, how many thousand now would clap their hands, rejoicing that such a conjecture was ever made. Suppose some one, two thousand years ago, had ventured to guess that the time would come when a shepherd would be afraid to drive his flock where Palmyra of the desert then stood, or through

Athens, Ephesus, or Rome; name any spot you please but one, and where would his reputation stand?

An admirer of the Bible, who once sought, during many years, an opportunity to converse on this subject with those of improved minds; asked questions resembling those above, oftener than he could name or remember. He found that the reason they had not thought with some degree of interest on some such Bible facts, was, they did not know that such facts existed. They could not think what God had said of Persia, Egypt, or Syria, strange, for they did not know what he had said, or that any thing was written about almost any nation or city, that could be mentioned to them. Those of them, who had read the Bible through, did not know that the things we have named were in the Bible! A thousand similar facts were equally unknown to thein. If the learned unbeliever of the present day, is thus wanting in the ancient literature, connected with the Bible, it will not be hard to fancy the condition of the uneducated scoffer. Thousands who range the streets of our large cities, seem to be beyond remedy. Their furious hatred towards all that is meek or holy, prevents their listening to expostulation; and their ignorance renders them incapable of weighing argument, on almost any subject. Their confidence in their edifice, however, would no doubt be much shaken, were it not that they fancy that they have substantial support in their sameness of belief, with the learned and the great. We were to show that scoffers are wilfully ignorant of Bible language; but we must first devote a few more chapters to facts. It is important that we should have a fair view of the fact that men have some appetite for darkness, but none for light. This can be seen, if we show that men will not inform themselves, even where they con