was not the natural result; for still enough of the indigent remained to rule the brutal creation that have not reason for their guide. But continue to watch the progress of events. The Lord has spoken, and shall he fail to make it good? After a time a despotic potentate craves a more splendid hunting ground: he repairs the wall of the ancient city and makes it the area of his chase. Their houses are then full of doleful creatures; owls dwell there, and dragons in their pleasant palaces.

3. But it was not to be expected that these houses could stand always, and they did not. It was not to be expected that Babylon could continue always the hunting-ground of a king, and it did not. Babylon had stood on a fertile and extensive plain.

Will not the

shepherd drive his flock wherever vegetation springs to sustain them, if man's dominion does not forbid him? Assuredly he will, if God has not said nay. But when the towering edifices of brick had fallen in, the under cellars and vaults afforded such dens and lairs for tigers, wolves, lions, and hyenas, that travellers inform us it was too hazardous for the approach of a shepherd and his flock.

4. But the Arabians move in bands; they delight to wield the javelin; they tremble not at the lion's growl. The Arab will surely pitch his tent there, as he traverses all the deserts of the eastern continent. And he would have done so in defiance of the most ferocious of the forest tribes; but under the extended and unparalleled rubbish of that spot, denounced of heaven, were concealed scorpions, serpents, and reptiles, so numerous, and of fangs so envenomed and deadly, that no one could close his eyes in safety under the shelter of his friendly tent.

5. "But time will obliterate these dens and hiding places; these heaps will dissolve and this rubbish will

decay. Babylon was in the midst of a rich plain that could not wash like the hills of Palestine into nudity and barrenness. Will it not be repeopled? Who shall venture to say it shall never be inhabited from generation to generation?" Answer-God. He said so, and it never has. No one lives near there.

6. But the Bible goes on to say that it should be inhabited by the bittern, a water-fowl; nay, the book declares that it should become pools of water. When did this happen? Answer-In comparatively modern days. Some singularly spontaneous obstruction of the Euphrates caused its overflowing, and travellers tell us that two-thirds or more of Babylon is now "pools of water for the bittern to cry in."

We have not exhibited half the items of history foretold concerning Babylon; but we have noticed enough to remind us of the difference between a vague prediction and a prophecy whose particulars are minutely mentioned. The man of great mind, and in other respects extensive information, who spake against this prophecy, had acquainted himself with none of these particulars, nor with any of a similar character abounding in the book of God; he only knew enough to make him doubt, to raise difficulties in his mind. Thus far his religious information extended, and no further. This is unques

tionably the condition of the most of the orators, statesmen, and leading characters of the present day. They have been pressingly engaged in their worldly pursuits. It seemed to them as though they had no time for such research. They indeed had but little love for this kind of labour; but of this last truth, perhaps they are unconscious. Yet many, it is to be feared, are influenced by them, as was a female of the state of Tennessee. Her husband kept a public house of much resort. Her friends

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,