LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.

Map of the Land of Israel according to the Covenant, to face Title Page. Map showing the entrance into Hamath

94

INTRODUCTION.

TRUE in all their emphatic meaning have been the words of the prophet for many ages past, Who shall have pity upon thee, O Jerusalem? or who shall bemoan thee? or who shall turn aside to ask how thou doest?* Yet the time cometh when the truth of other words of more propitious omen shall be as clearly seen: “For the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold his reward is with him, and his work before him, and they shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord: and thou shall be called, sought out, a city not forsaken."†

While the Jews have been scattered among all nations under heaven, the land of Israel-except in history and in the associations pertaining to ancient times, which suffer it not to be dissevered from the minds or memories of Christians or Jews-was long almost forgotten as an existing country, and its actual condition in a great measure unknown. After the age of the Crusades, it ceased to exercise any influence on the world at large, or any peculiar general interest in Asia or Europe. Its political importance was gone; and by the discovery of a new passage to India, the line of communication between these two quarters of the world was turned far from its shores. Its coast, though the cradle of commerce, was desolate, lone, and unvisited, the prey of barbarism and the resort of wild beasts. And it was only towards the close of the last, and the commencement of the present century, that Syria began to be inquired after, and to reassert its claim to the notice of the world. Bereaving the nations of men, as foretold, and partly fulfilled, it became * Jer., xv., 5. + Isa., lxii., 11, 12,

during the Crusades the common grave of Europe, of Asia, and of Africa, yet it could not be rescued from the hands of infidel but not idolatrous Moslems, but was left to the unmarked progress of decay and desolation, till its once vine-clad mountains are bare, and its cities waste, and its plains desolate, and nothing but the scantling of a population left in the land, for the possession of which many myriads had contended, and which in times more ancient had been thickly studded with cities. Yet these, when reduced to desolation, had ruins sufficient in an inquiring age to attract the traveller, and to command admiration. They were successively searched out, visited, and portrayed, till, strange to say, Tadmor or Palmyra, Baalath or Baalbec, built by Solomon, Petra and Geresa, became, in succession, novelties to the world. New causes speedily conspired to attach a higher interest than that of curiosity to Syria. Lying at the extremity of the Mediterranean, between Britain and India, its locality in a commercial view raised it, by the invention of steam navigation, into a new importance; and the traffic, or at least communication between Asia and Europe, pointed, after the lapse of ages, towards its direct and original channels. And as the contest between these quarters of the globe for its possession had riveted on it in former ages the attention of the world, so all eyes were fixed on it again in the course of the last few years, when the question of its subserviency to the Pacha of Egypt or the Sultan of Turkey was a question of the integrity or existence of the Ottoman Empire, and, consequently, of peace or war throughout Europe or the world.

But the heritage of Jocob, however desolate it may lie, or by whatever hordes of Gentiles it may be trodden down, has far higher interest attached to it than that of being a field for the inspection of ruins, and a higher destiny to fulfil than that of a bond of peace, or a cause of war, or any apportioning of earthly kingdoms. Of that land, even as of the people whose it is by the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, we