the arrow from a bow drawn at a venture, which brought Ahab down, a bomb penetrated a magazine of powder stored up for defence, and raised the arsenal in the air, as if to show that the time was come that the last fortress in Palestine should cease, and strewed it stone by stone upon the ground, as if the times too were not distant when the hands of strangers should find other work, and build up the ruined walls in another form. Taken but as yesterday by the British, it was given to the Turks! whose character must be changed ere the work of reparation be done by them. What next? it may be asked. Let the answer in effect be seen. And it may be that the time will no longer tarry till the world be a witness that it was not in vain that Acre fell to the lot of a tribe of Israel. In passing from Acre to Tyre, Captains Irby and Mangles, about three hours before reaching the latter, observed some ruins on a small eminence, which, on a narrower inspection, presented to their view the remains of a large city, and the ruins of a temple in a most dilapidated state. Only two columns much defaced are standing, the ruined monuments of a decayed city. From thence the remains of the great ancient paved way to Tyre are distinctly traceable; and between it and Sidon, they "passed through the ruins of five or six large cities, now mere rubbish" or utterly desolate. Of the hundreds of cities or towns that anciently flourished in Palestine, whether under the Israelites or the Romans, not one has been left to give now an example or illustration of what they were. Time after time they have been laid waste, and many of them are desolate without an inhabitant. Where miserable villages take the place and the name of large towns, and where towns still exist where cities stood, nothing more can be said than the prophet foretold in declaring the Thus saith the work of the Lord concerning them. Lord God, the city that went out by a thousand shall leave a hundred, and that which went out a hundred shall leave ten, to the house of Israel.1 The Jews, as a nation, rejected the Messiah, and while the gospel has been preached for many ages among the Gentiles, that a people might be brought from among them to the Lord, Jerusalem has been trodden down of the Gentiles, and the cities of Judah have been laid waste. In denouncing judgments against the cities of Judah, the prophet charged them with the sin of idolatry, According to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah. That they might not fall for the want of a message of salvation, if they would have heard it, Jesus not only went throughout them, but sent his twelve apostles, and afterwards seventy disciples to preach the gospel in them all. But there were not believers enough to save the cities, and they fell though the kingdom of God had come nigh unto them all. An apostate church, in after ages, could not reverse, but brought down from heaven the renewal of the judgments. Again and again has the fury of the Lord been kindled against the cities of Judah; and he has laid them desolate without man and without beast. But when the curses of the covenant shall pass away, and wars for ever cease in the land, because the Lord shall make a new and everlasting covenant of peace with the house of Judah as with the house of Israel, then shall his oftrepeated word of promise be fulfilled, God will save Zion, and will build the cities of Judah; that they might dwell there, and have it in possession. The seed also of his servants shall inherit it; and they that love his name shall dwell therein.3 All the goodliness of man,—all the 1 Amos v. 3. 2 Jer. ii. 28. 3 Psal. Ixix. 35, 36. goodliness, as we have seen, of the goodliest of cities, is as the flower of the field; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. And in Palestine the sight is common of withered grass and faded flowers covering ruined cities, ruined because the Spirit of the Lord has blown also upon them. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, as Scripture repeats the saying; but, as it adds, the word of our God shall stand for ever. And in the next words and same breath, the voice heard by the prophet cried, "O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, behold your God." "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; return unto me, for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath done it. Thus saith the 3 Lord, that confirmeth the word of his servants, that saith to Jerusalem, thou shalt be inhabited, and TO THE CITIES OF Judah, ye shall be BUILT, and I will raise up the decayed places (or wastes) thereof." Israel shall be saved of the Lord with an everlasting salvation. In the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the vale, in the cities of the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall the flocks pass under the hands of him that telleth them, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. In those days and at that time, I will cause the branch of righteousness to grow up unto David; and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah shall be saved.* 1 Isa. xl. 8, 9. 3 Ibid. xlv. 17. 2 Ibid. xliv. 23, 26. Ibid. xxxiii. 13-15. CHAPTER XI. RUINS IN THE NORTH OF SYRIA, BEYOND THE ANCIENT BORDERS The iniquity of the Israelites, in departing from the living God, hemmed them within narrow limits while they dwelt in the land, and finally expelled them from it all. But there was no limit to the curses of the covenant which were to fall upon the land, while there was no city to be found within it in which the everlasting covenant was not broken, when thousands of churches overspread all the land. On the final return of the seed of Jacob to the inheritance given them by an everlasting covenant, when they shall no more be plucked out of it, their heritage, in all its amplitude, shall be theirs, and the face of the land shall be filled with cities. They shall enlarge the place of their tent, and shall break forth on the right hand and on the left; and their seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. Throughout the extent of the land we may thus look for ruined cities, in the faith that as assuredly as they have fallen they shall be raised again within all the borders of the ancient kingdom of Israel, when the blessings of the new covenant shall supplant the curses of the old; and the Lord shall be glorified in Israel. The diminutive territory within which the seed of Israel dwelt of old, and possessed as their own, even 1 Isa. liv. 2. S when reduced to the land of Judea, sufficed for all the temporary purposes of the first covenant with Israel under the law; but the new covenant yet to be made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, that the Abrahamic covenant may have its full completion, demands ampler scope, as it forbids that very much or any land should again remain to be possessed, when all the earth shall see that the Lord will not suffer his faithfulness to fail. Most imperfect, therefore, would be our view, were we not to cast a glance from Sidon to Seleucia, and from the sources of the Jordan to the mouth of the Orontes, and from thence to the banks of the Euphrates, and see whether, in the intermediate wide-spread territories, cities be not ready to rise from their ruins whenever the people to whom it pertains shall be brought within the bonds of the covenant, and shall be no longer slack to go in and possess the land to its farthest borders on every side. When Israel shall be the restorer of cities to dwell in, he will not seek in vain where cities of the Canaanites stood. Each tribe, on the north as well as on the south of the land, may well have its towns from the Mediterranean sea to the river of Assyria. And if the Lord do better to them than at the beginning, He will not do worse to Israel when the people shall be all righteous, than He did to the idolatrous Canaanites or apostate Romans, nor worse to the believing sons of Isaac, when they shall be a blessing to all nations, than He did to the misbelieving sons of Ishmael, when they came, as a woe, for the infliction of his judgments. The cities of Phoenicia, which were long renowned throughout the world, and which armies of crusaders at first passed unassailed and only reduced after many years, have for ages lost their fame, and some of them have only recently been recognised, while others have |