INTERNAL EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 



117 



to their brethren.&quot; They were under the do 

 minion, first of the Romans, then of the Sara 

 cens, and now of the Turks. And in what 

 ignorance, barbarity, slavery, and misery do 

 most of them remain ? Many thousands of 

 them are every year bought and sold, like beasts 

 in the market, and conveyed from one quarter 

 of the world to do the work of beasts in another. 

 The present state of Babylon is also a striking 

 accomplishment of the denunciations of ancient 

 prophecy. When we consider the vast extent 

 and magnificence of that ancient city, &quot; the glory 

 of kingdoms and the beauty of the Chaldee s 

 excellency,&quot; we should have thought it almost 

 impossible that it should have become &quot; an utter 

 desolation,&quot; that &quot; the wild beasts should cry 

 in its desolate houses, and dragons in its pleasant 

 palaces,&quot; and that &quot; it should never be inhabited 

 nor dwelt in from generation to generation,&quot; as 

 the prophet Isaiah had foretold, several hundreds 

 of years prior to its destruction, and when it was 

 flourishing in the height of its glory.* Yet we 

 know for certain, that this once magnificent 

 metropolis, whose hanging gardens were reck 

 oned one of the seven wonders of the world, has 

 become so complete a desolation, that the besom 

 of destruction has left scarcely a single trace of 

 its former grandeur ; and it is a subject of dis 

 pute among travellers, whether the exact site on 

 which it was built be yet ascertained. 



In short, the present state of the Jews, com 

 pared with ancient predictions, is one of the 

 most striking and convincing proofs of the literal 

 fulfilment of Ae Old Testament prophecies. The 

 following prediction respecting them was uttered 

 more than 1700 years before the commencement 

 of the Christian era: &quot; The Lord shall scatter 

 thee among all people from the one end of the 

 earth even unto the other. And among those 

 nations shall thou find no 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.&quot; &quot; And thou shall become an 

 astonishment, a proverb, and a by-word among 

 all the nations whither the Lord shall lead you.&quot;f 

 The whole history of the Jewish nation since the 

 destruction of Jerusalem, as well as the present 

 state of that singular people, forms a striking com 

 mentary upon these ancient predictions, and 

 shows, that they had been fully and literally ac 

 complished. The Jews, it is well known, have 

 been dispersed almost over the whole face of the 

 globe for more than seventeen hundred years ; 

 they have been despised and hated by all nations ; 

 they have suffered the most cruel persecutions; 

 &quot;their life has hung in doubt before them, 

 and they have feared day and night,&quot; both for 

 their property and their lives ; they have been 

 sold in multitudes, like cattle in the market ; they 

 have been exposed on public theatres, to exhibit 



* Isaiah xiii. 19-22. 



* Dem. ch. xxviii. 



fights, or be devoured by wild beasts. So strong 

 were popular prejudices and suspicions against 

 them, that in the year 1348, on suspicion of their 

 having poisoned the springs and wells, a million 

 and a half of them were cruelly massacred. In 

 1492, 500,000 of them were driven out of Spain, 

 and 150,000 from Portugal, and even at the pre 

 sent moment they are, in most places, subjected 

 both to civil incapacities and unchristian severi 

 ties. Yet, notwithstanding the hatred and con 

 tempt in which they are held, wherever they 

 appear, they are most obstinately tenacious ot 

 the religion of their fathers, although their ances 

 tors were so prone to apostatize from it ; and 

 although most of them seem to be utter strangers 

 to piety, and pour contempt on the moral precepts 

 of their own law, they are most obstinately at 

 tached to the ceremonial institutions of it, burden 

 some and inconvenient as they are. They have 

 never been amalgamated with any of the nations 

 among which they awelt ; they remain a distinct 

 people, notwithstanding their numerous disper 

 sions; their numbers are not diminished; and, 

 were they collected into one body, they would foim 

 a nation as numerous and powerful as in the most 

 flourishing periods of the Jewish commonwealth. 

 The existence of the Jews in such circumstances, 

 as a distinct nation, so contrary to the history of 

 every other nation, and to the course of human 

 affairs in similar cases, may justly be considered 

 as a standing miracle for the truth of divine re 

 velation. Such a scene in the conduct of the 

 divine government, cannot be paralleled in the 

 history of any other people on the face of the 

 earth ; and their being permitted so long to sur 

 vive the dissolution of their own state, and to 

 continue a distinct nation, is doubtless intended 

 for the accomplishment of another important pre 

 diction, viz. that &quot; they may return and seek the 

 Lord their God, and David their king, and fear 

 the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.&quot; In 

 the present day, we perceive a tendency towards 

 this wished-for consummation. Within these 

 last thirty years, a greater number of Jews has 

 been converted to the profession of the Christian 

 faith than had happened for a thousand years 

 before. And when they shall be collected from 

 all the regions in which they are now scattered, 

 and brought to the acknowledgment of Jesus 

 Christ as the true Messiah, and to submission 

 to his laws, and reinstated either in their own 

 land or in some other portion of the globe, such 

 an event will form a sensible demonstration of 

 the divinity of our religion, level to the compre 

 hension of all nations, and which all the sneers 

 and sophisms of sceptics and infidels will never 

 be able to withstand. 



The internal evidences of Christianity are 

 those which are deduced from the nature of the 

 facts, doctrines and moral precepts which it ^e- 

 veals, and from the harmony and consistency of 

 all its parts. The following is a brief summary 



