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Book the blessing is repeated, that all the nations of the earth 
shall be blessed in him. Has not this blessing been marvellously 
fulfilled to the letter in His offspring the Saviour of the world ; 
and has not Christianity, with all the defects existing in the 
Church from the time of the Apostles until now, been a great 
blessing to all the world, whether through philanthropy, 
morality, or the spread of the Gospel ? Mohammedanism 
would have been an utter failure had not its author taken the 
Bible as the basis of his pretended divine mission. Even the 
son of Hagar, Sarah's handmaid, was promised, through his 
father Abraham, great power and national aggrandisement, 
but that he would be a wild man, “his hand will be against 
every man, and every man's hand against him," as his de- 
scendants are now ; and whether we look to the progeny of 
Abraham, spiritual as well as temporal, and whether through 
Isaac, Ishmael, or Esau, we find in the Jew, Christian, and 
Moslem, God's promised blessing, which can never fail. 
That same God who appeared unto Abraham, and even unto 
Hagar, Sarah's handmaid, in the time of her distress, is still 
magnified and praised by hundreds of millions of the most 
prosperous, the most intelligent, and most powerful of the 
human race; and although some of them do not yet believe 
in our Saviour, and are still looking for His advent, and others 
do not acknowledge His divine nature, yet they all look upon 
the Messiah as a supernatural being. 
There is another striking proof of the fulfilment of prophecy 
in the utter destruction and annihilation of the Assyrian and 
Babylonian monarchies for their rebellion and pride. God, 
through His omnipotent power, left no remnant of their 
sovereignty nor a vestige of their grandeur. To the Assyrian 
the decree from on high went forth : “ 0 King of Assyria, 
thy nobles shall dwell in the dust; thy people is scattered 
upon the mountains, and no man gathereth them ! " Where 
are those Assyrians now and their prowess ? There is not a 
man living who can really say, I am a descendant of those 
ancient Assyrians, nor is there a trace of the good they had 
done on the earth. As for Babylon, it was sentenced to be 
utterly destroyed, and that awful divine edict was carried out 
to the letter by the Medo-Persian kings, and made that once 
great and famous city a dunghill and a bye- word, as when 
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah ! But the Persians whom 
God raised to chastise the rebellious nations have held their 
own up to to-day, because it was divinely decreed that they 
should conquer and be victorious ; and in return for the 
victories which God bestowed upon them, they ordered the 
rebuilding of His temple at Jerusalem, and thus Persia has 
