and external trials-that the cloudy pillar and the flowing stream are expressive of Providential leadings and heavenly supplies-that "the land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; the land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; the land of oil olive, and honey,* is the expressive image of the privileges and blessings of the believer, and the pledge and symbol of the heavenly Canaan. Without extending these remarks beyond their proper limits, we might observe that the Jewish nation has been the great object for the display of all the Divine attributes, of God's moral government of the world, of his providential dealings, and the most signal interpositions. They have been distinguished by the highest privileges ever conferred upon any Church or people. "For ask now," says Moses, "of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?" * Deut. viii. 7, 8. "Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?”* St. Paul sums up the whole in the following comprehensive words: " Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises: "Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever."† But it is now time to reverse the picture, and to show that nations and churches may be distinguished by the most signal mercies, and yet be guilty of the grossest abuse of them. Gifts are not graces; the symbols of the Divine presence are not the presence of God in the soul; and privileges, when habitually despised or neglected, are the sure precursors of judgments. These remarks are painfully verified in the subsequent periods of Jewish history; first, by the captivity of the Ten Tribes under Psalmanezer and Ezarhaddon; secondly, by the Babylonian † Rom. ix. 4, 5. * Deut. iv. 32-34. captivity of the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah; and finally, by the entire overthrow of their civil and ecclesiastical polity under Titus ;* and their consequent dispersion among all the nations of the earth. No problem has ever more fully exercised the speculations of the Christian world, than the inquiry where the Ten Tribes are to be found. Portions of them are known to be situated in the Crimea, in Egypt, in Abyssinia, among the Affghans in India, and some probably in the vast population of China. The Rev. Joseph Wolff, with that intrepidity and zeal which marks his character, discovered remnants of them where they were originally carried, in the ancient Halah and Habor, once the cities of the Medes.† Others are said to have been recently found on the shores of the Caspian. There is a veil, however, thrown around the ten tribes that shrouds their history and existence in darkness, and which time alone and Providence can remove. But he who, at the great resurrection, will know how to collect the scattered particles of the human body, and form them into the same identity of substance, will be no less able, at the era of the spiritual resurrection of Israel, to bring together *"Josephus's History of the Jewish War." † 2 Kings xvii. 6. "bone to his bone," to make "the sinews and the flesh come upon them," and to cover them with the skin above; and then breathing into them his own Divine Spirit, raise them up "an exceeding great army," a spectacle that may well demand the admiration of men and angels. The dispersion of the two tribes of Benjamin and Judah, and their continued preservation, is no less a signal proof of Divine interposition. How wonderfully is the chain of prophecy maintained in all its successive links throughout the whole of the Jewish history! Fifteen hundred years before the occurrence of the event, it was predicted by Moses, "And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even to the other."* By Hosea, "They shall be wanderers among the nations."† And by Zechariah, "I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven.” ‡ The Jews are to be seen in every nation of the habitable globe. The Lord has placed them there, as if to furnish a constant living monument of the truth of prophecy, and of the awfulness of his judgments. There is no mistaking the fact of their identity. God has set, as it were, a mark upon them, in the peculiarity of their lineaments, which at once * Deut. xxviii. 64. + Hosea ix. 17. proclaim who and what they are. Their presence never fails to awaken a train of associations in every beholder. They are the world's remembrancers, God's witnesses, a subject of contemplation to men and angels. They stand alone among the various communities of men-mixed with all, united with none. "The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations." * Their preservation, under circumstances which must have led to the extinction of other races, is one of the most extraordinary events in the annals of time. They have no king, no political head, no form of government, no altar, no sacrifice,—without a home, without a country, and aliens from God; and yet they are still preserved. "scattered, peeled, meted out, and trodden down,"t and still remain unbroken and entire. To quote They have been the forcible, and, I might say, the sublime language of a Jew, "Persecution cannot dismay us, oppression cannot crush us, time itself cannot destroy us." An unseen hand has always been stretched out to guard and protect them. "I never," said Frederic the Great, "laid my hands on that people without having reason to repent it." "He suffered no man to do them wrong: yea, he reproved kings for their sakes." Their preservation, during the * Numbers xxiii. 9. |