in one defile leading to the city, the steep sides of which contain a sort of excavated suburb, accessible by flights of steps; niches, sometimes thirty feet in excavated height, with altars for votive offerings, or with pyramids, columns, or obelisks; a bridge across a chasm now apparently inaccessible; some small pyramids hewn out of the rock on the summit of the heights; horizontal grooves, for the conveyance of water, cut in the face of the rock, and even across the architectural fronts of some of the excavations; and, in short, the rocks hollowed out into innumerable chambers of different dimensions, whose entrances are variously, richly, and often fantastically decorated with every imaginable order of architecture,'-all united, not only form one of the most singular scenes that the eye of man ever looked upon, or the imagination painted, a group of wonders perhaps unparalleled in their kind, but also give indubitable proof, both that in the land of Edom there was a city where human ingenuity, and energy, and power must have been exerted for many ages, and to so great a degree as to have well entitled it to be noted for its strength or terribleness, and that the description given of it by the prophets of Israel was as strictly literal as the prediction respecting it is true. 'The barren state of the country, together with the desolate condition of the city, without a single human being living near it, seem,' in the words of those who were spectators of the scene, 'strongly to verify the judgment denounced against it.' O thou who dwellest in the clefts of the rock, &c.-Also Edom shall be a desolation, &c.

"Of all the ruins of Petra, the mausoleums and

sepulchres are among the most remarkable, and they give the clearest indication of ancient and long-continued royalty, and of courtly grandeur. Their immense number corroborates the accounts given of their successive kings and princes by Moses and Strabo; though a period of eighteen hundred years intervened between the dates of their respective records concerning them. The structure of the sepulchres also shows that many of them are of a more recent date. 'Great,' says Burckhardt, 'must have been the opulence of a city which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers.' But the long line of the kings and of the nobles of Idumea has for ages been cut off; they are without any representative now, without any memorial but the multitude and the magnificence of their unvisited sepulchres. They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom (or rather they shall call, or summon, the nobles thereof,) but there shall be no kingdom there, and all her princes shall be nothing.

"Amid the mausoleums and sepulchres, the remains of temples or palaces, and the multiplicity of tombs, which all form, as it were, the grave of Idumea, where its ancient splendor is interred, there are edifices, the Roman and Grecian architecture of which decides that they were built long posterior to the era of the prophets. They shall build, but I will throw down."*

The next one I shall notice is in regard to Nineveh. The prophet Nahum says, "He will make an

* Keith.

utter end of the place thereof. I will make thy grave, for thou art vile."* Mr. Buckingham says, with reference to the site of ancient Nineveh, "The mounds show neither bricks, stones, nor other material for building; but are in many places overgrown with grass." The same prophet says, "She is empty, void, and waste ;" and Gibbon, the historian, says, "the city, and even the ruins, had long since disappeared; the vacant space afforded a spacious field for the operation of the two armies."

The next prediction of which I shall speak is that concerning Tyre; and I wish to call particular attention to this, because the prophecy of Ezekiel concerning Tyre has been recently referred to in a lecture against the Bible, as a specimen of "predictions that never came to pass." Let us now compare the words of the prophet with the language of the traveller, and we shall see how much dependence is to be placed on the assertions of the lecturer. The prophet Ezekiel says, concerning Tyre, "They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets, in the midst of the sea." Volney says that this proud city is reduced to miserable village, whose inhabitants live obscurely on the produce of their little ground and a trifling fishery; and Bruce says, in the very words of the prophecy, that the site of this ancient city is a "rock whereon fishers dry their nets." Now, I ask if any man denies that this

* Nahum i, 8, 14; ii, 10.

a

† Ezek. xxvi, 14.

prophecy has been fulfilled, is his word to be relied on for any historical fact?

The same prophet likewise predicts concerning Egypt, that it shall be laid waste by the hand of strangers, and shall be the basest of kingdoms; and history shows that for twenty-three centuries she has been deprived of her natural inhabitants, and left a prey successively to the Persians, Macedonians, Ro mans, Greeks, Arabs, Georgians, and Turks. For two thousand years it has never had a prince of its

own.

The fulfilment of the prophecies concerning Babylon is still more remarkable.* It is a well known

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*The lofty terms in which Babylon is described in Scripture, correspond with the accounts of profane writers. It is called by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, the golden city,' 'the glory of kingdoms,'' abundant in treasures,' and the praise of the whole earth.' Berosus, Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus, some of the most ancient and authentic writers, represent it as the most glorious metropolis on which the sun ever shone, and rank it high among the wonders of the ancient world.'” According to the most authentic accounts that have come down to us, Babylon contained the astonishing space of sixty miles, and was adorned in every part with gardens, palaces, and temples. Around it were extended walls of stupendous height and thickcomposed of large bricks, cemented with bitumen, that by time acquired a solidity harder than stone. One hundred gates of solid brass, commanded the approaches to the city; and two hundred and fifty towers, of vast dimensions and elevations, were placed at equal distances along the walls. The buildings most remarkable for size and magnificence were, the bridge erected over the Euphrates, the spacious palaces of the kings, and the ancient temple of Belus, composed of eight towers, rising one above another, and diminishing in proportion to their prodigious elevation. At a dis

ness,

fact, recorded in profane history, that Babylon was taken by Cyrus, while Belshazzar and his nobles were indulging themselves in a drunken revel; and that Cyrus effected an entrance into the city by turning the course of the river, which passed through the city, and passing under the wall, through the channel of the river. But this same event was most clearly and plainly predicted nearly two centuries previous. More than a century and a half before his birth, Cyrus was called by name, by the prophet Isaiah, and this very event, and the manner of it, predicted. "Thus saith the Lord, that saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers, thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to sub> due nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates, the drying up of her rivers, indicating the manner in which he should effect an entrance into the city. But if the gates of the city, which led from the river to the streets, had been shut, Herodotus says "the Persians would have been shut up in the bed of the river, and taken as in a net, and all destroyed." But Belshaz zar, alarmed at the noise, ordered the gates of his pal

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tance these edifices had the appearance of lofty mountains. They were calculated to brave the fiercest attacks of hostile power, and to withstand the ravages of remote ages." "Yet this remarkable prophecy was uttered when it was rising to this state of grandeur, when the dominion of its sovereigns was spreading over the surrounding provinces, and power, opulence, and prosperity combined to insure the long continuance of its empire and glory."-Kelt.

* Isa. xliv, 27, 28; xlv, 1; xlvii, 11.