four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. But I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus, which shall destroy the palaces thereof.' Not a vestige of her palaces remains, except the prostrate granite pillars, over which the wave is ever beating. We remembered, too, as we looked along the bare shore, the minute prediction of Ezekiel, 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; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.' Alexander the Great seems actually to have scraped away the very rubbish as well as the stones of Old Tyre to construct his causeway; and now the bare rocks along the shore, in some part of which the ancient city must have stood, are literally a place for the spreading of nets. The first man we met in the gate of Tyre was a fisherman carrying a load of fish, and the fishing-boats in the harbour we have already mentioned. If, indeed, the sea has made an advance upon the coast, then the very rocks where Old Tyre stood may be now under water, and the nets of the fisherman may be literally spread over them. And this, also, would give new meaning to the expression, Thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the water;' although at the same time the ruin of her fleets and merchant ships will completely satisfy the terms of the prophecy. How interesting, too, is the very uncertainty that bangs over the true situation of ancient Tyre, some placing it on the shore, some at Ras-el-Ain farther inward, and some on a rocky eminence called Marshuk, to the north-east-all combining to shew how awfully the thrice-repeated curse has been fulfilled, 'I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more;' and how true to the letter, Though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again." Pp. 351, 352.

If we had room we would transfer into our pages some of the no less striking passages which describe Jerusalem. But independently of the minute predictions which have found their fulfilment in that centre of all prophecy and miracle, there is something to our minds unspeakably impressive in the obviously anomalous situation which Jerusalem now occupies among the cities of the nations. When a great city is overthrown, and the first outburst of sorrow dies away, it is either quietly rebuilt and re-occupied, or forsaken and forgotten. In either case, it is only one generation which needs to mourn. If a new city rise on the ruins of the old, the conquerors and the conquered usually blend more or less together, and in some future age they live promiscuously and rejoice together, on a soil which their fathers moistened with their mutual blood. What Roman feels it personally that the grass grows in the temples of old Rome, and brambics in its theatres? Or what Roman can tell whether he be chiefly made from Gothic or Italian clay? If, on the other hand, no new city be allowed to rise,-if the shock which overturned it have also dispersed its people, like the shattered fragments of the avalanche, they soon melt, and are lost atoms in the stream of some mightier population. Where is the bosom in which Troy awakens a throb of the faintest patriotism? What nation makes a pilgrimage to the place where Nineveh and Babylon should stand? And what feeling beyond vague sadness,

or a general impression of melancholy, is ever called forth among the broken shafts of Palmyra and empty rock-nests of Petra? Where are the people who have the hereditary right to sit down among such ruins, and weep because their house is left unto them desolate? Where are the old inhabitants? They were not exterminated, and yet they have vanished. Merged in the nations, and mutually commingled, there is no precipitate which can decompose them, and bring them out in their original distinctness again. The house is desolate-but no one feels that the house is his; so no one mourns its desolation. But there is a city whose case is quite peculiar. Captured, ravaged, burnt, razed to the foundation, dispeopled, carried captive, its deported citizens sold in slavery, and by severest penalties forbidden to visit their native seats again; though eighteen centuries have passed, and strangers still tread its hallowed soil, that city is still the magnet of many hearts, and awakens from time to time, pangs of as keen emotion as when its fall was recent. Ever and anon, and from all the winds of heaven, its exiled children come to visit it, and with eyes weeping sore bewail its widowhood. No city was ever honoured thus. None else receives pilgrimages of affection from the fiftieth generation of its outcast people. None else after centuries of dispersion could, at the first call, gather beneath its wings the whole of its wide-wandering family. None else has possessed a spell sufficient to keep, in remotest regions, and in the face of the mightiest inducements, its people still distinct; and none but itself could now be re-peopled with the identical race which left it five, ten, or twenty centuries ago. The reason of this anomaly must be sought, not in Jerusalem, but in the designs of God-and these designs, are they not written in the book?

In connection with the hope of Israel, and with the awakening hopes of Israel's friends, is it not a striking circumstance, that at this very conjuncture, the lost tribes of Israel should be found? With every wish to speak cautiously on a subject which has too often occasioned precipitate conclusions, we cannot omit this opportunity of calling the attention of our readers to some recent evidence on the subject, which we ourselves are unable to disbelieve, and which we trust that the church will investigate. It is to be found in the Travels of Dr Asahel Grant, of the American Board of Missions.* Unless they returned to Palestine, or migrated to some other land, the likelihood is that the ten tribes remained in the locality where the king of Assyria put them. That

• 8vo., London, 1841.

A short but very comprehensive abstract of the proof has been published by Mr Henry Innes of London, in a tract entitled, "The Remnant of Assyria " Shaw, Southampton Row.

they never returned to Palestine is notorious; that they ever migrated to any other land, is utterly unlikely, in the silence of all history, and in the absence of any known inducement. They still occupied their old seats beyond the Euphrates, in the days of Josephus. Four centuries later, when Jerome wrote, they still were there. Have there been any tidings of their migration since? But 'beyond the Euphrates,' is a wide word. Where, on the other side that flood, ought we to search for them? Obviously where the Assyrian conqueror planted them. And where was that? 'In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah, and in Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.* The country corresponding to this description is the modern Koordistan. It has been but little explored; and its mountain fastnesses, from the fierceness of the predatory tribes infesting them, have been visited by no traveller who has returned to tell his tale. Encompassed by these lawless hordes, and at no great distance from the lake Ooroomiah, is the territory of the independent Nestorians. Till now their country and their character were little known. But his medical skill having secured a safe passage through the treacherous Koords, Dr Grant found himself in the valleys of the Nestorians. Like the Waldenses, protected by their Alpine fastnesses, this people dwells alone. Their aspect, language, and customs, are quite peculiar. They say that they are Beni Israel, and their physiognomy confirms the saying. They cannot be discriminated from the Jews of that region, by whom they are reluctantly acknowledged as apostate brethren. They profess Christianity, and go by the name of Nazarenes―a name bestowed on the Jewish Christians of the early ages. They dislike the name Nestorian, and say that they only agree with Nestorius in his protest against images, and in refusing to call the Virgin Mary mother of God. They allege that they received the gospel in the first century, and from the Apostles themselves.+ The most primitive thing in their Christianity, is their abhorrence of idols. Of these they have a dread as Jewish as it is anti-popish and anti-patriarchal. Along with the New Testament sacraments, they have perpetuated a multitude of Jewish observances, such as the keeping of the passover, and many of the Mosaic rules regarding ceremonial defilement. They baptise their children when eight

2 Kings xvii. 6.

"Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia," were present at Pentecost; and James must have been aware of Christians among others than the proper Jews, for he addresses his epistle "to the twelve tribes scattered abroad."

6

days old; they keep the Mosaic law in the avenger of blood;" their language is a dialect of the ancient Syriac, and their family names are chiefly such as are found in the Old Testament. They allow that they do not all know the particular tribe from which they sprang. The present patriarch says that he is descended from Naphtali. Their numbers may amount to 200,000. There seems to be little spiritual life among them; but laying all the evidences together, there seems little room to doubt that they are part of the house of Joseph, whom the Lord will gather out of Assyria, and bring into the land of Gilead and Lebanon.* Should it so turn out, how wonderful that the discovery of these hidden ones should have been deferred to the present hour!

It is the place of highest eventual importance assigned to the conversion and restoration of Israel, which has directed so much Christian desire and inquiry towards the Jews; and which was the immediate origin of this exploring excursion. The deputation had it chiefly in their view to ascertain the most eligible spheres for missionary enterprise among the children of Israel. They discovered and reported many. Of these, our church has already provided with well qualified labourers two, viz. Pesth and Jassy. Others have been supplied by missionaries from the London Society; but the greater part remain unoccupied. We have no disposition, nor indeed the means, to discuss the comparative claims of stations. The likelihood is, that faith and liberality would reap a harvest in them all.

But there is one place on which we have a little to say-all the rather that though the deputation visited it, they did not report upon it probably because it was so near at hand, and the headquarters of another society; and, perhaps, because it had not then become so promising a sphere of operations as subsequent events have made it. We allude to London. It contains 20,000 Jews, more than half of all the Jews in Britain. These come from all quarters of the world; and with all quarters of the world they correspond. Amongst them are the richest and most influential Jews in Europe; and whilst many of them are sceptical and careless, some of them are sincere, earnest, and unhappy. With little systematic effort for their conversion, during the last twenty years, many have declared themselves Christians and been baptised. At the present moment there is a remarkable movement among the London Jews. A large and increasing body have declared their impatience of the Talmud and tradition, and adopted the Old Testament as their only rule of faith and manners. They have opened a synagogue of their own, where they enjoy the ministrations of

• Zech. x. 7—10.

an accomplished and eloquent rabbi. The startling boldness and growing numbers of these reformers have produced an unprecedented sensation in the Jewish community of the metropolis; and have given rise to publications, and controversy, and inquiry, which might end in the happiest results, were there only an Ezekiel to prophesy in the midst of all this stir. Why should not the Church of Scotland perform the prophet's part? It is true there is a Jewish society in London already. But its labours have been chiefly directed to foreign lands. And at present its prelatic and exclusive character has effectually alienated from it the sympathy and co-operation of a large portion of the Christian public. Many friends of Israel only wait till a society pure, comprehensive, and unsectarian, step into the field, that, with their contributions and their prayers, they may bid it God speed. The fact that such a movement had originated in the Church of Scotland, would with many be a guarantee for the soundness of its views and the wisdom of its operations; whilst the conviction gains ground, that such a church as ours possesses peculiar advantages in a mission to the Jews. Encumbered by no outward pomp, such as lately roused the mingled jealousy and derision of Turks and Jews, when good Bishop Alexander made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem; with no pictures in our churches to frighten them into the belief that we are idolaters; with no convenient litany to supersede the need of prayer;† with no printed form of godliness which an unconverted proselyte may substitute for his formal infidelity, and scarcely feel a difference; not substituting our church for the Saviour, nor its sacraments for salvation;-the Church of Scotland has ready access to the Jews, and has that gospel pure and full to preach to them, which, if they believe it, will save their souls. And now that she is no longer self-outlawed from the communion of other denominations, her's may be the glorious privilege to unite the evangelic churches in the most sacred of all enterprises, and, beginning at Jerusalem' again, we may find our way back to the love and simplicity which left the church soon after the church left Jerusalem. It is the kind providence of God which is turning the eyes of so many Christians in this and other lands in affection and admiration towards the Church of Scotland. What use of her position so legitimate can she make as bid those who are looking to her look also to Jerusalem? And what more royal road to farther

• The effect of altar-pieces and painted windows on the Jewish mind is illustrated in an instance recorded in Ebenezer, or, the Life of Lazarus,' lately published.

+ An inquiring Jew lately told a friend of our own, that he preferred the Church of England service, because it was so easy;' meaning that it did not require the heart-effort and attention of free prayer.