not exhort them to observe the progress of their neighbours in the art of war, and adopt their improvements. He does not caution them to study the subtleties of policy, and to cultivate the friendship of some of the adjoining states as a protection against the ambition of others. He displays no anxiety to rouse in them a spirit of military glory in order to secure them from invasion, or to refine them by literary pursuits in order to exalt their character. His cautions, his warnings, his counsels, are all directed to this single point—their obedience to the Great Jehovah. "All these things (says he) shall come upon you, if thou "wilt not observe to do all the words of this law written in "this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful 66 name, THE LORD THY GOD." * Now it is remarkable, in this view of the subject, that many particulars of this law were, according to the usual maxims of human wisdom, directly hostile to the temporal greatness of the people. All the particularities of their ritual, of their peculiar food, of their singular customs, tended to exclude or to offend strangers, and thus impede commerce. They were forbidden to multiply horses ;† and thus deprived of cavalry and chariots, a species of force so important. The assembly of all their adult males three times in the year at a place where the Lord chose to place his Name, necessarily left their frontiers as often exposed to every invader. And against this obvious and imminent danger their Lawgiver held out no security, but this assurance of their God, “I will "cast out the nations from before thee, and enlarge thy borders: "neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go "up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year."‡ Thus also the observance of the sabbatical year, which required them to leave their lands untilled every seventh year, seemed to expose them as often to the attacks of famine; against which their Lawgiver held out no security but the assurance of the same God, "I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years."§ No man will assert that any mere human sagacity could foresee that the neglect of either of these last precepts had naturally any tendency to hasten the ruin of the Jewish state, or prolong 66 66 66 the captivity of the Jewish people. Yet the Lawgiver in his prophetic denunciation lays particular stress on the last precept, relating to the sabbatical year, and affirms that its violation would materially conduce to hasten the era and prolong the period of their captivity and their country's desolation. “I will "bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell "therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you "among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall "the land enjoy her sabbath, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, "and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall "rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt "upon it."* Thus this signal prophecy connects events with causes which would seem, on the testimony of general experience, calculated to produce effects decidedly different from, or even directly contrary to those, which the prediction declares would take place. So that their accomplishment may be adduced as a proof, not only of a supernatural foresight displayed in predicting contingent, though ordinary, occurrences, but as an instance of special providential interference, regulating the fortunes of this extraordinary people so as to exhibit a decisive testimony of supernatural power directing and controlling all events to effect its eternal purposes. Let us next examine whether, in the various calamities which befell the Jews, but especially in the final destruction of Jerusalem and dispersion of the nation, there were not a variety of circumstances of an extraordinary nature, whose concurrence forms a combination which no conjectures grounded on common experience could anticipate. Their Legislator knew they were to be surrounded by warlike and hostile nations, whom he foretells in other places would be employed as instruments for their correction; yet their final destruction he declares should be effected by a nation whom God would bring from far, even from the ends of the earth. Now this was strictly applicable to the Romans, who, with respect to the Jews, came almost from the remotest part of civilized Europe. And it has even been observed, that Vespasian and Adrian, the two great conquerors *Levit. xxvi. 32-35. and destroyers of Judea, both came from commanding the Roman legions in Britain, which, to the Jews, was nearly the very remotest known island of the western world. "A nation (their "Lawgiver adds) whose language they should not understand;"— a character improbable from the intermixture of dialects in the various Asiatic nations, but strictly true of the Romans, whose language, in its sound, its construction, and its written character, is to this day most different from the language of the Hebrews. A nation, he further describes, "of fierce countenance, "which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favor to "the young. This too was most strictly fulfilled by the Romans, who, though in general disposed to spare the nations they conquered, yet to the Jews, at the time of their final destruction, showed themselves cruel and implacable. In truth, the destruction of Jerusalem exhibited every scene of horror which imagination can conceive. The besieged divided into three* parties, and butchering one another, first destroying each the provisions of the rest, and then all perishing by the agonies of famine-yet still all ferocious and unyielding in their opposition to their common enemy. Rejecting every overture for peace, fulfilling the prediction of the prophet, "that they should trust "in their strong holds, yet trust in vain," they provoked the fury of the Roman legions to such a degree, that no authority could restrain it.† 66 In Jerusalem, during the whole siege, according to Josephus, eleven hundred thousand perished; and during the war, ninetyseven thousand were made slaves. And here another remarkable prediction of their Lawgiver was fulfilled: "the Lord (says he) shall send thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way "whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: "and there ye shall be offered for sale unto your enemies for "bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you." This prediction was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, says Josephus :§ Of the captives above seventeen years of age, he sent many bound to the works in Egypt; those under that age were sold; but so little care was taken of those miserable Josephus of the Jewish War, Book v. chap. i. Deut. xxviii. 68. captives, that eleven thousand of them perished for want. And the historian adds, that "they were sold with their wives and "children at the lowest price, there being many to be sold, and "but few purchasers." And after their last overthrow by Adrian, we have the unquestioned testimony of history, that many thousands were sold; and those who could not be sold were transported into Egypt, and perished by shipwreck or famine, or were massacred by the inhabitants.* Now such an event as this cannot surely be said to come within the common course of human conjecture, and its accomplishment at two remote periods within the regular and natural progress of human events: Surely we may here conclude there exists the prescience of Inspiration, and the distinct agency of Providence. The universal dispersion of this singular people forms a still more extraordinary feature in their fortune. "The Lord shall "scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth " even unto the other," says their Legislator.† And how wonderfully is this prediction, at this hour, verified! From the burning sands of Africa, to the frozen mountains of Polandfrom the confines of China to the British isles; every country has been traversed by the wanderings, and has witnessed the sufferings of this unhappy race; every where we see the traces of their commercial activity; every where they exhibit proofs of their unshaken adherence to their Law. At one period, before the refinement of modern civilization had opened such general intercourse amongst the nations of the earth, that the established merchant can command universal credit, the Jews monopolized the management of almost all remote pecuniary transactions; because, from their universal dispersion, their common language and national connexion, the orders of the Jewish money-brokers could find in every country, and almost every city within the range of commerce, other Jews by whom they would be received and respected. And still do they continue to exist in almost every nation of the habitable globe. On this point we have recent satisfactory testimonies from the East. "During my residence in the East," says the very respectable * Vide Basnage, Book vi. chap. ix. sect. 26 and 28. + Deut. xxviii. 64.-Vide the particulars of this dispersion, Basnage, Books vi. and vii. 66 66 Dr Buchanan,* " my mind was much occupied with the pre"sent state and circumstances of the Jews. I visited them in "the different provinces of the British dominions."-" By the “events of the late war in India, a colony of Jews have become subject to Great Britain, the colony of the white and black "Jews of Cochin: I visited this colony; its number is calcu"lated to be 16,000. The number of the Jews in the United Kingdom is not reputed to be greater than 14,000; so that our Jewish subjects in the East are yet more numerous than "in the West. The white Jews live on the sea coast-the black "Jews live chiefly in the interior; they call themselves Beni"Israel, for their ancestors did not belong to Judah, but to the kingdom of Israel; they consider themselves to be descended "from those tribes who were carried away at the first captivity. "In some parts of the East (for they are dispersed through it) "they never heard of the second Temple; they never heard of "the coming of the Messiah: some of them possess only the "Pentateuch and Psalms, and the Book of Job."-" The Jews "of Cochin (he adds) may be addressed with advantage on the subject of the Christian religion, for they have the evidence of "the Syrian Christians before them; these ancient Christians "live in their vicinity, and are our witnesses. At one place in "the interior of the country which I visited, there is a Jewish synagogue and a Christian church in the same Hindoo village; 66 66 66 66 they stand opposite to each other, as it were the Law and the "Gospel, bearing testimony to the truth in the presence of the "heathen world." Surely we cannot but see, in this statement, a clear and irrefragable proof of the accomplishment of those predictions, which foretel the dispersion of the Jewish race from one end of the earth even to the other; and yet the facility with which Providence may prepare arrangements for again re-uniting them, when we see two bodies of Jews so numerous, and from each other so remote, as those of our United Kingdom and those of Cochin in Asia, brought as it were into contact, by being placed under the dominion, and capable of being influenced by the measures, * Vide Dr Buchanan's Speech as to the State of the Jews in the East, delivered at a Public Meeting of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, in December, 1809, published in London in 1810. |