LECTURE XIV.

PALESTINE RECONSECRATED.

That land of glorious traditions so recently the scene of cruel massacre, has yet a magnificent future in reserve.

"For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort

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all her waste places; and he will make her wildernesses like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody.

Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away. I, even I, am he that comforteth you.”—ISAIAH li. 3, 11 and 12.

ONE thread of connection links the words of the prophet into a grand and brilliant prophecy. The 3rd verse predicts the restoration of the land to more than its ancient fertility and beauty; the 11th verse foretells the return of the inhabitants to the land in a state of felicity and joy, intermingled with no sorrow, and broken by no mournings for ever; and in the first line of the 12th verse is announced the author of both the regeneration of the land and the restoration of the people:

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"I, even I, am he that comforteth you." Let us direct our attention, first, to the regeneration of the land; secondly, to the restoration of its people; and lastly, to the author of it all, who comforts them, and also comforts us who believe while we suffer.

For a moment let us consider what the land waswhat it is-and what it is prophesied it will one day be. Read the ancient inspired portraitures of that rare and beautiful land. It was a land of unprecedented fertility, salubrity, and beauty. Often two harvests were gleaned in one year. The very valley in which the Dead Sea, like the ghastly picture of death, sleeps and festers continually, was once exquisitely beautiful and munificently fertile as Paradise itself. We find Judea spoken of as a good land—a land that flowed with milk and with honey. The flowers were in perennial bloom, instead of being, as in this country, often nipped by the frosts in early spring, and even when they burst into their fullest beauty in our summer, poor and mean in comparison of what the flowers of Palestine were-flowers on some of which Eve looked, and on which Eve's daughters and sons shall look again. The flowers of Judea bloomed in ceaseless beauty, and retained their glory throughout the year. Our experience at present of one part of the year-the offspring of the curse-is dreary enough; though what are called the evergreens-the laurel and the laurestinus and the holly-seem spared to us, notwithstanding the curse, to keep the pathway open for summer that is gone to return again. Take away the sweet evergreens of winter, and the gap between the two summers would seem almost impassable. But now they keep the pathway open for the summer of 1860 to return as the summer of 1861. The bees swarmed in

the air of Syria, finding sweet blossoms all the year, and the grass kept green for the cattle all the seasons; so that it came to be justly depicted as a land overflowing with milk and honey. The grapes in Palestine, of the most delicious flavour, were so common that the people boiled them as vegetables for their meals, as well as made use of them for wine to refresh and cheer them. The terraces upon Lebanon and on the mountain sides rose one over the other, till the fruits of all climes were produced; the fruits of the more northern climes in the cooler air upon the heights of the mountain chains; and the fruits of tropical climes on the lower terraces on the slopes at the foot of the mountains. Palestine seems to have been the spot on which the curse last and most lightly fell.

Having seen, without referring minutely to the original passages of Scripture, what Palestine was, let us now ascertain what it is. Read for information the most interesting sketch that I know, namely, Lamartine's "Travels in the East;" it is full of poetic beauty, of fine thought, accurate and truthful. We find there a picture of what Palestine now is. It is described by him and by others as bare, deserted, riven by the lightning, torn by the earthquake; literally, according to the curse denounced, its rain is become powder and dust as it falls; its sky at this moment is as brass, and its soil, out of whose bosom sprang such beauties, and such flowers, and such crops as I have delineated, is now rent and cloven into fissures by the intolerable and parching heat. Its gardens, in which Solomon walked, are all dismantled, and the place of them is known no more -plague, pestilence, and famine, brood upon some districts of Palestine almost continually. The very sea

seems to retire from the land, as if fearful of being infected by touching it. Its cities are cities of the dead; and its clustering tomb-stones loom up like reefs amidst the eternal sea, as if to show us what a rich argosy has made shipwreck there. The soil is still pregnant with hidden fertility; but there is no hand to cultivate and no reaper to enjoy it. The birds of prey darken the air with their wings; and the wild animals make their lairs in its tombs, its broken columns, its deserted capital. The Bedouin and the Arab are its lords and its dangerous tenants; and no capital will be invested, and no wealth will be laid out in enterprise where the Bedouin and the Arab of the desert are the lords of the land. Its springs are dried up; its magnificent Jordan has lost its ancient roll and volume of water. The bare rocks were once gardens; the mountain-sides and slopes were once covered with vines. What a change since Moses looked forth from Mount Nebo, and admired its beauty, its magnificence, and its fertility! Such is Palestine now. Let us see what it will be. That day is not yet come. It is nearer than a good many think; but whether it be near or remote, we know what it will be by looking through the perspective of unfulfilled prophecy. Hear what God says it will be: "For the Lord will comfort Zion; it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing." "Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went through thee, I will make thee an eternal excellency, a joy of many generations. Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise; thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.'

This is a great thought, that, however lost and ruined that nation may be, it has in its bosom all the hoarded possibilities of a glorious restoration. There is no sin beyond forgiveness; there is no sorrow beyond comfort; there is no land so desolate as to be beyond the reach of restoration by Divine power, if pledged in the prophecies and promises of God.

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Having seen what the land was, having seen what it is, having learned from prophecy what it will be, let us now turn our attention to the restoration of its people. "Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head; they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away." Its people are described as then the redeemed of the Lord; redeemed not with gold, nor silver, nor any such corruptible thing; but with the precious blood of a Lamb without spot and without blemish;" redeemed from Satan, from sin-redeemed from the captivity in which they now are, and from the dispersion of which they are now the suffering and the miserable victims; gathered out of every land; brought home in the ships of Tarshish a present to the Lord of hosts, a redeemed people, introduced into a redeemed land-the days of their sorrow, their captivity, and mourning ended for ever." “Then,” saith the prophet in this passage," they shall return." Their land is reserved for them; it is not a new land for a new and a strange people; they return to a land that is their own. There is not a Jew of the least sincerity who does not look to Jerusalem as his capital, and to Palestine as his native land. There is not a Jew, who has one atom of the feeling of a Jew, whose heart does not turn to Zion as the needle inclines,