TYRE. In the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, God declared, by the prophet Ezekiel, his judgments against Tyre, on account of the "pride and wickedness" of its inhabitants, their exultation over the calamities of the Israelites, and their cruelty in selling them to slavery; he further declared that the same ruin would be brought upon them by King Nebuchadnezzar, into whose hands he would deliver them. This is the subject of the 26th, 27th, and 28th chapters of Ezekiel's prophecies, in the last of which God particularly upbraids Thobal, then king of Tyre, for his insolent and proud conceit of his own knowledge and understanding, "as if he were wiser than Daniel, and there was no secret that could be hid from him.” (Ezek. 28. 3.) At the time of the delivery of this prophecy, a century before its fulfilment, the Assyrians were an inconsiderable people, while the Tyrians were at the height of opulence and power. In the twenty-sixth year of the captivity of Jehoiachim, and the fifteenth after the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar made himself master of Tyre, after a siege of thirteen years, one of the longest recorded in history. He took the place, and utterly destroyed it, that is, the city which was on the continent, the ruins of which were afterwards called Pale-Tyrus, or Old Tyre. the But before it came to this extremity, the inhabitants, foreseeing what would happen, removed their effects into an island about half a mile distant from the shore, and there established themselves. When Nebuchadnezzar, therefore, entered the town, which he and his soldiers had so long laboured to take, he was enraged at finding no spoil, and, wreaking his anger upon buildings and the few inhabitants who were left in them, he razed the whole town to the ground, and slew all he found in it. After this, the city never recovered its former glory; but the town on the island became the Tyre that was afterwards so famous by that name, that on the continent never rising any higher than to become a village, by the name of Old Tyre. That it was Continental Tyre, and not Insular Tyre, that Nebuchadnezzar besieged, appears from the description of the siege which we have given us by Ezekiel; for we find that the king cast up a mound against it, and erected engines to batter down the walls. (Ezek. 28.8-10.) But that the city on the island then escaped this fate, is manifest from the Phoenician histories. Nebuchadnezzar and his army naturally felt much disappointed at the result of their long and laborious siege. They had served before Tyre "till every head was bald, and every shoulder peeled," (Ezek. 29. 18-20;) and yet all their time, and all their toil, remained unrewarded. The Tyrians had escaped with their property to the island, and mocked their utmost efforts. In order, therefore, to reward the Assyrians for being the means of executing the divine wrath on Tyre, the Almighty promised, by the prophet Ezekiel, to give up Egypt to them as a spoil. Accordingly Nebuchadnezzar, taking advantage of the intestine divisions which were occasioned in that country by the revolt of Amasis, marched his whole army thither, and overran the whole land from Migdol to Syene, or from the first entering into Egypt to the borders of Ethiopia; in short, from one end of Egypt to the other. (Ezek. 30.) However, although the Tyrians had evaded the spoliation of their valuable property, they eventually became subject to the Babylonians, as the prophets had foretold. Indeed, it would seem as if the royal family of Tyre, like that of Judah, had been carried into captivity, for Josephus cites the Phoenician annals, as showing that after this time, the Tyrians received their kings from Babylon. The 1311 duration of their subjection was limited by prophecy to seventy years, (Isai. 23. 15-17;) that is, to the termination of the Babylonian monarchy, when the Tyrians, with some other remote nations, were restored to comparative independence by the Persians. They then seem to have been allowed the entire management of their own affairs, with the only discoverable limitation, that they were obliged to furnish vessels and subsidies to the Persians, when required. Accordingly, they did render very valuable assistance to the Persians in the famous war of Xerxes against the Greeks; and Herodotus (viii. 69) particularly mentions the kings of Tyre and Sidon as present at the council of war held by the Persian monarch. Under the Persians the people of Tyre recovered much of their former wealth and importance; and such were their resources, and the strength and advantageous situation of their insular city, that they were for a long time enabled to withstand Alexander the Great, although he had already made himself master of the whole of Syria and part of Phoenicia. When Alexander advanced towards Tyre, the inhabitants, anxious to conciliate him, sent ambassadors with presents for himself and provisions for his army, but on his demanding admittance to the city, they positively refused, and shut the gates against him. Flushed with so many victories, Alexander could not brook such treatment, and resolved to use every effort to reduce them to submission, while the Tyrians, on the other hand, determined to stand out against him. Their resolution was by no means desperate, when we consider how admirably they were situated for withstanding a siege. The city stood on an island, at the distance of half a mile from the shore, and was fortified with a strong wall drawn round it at the brink of the sea. This wall, Arrian tells us, was one hundred and fifty feet high, and of proportionate thickness, constructed of great stones strongly cemented together. Moreover, they had great confidence in the assistance promised them by their allies, and particularly the Carthaginians, who were then a very powerful state, masters of the seas, and who had engaged to send the Tyrians succours in the siege. Alexander, irritated by several unsuccessful attempts to storm it by sea, conceived the bold design of filling up the channel which separated it from the continent. This was effected by sinking piles into the sea, and throwing into the intervening space immense blocks of stone. The difficulties of this enterprise, which has in all ages been the wonder and admiration of military men, are fully stated by Q. Curtius, who says that the soldiers were in despair when the work was proposed to them, for the sea was so deep, that it seemed impossible to them even with the assistance of the gods to fill it up. Alexander encouraged them, and reminded them that the ruins of the old town afforded plenty of stones for the purpose, while from the neighbouring mountains of Lebanon, (so famous in Scripture for its cedars,) they could obtain sufficient timber for the undertaking. the undertaking. After vast labour, the mole was nearly completed, when it was swept away by a storm, and a new one had to be undertaken; the materials must have been nearly exhausted, and while it accounts for the entire disappearance of Old Tyre, does most strikingly corroborate the prediction, that its stones, its timber, and its very dust, (rubbish,) should be laid in the midst of the water, (see Ezekiel 26. 19;) “Ishall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee;" this text is very remarkable when we consider that the mole was constructed of successive layers of stones, rubbish, and timber. At length this gigantic undertaking was completed, and the whole covered with sand. Alexander, accordingly, on this artificial mole erected his battering-rams and other instruments of war known in those times. But even then success did not immediately follow the enterprise. It was only after seven months' close siege, that the inhabitants, attacked simultaneously by sea and by land, and the town being set on fire, surrendered to the Macedonian chief; further illustrating prophecy: "Tyre did build herself a stronghold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. Behold the Lord will cast her out, and he will smite her power in the sea, and she shall be devoured with fire." (Zech. 9. 3,4.) Enraged at the defence which the Tyrians had made, and the delay which they had occasioned, Alexander, with a cruelty not unusual to him, and which has left a blot upon his character, crucified two thousand of the inhabitants, sold thirty thousand for slaves to the Jews and others, and put eight thousand to the sword. The city he re-peopled from the continent, and made Azelmir the king, who had been abroad during the siege, and who consequently had not incurred his displeasure, its governor. The Tyrians had sent off their wives and children to Carthage during the siege, and about fifteen thousand were secretly carried off in the Sidonian ships. About nineteen years after, Tyre was again taken by Antigonus, and was able to withstand his fleets and armies for fifteen months, whence we infer that it had partly recovered its strength. But the former glory of Tyre, and all Phoenicia, had departed for ever: owing to the foundation of Alexandria, it was no longer the emporium of the world, and was constantly changing masters from the Syro-Grecian to the Syro-Egyptian kings. Finally, all were absorbed in the Roman empire. Alexander did the Tyrians more evil than the ruin of their city and the slaughter of its people, by the foundation of Alexandria in Egypt, which gradually drew away from them that foreign traffic, through which they had enjoyed unexampled prosperity for not less than a thousand years. With the loss of their monopolies, and commercial establishments, the skill and enterprise of the Tyrians sufficed to keep Tyre in a respectable station as an individual town, and such it remained under the Romans. The Emperor Hadrian repaired the fortifications, and made it the metropolis of a province, giving it all the advantages of a Roman colony. Many of the people of Tyre embraced the Jewish religion, and that city was one of the first that received the faith of Christ, who Himself visited the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, and miraculously healed the woman of Canaan's daughter. (Mark 7. 26-30.) Paul found there some faithful disciples on his journey to Jerusalem, and in the persecution under Dioclesian, there were many sincere believers at Tyre, who "counted not their lives dear unto them." For many ages there were famous churches in Tyre and Sidon, and in Tyre, a magnificent cathedral, the ruins of which remain. Eusebius speaks of this church, calling it the most splendid temple in Phoenicia. The see was dependant upon the Patriarch of Antioch, and had under it fourteen suffragan bishoprics. Gulielmus of Tyre was its first archbishop. Several councils and synods were held at Tyre: the most important was that which condemned the heresies of Athanasius. At Tyre was interred Frederick the First, surnamed Barbarossa, who died in the year 1190. It was the birth-place and residence of many persons celebrated in history. The decline of Tyre even as a town may soon be told. It passed with the rest of Syria to the Arabs; in 1129, it was taken from them by the Crusaders; Saladin made an ineffectual attempt to recover it in 1187; and it was finally taken in 1291, by Khalil, the Sultan of Egypt, who nearly razed it to the ground, that it might never again afford a stronghold or harbour to the Christians. The Turks took it from the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1516, and in their hands it now remains. After the destruction of the city by the sultan, it was completely abandoned, and the people emigrated to Acre. "It remains nearly in the state in which they left it, (says Mr. Robinson, who visited Tyre in 1830,) with the addition of about a hundred new stone dwellings, occupying a small space to the north of the peninsula, contiguous to the port. The latter is a small circular basin, now quite filled up with sand and broken shafts of columns, leaving scarcely space for small boats to enter. At the entrance stood two towers, with probably a chain drawn across. "The few fishing-boats belonging to the place are she!tered by some rocks to the westward of the island. On seeing their nets hanging out to dry, I was forcibly of sand. The part next the village, and without the struck by the sad fulfilment of that part of the prophecy wall, is full of old walls, mounds, cellars, and all the concerning the place, which says, 'I will make her like indications of having once been covered with houses. the top of a rock, it shall be a place for spreading of There are, indeed, one or two large old buildings still nets in the midst of the sea.' (Ezek. 26. 5.) standing on it. The part of this neck adjoining the mainland is so low as to have considerable pools of water in it. We passed a number as we coasted along the edge of the sand from the south, on approaching the village. There is all the appearance that the water once came out to the steep bank at the edge; but the passage between the island and the mainland being stopped, the sand both to the north and south has been thrown up so as to form a wide flat beach, extending out near the island, as far as what was formerly the east side of the island. The whole space here shows great changes. "Many parts of the double wall which encompassed the island are still visible, and attest the strength of its ancient fortifications. There was only one gate which opened out upon the isthmus. This side was protected by a triple wall. The isthmus is so completely covered with sand washed up by the sea on either side, that none but those acquainted with the history of Tyre would suppose it to be the work of man. The peninsula is about a mile long, and half a mile broad. Its surface is covered with the foundations of buildings now nearly all in ruins. On the western side, where the ground is somewhat more elevated than the rest, is the modern citadel, probably occupying the site of the ancient one. "The place is now known to the natives by its ancient Hebrew name of Tsur or Soor, (corrupted by the Greeks into Tyrus, and by the Romans into Terra,) though ignorant of the classic ground on which it stands. I was so annoyed by their crowding round me wherever I went, and by their refusal to accommodate me with anything like a decent lodging, that I left the place abruptly. The cause of this inhospitality no doubt arose from suspicion as to my real character, having been seen taking notes whilst visiting the ruins.” "The most interesting and remarkable relic of antiquity which I saw at Soor, (the modern name of Tyre,) was the remains of the church of Origen, (we have alluded to this church in the preceding part of this article.) It stands on the south side of the village, and makes part of the wall at that place. Much the larger part of it is fallen and removed. The remaining fragments show that it has been of very great size. There are a few small huts on the ground on which that part of the church that has been removed stood. There is some richly-wrought stone in the walls and about the stairs that run up at one part of the building. The stone is the soft spongy limestone, which abounds on this coast, and, I may add, through most of Palestine. "It is a stone that works easily, but wastes away under the action of water, and is especially liable to be saturated with water, and to form damp walls. No part of the ruins of this old and celebrated church more interested me than the stupendous granite pillars which were once connected with it, but now lie on the ground, and some of them almost buried in it, and by the ruins which cover this quarter. These pillars were of the fine Egyptian granite, of great length and thickness. They formed masses of stone of a most enormous weight. We seldom saw pillars of a larger size. There must have been some regard for Christianity at Tyre when its inhabitants erected this splendid edifice. The Rev. J. D. Paxton, who visited Tyre in 1836, gives the following account of its appearance. "The old site on the mainland is desolate, not one house, and scarcely a vestige, remains to mark the spot. It was scraped as a rock, and probably was thus treated by Alexander to get materials for the stupendous causeway be made. The city, on what was once an island, was almost wholly forsaken, as many travellers assure us, and thus the prophecy has had its fulfilment. There is, however, a new village growing up on its site. It has much increased within a few years. There may be between one or two hundred houses, a quarter part of them very miserable things, but a few tolerably good for this region. The pasha has established some factories. here, and the place is evidently reviving. Three or four of the European powers have consuls residing here, and the Americans have a consular agent. The old harbour, which once contained the first trading ships in the world, lies on the north side of the town, and was once surrounded by a strong wall, some small fragments of which still remain. The harbour is much filled up, so that only vessels of small burden can come within it. It does not indeed appear to have much trade of any kind. The water at the extreme point of the island is very without the spirit and power which makes it a transshallow, a considerable space barely covered with water. forming principle among mankind. But the darkness is There are some ruins on a part of this, and some fallen passing away, rays of light are breaking upon these pillars; whether it was once covered with houses I am regions, and we doubt not the day is not far remote unable to say. To the south the water is deeper, but when the religion of Christ will, in its enlightening and still so shallow as to oblige vessels to lie off at a con- transforming power, revisit these regions, and make siderable distance from the shore. The neck which them revive and flourish like the garden of the Lord." joins the island to the mainland is little else than a bed | A. "But oh! what changes have passed over these lands since those days when Origen ministered here, and raised his voice to the thousands which this church was capable of holding. A deep darkness now rests on all these regions. The Moslem rules, but his pride is humbled; his strength broken, and he appears conscious that the day of his glory is past and not likely again to return! The few Christians that are now found in these regions have lost the spirit of Christianity. It is with them a body without a soul, a form-and a greatly altered form UBIQUITY. An attribute of the Deity, identical | even name, are no longer in their opinion but human with omnipresence, whereby he is always intimately prohibitions established by the policy of legislators. present to all things. C. ULAI. A river of Persia, on the banks of which Daniel had his vision of the ram and he-goat. (Dan. 8. 2-16.) It flowed near the city of Susa or Shushan, the capital of the Persian province of Shuzistan. This city owed most of its celebrity to the fertilizing waters of the Ulai, which was employed to irrigate the plains, and rendered them so productive, that they returned a hundred and even two hundred fold to the agriculturist. In consequence of this fertility, Susa was the chosen winter residence of the kings of Persia, but in summer, it was so fiercely hot that the inhabitants were forced to cover their houses with earth to the depth of a yard and to remain within doors during the entire day. After Susa was plundered by Alexander, the Ulai ceased to receive the attention which such a stream required; its waters dispersed through a thousand channels, stagnated in marshes, or were evaporated by the heat of the sun, and Susa became a heap of ruins, in which state it has lain for nearly two thousand years. C. UNBELIEF. The refusal of assent to testimony; in Scripture, the term most usually signifies a distrust of God's faithfulness, and a discrediting of the testimony of God's word respecting His Son. (John 3. 18.) "It includes," says Dr. Guise, "disaffection to God, disregard to His word, prejudices against the Redeemer, readiness to give credit to any other than Him, inordinate love of the world, and preferring the applause of man to the approbation of God.” "Unbelief," says Dr. Charnock, "is the greatest sin, as it is the foundation of all sin: it was Adam's first sin, it is a sin against the Gospel, against the highest testimony, a refusal to accept Christ upon the terms of the Gospel. It strikes peculiarly at God as the highest reproach of Him, robs Him of His glory, is a contradiction to His will, and a contempt of His authority." C. UNBELIEVERS. Theologians divide unbelievers into three classes; I. Those who having heard the Gospel reject it;-II. Those who verbally assent to it, yet know not to what they assent, or what they believe; and III. Those who whatever knowledge they may have of certain speculative points of divinity yet obey not the truth but live in sin. The following description of an unbeliever by the eloquent Massillon, is worthy of the most serious attention and consideration. "He is a man without morals, probity, faith, or character; who owns no rule but his passions, no law but his iniquitous thoughts, no master but his desires, no check but the dread of authority, no God but himself; an unnatural child, since he believes that chance alone has given him fathers; a faithless friend, seeing he looks upon men merely as the fruits of a wild and fortuitous concurrence, to whom he is connected only by transitory ties; a cruel master, seeing he is convinced that the strongest and most fortunate always have reason on their side. Who could henceforth place any dependence on such? They no longer fear a God; they no longer respect men; they look forward to nothing after this life; virtue and vice are merely prejudices of education in their eyes, and the consequences of popular credulity. Adulteries, revenge, blasphemies, the blackest treacheries, abominations which we dare not According to them, the most horrible crimes or the purest virtues are all equally the same, since an eternal equalization shall soon equalize the just and the impious, and for ever confound them both in the dreary mansion of the tomb. What monsters then must such be upon the earth!" C. UNCLEAN. In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Leviticus, Moses has given a catalogue of the various animals which the Hebrews were prohibited from eating between the clean and unclean are stated with great as being legally unclean. The marks of discrimination accuracy and precision. The quadrupeds prohibited as unclean were those which did not divide the hoof and chew the cud. In applying the first principle, we must observe, that those beasts are excluded which have not the foot by one cleft thoroughly divided into two parts, as the camel; and also those beasts whose feet though thoroughly divided into two parts by one cleft externally, yet internally by the construction of their bones, differ from the general character of cloven-footed beasts; a rule which excludes the swine, the anatomical construction of whose foot is similar to that of animals having fingers and toes. Animals are also excluded whose feet are divided by two clefts into three toes, as the ]DV saphan, which our translators have rendered the coney, but which most commentators now agree should be translated the jerboa, or Mus jaculus of Linnæus. Finally, those quadrupeds were to be deemed unclean whose feet were divided by more than two clefts, as the hare, which has four distinct toes, and of course the whole quadrumanous race of apes, monkeys, and baboons. The construction of the foot was the most marked and distinguishable test, for it required some acquaintance with the habits and internal construction to determine whether they ruminate or not. Two characters were assigned to determine what fish could lawfully be eaten; it was required that they should have fins and scales; those who wanted either were to be rejected as unclean. No particular characters were given for distinguishing birds into classes as clean and unclean, but it may be generally stated that those which live on grain, including the domesticated kinds, were permitted to be used for food, while birds of prey were rejected. An old English poem of uncertain date, but probably belonging to the poem of uncertain date, but probably belonging to the Elizabethan age, affords so curious and accurate a catalogue of the birds which were deemed unclean in the Levitical Law, that it deserves to be inserted. We have ventured to modernise the antiquated orthography. Oi feathered fowls that fan the buxom air Not all alike were made for food to men; For these thou shalt not eat, doth God declare, Twice ten their number, and their flesh unclean. First, the great Eagle, bird of feigned Jove, Which Thebans worship and diviners love. Next Ossifrage and Osprey both one kind, Of luxury and rapine emblems meet, That haunt the shores, the choicest prey to find And burst the bones, and scoop the marrow sweet. The Vulture, void of delicesse and fear, Who spareth not the dead pale man to tear. The tall-built Swan, fair type of pride confest; The Pelican, whose sons are nurst with blood, Forbid to man! she stabbeth deep her breast, Self-murderess, through fondness to her brood; They too that range the thirsty wilds among, UNCLEAN The Raven ominous, (as Gentiles hold,) The vocal Cuckow, of the falcon race, The glutton Cormorant, of sullen mood, The Ibis, whom in Egypt Israel found, Last the foul Bat, of beast and bird first bred, The Scripture, our only safe guide in this matter, informs us that the distinction of animals unto clean and unclean, was subservient to a moral and political purpose, the preservation of the Hebrews as a people distinct from the surrounding idolatrous nations. This is declared in Leviticus 20, 24-6, "I am the Lord your God who have separated you from other people; ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean; and ye shall not make yourselves abominable by beast or by fowl, or by any living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean; and ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine." The entire race of reptiles, serpents, and creeping things more than having four legs was prohibited, with the exception of such winged insects as having four walking legs, have in addition two longer used in jumping or springing, (pedes saltatorii); these, under the general name of locusts, are declared to be clean. The Hebrews were also prohibited from eating animals slaughtered by strangulation, or which died of themselves, because in these cases the blood remained in the flesh. The Levitical law respecting food at once broke off all the corrupt practices which the Hebrews had learned during their bondage in Egypt; for they were permitted to slaughter animals, such as the ox, which their ancient taskmasters regarded as sacred; and they were taught to regard as unclean and abominable several others, such as birds of prey, to which the Egyptians looked with superstitious veneration. This restriction equally separated them from the idolatrous nations of Canaan, so grossly corrupt in their manners, morals, and worship, for it prevented them from social intercourse with those who brought prohibited food to their board, so that in no instance could "their table become a snare, nor their entertainments a trap." (Psalm 59. 22.) The Jews have generally adhered to the law of distinctive meats with inveterate obstinacy, so that St. Peter in his vision was disposed to refuse obedience to the commands of God Himself, by eating what was common and unclean." (Acts 10. 14.) They preserve this peculiarity even in the present day, and nothing has been more efficacious in preserving them as a distinct and separate people. C. 66 UNCLEANNESS. This term is applied in Scripture not merely to physical impurities, but to ceremonial ordinances, such as the neglect of the purifications enjoined by the Levitical law, and also to violations of .1eem ראם ,UNICORN The Hebrew word simply signifies "tall animal," and it was first rendered "unicorn" by the Septuagint translators, who uniformly call it μovokeрos, monoceros, or "the one-horned." Such an animal as is usually pictured for the unicorn has never existed, and consistent with the laws of nature never could exist, but unfortunately our translators living in a time when natural history was little understood, gave the name of this fabled animal to the Hebrew reem, and thus rendered the error inveterate. Most commentators assert that the reem is the rhinoceros, an animal remarkable for its erect horn, nearly perpendicular to the os frontis. There are, however, some difficulties in this identification; the Hebrew name implies that the animal was tall and erect, but the rhinoceros is not so erect as other quadrupeds, having crooked knees, and a most clumsy gait. In the cognate languages, reem, at the present day, is applied in a vague sense to tall animals of the deer species, and not, as Mr. Good has asserted, to the rhinoceros. Finally, no representation of the rhinoceros, as far as we know, has been yet found on the Egyptian monuments, though they contain delineations of nearly all the animals mentioned in the Scriptures. These and similar reasons have led many recent writers to identify the reem with the oryx, the bison, or the giraffe; and it appears to us, that the giraffe affords the most plausible solution of the difficulties connected with the subject; the animal is frequently delineated on the Egyptian monuments, its Canst thou make his harness bind the reem to the Will he forsooth plough up the valleys for thee? Wilt thou trust him that he may gather in thy grain |