that cities of surpassing splendour once lay within the bounds of the kingdom of Israel. The greatest days which Rome in all her glory ever saw, were those in which captive generals or kings were led in triumph through her streets, and the richest treasures and most splendid spoils were borne in procession before her victorious consuls or emperors. The greatest of these, as recorded in Roman annals, was that in which Zenobia graced the triumph of Aurelian, and "the Queen of the East," who had reigned at Palmyra, bowed her neck beneath the yoke of Rome. The spectacle, which called forth the shouts of admiring citizens and slaves, was but the idle pageant of an hour. Not a fragment of her royal city could be transferred to Rome. But its ruins yet remain, and hundreds of its columns are yet erect; and when the way of the kings of the East shall be prepared, and the kingdom be returned to the daughter of Jerusalem, and the bands of her neck be loosed by the triumphant King who leads captivity captive, the ruins of Palmyra, whose fame has spread throughout the world, shall be an enduring monument of Israel's glory, while the voice of harpers and of trumpeters shall be heard no more, and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all* in the city that triumphed over Jerusalem and Palmyra, and gloried greatly in the day of their fall. Palmyra not only lay within the borders of Solomon's kingdom, or of the proper heritage of Israel, but was also a city which he built; and when the kingdom shall return, it doubtless shall be raised again. Its ruins, well known, need not be described; but, having heard much from many a traveller of hewn stones in heaps where the cities of Israel stood, we may see them as they lie uncovered in Palmyra, or still reposing in its walls, as in those of the gate of Antioch. The cities of Israel, whether cast down by earthquakes or by the hand of man, fell not, like fractured walls, in useless pieces, in whose fragments the stones are imbedded as before, and unfit to be built up again, but the uncemented stones lie singly, ready for the builder's hand. But the Lord will do better to Israel than at the beginning, and better than He did to Greeks or Romans in a land not theirs. A Protestant king, but of late, ignorant or forgetful, perhaps, that far more than a hundred cathedrals lie in ruins in Syria, boasted that the quarry would be opened * Rev., xviii., 23. |