with righteousness, and stamped with the image of the Divine One, and finally received into everlasting habitations.

We ask, then, not who will believe the Bible? who will honour the Bible? who will read the Bible ? but we do ask, Who will obey it? who will even now discard and repent of the sins it condemns? who will receive and pray to the God it reveals, the Saviour it discloses? who will turn aside from the broad path which it reprobates, and enter the narrow one which it shows? who will seek first a place in the kingdom it points to, and the righteousness it recommends ? O who will take the Bible as a guide, and its author as a Father and Saviour ? who will bind its precepts upon their hearts, and have its principles written upon their souls? who will prefer the treasure it promises to wealth, the glory it holds up to honour, the comfort it offers to pleasure? who will seek, as a parent, first to impress a knowledge of the Bible, and obedience to it, as of prime importance, upon his child ? In fine, who will show, by the general tenor of his life, and by the whole ordering of his conversation, that he regards the religion of the Bible as the one thing needful,” and alone worthy of the life-struggle of every man?

OHAPTER XIII.

THE PROPHECIES OF MOSES.

The prophecies of Moses, and their clear fulfilment, do undeniably demonstrate his divine commission. These prophecies are so various, so connected, and so minute, and their fulfilment is so evident, and so remote from his time, and was brought about by such a singular train of causes, that none but God could have foreseen, that every candid inquirer must bow with astonishment before Him who, through Moses, revealed his vast designs.

This is the fact to which we bespeak attention. A mere man, like one of us, who lived about three thousand years ago, foretold a long-connected train of events, and with an air of authority assuredly proclaimed that all should come to pass. History, written by successive authors down even to the present day, has most singularly and exactly delineated a full accomplishment of those predictions. Can anything be more miraculous ? Could higher evidence of inspiration beimagined?

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The prophecies of Moses, to which we allude, are those given by him immediately after publishing the laws of his nation. Omitting some of the less remarkable or distinguishing predictions, the prophecies are as follows, as found in the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters Deuteronomy. After promising prosperity, certain conditions, which prosperity was always enjoyed so long as the conditions were observed, he continues :

“It shall come to pass, if thou wilt bot hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to obserta to do all his commandments and his statutes, which I command thee this day : that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee : and they shall be upon thee for a sign and for å wonder, and upon thy seed forever."

Then follows an enumeration of curses, from the forty-ninth verse to the sixty-third.

The same subject is presented in Leviticus xxvi, 33-39.

Now, to doubt respecting the accurate and complete fulfilment of this long train of prophecies, is impossible to any one conversant with the history and present condition of the people addressed. The verification of the prophecy must be acknowledged, and must be convincing, ese

cept to those who will not believe. Let us now closely examine it.

1. It is expressly foretold that the Israelites shall suffer so conspicuously and strangely that the attention of other nations will be arrested, and men shall inquire into the origin of those sufferings, “and they shall be for a sign and a wonder, upon thy seed forever.”

That this is true no man can deny. Whatever the religious tenets of any historian, or traveller, who has become acquainted with this nation, he has acknowledged that their condition is wonderful, and cannot be accounted for upon the principles of nature; and every man who acknowledges the direct agency of the Almighty in any event, recognises that agency here.

“Good God,” exclaims Volney,* a man, alas! who would not acknowledge the truth when looking upon Judea, over which he travelled, “from whence proceed such melancholy revolutions? For what cause is the fortune of these countries so strikingly changed? why are so many cities destroyed? why is not that ancient population reproduced and perpetuated?

"I wandered over the country, I traversed the provinces, I enumerated the kingdoms of

• Volney's Ruins, chap. ii, p. 8.

Damascus and Idumea, of Jerusalem and Samaria. * This Syria,' said I to myself, ‘now almost depopulated, then contained a hundred flourishing cities, and abounded with towns, villages, and hamlets. What has become of so many productions of the hands of man? What has become of those ages of abundance and life ??"

2. The second prediction of Moses was a striking description of the nation which was to overthrow the Jewish empire, and produce this destruction. What nation was it? Every student of history can reply, It was Rome that subjugated Palestine: it was the fourth and last universal empire that dethroned her monarch, sacked her cities, and slaughtered her people.

Behold now the prophet's description of this people, many centuries before Romulus and Remus had established their asylum for banditti at Rome, which afterward became mistress of the western world: “The Lord shall bring against thee a nation from far, from the end of the earth.” Rome was far from Palestine; it was a region which none of them who listened to Moses had ever visited,-a region of whose existence they were as ignorant as they were of America; a nation, adds the prophet, “as swift