on a spindle, or axis, and had its rotatory motion communicated to it by the foot of the potter sitting at his work, as we may learn from Eccles. xxxviii. 29, 30. On the top of this upper stone, which was flat, the clay was placed, which the potter, having given the stone the due velocity, shaped with his hands.—Blayney. ORIENTAL PRISONS.-" Wherefore the princes were wroth with Jeremiah, and smote him, and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe for they had made that the prison."―Jer. xxxvii. 15. The Eastern prisons are not public buildings erected for that purpose, but a part of the house in which their criminal judges dwell. As the governor and provost of a town, or the captain of the watch, imprison such as are accused in their own houses, they set apart a canton of it for that purpose, when they are put into these offices, and choose for the jailor the most proper person they can find of their domestics.-Sir J. Chardin. SEATS AT BANQUETS. "When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room, lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place," &c.-Luke, xiv. 8, 9. That there were among the Jews of these times many disputes about seats at banquets, we learn from Josephus and the Rabbins; nor were these matters unattended to by the Greeks and Romans. Similar admonitions to this of our Lord also occur in the Rabbinical writers. Rabbi Akiba said, "Go two or three seats lower than the place that belongs to thee, and sit there till they say unto thee, Go up higher; but do not take the uppermost seat, least they say unto thee, Come down for it is better they should say unto thee, Go up, go up, than they should say, Go down, go down."-Schoetgen.—Bagster. MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. JERUSALEM. (CONCLUDED FROM P. 110.)-" Cast your eyes between the temple and Mount Zion; behold another petty tribe cut off from the rest of the inhabitants of this city. The particular objects of every species of degradation, these people bow their heads without murmuring; they endure every kind of insult without demanding justice; they sink beneath repeated blows without sighing; if their head be required, they present it to the scimitar. On the death of any member of this proscribed community, his companion goes at night, and inters him, by stealth, in the Valley of Jehosaphat, in the shadow of Solomon's Temple. Enter the abodes of these people, you will find them, amid the most abject wretchedness, instructing their children to read a mysterious book, which they, in their turn, will teach their offspring to read. What they did 5000 years ago, these people still continue to do. Seventeen times have they witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, yet nothing can discourage them, nothing can prevent them from turning their faces. 120 MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. towards Sion. To see the Jews scattered over the whole world, according to the word of God, must, doubtless, excite surprise. But to be struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem; you must behold the rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth; and a petty tribe, whose origin preceded that of those great nations, still exists, unmixed, among the ruins of its native land." To the same effect are the remarks of Dr. Richardson: "In passing up to the synagogue, I was particularly struck with the mean and wretched appearance of the houses on both sides of the streets, as well as with the poverty of their inhabitants. The sight of a poor Jew, in Jerusalem, has in it something peculiarly affecting. The heart of this wonderful people, in whatever clime they roam, still turns to it as the city of their promised rest. They take pleasure in their ruins, and would kiss the very dust for her sake. Jerusalem is the centre around which the exiled sons of Judah build, in imagination, the mansions of their future greatness. In whatever part of the world he may live, the heart's desire of a Jew is to be buried in Jerusalem. Thither they return from Spain and Portugal, from Egypt and Barbary, and other countries, among which they have been scattered. And when, after all their longings, and all their struggles up the steeps of life, we see them poor, and blind, and naked, in the streets of their once happy Zion, he must have a cold heart that can remain untouched by their sufferings, without uttering a prayer that God would have mercy on the darkness of Judah, and that the day-star of Bethlehem might arise in their hearts." "Jerusalem," remarks Sir Frederick Henniker, "is called, even by Mohammedans, the Blessed City (El Gootz, El Koudes). The streets of it are narrow and deserted, the houses dirty and ragged, the shops few and forsaken; and, throughout the whole, there is not one symptom of either commerce, comfort, or happiness. The best view of it is from the Mount of Olives: it commands the exact shape, and nearly every particular; namely, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Convent, the Mosque of Omar, St. Stephen's Gate, the round-topped houses, and the barren vacancies of the city. Without the walls are a Turkish burial-ground, the tomb of David, a small grove near the tombs of the kings; and all the rest is a surface of rock, on which are a few numbered trees. The mosque of Omar is the St. Peter's of Turkey; and the respective saints are held respectively, by their own faithful, in equal veneration. The building itself has a light pagoda appearance; the garden in which it stands occupies a considerable part of the city, and, contrasted with the surrounding desert, is beautiful. The burial MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 121 place of the Jews is over the valley of Kedron, and the fees for breaking the soil afford a considerable revenue to the governor. The burial-place of the Turks is under the walls, near St. Stephen's Gate. From the opposite side of the valley I was witness to the ceremony of parading a corpse round the Mosque of Omar, and then bringing it forth for burial. I hastened to the grave, but was soon driven away as far as my on dit tells me, it would have been worth seeing. The grave is strewed with red earth, supposed to be of the Ager Damascenus, of which Adam was made. By the side of the corpse is placed a stick; and the priest tells him that the devil will tempt him to become a Christian, but that he must make good use of his stick; that his trial will last three days, and that he will then find himself in a mansion of glory." Not a ves The Jerusalem of sacred history is, in fact, no more. tige remains of the capital of David and Solomon; not a monument of Jewish times is standing. The very course of the walls is changed, and the boundaries of the ancient city are become doubtful. The monks pretend to show the sites of the sacred places; but neither Calvary, nor the Holy Sepulchre, much less the Dolorous Way, the house of Caiaphas, &c., have the slightest pretensions to even a probable identity with the real places to which the tradition refers. Dr. E. D. Clarke has the merit of being the first modern traveller who ventured to speak of the preposterous legends and clumsy forgeries of the priests with the contempt which they merit. "To men interested in tracing, within its walls, antiquities referred to by the documents of sacred history, no spectacle," remarks the learned traveller, "can be more mortifying than the city in its present state. The mistaken piety of the early Christians, in attempting to preserve, has either confused or annihilated the memorials it was anxious to render conspicuous. Viewing the havoc thus made, it may now be regretted that the Holy Land was ever rescued from the dominion of Saracens, who were far less barbarous than their conquerors. The absurdity, for example, of hewing the rocks of Judea into shrines and chapels, and of disguising the face of nature with painted domes and gilded marble coverings, by way of commemorating the scenes of our Saviour's life and death, is so evident and so lamentable, that even Sandys, with all his credulity, could not avoid a happy application of the reproof conveyed by the Roman satirist against a similar violation of the Egerian fountain.” Dr. Richardson remarks, "It is a tantalizing circumstance for the traveller, who wishes to recognise in his walks the site of particular buildings, or the scenes of memorable events, that the greater part of the objects mentioned in the description both of the inspired and the Jewish historian, are entirely removed, and razed from their foundations, without leaving a single trace or name behind to point out where they stood. Not an ancient tower, or gate, or wall, or hardly even a stone, remains. The foundations are not only broken up, but every fragment of which they were composed is swept away, 122 MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. and the spectator looks upon the bare rock, with hardly a sprinkling of earth to point out her gardens of pleasure, or groves of idolatrous devotion. And when we consider the palaces, and towers, and walls, about Jerusalem; and that the stones of which some of them were constructed were thirty feet long, fifteen feet broad, and seven and a half feet thick, we are not more astonished at the strength, and skill, and perseverance, by which they were constructed, than shocked by the relentless and brutal hostility by which they were shattered and overthrown, and utterly removed from our sight. "A few gardens still remain on the sloping base of Mount Zion, watered from the Pool of Siloam; the gardens of Gethsemane are still in a sort of ruined cultivation; the fences are broken down and the olive-trees decaying, as if the hand that dressed and fed them were withdrawn: the Mount of Olives still retains a languishing verdure, and nourishes a few of those trees from which it derives its name. But all round about Jerusalem the aspect is blighted and barren; the grass is withered; the bare rock looks through the scanty sward; and the grain itself, like the staring progeny of famine, seems in doubt whether to come to maturity or die in the ear. The vine that was brought from Egypt is cut from the midst of the land; the vineyards are wasted; the hedges are taken away; and the graves of the ancient dead are open and tenantless.' On the accomplishment of prophecy in the condition in which this celebrated city has lain for ages, Keith well remarks:-"It formed the theme of prophecy from the death-bed of Jacob: and, as the seat of the government of the children of Judah, the sceptre departed not from it till the Messiah appeared, on the expiration of 1700 years after the death of the patriarch, and till the period of its dissolution, prophesied of by Daniel, had arrived. It was to be trodden down of the gentiles, till the time of the gentiles should be fulfilled. The time of the gentiles is not yet fulfilled, and Jerusalem is still trodden down of the gentiles. The Jews have often attempted to recover it: no distance of space or of time can separate it from their affections: they perform their devotions with their faces towards it, as if it were the object of their worship as well as of their love; and, although their desire to return be so strong, indelible, and innate, that every Jew, in every generation, counts himself an exile, yet they have never been able to rebuild their temple, nor recover Jerusalem from the hands of the gentiles. But greater power than that of a proscribed and exiled race has been added to their own, in attempting to frustrate the counsel that professed to be of God. Julian, the Emperor of the Romans, not only permitted, but invited, the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem and their temple; and promised to re-establish them in their paternal city. By that single act, more than by all his writings, he might have destroyed the credibility of the Gospel, and retored his beloved, but deserted, paganism. The zeal of the Jews was equal to his own; and the work was begun by laying again the foundations of the temple. It was never accomplished, and the MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS. 123 prophecy stands fulfilled. But even if the attempt of Julian had never been made, the truth of the prophecy itself is unassailable. "The Jews have never been reinstated in Judea; Jerusalem has ever been trodden down of the gentiles. The edict of Adrian was renewed by the successors of Julian; and no Jews could approach unto Jerusalem but by bribery or by stealth. It was a spot unlawful for them to touch. In the Crusades, all the power of Europe was employed to rescue Jerusalem from the heathens, but equally in vain. It has been trodden down for nearly eighteen centuries by its successive masters; by Romans, Turks, Christians, and again by the worst of the rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And could anything be more improbable to have happened, or more impossible to have been foreseen by man, than that any people should be banished from their own capital and country, and remain expelled and expatriated for nearly 1800 years? Did the same fate ever befal any nation, though no prophecy existed respecting it? Is there any doctrine in Scripture so hard to be believed as was this single fact at the period of its prediction? And even with the example of the Jews before us, is it likely, or is it credible? Or who can foretel that the present inhabitants of any country upon earth shall be banished into all nations, retain their distinctive character, meet with an unparalleled fate, continue a people, without a government and without a country, and remain for an indefinite period, exceeding 1700 years, till the fulfilment of a prescribed event which has yet to be accomplished? Must not the knowledge of such truths be derived from that prescience alone which scans alike the will and the ways of mortals, the actions of future nations, and the history of the latest generations?"-Rev. R. Watson. EARNESTNESS IN THE PULPIT.-When a prelate inquired of Garrick, why the theatre exhibited so much more eloquence than the pulpit, the actor replied-"We speak of fictions as if they were realities; you speak of realities as if they were fictions." Let a stammering peasant be put to plead for his life, and he is eloquent. Let a minister of the gospel be deeply impressed with the weight of his business, and he will be eloquent. He will make you understand him, for he understands himself. He will make you feel, for he feels himself. The highest order of pulpit eloquence is nothing but the flame of enlightened piety united with the flame of genius. When this glows in the bosom, it sanctifies and concentrates all the powers of the mind. It makes even the stripling warrior" valiant in fight," and enables him to cut off the head of Goliath with the sword wrested from his own hand. Would you know the difference, then, between the pulpit declaimer and the pulpit orator? this the former preaches for himself, the latter for God. seeks the applause of his hearers; the other, their salvation. displays before them the arts of a fine speaker; the other assails them with the lightning and thunder of truth. One amuses the It is One One |