foundation should be as immoveable as "the rock of ages." To the assurance thus given, certain conditions were annexed; the violation of which, by the party who engaged in the compact, freed the supreme stipulating Power, from all obligation, to which he had bound himself. The sustaining providence of the Omnipotent having been thus withdrawn; the nation thenceforth resigned to its natural resources, or depending upon alien support, became the victims of the oppression, and a prey to the rapacity, of those to whom they looked for protection. When thus abandoned by providence, they were given up to a persecution, which not only threatened the extinction of Judaism, but the establishment of Paganism in the land of their fathers. But the estrangement of their natural Protector did not outlast their apostacy. When their zeal for his service revived, his providential care was renewed. And from this time, their resistance to the persecution, which menaced them with extermination, was attended with success. The struggle having commenced from the profanation of the temple, ended with its purification; and was at length consummated in the recovery of their independence, and the re-establishment of their religion. And this remarkable crisis was no less distinguished, by their restoration to liberty, than by the transfer of the supremacy, from the third to the fourth of the

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prophetical empires. The scepticism must be invincible, which does not recognise, in these reverses, the divine operation, maturing the great purposes which were in the course of fulfilment; as revealed through the prophets. The coincidence of events, having no necessary connexion, at so remarkable a conjuncture, and according to a prediction so expressly declared, can be only resolved into that divine superintendance, the purposes of which were foreshown, and accomplished as they were predicted.

Of the extraordinary providence by which these times were distinguished, the history of the events to which they gave birth, abounds with examples. But the most striking instance which they present, is deducible from the last successful effort of the Maccabees, and the fatal reverse with which it was followed. While they depended on their individual exertions, referring the issue of the contest to the Lord of Hosts; so long they were invincible. But when, with a distrust in his succour, they applied for aid to the Romans, who held the destiny of the eastern world in their hands; from that time, their decline was as remarkable, as their previous success was miraculous. In the expedition dispatched against them, by the successor of Antiochus; to repair the loss sustained in the destruction of an army, which had fallen before their arms; their leader found himself deserted

by his troops. At the head of a small and resolute band, he accordingly hazarded the fate of a battle; but having fallen in the attempt, with him the independence of the nation expired, which he had so nobly asserted. From this time, the freedom of the Jews was guaranteed by a league into which they entered with the Romans, who had succeeded to the supremacy of the East, on the subversion of the Macedonian dominion; and who threatened their inveterate enemy with their vengeance, should he molest those whom they had admitted into the number of their allies. After this degrading alliance, they depended, for their security, on the contests, which arose, for the throne, among the successors of Antiochus; or on the jealousy, which arrayed the rival dynasties of Syria and Egypt, against each other.

The prophet had indeed given, in a later and more circumstantial prediction, an insight into the event of this period of unexampled trial and affliction to his country; from which not only consolation but security might be derived, by those who had so far a faith in his inspiration, as to bring his predictions to the test of the event. But we cannot be unconscious of the effect with which his claims would be attended, were the trial of his spirit to be made in the present sceptical age: and there is reason to conclude, from the temper of the times to which his revelations

were addressed, from its distrust in the providence and defection from the law of God, that if deemed at all worthy of consideration, they were rejected as baseless and illusory visions. Of the character of their inspired author, the great and good man, who was the first mover of resistance to the merciless decree which marked out an entire nation for extermination, was not insensible; among the examples by which he sought to kindle the zeal and animate the courage of his sons and successors, a principal place is accordingly assigned by him to Daniel.* But as he lived to behold none of those successes against the tyrant, by whom they had been proscribed, in which the predictions of the prophet were verified; he could form no conception of the manner in which they were accomplished. The times which succeeded his death were so wholly given up to enterprise, and involved in danger, as to allow no leisure for examination or study: while in identifying the event, as accomplished, in the truth, as foretold, there was need of comparison and deduction, to be convinced of the resemblance between them. No encouragement was given, by the prophet, to the curious or speculative, in anticipating his meaning, by unfolding the scroll and decyphering its characters; but the event was declared by him to be in

* 1 Maccab. ìì. 60.

volved in obscurity, that time only could clear away. It is therefore probable, that few, even of the more serious and devoutly disposed among his readers, would submit to the patient investigation, which was necessary to its discovery; as is unfortunately experienced, since the volume has been unclasped, and the seal set upon it has been broken.

In estimating the privileges which we inherit in the possession and the perusal of those oracles, which, though unclasped to us, were closed to them; it seems not easy to conceive how some of the advantages, which accrue to us from the period at which we live, can be regarded with indifference or lightness. While in trying prophecy by the rule of history, we trace the resemblance between the truth as predicted, and recorded as it occurred; as that foundation proves its firmness and solidity which resists the shock of time, we see the evidence increase, by which alone, in an age that is vouchsafed no special and sensible interposition, our faith can be strengthened and confirmed. On regarding the course of events, in the short period of the Jewish annals which has been reviewed, in a historical rather than a prophetical light; as exhibiting the triumphs of a few brave and zealous persons against lawless and tyrannical power, in the defence of the most sacred inheritance which can be transmitted to man, and in a contest the