wonderful hardness and blindness, when considered in the light of God's mercies and miracles in their behalf.

The prophecies of Jeremiah were written during the last forty years of the Kingdom of Judah. They foretell the overthrow of the kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and the long captivity of the Jews. Those dreadful prophecies were pronounced because the Jews had become so wicked and idolatrous as to require the most severe punishment. Jeremiah is God's last prophet before the seventy years' captivity; God's last voice of warning and appeal to unfaithful Judah; and therefore, his prophecies have a sadness and solemnity about them, which can be appreciated only when they are read with this fact in view.

Through Jeremiah, God again and again warns his people. He points out their sins in the most definite terms. He shows their aggravation, namely, not only are these great in themselves, but they are committed in the very face of light and knowledge, of love and mercy. He declares the punishment which must follow; and yet assures them of mercy if they will even then yet turn to Him. These things are found upon almost every page of Jeremiah. Yet the Jews-like many to-day, who hear God's words of warning, of mercy and entreaty, but heed them not; who blindly, yet with open eyes, walk directly into the fearful abyss of eternal captivity amid blackness and despair-the Jews became worse and worse; their hardness increased, and their idolatry became more gross.

Oh, how the tender-hearted Jeremiah laments the wickedness, the folly and the blindness of his people! In the ninth chapter, he pours out his soul in earnest words of anguish and sorrow:-"Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people. Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of way-faring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacher

The Jews were exceedingly wicked. This forty years' warning, threatening and pleading were of no avail, and his sad prophecies had to be fulfilled; the people must become captives and Jerusalem a desolation.

Behold the fulfilment! Before Jeremiah's own eyes, his words of God were made good. Zedekiah was the last King of Judah; and it is expressly said he did evil in the eyes of the Lord. In the ninth year of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and all his vast army, came against Jerusalem and besieged it for two years, till famine forced the city to yield. The men of war fled; but the Chaldeans pursued and overtook Zedekiah. They carried him to King Nebuchadnezzar, who, with his own hands, first slew the sons of Zedekiah before his very eyes, and also all the Princes of Judah, and then put out the eyes of Zedekiah himself, bound him in chains, carried him to Babylon, and kept him in prison till the day of his death.

Then followed the burning of Jerusalem, the destruction of its very wall, and the carrying away of the Jews into their long, sad captivity. (See Jer. LII.)

Oh, Jerusalem, once the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth, but now ashes and desolation! The temple, with all its glory, magnificence and sacredness, was laid low; its gold, silver and brazen vessels were hurried away into Babylon by the heathen spoiler. So Jerusa

the Jews

lem was made a desolation and her people captives; so were punished for their aggravated sins; and so were the sad prophecies of Jeremiah fulfilled. After all this has happened, Jeremiah-still living in Judea-writes this touching elegy called Lamentations.

Now let us read a few passages, recollecting that Jeremiah is weeping over the fulfilment of his prophetic warnings:-"How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity, because of affliction, and because of great servitude; she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts. All her gates are desolate; her priests sigh; her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. The Lord hath swallowed up Israel, He hath swallowed up all her palaces; He hath destroyed His strong holds, and hath increased, in the daughter of Judah, mourning and lamentation. And He hath violently taken away His tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; He hath destroyed His palaces of the assembly: the Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised, in the indignation of His anger, the king and the priest. The Lord hath cast off His altar, He hath abhorred His sanctuary, He hath given up into the hands of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He hath stretched out a line, He hath not withdrawn His hand from destroying: therefore He made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. Her gates are sunk into the ground; He hath destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call, The Perfection of beauty, The Joy of the whole earth? Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. The joy of our heart is ceased: our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us that we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes are dim."

These are the sad and sorrowful words of the prophet, as he looks around upon the desolation, which the enemy has made of the once lovely and glorious Jerusalem. His eyes are sore with weeping, and his heart is full of anguish. Every word of Lamentations is a tear, and every verse a sad sigh.

Has not this book new force and clearer meaning, when read in the light of its history? It is Jeremiah's lament over the fulfilment of his prophecies.

When the combat ends, and slowly
Clear the smoke from out the skies.
When far down the purple distance,

All the noise of battle dies,
When the last night's solemn shadows
Settle down on you and me,
May the love that never faileth,
Take our souls eternally.

JERUSALEM AND THE JEWS.

BY THE EDITOR.

During the last ten years the population of Jerusalem has increased at least three thousand. It now contains over eighteen thousand inhabitants. Of these, there are five thousand Mohammedans, nine thousand Jews, and about four thousand Christians. The latter include the different oriental branches-Armenians, Greeks, Latins, Copts &c. Hitherto the Holy City has remained untouched by the spirit of modern progress. A vast multitude of Jewish pilgrims from all parts of, the world, crowded around its shrines during hundreds of years. Many went thither to live and die, and be buried with their fathers. An immense throng of Christian pilgrims from universal Christendom have knelt around the Holy Sepulchre, since its discovery. All these brought the education, customs and habits of their respective countries with them, which were wholly foreign to those of Jerusalem.

Its reigning life is still as purely oriental as it was a century ago. Its business is very limited, being chiefly confined to one or two months in the year. Being an inland city, some thirty miles from the nearest Mediterranean port, it receives very little trade and travel, beyond what its history and sacred places attract. The principal business of the people is the manufacture of soap, and what is called Jerusalem ware, consisting of chaplets, crosses, beads and the like, carved out of shells, chiefly mother-of-pearl, and of olive wood, and sold to the pilgrims, who annually visit the Holy city, during the Easter season. The number of these yearly visitors is from five thousand to ten thousand.

The churches of Jerusalem may be radically changed by the solution of the Eastern question. Its purely oriental type is to a great extent, owing to its Moslem rulers. Mohammedanism is a purely Eastern religion. It stamps an oriental impress upon all its dependencies. Should Palestine, or even Judea, pass into the hands of some Christian powers its ancient complexion would be changed. The Rothschilds and other Jewish bankers have money enough to buy the whole of Canaan. As the Sultan of Turkey could not remain on his throne six months without Jewish gold, it is not impossible that some day he may mortgage the Holy Land to avoid bankruptcy. And once mortgaged, might not these sons of Abraham say: "I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak; I'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more?"

Vol. xviii.-14.

The Christian powers permitting, the Rothschilds are thus in a situation to wrench the homes of their fathers from the hands of the insulting Turk in one year's time. Events are ripening for a fulfilment of prophesy. The Jews shall return to the hallowed hills and desecrated altars of their ancestors, and Jerusalem shall again become the centre of Jewish worship.

Possibly this will throw the Holy city open to the inroads of modern improvements. Even now two lines of telegraph connects it with Europe and America. Next they will open a railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem. Perhaps a route to India via the city of David and Damascus. This would strip it of its hoary sacredness, and convert it into a vulgar modern town, with all its irreverence and humbug.

All pious Jews pine under the old home sickness of Babel's exiles. Dispersed among all nations, they always devoutly turn their faces toward Jerusalem, when they pray. True some forget Jerusalem, and prefer it not to their chief joy. The right arm of faith forgets its cunning; the tongue of praise is hushed-"cleaves to the roof of the mouth." Earnest souls, too, hang their harps on the willows, and refuse to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. The burden of their prayers is— "How long, O Lord, how long!" Many grow old with waiting, and return to Jehoshaphat, that they may be buried with their fathers

A late number of the "Jewish Messenger" says: "On Sunday last we were called upon by a Mrs. Rachel Cohen, stating that she had determined on ending her days in Palestine. We endeavoured to dissuade her, telling her that although it was the land of promise, yet we learned that at present it was not very favorable to afford a home of comfort for any one-unless she was amply provided with funds for a permanent support. With a piety worthy of imitation, she stated that she was satisfied with the means in her possession. They were enough to take her, a son, and two daughters to Jerusalem; and, having two daughters married,-one in this city, the other in San Francisco-who had arranged to provide for her hereafter, she had resolved to accomplish her heart's yearnings-to live and die on the soil watered by the nation's tears. She required no material aid from us. All that she solicited was that we would give her a certificate of her standing and character. Bringing us a letter from the President of the congregation to which she was attached, speaking in eulogistic terms of Mrs. Cohen, we readily complied with her wish, and place the case before our readers, to manifest how strongly the love for Jerusalem still beats in Jewish hearts."

As in the days of Christ, there is a numerous Sadduceeic party among the Jews. These make light of the Law and of the Mosaic rites and ceremonies, they are a kind of Jewish Rationalists, observing neither the Sabbath, nor any of their festival days. To check this tendency and promote a better observance of the Jewish Sabbath a "Hebrew Sabbath Association" was recently formed in New York. On Saturday before Whitsunday, the anniversary of the Giving of the Law, every Jewish pulpit in that city published an exhortation to "Remember the seventh day, and to keep it holy."