Evidences of Christianity.
By Moses Hull
Egypt.—The Jews are not the only ones of whom the prophets have spoken. They have no less definitely described the future of Egypt: "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations; for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." Eze. xxix, 15. Again, the same prophet says, "Thus saith the Lord God: I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon. He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land; and they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked; and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God: I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt; and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt." Chap. xxx, 10-18. Egypt was one of the most ancient, and, at the time Ezekiel uttered this prophecy, one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world. "It contained eighteen hundred cities, and seventeen millions of inhabitants." The revolutions and state of this kingdom are described in the Bible. See Isa. xix; Jer. xliii, 8-13; xlvi; Eze. xxix-xxxii. It is now more than twenty-four centuries since the prophecies concerning this nation were delivered. And now we are led to ask, What likelihood or appearance was there that Egypt, the most defensible country in the world, bounded on one side by the Red Sea, and on another by the trackless desert, able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to drown an invading army by the inundation of the Nile,—what likelihood that such a country should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, fall into the hands of strangers, and that forever, become the basest of kingdoms, and renounce idolatry? Yet such is, and has been for three hundred years, the state of Egypt. "Invaded and subdued by Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, according to the word of the Lord, both by Jeremiah, xlvi, 13, and by Ezekiel, xxx, 10, subjected afterward by the Persians under Cambyses, and to the Macedonians by Alexander the Great, Isa. xix, 1-13, Egypt was, after his death, governed for nearly three centuries by the Ptolemies, the descendants of one of his generals, at which time it was an opulent kingdom, till, about thirty years before the Christian era, it came under the Roman yoke: and Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks, have since successively ruled over it. Its history shows the completion of the prophecies concerning it."—Keith on Prophecy, p. 116. Now let the infidel Volney once more bear testimony to the truth: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Greeks and Arabs, the Georgians, and, at length, the race of Tartars, distinguished by the name of Ottoman Turks. The Mamelukes, purchased as slaves, and introduced as soldiers, soon usurped the power and elected a leader. If their first establishment was a singular event, their continuance is not less extraordinary. They are replaced by slaves brought from their original country. The system of oppression is methodical. Everything the traveler sees or hears reminds him he is in the country of slavery and tyranny. In Egypt there is no middle class, neither nobility, clergy, merchants, nor land-holders. Ignorance, diffused through every class, extends its effects to every species of moral and physical knowledge," &c. Travels, vol. i, pp. 74, 103, 110, 190, &c. Gibbon, another infidel, says, "A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude under the arbitrary dominion of strangers and slaves. Yet such has been the state of Egypt above five hundred years. The most illustrious sultans of the Baharite and Borghite dynasties were themselves prompted from the Tartar and Circassian bands; and the four-and-twenty beys or military chiefs, have ever been succeeded, not by their sons, but by their servants."—Dec. and Fall, vol. vi, pp. 109, 110. Says Mr. Patterson: "Mehemet Ali cut off the Mamelukes, but still Egypt is ruled by the Turks, and the present (Ibrahim Pasha) is a foreigner. It is needless to remind the reader that the idols are cut off. Neither the nominal Christians of Egypt, nor the iconoclastic Moslem, allow images to appear among them. The rivers, too, are drying up. In one day's travel forty dry water courses will be crossed in the Delta; and water-skins are needed now around the ruined cities whose walls were blockaded by Greek and Roman navies."—Fables of Infidelity, p. 141. Again, after quoting Eze. xxix, 15, he says: "Every traveler will attest the truth of this prediction. The wretched peasantry are rejoiced to labor for any who will pay them five cents a day, and eager to hide the treasure in the ground from the rapacious tax-gatherer. I have seen British horses refuse to eat the meat ground from the mixture of wheat, barley, oats, lentils, millet, and a hundred unknown seeds of weeds and collections of filth which form the produce of their fields. For poverty, vermin, and disease, Egypt is proverbial."—Id., p. 142. Unbeliever, have you not been surprised as you have compared the prophecies concerning Egypt with the last twenty-four centuries of its history? Or have you taken the pains to compare them? If not, are you not justly censurable for your unbelief? Is it not strange that among all the nations of the earth, one only answers to the prediction of the prophet? and that the very one that the prophet calls by name in his prophecy? Babylon.—The prophets are no less definite in giving the future history of particular cities, than in that of the nations concerning which we have been inquiring. Especially is the reader's attention called to the prophecies concerning the ancient city of Babylon. But before quoting these prophecies it may be necessary to give a brief description of "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." If the reader wishes an extended notice of this city, he will find it in Rollin's Ancient History, vol. ii, pp. 48-52. Goodrich says, "Among the most wonderful things handed down to us by history, is the account of the ancient city of Babylon, which is so often mentioned in the Bible, and remains of which astonish the traveler at the present day. The most particular description we have of it is furnished by the Greek historian, Herodotus, who visited it about four hundred and fifty years before Christ. "He says that it was situated in a great plain, the river Euphrates running through it from north to south. Its form was square; each side measured fifteen miles, and the whole circuit sixty miles. It was surrounded with walls three hundred and fifty feet high and eighty-seven feet thick. On these walls were two hundred and fifty towers. The entrance to the city was by one hundred gates of brass. Without the wall there was a deep ditch around the city filled with water. "Upon the tops of the walls there were buildings on each side containing one room each. Between these there was space to drive a chariot with horses. The walls were built of brick, cemented together with bitumen. At every thirty layers of bricks there was a layer186of reeds to give the fabric strength. . . . . The streets in the city were strait, the houses being four or five stories high. The temple of Belus was of amazing magnitude, being nearly as large as the great pyramid of Gizeh. It was a regular square, each side measuring six hundred feet. It consisted of eight towers, one above another, and was of immense hight. Besides this, there was a magnificent palace, and connected with it were hanging gardens of great extent."—Curiosities of Nature and Art, pp. 231, 232. Alexander Keith says, "The walls of Babylon, before their hight was reduced to seventy-five feet by Darius Hystaspes, were above three hundred feet high; they were eighty-seven feet broad, and forty-eight miles in compass. The temple of Belus, six hundred feet in hight; the artificial hanging gardens, which, piled in successive terraces, towered as high as the walls; the embankment which restrained the Euphrates; the hundred brazen gates; the palace built by Nebuchadnezzar, surrounded by three walls forty-eight miles in compass; and the adjoining artificial lake, the circumference of which was far more than a hundred miles, and the depth, by the lowest account, thirty-five feet; all displayed many of the mightiest works of mortals concentrated in a single spot. This great Babylon was the glory of kingdoms, and the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, the golden city, the lady of kingdoms, and the praise of the whole earth. The Scriptures, which thus describe it, mark minutely every stage of its fall, till it should become what now it is—a complete desolation. And every feature of its present aspect is delineated in the prophecies with all the precision with which they could not be drawn by the traveler who looks on fallen Babylon itself."—p. 101. Isaiah thus predicts the doom of this great city: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there: neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." Isa. xiii, 19-22. Also Isa. xiv, 22, 23: "For I will rise up against them saith the Lord of hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts." Much might be said about the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus and the fulfillment of prophecy in that event. Cyrus was called by name before his birth, and it was prophesied that the loins of kings should be loosed before him, "to open the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut." Isa. xlv, 1. All of this was literally fulfilled on the night of Belshazzar's great feast, when the mighty men of Babylon forbore to fight. They remained in their holds, their might failed them, and they became as women. Jer. li, 30; Dan. v. But we choose to confine our remarks to the present state of Babylon. 1. All must acknowledge that the prophecies in Isa. xiii and xiv, lie entirely beyond the range of human sagacity. This prediction was uttered before Babylon arrived at the hight of its glory. Nebuchadnezzar had not yet said, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" The walls were thought to be impregnable, and twenty years' provisions were stored up within their enclosure, so that in case of a siege they could not be starved out. Certainly Isaiah must have been considered insane when he uttered such predictions. "Babylon," said he, "shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." Not destroyed so suddenly, but as effectually. After the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus, Alexander attempted to restore it to its former glory, and make it the metropolis of a universal empire. He set ten thousand men to work at it, but he died, and the undertaking was abandoned, thus fulfilling another prediction: "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." Jer. li, 9. The glory of Babylon kept diminishing. At the commencement of the Christian era, Babylon was only partially inhabited. Peter dated his first epistle from that place. But the fiat had gone forth—"It shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah." So it kept going down until in the fourth century its walls formed an enclosure for wild beasts, and "the golden city" was converted into a hunting-ground. The name of Babylon was cut off from the history of the world. A long interval succeeded without any history concerning it, or ever its site being known. So literally has the language, "It shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah," been fulfilled. 2. The prophet goes on to state that it shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there. Every one who has visited the spot attests the fulfillment of this wonderful prediction. Mignon declares Babylon to be "a tenantless and desolate metropolis." Another writer says, "The name and remnant are cut off from Babylon. There the Arabian pitches not his tents; there the shepherds make not their folds; but wild beasts of the desert lie there, and their houses are full of doleful creatures, &c. It is a possession for the bittern, and a dwelling-place for dragons, a wilderness, a dry land and a desert, a burnt mountain, empty, wholly desolate, pools of water, heaps, and utterly destroyed, a land where no man dwelled, every one that goeth by it is astonished," &c.—Keith, pp. 104-5. See also Isa. xiii, 19-22, xiv, 22, 23; Jer. l, 13-23, 29; li, 13-26, &c. The dread of evil spirits prevents the Arab from pitching his tent there. Mignon declares that though he was fully armed and attended by six Arabs he could not induce them by any reward to spend the night among the ruins of Babylon, from their apprehension of evil spirits, so completely is the prophecy fulfilled.—"The Arabian shall not pitch tent there." Sir Robert Ker Porter saw two majestic lions in the ruins of the palace, and Mr. Fraser says "There were dens of wild beasts in various places; and Mr. Rich perceived in some a strong smell like that of a lion. Bones of sheep and other animals were seen in the cavities, with numbers of bats and owls."—See Fables of Infidelity, pp. 144, 145. 3. In the above testimonies we have seen fulfilled the next two verses, which read, "But the wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and the dragons in their pleasant palaces, and the time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." 4. But the same prophet has declared that it should be made "a possession for the bittern," a water fowl, and that "it shall be pools of water;" while another prophet has said, It shall become heaps, and "a dwelling-place for dragons." Jer. li, 25-28; and in another place, "That it shall become a burnt mountain." Verse 25. How can such contradictions be true? says the infidel. But they are all true. While the lion in one part of Babylon is howling his testimony to the truth of God's word, "the bittern" is a pool in another part, and the "doleful creatures" in another, and the heaps and burnt mountains in still others, are warning the traveler over its ruins to "take heed" to the "sure word of prophecy." Mignon says, "Morasses and ponds tracked the ground in various places. For a long time after the subsiding of the Euphrates, a great part of this place is little better than a swamp; at another season it was 'a dry waste and burning plain.' Even at the same period, 'one part on the western side is low and marshy, and another an arid desert.'"—Fables, p. 145. Mr. Fraser says, "There is one fact in connection with the most remarkable of these relics (the Birs Nimrod) which we cannot dismiss without a few more observations. All travelers who have ascended the Birs have taken notice of the singular heaps of brick-work, scattered on the summit of this mound, at the foot of the remnant of the wall still standing. To the writer they appeared the most striking of all the ruins. That they have undergone the most violent action of fire is evident from the complete vitrification which has taken place in many of the masses. Yet, how a heat sufficient to produce such an effect could have been applied at such hight from the ground is unaccountable. They now lie on a spot elevated two hundred feet above the plain, and must have fallen from some much more lofty position; for the structure which still remains, and of which they may be supposed originally to have formed a part, bears no marks of fire. The building originally cannot have contained any great proportion of combustible materials, and to produce so intense a heat by substances carried to such an elevation, would have been almost impossible, for want of space to pile them on. Nothing, we should be inclined to say, short of the most powerful action of electric fire, could have produced the complete, yet circumscribed, fusion which is here observed. Although fused into a solid mass, the courses of brick are still visible, identifying them with the standing pile above, but so hardened by the power of heat that it is almost impossible to break off the smallest piece; and though porous in texture, and full of air-holes and cavities like other bricks, they require, on being submitted to the stone-cutter's lathe, the same machinery as is used in dressing the hardest pebbles."—Fables, pp. 145, 146. Mr. Alexander quotes Mignon as saying, "The whole view was particularly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates, wandering in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch, through the silent ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a noble river, under all the disadvantages of its desert tracked course. Its banks were hoary with reeds, and the gray osier willows were yet there, on which the captives of Israel hung up their harps, and, while Jerusalem was not, refused to be comforted. But how is the rest of the scene changed since then? At that time those broken hills were palaces—those long undulating mounds, streets. This vast solitude, filled with the busy subjects of the proud daughter of the east. Now wasted with misery, her habitations are not to be found, and for herself, a worm is spread over her."—Evidences, p. 152. Alexander Keith closes his chapter upon this subject in the following language: "Who hath declared this from ancient times? Who hath told it from that time? Have not I the Lord, and there is no God besides me? Has not the day of the Lord come against Babylon as a destruction from the Almighty? And when we see the proudest works of man thus brought to the dust, where is the human strength, or wisdom, or beauty, or greatness, in which any ought to glory; and whose name alone is it that ought ever to be feared, and that shall be exalted forever, but that of the Lord who hath performed his every purpose against Babylon? And seeing that the glory of kingdoms is thus fallen, what earthly possession or privilege deserves to be prized like the citizenship of that kingdom which alone can never be moved? and how worthless in comparison shall they all at last prove, even as the dust of fallen Babylon! And what other stay need the true Christian seek, or what human fear need he dread, while he puts his trust in that God according to whose word the broad walls of Babylon have been utterly broken! And if the life on their lips, and the breath in their nostrils, and the graves of their brethren and forefathers, cannot teach the worldly, the careless, and the nominal Christian, that pride was not made for man, let them go and look for the walls of Babylon, and stand on the blasted ruins of the temple of Belus. There they may learn, visibly illustrated, the truth of that word of God—'All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world passeth away, and the fashion thereof.' O that all such would remember that 'He that doeth the will of God abideth forever.'"—pp. 108, 109.