This subject reminds me that my aunt has had a satisfactory letter from Bertram and Madeleine. He is much improved in strength. She appears to be very happy, and the little girl is going on well.
7th, Sunday.—Wentworth has been so much interested by the character of Moses, and by the explanations my uncle has occasionally given of his prophecies, that during the last week he prepared a long string of questions for this morning. His father was pleased by this eagerness to obtain information, and answered them all most kindly and fully. I need not repeat the questions, I shall only tell you the general substance of the answers; and you, dear mamma, who are so well acquainted with the subject will easily trace my omissions.
The prophecies of Moses may be considered in some measure as supplemental to those of Jacob and Balaam. He enters into many details of the perverseness and the corruptions of the Israelites, and the consequent calamities of famine, pestilence, and war, which should afflict them under the government of their kings. He states them almost with the simplicity of an historical narrative; while all other prophecies, except those of our Lord, are expressed in more poetical, and in far more obscure language.
The 28th chapter of Deuteronomy contains several passages which are plainly indicative of the captivity of the ten tribes by the Assyrians, and of the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin, by the Babylonians. In examining the books of Kings and Chronicles, we find that most part of those predicted judgments were fulfilled in the order he foretold; as in the dearths that took place, the plagues that carried off numbers of the people, and the repeated invasions of the country by the Moabites and Philistines, and afterwards by the Ammonites, Chaldees, and Syrians. The captivity of Jehoiachin by the Babylonians was a striking accomplishment of the prophetic threat in the 36th verse. “The Lord shall bring thee and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known:” for it was delivered long anterior to the establishment of any king. The conclusion of that verse, “and there thou shalt serve other gods, wood and stone,” was also precisely fulfilled, as the people were compelled by their cruel conqueror to worship his idols.
The circumstantial prophecy contained in the last twenty verses of that chapter, was fulfilled most literally by the invasion of the Romans, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the complete dispersion of the Jews. The Romans were described in it with characteristic precision eight hundred years before they existed as a nation. It is said that they were to come “from far, from the end of the earth:” now the western parts of Europe were at that time the limits of the known world; and it is remarkable that the armies of Titus and Adrian were principally composed of Gauls and Spaniards. The rapidity of the Roman marches is compared by the prophet to the flight of the “eagle,” and it is not too much to suppose, that in that expression he alludes also to the eagles which were the Roman ensigns. Their language was not to be understood by the Jews; and the “fierce countenance,” for which the Romans were distinguished from the earliest periods of the republic, is noticed, as well as the merciless ferocity of their conduct.
The horrors of the siege of Jerusalem are next foretold with dreadful exactness; as well as the miseries the people were to endure in their subsequent dispersion. “The Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other; ... and among these nations thou shalt find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest.” “Observe now,” said my uncle, “the fulfilment of that prophecy. Since their calamitous expulsion, the Jews have wandered over the face of the globe for one thousand seven hundred years, without national possessions, government, or laws. Their riches have exposed them to plunder, and their poverty to contempt. Driven from place to place, they have been persecuted even in Christian countries with unrelenting cruelty; they seem to have lost their rank in the creation, and have been made to feel the ‘trembling heart,’ ‘the sorrow of mind,’ and the uncertainty of their lives, of which their great prophet so emphatically warned them.
“Yet, notwithstanding their sufferings, they have been preserved a distinct people through all the changes of nations; for the same prophet said, they should ‘only be oppressed and crushed;’ not exterminated and rooted out like the Canaanites. They have adhered to their religion and retained the sacred language of the Scriptures; they appear to have been preserved for ‘a sign,’ and for ‘a wonder;’ and they may be said to be the depositaries of the prophecies, the continued accomplishment of which is really a standing miracle of the most extraordinary and convincing nature.”
I am ashamed, dear mamma, of the slight sketch I have given of what my uncle said at great length in answer to Wentworth; but, though I have done him very little justice, it has all made a deep impression on my mind, and I am going to read a book he has lent me on the comparison of the prophecies with profane history.
8th.—At last I have escaped from confinement, and am enjoying the delight of fresh air. Everything looks gay; the sweet flowers, the bright green shrubs, the butterflies flitting about in the sun-beams, and, above all, the unceasing singing of the birds. Oh, mamma, how can you bear to live where you hear so few warbling birds?
The change that one short week has produced in my garden is quite magical; it is really a sheet of flowers; and I found there a new proof of the goodnature of my cousins, for they had pulled up every weed that disfigured it while I was confined to the house.