sites of a temple, churches, or other public buildings,' the fit monuments of a worship that, over all the world, shall perish for ever, when the cities of Israel shall be raised again, and the Euphrates be the border of a land that shall then be a blessing in the midst of the earth.2

At Utch-Kilesi three churches are the ruins of houses which had once been edifices of some pretensions. Even in passing over an inhospitable district, the traveller constantly discovers traces of early Christianity, ecclesiastical and monastic edifices, often of great beauty; remains of large villages, with deep cisterns and reservoirs hewn out of the solid rock.3

All that remains of the once celebrated city of Samoeisat, on the north-eastern extremity of Syria, the seat of the king of Commagena, and an episcopal city in the middle ages, is a partly artificial mound, and the fragmentary remains of a castle on its summit. The modern town is a poor place of about four hundred houses. *

4

While, on the east of the Jordan, towns, ruined or deserted, have recently been disclosed to view, in far greater numbers than were ever recorded by Grecian or Roman geographers, many cities were enumerated by them, or had their place in the lists of episcopal cities in Christian times, in other parts of Syria, of which the ruins have yet to be sought. These, utterly destroyed, exist now only in their undistinguishable or undiscovered ruins. But they shall rise-as they have fallen-at the word of the Lord.

Besides the ruins specially noted in the preceding cursory view, the reader may have marked the uniform testimony which is borne to the fact, that "the country is full of the sites of ruins, whether on the south of JuIsa. xix. 24.

1 Pococke, p. 165.

3 Ainsworth's Travels, vol. i. pp. 286-7.

4 Ibid. 285.

dea, or on the coast of Phoenicia, or in the interior or the north of Syria." And if he compare the lists of ancient cities previously given, he will not fail to perceive that many a name still wants a spot to mark it, while ruins like those of El-Bara, and many heaps of unknown name, have lost their genealogy, or have not been identified with the cities of their origin. The less distinguished that they are, of no note, as the ruins of Askelon were accounted, till Ibrahim Pasha sought to restore a city, and as those of Cæsarea appeared, till Djezzar Pasha wanted beautiful marble columns to ornament a palace, and the port of Seleucia with the ruins of the city, not worth while to travel half an hour to see, till another pasha purposed its restoration, and a modern engineer gave in an estimate, the cities, because hid from view, and the ports because they were filled up, have lain secure in the dormancy of ages, to awaken at the same voice that bade them repose. The cities of the Haouran, constructed of the hardest stones, which are bound together, though uncemented, with the firmness of a rock, have withstood the ravages of time, which has passed over them in the exposure of ages with the lightness of a painter's brush, and only tinged them with a fairer hue. But the cities on the other side of the Jordan, as the caverned but inexhaustible quarries and partial ruins show, were constructed of stones varying from compact limestone, slightly shading into marble, as in the hills of Judea, to fine yellow freestone, of softer texture, as in the ruins near El-Bara. And destined as they were both to fall and to be built again, their fractured walls have not stood exposed to a slow decay from age to age, but razed from their foundations, as the towns of Judea by the Romans, or cast

1 See above, pp. 181, 182, 187, 188, 191, 192.

down by earthquakes as by the hand of the Lord, covered with thorns, and guarded by wild beasts, the last word of the Lord concerning them shall be true as all the rest; and cities of Israel are yet ready at his voice, to rise again, fresh as when they fell.

For many generations desolations were to continue, yet there was an appointed term for them all, when the Lord would comfort Zion, and her cities through prosperity should finally be spread abroad. He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root. Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. Yet the defenced city shall be left, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness; there shall the calf feed, and there shall he lie down, and consume the branches thereof." Upon the land of my people shall come up thorns and briers, yea, upon all the houses of joy in the joyous city. Because the palaces shall be forsaken, the multitude of the city shall be left; the forts and towers shall be for dens for ever, a joy of wild asses, a pasture for flocks; until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high. Then my people shall dwell in a peaceful habitation, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places."

3יי

It is not then till the curses pass away, and the blessing come, when Israel shall take hold of the strength of his God, that we can look for the proof of what these cities were, or the evidence, save of faith, of what they still shall be. But we have seen some token of the ancient greatness, as well as of the vast number, of the cities that lay within the land of Israel as anciently possessed, and also within the bounds of Solomon's dominion.

Numerous these ruins manifestly are, as those of the cities or towns of any land. But fallen as they lie, the

Zech. i. 17.

3 Isa. xxxii. 13–15, or 18.

2 Isa. xxvii. 6, 10.

4 Isa. xxvii. 5.

many once noble cities of Syria may be owned as such rather by the ancient records concerning them, than by looking on their graves overgrown with rank weeds, or searching for their ruins among thorns. The desolation to which they have been brought down, is the visible issue of the iniquity with which the land was defiled; and, as we have seen, enough is left to show the justice of the judgment, and to meet its cause, as announced in Scripture. And we may take a parting glance of these ruins, by looking for a moment on another city in its desolation, in which, as in Baalbec and Geresa, enough is also left to show, as no other country can, that cities of surpassing splendour once lay within the bounds of the kingdom of Israel.

The greatest days which Rome in all her glory ever saw, were those in which captive generals or kings were led in triumph through her streets; and the richest treasures and most splendid spoils were borne in procession before her victorious consuls or emperors. The greatest of these, as recorded in Roman annals, was that in which Zenobia graced the triumph of Aurelian, and "the queen of the east," who had reigned at Palmyra, bowed her neck beneath the yoke of Rome. The spectacle, which called forth the shouts of admiring citizens and slaves, was but the idle pageant of an hour. Not a fragment of her royal city could be transferred to Rome. But its ruins yet remain; and hundreds of its columns are yet erect. And when the way of the kings of the east shall be prepared, and the kingdom be returned to the daughter of Jerusalem, and the bands of her neck be loosed by the triumphant King who leads captivity captive, the ruins of Palmyra, whose fame has spread throughout the world, shall be an enduring monument of Israel's glory, while the voice of harpers and of trumpeters shall be heard no more, and the light of a