they were banished as profane persons. The whole earth was possessed with the same error. The great God, the Creator, and Governor of the world, had neither temple, nor worship, but in Jerusalem. What a mercy that Judea was acquainted with his holy name, and knew that to divide religion, by admitting other gods, was to destroy it. "They, and they only, amongst all mankind, COWPER CHAP. XVI. Extraordinary Character-Wonderful Distinction, and Marvellous Preservation of the Jews, with their Punishments, illustrated by their Separation, and the Destruction of their City and Temple-Reflections. THE preservation of the Jews and the Sacred Scriptures, claims the serious attention, and deepest gratitude, from every inintelligent being in the world; and calls on us to contemplate, and adore the wonderful providence of Almighty God, in raising up, and preserving that nation, as a distinct and peculiar people, giving them the sacred canon of the Old Testament, and making them thereby a barrier against idolatry, and the depositories of those writings, which, as well as the revolutions in their nation, all clearly pointed to the Shiloh. The distinction of character which still mark the Jews, dispersed, or however sítuated, the fulfilment of prophecies already accomplished, and still to be accomplished, in their return to the Messiah, "when "God will remember his mercy and his "truth towards the house of Israel, and all the ends of the world shall see the sal-"vation of God," command attention and affection from Christians, towards this people, by whose means the worship of the true God had been kept up in the midst of an idolatrous world, and by whose instrumentality the inestimable records of Scripture have been preserved, and will be transmitted to future generations. And when we view this despised, and too often persecuted people, at this moment inhabiting part of all the quarters of the globe,-when we consider that of three million, which according to the present calculation is their number, one million remain in the Turkish dominions, wherethey so nearly approximate the ancient scene of their prosperity, the vast empire of the East-and that they inhabit countries never yet fully explored by Europeans, how forcibly does the idea of the Jews, being the heralds of the Messiah, to many countries, strike the mind. This extraordinary people have been kept wonderfully and totally distinct from all the other nations of the globe, in defiance of all their individual and united exertions to confound them. The Assyrians, the Grecians, and the Romans, successively conquered them by their arms; but neither they, with all their other conquerors and oppressors, could incorporate them with their people. These empires rose and fell, one after the other, while the Jews alone continued. What a wonderful act of Divine Provi dence is it, that the vanquished should, for so many ages, survive the victors, and the former spread all over the world, while the latter are no more known! The northern nations have poured forth in swarms, into the southern parts of Europe, but, where are they now!-Who can distinguish the Britons, the Romans, the Saxons, the Danes, or the Normans, in England? Or the Gauls, the Romans, and the Franks, in France. In Spain, who can distinguish between the first Spaniards, and the Goths and Moors, who conquered it?-They are all blended and lost, and similar observations might be made on all other nations. Much more might it have been expected, that the sufferings of the Jews, like fire, would have melted them down into the common mass of human nature, with the different nations, among whom they dwelt; to name one instance only, the destruction of Jerusalem, when upwards of a million were said to have perished; but they still are distinct; they still are very numerous; they still exhibit, in every individual, the legible marks of Divine Power; so that whoever sees the face of a Jew, sees a standing miracle, a living argument for the truth of Christianity, whose divine |