Gold shall be found and grown,

In a land that's not yet known.

Columbus discovered America in 1492, but the statement would doubtless be true though made after that event, for the land was hardly known in any sense. Did the eye of the seer peer through the mists of the stormy Atlantic, and discover this vast continent? And into the bowels of the earth and see the glitter of the gold, which was not discovered even by ourselves, until the year 1847, four hundred years after the words were spoken, and nearly so many after the discovery of the continent? Or even if Australia should be supposed to have been referred to, the remark is equally true, for Australia was not known before 1550 and more than likely not earlier than 1600; and the discovery of gold there was not until the year 1851. And in both cases the production was in such immense quantities as to awaken the wonder of the world. Whence could have come so exact a knowledge? Covering in two lines two such facts, agreeing precisely with the prediction.

Fire and water shall wonders do:

This can have reference only to the steam engine in its application to navigation, locomotion and manufactures. And however, philosophers and mechanics and inventors may have thought and written upon the subject, no pretence can be made of any application of steam to use before 1600, and nothing tangible before the claims of Jonathan Hulls in 1736. It is true that Roger Bacon as early at least as 1292, is supposed to have discoursed of the uses of steam, but nothing seems to have come from his lucubrations.

So in regard to the prediction made concerning the electric telegraph. That "in the twinkling of an eye, around the world our thoughts shall fly," is an accom plished fact; and yet it is but a few years since the laying of the Atlantic Cable was among the wonders of the

century. That scientists should have guessed as much, might not be so astounding, but coming as it is claimed to have come, it is unaccountable.

We pass these things, however, and proceed to discuss two other matters, more curious and more important.

England at last shall admit a Jew.

It is impossible to give even an epitome of the horrible persecution to which the Jews were subjected during the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian era. In this more enlightened and humanized and perhaps Christianized age, the cruelties are almost beyond belief, and would certainly not be credited were they not attested by sober history. During the early years of our era the Roman emperors seemed determined to annihilate them, and about A.D., 135, the whole of Judea was made like a desert. A thousand towns and villages lay in as es, and Jerusalem itself was settled by a heathen colony, from which the Jews were strictly debarred. They were dispersed over the world, and for a couple of centuries, were, in their poverty and obscurity, comparatively unmolested. They began in the mean time to flourish in trade and commerce, they became merchants, artizans and bankers, as well as husbandmen and shepherds. They were scholars, poets and professors in schools of learning; and in the community, quiet, unassuming and industrious citizens. But growing in wealth and importance the ecclesiastical and civil law was invoked against them. Various restrictions were put upon them, enormous taxes were assessed against them, certain callings and occupations were forbidden them, they were excluded from the military service, they were not allowed to bear arms nor defend themselves, and in various ways were subjected to frightful persecu tions. In no country could they even live except by the payment of great pecuniary amercements. In some, especially in France, their whole estates were more than once confiscated, their evidences of indebtedness forced from

them, their goods seized, and they themselves, thus stripped of everything, banished the kingdom. Having been allowed to return to France, there was in 1321, a most horrible massacre inflicted upon them. In their agony, Jewish fathers and mothers threw their children to the Christian mob to appease their devilish fury, and in vain. On the breaking out of the plague in the following year, the wildest crimes were laid to their charge, and in whole provinces every Jew was burned. At Chinon a deep ditch was dug, an enormous pile was raised, and one hundred and sixty of both sexes burned together.

They appeared in England at an early period and they were pelted and plundered and persecuted. In 1189,

because some of them came to witness the coronation of King Richard of the Lion Heart, they were attacked by the mob, their houses pillaged and burned, and themselves murdered; and in York, where it was proposed to force them to Christian baptism, they preferred voluntary martyrdom. Persecution and plunder, exclusion from trades and callings, refusal of others to deal with them, and fines and imprisonments made life intolerable; and in 1253 they begged of their own accord to be allowed to leave the kingdom. They were persuaded to remain, for they had wealth and they were industrious; but in 1290 they were driven from the shores of England and pursued by the execrations of the infuriate rabble, even after they had left in the hands of the king all their property, accounts, obligations and mortgages. Time and space are not at my command, so as to enable me to follow them through Spain and Holland and Germany, and recount the persecutions and murders and plunderings to which they were subjected. It is horrible beyond description, and almost beyond the imagination to conceive, and it shows the condition of the universal Gentile mind in reference to them.

The decree of Edward I, by which they were banished from England in 1290, remained in force for more than three hundred years, and it was while they were under the

ban of that decree, that the prediction now under consideration was made. When to all human foresight no such thing was possible, when no Jew dared put his foot into England, when king, lords and commons were all supporting the persecution of the hated race, we are told that at last, England shall admit a Jew. But it was not until the reign of Charles II, more than two hundred years after the utterance of the prophecy, that they were permitted to return. In 1723 they acquired the right to possess land, in 1753 they obtained the right of naturalization. But it was nearly a hundred years later before they were allowed to become members of civic corporations, then shortly after advocates. In 1845 they could hold the office of alderman and lord mayor; in 1858 they were admitted to parliament, and in 1868, Mr. Disraeli, a Jew by descent, was made Prime Minister of England. A little more than four hundred years had elapsed since the prediction, and England not only admitted the hated and persecuted and banished Jew, but a Jew guided the destinies of that England, in which six hundred years before, he dared not even to reside.

And it is not among the least curious of these historical facts, that the clause of this prophecy relating to the religious element of it, should begin and end during the premiership of this same Jew. That the "Cross" under his management of the foreign policy of England should rise over the "Crescent," and that England should be restrained under his leadership, from carrying out her long maintained eastern policy--especially in favor of the only nation which had the power, the independence and the will to protect his race, during the times of persecution. Nor is it beyond the consideration of this question, to remember that many English statesmen consider the policy of Mr. Disraeli most inimical to the welfare of England, that they believe the peace of Berlin to be but a sowing of the dragon's teeth, and that all the pomp and parade of ministers will be but dust and ashes. historical compensation if the

Would it not be a stern wind sown by England

should return a whirlwind out of the hand of this Jew? Look at the political and social condition of the nations which for long years plundered and persecuted and butchered his race; see the position in which this peace of Berlin has placed them; hark to the thunderings of new wars in various parts of the empire of Great Britain, which already load the breeze; consider the difficulty in carrying out the provisions of this patched up peace, the responsi bility assumed by England in her new role of guardian; and then consider all these complications as the work of the Jew, of one of the chosen race whose national existence is assured from generation to generation, whose national restoration is solemnly promised, and through whose instrumentality all the great changes in the government of the world have been wrought; and then consider the closing lines:

The world to an end shall come,

In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

A long line of prophetic teaching, the secular history of the world, and the universal expectation of mankind awaited in profound anxiety the change in the moral government of the people of our earth, when the birth of the Saviour of the world occurred, in the year of the creation, 4004. What great leader or deliverer was to appear, what were to be his character and attributes, in what city, nation or quarter of the world he was to arise, were, among the great body of expectant people, surmise and mere conjecture. But it was a curious fact that oppressed people everywhere looked for the Coming Man to be their deliverer from whatsoever thraldom bore most heavily upon them. He was to lighten the public burdens. He was to let the oppressed go free. He was to establish a universal kingdom, and the splendor of his reign was to be incom parable. Virgil is thought to have had in his mind this great expectation in his Fourth Eclogue; and to have applied the words of the Cumæan Sibyl, spoken in reference