some places they refer distinctly to the one or the other, may be considered, in a great degree, equally applicable to both the old and new cities.

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In its most prosperous days Tyre had risen to such greatness that she gave kings to several of her dependent colonies,' and traded in the most valuable produce of all known parts of the world. The Scriptural account of the magnificence of Tyre is borne out by ancient profane authors, who highly extol the purple dye which was among its staple manufactures. Its mariners visited the most remote shores then known, bringing gold from Ophir, in the south of Arabia; silver from Tarshish or Tartessus in Spain ; and slaves from the shores of the Mediterranean. While Tyre yet stood in this proud state, the prophets Joel' (B.c. 800) and Amos (B.c. 787) foretold its destruction by fire and the enslaving of its inhabitants. Isaiah (B.c. 715) denounced against it the same fate; and when Ezekiel (B. c. 588) uttered his fearful denunciation, its fate was drawing near. So terribly and so accurately were his prophecies fulfilled almost immediately after they were uttered, that none but the wilfully blind could fail to be con-vinced that the more distant events which he foretold were certainly approaching. During a period of thirteen years Nebuchadnezzar was employed in the siege of the devoted city; at the expiration of which time, when his army was well nigh

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(1) Isa. xxiii. 8. Who hath taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth? (2) Ezek. xxvii. (3) Ezek. xxvii. 7. covered thee.

Blue and purple from the isles of Elishah was that which

(4) 1 Kings ix. 28. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought to king Solomon. (5) Ezek. xxvii. 12. Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. (6) Ezek. xxvii. 13. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market.

(7) Joel iii. 7, 8. Behold, I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return your recompense upon your own head and I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off.

(8) Amos i. 9, 10. Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Tyrus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they delivered up the whole captivity to Edom, and remembered not the brotherly covenant: but I will send a fire on the wall of Tyrus, which shall devour the palaces thereof. (9) Isa. xxiii.

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exhausted, he gained possession of it, but was scarcely rewarded for his pains, the inhabitants having removed their most valuable effects to the new city. Old Tyre never recovered its magnificence, but the insulated city retained its importance until the time of Alexander the Great, who, after a siege of seven months, took it by the help of a causeway constructed out of the materials of the old city,2 burnt it to the ground, and destroyed or enslaved all the inhabitants; and thus was accomplished all that was wanting to fulfil the denunciations of the prophets. Tyre afterwards rose again from its ruins, and, in the hands of " many nations," continued to be a place of great strength until A.D. 1291, when it surrendered to the Egyptians and was razed to the ground.

Tyre is memorable in New Testament history as having been visited by our blessed Lord and his Apostles, as well as for the affecting interview between St. Paul and the Christian converts on the occasion of his perilous journey to Jerusalem.* It became a metropolitan see at an early period, and when Palestine was recovered from the infidels, (A.D. 1124,) it received for its archbishop an Englishman, William of Tyre. For more than 160 years it remained in the possession of the Christians, thus fulfilling the prophecy that "her merchandise and her hire should be holiness unto the Lord." After its destruction by the Egyptians several attempts were made to raise it from its degradation, but they failed. Thenceforth men said,

(1) Ezek. xxix. 18. Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it.

(2) Ezek. xxvi. 12. And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.

(3) Ezek. xxvi. 3. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up.

(4) Acts xxi. 3-5. Now when we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the left hand, and sailed into Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there the ship was to unlade her burden. And finding disciples, we tarried there seven days: who said to Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem. And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way; and they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed.

(5) Isa. xxiii. 18.

"What city is like Tyrus, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea?" The present state of Tyre is described by travellers scarcely less accurately than by the prophets of old. Modern Tyre, or Soor, which ought rather to be called a village than a town, embraces scarcely two-thirds of the former island. It is situated on a peninsula, the isthmus of which, being composed of an entirely different soil from the old island, affords enduring evidence of the labours of Alexander, though it is covered with traces of the foundations of medieval buildings. On the north side of the island is to be seen nothing but a Babel of broken walls, pillars, and vaults, there being not so much as one entire house left. Its present inhabitants are only a few poor fishermen, harbouring themselves in the vaults, and drying their nets on the ruined palaces of the "honourable of the earth."2 Various fragments of the city wall yet remain; but the once wealthy port is becoming daily more and more filled up with sand, so that only boats can now enter it. The only houses now existing there are wretched huts, one story high, ready to crumble to pieces; and such is the sloth of the inhabitants that the few miserable gardens on the western side contain far more weeds than useful plants. The shore is strewn from one end to the other, along the edge of the water and in the water, with columns of red and grey granite, the only remaining monuments of its ancient splendour. The most remarkable among the ruins is one at the south-east corner, which was formerly a Christian church, and was probably built by the crusaders. A part of the choir only is now standing. But enough remains to show that the church was built in the shape of a cross. Tyre has indeed become “like the top of a rock, a place to spread nets upon." The sole re

maining tokens of her ancient splendour lie strewed beneath the waves, in the midst of the sea; and the few hovels which now nestle upon a portion of her site present no contradiction of the dread decree, "Thou shalt be built no more.' "There is nothing here," said a poor native woman to a recent traveller, "but poor people, and nothing to look at but the sea.”

(1) Ezek. xxvii. 32.

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(2) Ezek. xxvi. 5. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea. -Isa. xxiii. 8.

(3) Ezek. xxvi. 14.

FROM the earliest times, it has been the custom of pious men to consider as holy places those chosen spots in which God has made Himself known to men, or which have been once set apart for religious worship. Thus the ancient town of Luz, after the appearance of the Angels to Jacob,' was called Bethel, (House of God ;) and Mount Horeb, where the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush, was made the scene

(1) Gen. xxviii. 16-19. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

both of the first sacrifice offered by the Israelites after their departure from Egypt,' and of the delivery of the Law," and was called "the mount of God" five hundred years after the solemn events which took place on it.3 In like manner, the mountain on which Abraham was commanded to offer up his son Isaac, was never divested of its sacred character, being afterwards pointed out by God as the site of the Temple, the sign of such election being the staying of the destroying Angel's hand at the threshing-floor of Araunah, or Ornan, the Jebusite.

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The general name of Zion was given to the elevated ground on which the entire city of Jerusalem was built, and which was surrounded on three sides, the east, south, and west, by a deep precipitous valley, called, in different parts of its course, the valley of Kedron or Jehoshaphat, the valley of Ge-Hinnom, and the valley of Gihon. On the north, Zion gradually sloped and formed an undulating plain, naturally divided by hollows into four distinct hills constituting distinct quarters of the city. These four hills were named Zion (proper), Akra, Moriah, and Bezetha. Of these Zion was the loftiest, and was separated from Moriah by a broad ditch over which there was a bridge. On Zion lay the upper town, the castle of David," (captured by him from the Jebusites,) the palace of the high-priest, and (1) Exod. iii. 12. When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.- -Exod. xvii. 15. And Moses built an altar,

and called the name of it Jehovah-nissi. (2) Exod. xix. 20. And the Lord came down upon mount Sinai, on the top of

the mount.

(3) Exod. iii. 1. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.- -1 Kings xix. 8. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.

(4) Gen. xxii. 14. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh : as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

(5) Deut. xii. 5. But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes to put his name there, even unto his habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come. Ps. lxxviii. 68. But chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved.--2 Chron. iii. 1. Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

(6) 2 Sam. v. 7. Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.