The nations selected as examples of divine justice are as various as their sentences are different--covering a space as long as from New York to San Francisco and climes as various as those between Canada and Cuba; peopled by men of every shade of color and degree of capacity from the negro servant of servants, to the builders of the Coliseum and the pyramids. The prophecies describe in their own expressive symbols, the nations yet unfounded and kings unborn, who should ignorantly execute the judgments of God. They also predict the future of over thirty states--no two of which are alike. If, for instance, a prophet should declare that New York should be overturned and become a little fishing village--that Philadelphia should become a swamp and never be inhabited--that New {140} Orleans should become a dry, barren desert, and Chicago be utterly consumed with fire and never be rebuilt--that learning should depart from Boston and no travelers should pass through it any more--that New England should become the basest of the nations and no native American ever be president of the Union, but that it should be a spoil and a prey to the most savage tribes--that the Russians should tread Washington under foot for a thousand years, but that God would preserve Pittsburg and Salt Lake City in the midst of destruction; then, if all these things should come to pass, would any man dare to say that the prophet spake the dictates of human sagacity, or the calculations of human reason, and was not inspired by the Spirit of God? Such was the character of the prophecies concerning the geographical, political, social and religious condition of the greatest nations of antiquity. Considering the modes of ancient warfare, Egypt was one of the most defensible countries in the world. Bounded on the south by high mountains, on the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless, burning desert, she was able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, to drown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile. Egypt had not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests for a thousand years. She had given learning, art, science and idolatry to half the world and had not yet risen to the hight of her fame or extent of her influence until many years after the {141} predictions against her were uttered. Yet it was prophesied, "I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked; and I will make the land waste and all that is therein by the hand of strangers. I, the Lord, have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God, I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph, and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." {141} [ILLUSTRATION: SPHYNX AND PYRAMIDS] {142} The infidel, Volney, thus relates the fulfillment of these predictions: