Here are four distinct predictions; national peculiarity, grievous oppression, universal dispersion and remarkable preservation. The fulfillment is obvious and undeniable. The infidel is sorely perplexed to give any account of this great phenomenon. How does it happen that these singular people are dispersed over all the earth, and for eighteen hundred years have resisted all the influences of nature, all the customs of society and all the powers of persecution driving them toward amalgamation, and irresistible in all other instances. In spite of the power of imperial Rome and the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition, amid the chaos of Asiatic and African tribes, and the fusion of American democracy, on the plains of Australia and the streets of San Francisco, the religion and the customs of the children of Israel are as distinct this day as they were three thousand years ago when Moses wrote them in the Pentateuch, and their physiognomy the same as when Shishak caused them to be engraven on the monuments of ancient Karnack. Human sagacity cannot explain these facts as they exist to-day, much less could it foretell them three thousand years ago. Did space permit, it might be shown that the predictions against the seven churches of Asia, were literally fulfilled. (_See Rev. i and ii_). Ephesus, once famous for its magnificence and the great temple of Diana, the mart of commerce {147} and the busy avenue of travel, was the first to receive the doom of abused privileges: "I will remove thy candlestick out of its place unless thou repent." "A few unintelligible heaps of stone," says Arundell, "with some mud cottages untenanted, are all that remain of the great city of the Ephesians. Even the sea has retired from the scene of desolation, and a pestilential morass, covered with mud and rushes, has succeeded to the waters which brought up the ships laden with merchandise" from the whole known world. Laodicea, some of whose public buildings would contain 100,000 persons; Sardis, that once contained more specie than is now in circulation in the United States; Thyatira, that once manufactured the royal purple of kings and princes; Pergamos, the seat of learning and the birth-place of Galen, the father of medicine; all these cities are in ruins. Amid the fallen columns and broken arches, the temple of Jupiter, of Venus or of Diana, will equally elude the search of the curious traveler. They have all received their doom according to the words of Jesus. Yet, Smyrna, against which no doom was pronounced, is still the queen city of Asia Minor; and Philadelphia, of which it was said, "I will write upon him my new name," is still erect--a column in a scene of ruins. The prediction of the Savior is fulfilled in its modern name, _Allah Sehr--the city of God_.