Here, then, we bring to an end this strangely varied, yet still more strangely monotonous, narrative—not, as in the case of any other ancient people, because its national history has come to an end, but simply because we cannot read the future. Eighteen centuries have, in all other instances, effected so vast a change in the condition of a nation, that it is difficult to trace any identity between its earlier and its later generations. Eighteen centuries ago our own ancestors were savage tribes, living in wattled huts, staining their naked bodies with woad, and practising barbarous and bloody rites. In language, in religion, in mental and moral culture, in social organization, they were so wholly different from ourselves that it is difficult to discover any point of resemblance between the two. But in all these respects, the Jew of the first century differs but little from his descendant eighteen hundred years afterwards. He speaks the same tongue, he holds the same creed, he observes the same habits, or nearly the same habits, of life as his forefathers did all that long period ago. And yet that long period is not half the life of the Jewish people. It began in an age when the tradition of the Flood was still fresh on earth; it is still in the fulness of its life, when the eye of faith can distinguish, not very far off, the dawning of the Judgment Day. How is this strange tale to end? What is to be the last act of this amazing drama? Jerusalem has been long trodden down of the Gentiles; the times of the Gentiles are nearly fulfilled. What is to follow? Are the Jews to be restored, as a distinct people, to the Land of Promise, and there accept Him whom their fathers rejected as their King? There is no subject on which speculation is more busy, or on which more confident judgments are pronounced. But it is the voice of man that speaks, not of God. One thing alone is sure. God has not cast away His people. Who can read their history, and doubt that? But when, where, or how, He may be pleased to take them again into favour, no man can foretell. Our children will behold the solution of the riddle, and bless God for His mercy. Let us, too, bless God, and wait in faith. THE END. _APPENDIX I._ STATISTICS OF JEWISH POPULATION.