I consider the prophecy concerning Ishmael, and his descendants the Arabs, as one of the most extraordinary that we meet with in the Old Testament. It was also one of the earliest made, and proceeded upon grounds of private reparation. Hagar had not sinned, though she had fled from Sarah with Ishmael her son into the wilderness. In that desert there were then no inhabitants, and though Ishmael’s[192] succession was incompatible with God’s promise to Abraham and his son Isaac, yet neither Hagar nor he having sinned, justice required a reparation for the heritage which he had lost. God gave him that very wilderness which before was the property of no man, in which Ishmael was to erect a kingdom under the most improbable circumstances possible to be imagined. His [193]hand was to be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. By his sword he was to live, and pitch his tent in the _face_ of his brethren. Never has prophecy been so completely fulfilled. It subsisted from the earliest ages; it was verified before the time of Moses; in the time of David and Solomon; it subsisted in the time of Alexander and that of Augustus Cæsar; it subsisted in the time of Justinian,--all very distant, unconnected periods; and I appeal to the evidence of mankind, if, without apparent support or necessity, but what it has derived from God’s promise only, it is not in full vigour at this very day. This prophecy alone, in the truth of which all sorts of religions agree, is therefore of itself a sufficient proof, without other, of the Divine authority of the scripture. Mahomet prohibited all pork and wine; two articles which must have been, before, very little used in Arabia. Grapes, here, grow in the mountains of Yemen, but never arrive at maturity enough for wine. They bring them down for this purpose to Loheia, and there the heat of the climate turns the wine sour before they can clear it of its fæces so as to make it drinkable; and we know that, before the appearance of Mahomet, Arabia was never a wine country. As for swine, I never heard of them in the peninsula, of Arabia, (unless perhaps wild in the woods about Sana,) and it was from early times inhabited by Jews before the coming of Mahomet. The only people therefore that ate swine’s flesh must have been Christians, and they were a sect of little account. Many of these, however, do not eat pork yet, but all of them were, oppressed and despised every-where, and there was no inducement for any other people to imitate them. Mahomet then prohibiting only what was merely neutral, or indifferent to the Arabs, indulged them in that to which he knew they were prone.