Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/184

 ivory, and every vessel made of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble; and cinnamon, and spice, and incense, and ointment, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and cattle, and sheep; and merchandise of horses and chariots and bodies; and souls of men" until it shall finally and for ever be overturned by one terrible act of judgment from God.

To this conviction we are led chiefly by the fact that there are prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the literal Babylon which have never in the past been exhaus tively fulfilled, and that Scripture usually connects the final overthrow of Babylon with the yet future restoration and blessing of Israel.

And it is very striking to the close observer of the signs of the times how things at the present day are rapidly developing on the very lines which are forecast in the pro phetic Scriptures. " The fears and hopes of the world political, commercial, and religious," writes one in a monthly journal which lies before me, " are at the present day being increasingly centred upon the home of the human race Mesopotamia. ... As the country from which the father of the Jewish nation emigrated to the land of promise, it is also occupying the thoughts and aspirations of the Jews."

Whatever may be the outcome of the negotiations which have been carried on recently with the Turkish Government by the Jewish Territorialists " for the establish ment of a Jewish autonomous State " in this very region, in which many Zionists and other Jews were ready to join, there is so much truth in the words of another writer that when once a considerable number of such a commercial people as the Jews are re-established in Palestine, " the Euphrates would be to them as necessary as the Thames to London or the Rhine to Germany. It would be Israel's great channel of communication with the Indian seas, not to speak of the commerce which would flow towards the Tigris and Euphrates from the central and northern districts of Asia! It would be strange, therefore, if no city should