Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/52

 part in their blood, testify. God scattered Israel (Jer. xxxi. 10); but the nations among whom they have come trampled upon them, and put a yoke of iron upon their necks, and made them " to howl " all the day long (Isa. Hi. 5), because of their oppressions. God gave them over to punishment, but, at the same time, warned the nations, saying, " Make not a full end" (Jer. v. 10); but they have tried, if possible, to destroy them, and to cut off their very remembrance from the earth. God gave over for a time " the dearly beloved of His soul into the hand of her enemies " (Jer. xii. 7): "I was wroth with My people," He says, addressing Babylon, the first, and also in many Scriptures the great, representative of all Gentile worldpowers: " I polluted mine inheritance and gave them into thine hand, and thou didst show them no mercy" (Isa. xlvii. 6).

And this was not merely the attitude of the great nations of antiquity who have now for the most part perished from off the face of the earth Israel's lot in the midst of Christendom has been even worse.

" Where shall we begin," writes an American brother, " in treating the awful truth which is put here in such simple language? Where shall we find words earnest enough to picture the terrible facts in connection with it, and sound a warning for our times? Some time ago a person said, 1 The Jews are to-day more stiff-necked and blinder than ever before. Who has made them thus? Surely judicial blindness and hardness of heart: ears which do not hear, are given by God; but, alas! the nations, or so-called Chris tendom, have helped forward their affliction; they have made matters worse a thousand times: and Satan, who hates Israel, has been the author of all things calculated to increase the affliction of this downtrodden nation. Surely the cause of the increased stiff-neckedness and the increased blindness of the Jewish people is one which is traceable to the nations. Every reader knows something of the history of the Jews, what it has been since they were driven from their land a long, long tale of suffering, tears, and blood.