But afterwards the posterity of Esau receded from their native scenes, and their very name, as before observed, was forgotten in the first centuries of the Christan era; nor is even the site of their ancient capital Petra at present known, unless it proves that the very remarkable scene of ruins discovered by Burkhantd in his travels through Syria, are the remains of that city. But soon after the descendants of Esau ceased to be noted in their own country, there was seen rising in the adjoining land (a country marked out by Scripture as the station of Ishmael and Esau's posterity) a religious power, at once WARLIKE, PROFANE, and PERSECUTING, the three branding marks of Ishmael and Esau, and this power became a great dominion; but it was transitory, and the dominion promised to Esau in his blessing must necessarily mean a transient dominion, because the prime blessing of Isaac had made Jacob lord over him, and the tenour or run of the words denote that the dominion was an adventitious circumstance: "It shall come to pass, that WHEN thou shalt have the dominion:" the word when shows that the dominion was an adventitious

event. And during the Mahometan dominion there certainly was no yoke of the Jews left on any of the inhabitants of Arabia. Both Ishmael and Esau had been excluded from the heavenly inheritance, the one by Sarah's approved denunciation, and the other by the sale of his birthright, and also by the authority of his mother, Rebekah; an authority certainly sanctioned to our apprehension by the example of Sarah's approved authority over the succession of her son. These two Arabian patriarchs were therefore both inimical to the true inheritors. Ishmael was shown to be mocking from the first, and is in the New Testament said to be a persecutor of those born of the promise.-Galatians, iv. 29.

And Esau (Genesis xxviii. 41.) hated his brother Jacob, and purposed in his heart to slay him at some distant period. But as neither Ishmael nor Esau appears to have hurt either Isaac or Jacob, during the term of their own natural lives, it is in the future deeds of their disappointed progeny that we must look for the fulfilment of their persecution and hatred; and in the sixth century, by

means of the forgeries of the self-constituted prophet of Arabia. The tabernacles of Edom and the Ishmaelites were enabled, sword in hand, to deny in part the authenticity of God's ancient covenant with his chosen people the Jews; and also in part, that of the new covenant of his Son with the Christians. Assuming to themselves the superiority, and thus claiming to be the true heritors, they endeavoured to set aside both the Old and the New Testament of God, and the blessings of Abraham and Isaac their natural fathers, and enforced their pretensions with the sword and persecution from the very beginning, when Mahomet himself, according to Mr. Gibbon, beheld seven hundred Jews descend alive into the grave which he had prepared for them, because they refused to relinquish their authentic covenant, and thereby authorise his forgeries.

And we further find, from Mr. Gibbon, that the 'obstinacy of their refusal converted his (Mahomet's) friendship into implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate people to the last moment of his life, and in the double character of

an apostle and a conqueror, his PERSECUTION was extended to both worlds."-Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 303.

It is surely remarkable that such a man as Mr. Gibbon should have, upon this occcasion, made use of the word persecution, the very term by which the New Testament designates the conduct of Ishmael, the progenitor of the Arabians, in the epistle to the Galatians: "But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now."

In the Old Testament, Ishmael's descendants are marked as archers, and in Jacob's blessing to Joseph, he says, at the twenty-third verse, "The ARCHERS have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him."

The records of history show how truly this was fulfilled by the Saracens.

But when we only consider the one terrific instance of burning alive seven hundred true Israelites because they would not desert their fathers' covenant, does it not, according to the purpose of remote fulfilments, unavoidably remind us of the old hatred, and the purpose of Esau to slay Jacob when his

father should be dead?

And is not the persecuting

spirit evinced to this day in the disdainful behaviour of every Mahometan to both Jews and Christians? The common term for the latter is Christian dog.

If, upon research, it is found to be probable that the martial spirit of Esau, operating in the Nabathean division of his descendants, was the spring of that warlike disposition which suddenly arose in Arabia, and produced the Saracenic conquests in the seventh and eighth centuries; shall we not see the fulfilment of the sword and the dominion given to Esau in Isaac's blessing, some thousand years before? And, by contrasting the two blessings, we find that Esau has a sword, but no wine, and Jacob has wine, but no sword ; in accordance with which, at THIS day, the Israelites decidedly have no sword, and the Mahometans decidedly have no wine, being by fundamental law prohibited from using it. And surely that remarkable avoidance of wine in the Mahometan code, will, if we proceed under the apprehension that Esau was incorporated in Arabia, clearly show