ent of the
skill of the architect of a temple; yet, as such a fragment may excite
the curiosity of the traveler to visit the structure whence it was
taken, I shall present two or three prophecies in which specific
predictions are given, concerning the _geographical, political, social,
and religious condition_ of three of the great nations of
antiquity--_Egypt, Judea, and Babylon_--the fulfillment of which is
spread over the surface of empires and the ruins of cities, patent to
all travelers at the present hour, and abundantly attested in many
volumes.[84]

Could human sagacity have calculated that Egypt--the most defensible
country in the world, bounded on the south by inaccessible mountains, on
the east by the Red Sea, on the west by the trackless, burning desert;
able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy, and to
drown an invading army every year by the inundation of the Nile; which
had not only maintained her independence, but extended her conquests for
a thousand years past, whose victorious king, Apries, had just sent an
expedition against Cyprus, besieged and taken Gaza and Sidon, vanquished
the Tyrians by sea, mastered Phoenicia and Palestine, and boasted that
not even a god could deprive him of his possessions--Egypt, which had
given arts, sciences, and idolatry to half the world, and which had not
risen to the full height of its world-wide fame, or the extent of its
influence for twenty-five years after the prediction[85]--that Egypt
should be invaded, conquered, spoiled, become a prey to strangers and
evermore to strangers, never have a native prince, sink into barbarism,
renounce idolatry, and become famous for her desolations? Yet the Bible
predictions are specific on all these matters: "_I will make the rivers
dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the
land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the
Lord have spoken it. Thus saith the Lord God; I will also destroy the
idols, and I will cause the images to cease out of Noph; and there shall
be no more a prince of the land of Egypt._"[86]

Let Infidels read the fulfillment of these predictions, as described by
Infidels: "Such is the state of Egypt. Deprived twenty-three centuries
ago of her natural proprietors, she has seen her fertile fields
successively a prey to the Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the
Greeks, the Arabs, the Georgians, and at length the race of Tartars
distinguished