“And in their days, even of those kings, the God of heaven shall set up A KINGDOM which shall never perish, and A DOMINION that shall not be left to another people. It shall grind to powder and bring to an end all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever.”—DANIEL.

JOHN THOMAS, Editor. NEW YORK, OCTOBER, 1853—

Volume 3—No. 10

By Col. George Gawler, K.H., F.R.G.S.

Late Governor and Resident Commissioner of the Province of South Australia. *

The portion of the surface of the globe to which our attention is to be directed in this address, is known to Europeans in general by the name of SYRIA.

Phoenicia, of which the principal sea-port and capital was the renowned city of Tyre, Zor, or Soor, was the great commercial, manufacturing, ship-building, colonising and science-spreading nation of antiquity. Her “merchants were princes, and her traffickers the honourable of the earth”—Isaiah 23: 8. Her emigrants formed settlements in the then uttermost west. Of these, evidences remain in the traditions of Ireland and the Irish language itself, in Punic relics found in the south of England, and in the enumeration of “tin” by sacred (Ezekiel 27: 12) and profane historians as articles procured from the western Tarshish, “the metal islands,” the “End of the earth.”**

* This pamphlet was forwarded to me by a kind friend in England at my request. Finding that it sets forth the truth, I republish it for the benefit of my readers. It contains the substance of an address delivered by Colonel Gawler in “the Young Men’s Christian Association Lecture Room, Derby.” I do not recollect any point of difference between the Colonel and myself. He does not appear to be far from the Kingdom of God; he may be near it: though of that I cannot speak positively from his address. There are many who believe the gospel of the Kingdom without understanding the Mystery of the name, though they believe the facts concerning Jesus. They are like Apollos, who need to be taught the way of the Lord more perfectly. They will admit the truth concerning the kingdom, confess that Jesus is the King who is to sit on David’s throne in Syria, acknowledge that his blood is the blood of the Abrahamic covenant, that by his death he gave it force, &c.; yet will they fall back upon theological foolishness, and call the saving of an immortal soul from hell at death, and its translation to a sky kingdom through the merits of Jesus, The Gospel! I know not if the Colonel be one of these. I hope not. There are many such, however, who have not yet learned discrimination. If the Colonel write on all other Bible topics as on Syria, he may be regarded as a scribe instructed for the Kingdom of God. I have added some notes which I hope will be found useful to the student of the word. The Colonel’s address, I believe, has never been republished in this country before. —Editor of the Herald.

There are, moreover, strong reasons for believing, that in the then far east, the Phoenicians traded with the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and that sailing from the Red Sea to the South, they performed the marvellous exploit of circumnavigating the whole of the vast continent of Africa, returning to Tyre by the straits of Gibraltar.

Phoenicia was evidently to the ancient world, what Great Britain has become to the world as it now is. The Queen of the Ocean, the great mart of nations, and the principal maritime carrier for the human race. The resemblance runs most momentously close, in the fact that Tyre was the great preparatory instrument in the establishment of that temple at Jerusalem, in which Deity, usually invisible, appeared in visible glory. Hiram, the faithful friend of David and of Solomon, hewed down the cedars of Lebanon, transported them in floats to Joppa, and sent, besides, carpenters, quarrymen, stone-masons, and artificers for the work—1 Kings 5. His hardy sailors, also, showed the Jews the way to Ophir, for gold, silver, and ivory—1 Kings 9: 26-28; 10: 22, to increase the glory of the temple, and the wealth of Israel.

It is a satisfactory recollection, that in sacred writ, few forerunning types are complete likenesses of their subsequent anti-types. So far as we have gone, may the resemblance between ancient Phoenicia and modern England be perfect; but may England never sink into the pollution and degradation of that tyranny (the word “tyrant” is derived from “Tyre”), pride, luxury, contempt of God’s laws and idolatry, that have turned the once gorgeous, “crowning city,” into a bare rock upon which fishermen spread their nets—an eternal mockery for men and angels!

It is natural that the name of the splendid centre of that ancient marvellous mercantile prosperity, should have been extended among foreigners to a large surrounding district. From the eastern name of Zor or Soor was derived the appellation of Sooria or Syria, which in process of time has been stretched to include the whole of the extreme eastern boundary of the Mediterranean Sea, from the bay of Scanderoon to el Arish on “the river of Egypt.”

Eastern tradition, however, true to its primitive antiquity, overlooks the comparatively modern splendour of Tyre, and gives to the country a more venerable title. The whole Arab race see in it, with especial reference to Damascus, the territory which Shem, the favoured son of Noah, selected for his own personal residence, and with simple pertinacity in their ancient Creed still call it “esh Shamy”—Shem’s country.

I would now beg you to fix your eyes on this large general map of the ancient world, and to observe the remarkable central situation that Syria occupies in it. With Europe, Asia and Africa around her, the extraordinary inland channels of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, diverging from Syria as a general focus, give her ready maritime communication with all the sea-coasts of the world. Her northern, eastern, and south-western borders, also, run in proximity with those vast districts of Asia Minor, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Media, Persia, Assyria, Babylon and Egypt, which bore the earliest and heaviest populations of primeval society.

In no visible circumstance on the surface of the globe, can right-minded persons discern more clearly the forerunning design of the invisible Creator. Syria, with especial reference to Jerusalem, was created—was created—to be the centre from which divine truth should radiate to the whole human race. Do you wish to see a visible footprint of the invisible God, —behold it there.

Though in some sort anticipating the subject, I would also at this point call your attention to another very remarkable forerunning arrangement of the Creator in creation itself. Great Britain, manifestly destined to perform in these modern times a work similar to that which her maritime mother Tyre accomplished in the days of David and Solomon, was also most signally prepared in creation for her high commission. Though lying in near proximity to the civilised nations of the old hemisphere, yet her girdle of waters has become in the hour of need, a wall of preserving fire against the frightful evils with which they have been too often, and that too recently, desolated. Those waters have also given to her sons the maritime experience through which she has become the mistress of the seas, and those facilities of communication, by which, in resemblance of ancient Tyre, her colonies and dependencies have been spread to the very ends of the earth.

Remarkable as are these creative arrangements, they are surpassed by the further fact, that under her surface were laid in profusion altogether unequalled elsewhere, the very materials which are above all others essential to modern maritime superiority, and commercial and manufacturing pre-eminence. Her inexhaustible beds of coal, combined with ironstone, are gifts from God. Dou you desire to see another footprint of the invisible Creator, —it is certainly exhibited here!

These extraordinary advantages were not bestowed (as Sidney Smith would remark), for the mere purpose of “building up the walls of flesh of her comfortable” denizens, but for the more exalted object of furnishing her as the honoured instrument of preparing the way for God’s beneficence to the whole world through the Jewish people.

In the Lecture to which you invited me soon after my return from Syria, I described the general geography and present condition of that country. I will now after a necessary brief sketch of its past history proceed to its future prospects. These shall first be considered in themselves, without reference to time; and evidence shall then be produced that the stupendous events included in them, are so near at hand as to have already commenced their operation.

All present will bear me witness in their hearts that the subject is as difficult as it is momentous. I therefore beg from you forbearing consideration, with the confidence that I hold unchanged the principle which some of you will remember was declared to be the regulator of my former Lecture, that the highest duty and advantage of man is in all things to discern, to grasp and to impart REALITIES, and, moreover, that I do not hazard a single opinion which, in a chequered life, has not been tested by very long and very close observation. There are some here present who know, that when I first entered this town about thirty-four years ago, my mind was directed to this very subject. God in his mercy had brought me a short time previously, when with the Duke of Wellington’s army in France, from the wretchedness of French infidelity and scepticism, to a permanent practical conviction that the invisible God is the God of revelation. Nothing confirmed me more fully in this confidence, than the standing miracles of the state of Syria and the Jewish people; and nothing, even then, gave me a brighter hope, than the sure and certain knowledge that in God’s good time both would be delivered, as well as the whole human race after them, from miserable degradation. I have therefore at least well considered the points at issue.

In pursuing them it is of intense importance to discern and grasp the REALITY, that the eternal invisible Being with whom we have to deal, is as infinite in minuteness, as He is in magnitude. Perfection requires Him to be a minute God as well as a great God. “Where are you going?” said a vexed sceptic on a Sabbath morning, to a poor man whom he met every week walking in a direction opposite to his own. “I am going to worship God.” “To worship God—what do you know about an invisible and inaudible God?” “I know that he is a great God and a little God. A great God, for He fills the universe with his majesty; a little God, for He dwells in my heart!” Dr. Chalmers beautifully expresses the same reality in the words, “Magnitude cannot overwhelm Him, variety cannot perplex Him, minuteness cannot escape Him!”

To apply these realities to our subject. God who in his greatness controls with the same laws which regulate the movements of our own planetary system, the worlds that Lord Rosse’s monster telescope has defined; worlds so distant that their light, travelling at the rate of twelve millions of miles in a minute, may take ten thousand years to reach our eyes, in his minuteness has selected this ball of earth to be the scene of one of the most marvellous of His moral works—the raising of a fallen race from guilt to glory. Having chosen for this object our globe from among the myriads of creation, He selected (as has before been observed) the land to which our attention is this night directed, Syria, from among all the countries of this earth to be the great centre and focus of His beneficence.

Do the minds of any of you revolt from this idea of the pre-determined arrangement and control of God—go to one of our great dockyards, and see the prearranged lines by which the floating leviathans of the deep are precisely formed, and the machinery by which stubborn beams and planks are twisted exactly for their determined places. Shall the God of heaven be less in design and in the power of control, than one of Britain’s master shipwrights?

PAST HISTORY OF SYRIA.

Syria having been formed at creation as the especial centre of the ancient world, became possibly a portion of the first glorious demesne of the parents of the human race. We are disposed to limit the dimensions of Paradise to something like those of an English park, while the reality may well have been, that, embracing whole countries, it extended from the Mediterranean to perhaps the Caspian Sea; the river Euphrates, especially named as belonging to it—Genesis 2: 14, thus flowing through its centre. Arab tradition, for whatever it is worth, makes Adam to be formed from the red earth of the plain of Damascus, and refers to Syria other events in the history of the antediluvian age.

Descending to the period subsequent to the flood of Noah, the same tradition ascribes (as has been already observed) Damascus for the residence of Shem, the greatly honoured servant of God, (“Blessed be the Lord God of Shem”—Genesis 9: 26.), and the favourite son of Noah; and before his death and during the comparative youthfulness of Abraham, there appeared in another portion of Syria, Melchisedec, the king of Salem, the priest of the most high God—Genesis 14: 18. The peculiar divine selection of the country being thus early maintained, possibly by the residence in it of Shem, and certainly by the reign of Melchisedec and the advent of Abraham.

That extraordinary land which we see before us, was then stamped with a seal which every man who truly grasps realities, must believe the principalities and powers of earth and darkness cannot disannul. The most ancient, the most solemn, and the most wonderful conveyance of land on record, is to be found in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis. The gift is Syria, “the land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” The donor was the eternal God, the legatees were the seed of Abraham, the marvellous and mysterious witnessing signs and seals were “a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between the pieces” of the victims, which, according to the custom of those days, Abraham had divided.

Who can show such a title-deed to any estate in the wide world? Abraham cannot for the field and cave of Machpelah. His covenant for that property with “Ephron the Hittite”—Genesis 23, so celebrated among English jurists as an ancient example of land conveyance, was nothing like so solemn as that for Syria from God himself; and yet the covenant with Ephron remains unbroken. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Leah, have remained undisturbed through thirty-six centuries in their most honoured possession. Veneration has even fenced it round with a high wall of massive stone, of which intense jealousy even now keeps the narrow portal. WILL THE COVENANT ARRANGEMENT OF A MAN BE MORE LASTING THAN THAT OF THE MOST HIGH GOD?

After a preparatory period of humiliation and suffering in Egypt and in the desert, the children of Abraham were planted as a nation in Syria. God “remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant, and brought forth his people with joy and his chosen with gladness”—Psalm 105: 42-43. The immutability of His purpose was vindicated to the uttermost by suspensions of those majestic laws of gravitation and centrifugal force, which ordinarily reign omnipotent from this our solar system to the most distant sun in the nebula of Orion. The waters of the Red Sea and of the Jordan stood in heaps. (“What ailed thee, O sea, that thou fleddest, and thou Jordan that thou wast driven back?”), and the sun stood still on Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon. The ruler of a deeply learned and most powerful nation, who ventured to array the unchangeableness of his puny purpose against the “I change not” of the Eternal, lives forever as a monument of consummate folly—another laughing-stock for men and angels. —Oh, that among rulers, the line of the infatuated Pharaohs had ceased forever with the ancient kings of Egypt!

The massive and gorgeous temple of the living God, was at length built upon the very hill on which Abraham had, by the highest act of devotedness, grasped the REALITY of God’s existence, character, power and faithfulness; the visible glory of that God “filled the house”—2 Chronicles 7: 1-3, and, upon the throne of David and Melchisedec, Solomon reigned supreme from the torrent of Egypt to the banks of the Euphrates.

For nearly eighteen centuries, that temple and the glory, the high priest and the sacrifice, have ceased—“For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice . . . . Afterwards shall the children of Israel return”—Hosea 3: 4-5; —and the Hebrew nation has been “scattered and peeled”—Isaiah 18—in and throughout every country in “the wide, wide world.” What of that? Has not the condition of Syria and of the Jewish nation throughout this (humanly speaking) immense interval, borne a witness to the faithfulness of God’s covenant deed to Abraham and his descendants, more mighty, miraculous and marvellous than if the Jews had remained in Palestine? Despite the fiercest and most energetic efforts of men, and, no doubt, of more than men, the land through eighteen centuries has been kept for the nation, and the nation for the land!

Since the ejection of the Jews from Syria, the Franks have settled as a nation in France, the Anglo-Saxons in England, the Goths in Spain, and others elsewhere; but no nation has been able to establish itself as a nation, in Syria. Up to this day, there has been there no nation, no national union, and no national spirit. The motley impoverished tribes which have occupied it, have held it as mere tenants at will, temporary land-holders, wasting, and manifestly waiting for them whose permanent right it is. The land “devouring up men”—Ezekiel 36: 13, in desolation has enjoyed her Sabbaths, —“I will scatter you among the heathen . . .. And your land shall be desolate and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths . . .And yet for all that I will not cast them away . . .But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors”—Leviticus 26: 33-45—waiting for them, in truth, whose right it is, by that “WORD OF OUR GOD WHICH ENDURES FOREVER.” Every eye that has seen Syria, its moral divisions, its wastes, its ruins and its depopulation, has received mournful but joyful testimony to the fact.

(This Article is continued Here)