Jews, Land of the
The Jewish people are like a cursed, blasted fig tree yet hold eternal title-deeds in God's promises.
Palestine itself, at this moment, seems almost overspread by the curse. Its cities are the cities of the dead; its every acre is covered with the tombs of departed ages; it has a soil fit to grow corn that would positively crowd and overflow all the granaries of the world; but it cannot provide corn enough to feed its miserable, its starved and wretched peasantry. At this very moment, there is no Mount Nebo, or Mount Pisgah, from which a successor of Moses can see a goodly land overflowing with milk and honey. On every part of that land, the iron hoof of the Arab steed, and the naked foot of the papal monk, have trod in succession, and warred for supremacy. In rapid succession, the Roman, the Persian, the Arab, the Turk, the robber, have taken possession of Palestine; and the poor Jew—the fig-tree blasted—has a home anywhere and everywhere, but least a home in his own home; has possessions everywhere, but none in that land which is held by title-deeds more lasting than those of the aristocracy of England. His title-deeds are in Ezekiel, in Jeremiah, in Isaiah, in the Psalms, and must last and live for ever and ever. You have, then, in the Jew, wherever you find him, a blasted fig-tree, a miracle-stricken nation; a people scathed by a curse which cleaves to them and consumes them; the people of the weary foot; the exiles of the earth; in it, and not of it, as if their very existence was a symbol of what God's people should be,—in the world, and not of the world. Dr. Cumming.