The New York herald., 1870-05-01
Tho Resurrcction OF tho Ancient East
The Mission 0f Modern Civiiixntion ITO"
the West.

|
In shall see he CORY OF the Lord ana the excel
| lency of our God
THUS opens the thirty-fourth chapter OF
Isaiah in its exutations over the future pros
per,ty of Zion, and The whole chapter will
amply TO the coming resurrection OF all those
ancient Oriental countries, held In uni
yersal reverence as the cradle and the
nurseries of the human race. This, too, is
| the application which herein we intend to
make of these beautiful prophecies in refer
| ence TO the progress eastward Of the modern
| civilization of the West, with it's irresistible
enlightenm mt, free speech, free press and
equal rights, civil political and religious, to
all men Of oil races, nations and creeds.
We briefly tolched the other day upon the
boundless field of election and speculation
laid open with tho report of special HERALD
correspondent Of his ascent in modern steam
boat of those most ancient historical rivers,
the Euphrates and the Tigris, passing en- route
modern telegraph station on the traditional
site of the sacred bowers of the Garden Of
hallowed ground within the Asiatic dominlons
of the Sultan Of Turkey, and we find therein
also the localities where once flourished the
splendid capitals of the Assyrians, the Nedes
and Persials, and the cal:phs Of the brilliant
and enlightened Saraeen empire, the glories OF
which lasted even in the so-caled Moorish
kingdom OF Spain through period of seven
hundred years We find, too, that this Asiatic
division of the present Turkish empire en-
braces what was the kingdom Of Israel, but
which is, par erce,5 nee, the Holy Land, and
embraces, too, all those famous ancient seats
of trade on the eastern shore of the Mediterra-
mean, and St. John the Divine's seven churches
of Asia, and Damascus, Blalbec and Palmyra,
and old HON RS fighting city Of Troy. In a
word, within the area of five hundred thousand
square miles OF Asiatic Turkey we have more
than five thousand years Of the richest histori-
cal treasures of the human family; but the
richest and the olly priceless treasures OF
them all are in tie history OF the Jews and n
the old Mosaic disoensation.
Moses, under the kings favor, was taught
in all the learning OF the ancient Egyptians.
From the Mosaic code we may thus infer that
those people, in his day, had reached high
stage Of civilization but the strength of the
laws of Moses was derived from their divine
authority and from their enduring character
as a relig gious system. Under this system,
Notwithstanding their incessant wars, the
Israelites, in their Promised Land, continued
to prosper till the time OF Solomon; and, If we
may cal David their julius Ces tr, Solomon
was their Augnstns. Their reli zion, however,
was almost entirely confined to th cir own limited
realm, or to their own people In tn ,ir capsivi-
ties and dispersons, and is 50 TO this day
and YET, though The Jews ara now strangers
in Jerusalem, their number throughout the
world is greater than their census under
David, when his kin ydom returned a mus er
roll of thirteen hundred thousand citing men.
The tenacity of the Jews, then, to their
people through all their vicissitudes as q
nation, and through all their prosecutions
since their general dispersion, becomes, from
its bearings upon modern civilization, the
most remarkable and the most important fact
in the history of mankind. Those ancient
empires and kingdoms-Eyypt, Assyria, Per-
sia, Tyre, Greece, Carthage, Rome-left no
en- turing religious impress behind them; but
passing through them all and surviving them
all we have the Jews and their code of Moses
oo Ia fn,,p+oinhaa1 of M
and S ate, throug hout the Christian world of
the pres mt day. The little Judean village Of
Bethlehem is the connecting link not only be-
tween the present S.. Paups of London and
st. Peters of Rome on the one hand, and
Mount Sinai on the other, but between the
Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem and Solomon's
Temple; for Mohammed, too, drew his inspira-
tions from the Bible.
But under the crescent all the vast regions
in Asia, Africa and Europe which in the
reign of the Arabian or Saracen caliphs Of
Bagdad and Damascus boosted the highest
civiz alton of their time, have fallen into
decay and are largely in the condition of new
territories, abounding in undeveloped resources
of wealth and power. 1t has now become the
mission of the cross from the West to bring
about the resurrection, moral and material, Of
all those sleeping countries Of the ancient
East, and so completely to fulfil the prophecy
of Isaiah that ''the wilderness and the solitary
place shall be made glad, and the desert shall
rejoice and blossom as the rose" We have
the beginning of this fulflment in the bios
soming of the desert along the Suez Canal,
in the steamboats, and telegraphs on the
Euphrates and the Tigris, in the railway enter
prises of Turkey and Egypt, in the advances
of Russia into Central Asia, and in the pro-
jected English railway from the Mediterranean
across Palestine and by the Dead Sea to the
Persian Cult, as short cut to India
What sublime picture is this! Moses in
the dazzling light of the burning bush on
Mount Sinai, in the distant horizon the star