gh every class, extends its effects to every species of
moral and physical knowledge. Nothing is talked of but intestine
troubles, the public misery, pecuniary extortions, and bastinadoes."[90]

The objector perhaps will allege in extenuation the modern improvements
now in progress, the Suez Canal, the railroads, the steamboats on the
Nile, the bridge across the Nile at Cairo, and the sugar and cotton
plantations.

But if these were as evident tokens of progress in Egypt, as they would
be in America, they would not in the least invalidate the facts of the
past degradation of Egypt for centuries. But these speculations of the
Khedive are of no advantage to the people; rather, on the contrary, do
they afford him additional opportunities of exacting forced labor from
the miserable peasants. I have seen the population of several villages,
forced to leave their own fields in the spring, to march down to an old,
filthy canal, near Cairo, and almost within sight of the gate of the
palace, men, and women, and little boys, and girls, like those of our
Sabbath-schools, scooping up the stinking mud and water with their
hands, into baskets, carrying them on their heads up the steep bank,
beaten with long sticks by the taskmasters to hasten their steps; while
steam dredges lay unused within sight. Egypt is still the basest of the
nations.

Here, then, we have conclusive proof of the fulfillment at this day of
four distinct, specific, and improbable Bible predictions: concerning
the country, the rulers, the religion, and the people of Egypt.

Let us note now a distinct and totally different judgment pronounced
against the transgressors of another land. Pre-eminent in inflicting
destruction on others, her retribution was to be extreme. Degradation
and slavery were to be the portion of the learned Egyptians, but utter
extinction is the doom of mighty Babylon. It is written in the Bible
concerning the land where the farmer was accustomed to reap two
hundred-fold: "_Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth
the sickle in the time of harvest. * * * Every purpose of the Lord shall
be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation
without an inhabitant. * * * Behold the hindermost of the nations shall
be a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert. * * * Because of the wrath of
the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly
desolate._"[91]

Proofs in abundance of the fulfillment of these predicti