The Jews Must Return to Their Land

[Written in 1888] Another remarkable fact in connexion with the signs of renaissance of the Jewish nation is their rapid increase in number. This also had been predicted (Isa. lx. 22; Ezek xxxvi. 37). Basnage, in his "History of the Jews," 175 years ago, estimated their number to be at that time only about three millions. It already amounts to between six and seven millions, and some place it as high as eight, and the Jews are everywhere increasing in a more rapid ratio than the Gentile populations in the midst of which they live. They have a very high birth-rate, and an exceptionally low average mortality. "Twenty per cent, of the Jews reach the age of seventy years, as against only twelve per cent, of the Christians."

The climax of the Jewish renaissance is, as we know, to consist in their restoration as a nation to the land of Palestine,—a climax which has not yet come, but which is perceptibly nearer than it was even a quarter of a century ago. No sooner was the law passed which enabled them to hold landed property in Palestine, than many Jews began to avail themselves of the right. Up to the year 1841 only 300 Jews were permitted to live in Jerusalem. The number has now [1887-8] risen to over 10,000, and some say to over 15,000; that is, about half of the population; M. do Haas, lately United States consul at Jerusalem, numbers them as high as 20,000 -an estimate which, without including the Jews in other parts of Palestine, is yet nearly half the number restored from Babylon.

The Palestine Exploration Society have done a most important work in preparing the way for Jewish restoration, and many thoughtful and judicious writers have already suggested that the only way to settle the eastern question, so far as Palestine is concerned, is for the Jews themselves to have it back. "Thus, as the Ottoman power moves on to its predestined dissolution, these two questions, What shall be done with the Jews as they are found in various Christian lands? and What shall be done with the land which once belonged to them? force themselves simultaneously, and more and more imperatively on the attention of the statesmen of Europe." The Russian persecutions have given a new impulse to the movement of the Russian Jews towards the Holy Land…"

--H. Grattan Guiness ((11 August 1835 – 21 June 1910, Christian preacher, evangelist and author, called the “Irish Spurgeon.”)