Quotable

The signs of the present times point strongly towards the Holy Land and the once glorious city of Jerusalem; and the eyes of many (both Jews and Gentiles) are turned hither in anxious expectation of the approaching fulfilment of those promises of favour and restoration which are so strikingly set forth in Scripture, with reference to that land and her scattered and degraded people. The threatened judgments have been awfully and literally accomplished, and shall not the promises of God be found to be equally sure? It will be no hard matter for the same Almighty power which has turned her fruitful valleys into a desolate wilderness, to cause that “wilderness” once more “to blossom as the rose”; and the same Hand that has scattered her inhabitants over the whole earth, and made them a mark for the scorn and reproach of the Gentile nations, can as easily gather them together and bring them again into their own Land.

—Mrs. J. B. Webb, in the preface to her novel Naomi or The Last Days of Jerusalem, December 1840