and the wild beasts of the islands shall enter their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.*

Jeremiah also ascribes the cause of her destruction, to her idolatrous practices, in the following emphatic manner: "The word of the Lord, spake against Babylon, and against the land of the Chaldean, "by Jeremiah the prophet: declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish and conceal not: say Babylon is taken; Bel is confounded; Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken to pieces, &c. A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the Lord, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men, &c. &c. A drought upon her waters, and they shall be dried up; for it is the land of graven images, and they were mad upon their idols," &c. Behold a people shall come from the north, and a great nation, and many kings, shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. They shall hold the bow and the lance; they are cruel, and will not show mercy, &c. The king of Babylon hath

* Is. ch. xiii. See also ch. xiv.

heard the report of them, and his hands waxed feeble; anguish took hold of him, a pang, as of a woman in travail," &c. "Wherefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will do judgment upon her graven images, and through all her land, the wounded shall groan. A sound of a cry cometh from Babylon, and her mighty men are taken; every one of their bows is broken, for the Lord God of recompence, shall surely requite, and I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, saith the king, whose name is. the Lord of hosts.*

Had Jeremiah been present with the army of Cyrus, to witness the peculiar manner in which the impregnable city was taken, by diverting the waters of the river from the usual channel; and to witness the consternation of Belshazzar and his nobles, and the slaughter which ensued, he could scarcely have given a more lively description of these horrid events.†

The above are concise extracts from numerous other denunciations of similar import, which evince the vast importance that was attached to the destruction of the Babylonish empire, in the moral economy of divine providence.

* Jeremiah ch. 1. See also ch. xli.

† See Note N.

This public and miraculous disgrace of its gods, and their deceitful priests, was in fact an abolition of the empire of paganism in all the regions of the east. Babylon was the chief seat of systematic superstition and idolatry. Its magicians and soothsayers, were men of education and learning. To them was the character of wise men given almost exclusively. They were the admiration of the nations. They professed intercourse with the heavenly bodies, and to interpret the mandates of the deities, which were supposed to inhabit them. They were always consulted upon the important matters of state; nor was any enterprize undertaken without their advice and concurrence. The abolition of such mental tyranny was, therefore, prerequisite for the diffusion of superior light and knowledge. But this tyranny was too extensive, and too deeply rooted, to be eradicated by means purely natural. The cause of God, and of truth, therefore, demanded preternatural means, and such as should impress terror and conviction upon the servants of idolatry; as should console the house of Judah in its humiliated state, alienate their minds from the worship of idols, and expedite their repentance, that they might be qualified to return to the land of their fathers; such as should convince the nations, that

the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The nature of the miracles performed, was correspondent to the causes which gave rise to them; such as fully demonstrated the interference of Israel's God, and the infliction of retributive justice, by his almighty power. The marvellous protection of the three governors in the fiery furnace, precisely corresponded with the nature of the sufferings, which tyranny had dictated as a punishment to disobedience. The instant destruction of their adversaries by the same means, marked, in the most awful and impressive manner, the distinction made between the friends, and the enemies of the living God. The miraculous inscription was a demonstration, that the approaching calamity was not to be classed with the common rise and fall of empires; that it was immediately inflicted by the hand of heaven, as a tremendous punishment of the grossest idolatry, in its very act of insulting that God, "who alone forms the light and creates darkness, makes peace, and creates evil;"-and "that they may know that there is none else.”

Darius the Mede, "who took the kingdom," was uncle to the great Cyrus, and the Cyaxares of profane writers. He was the ostensible sovereign of the kingdoms which the arms of Cyrus had subdued. This conqueror was by

birth a Persian, and educated, from his infancy, according to the strict discipline which was peculiar to that kingdom. He was instructed by his father, Astyages, in all the principles of morals which were then known, and taught to revere the Gods. He was also initiated in the mysteries of Divination, which was considered as an important science. This was, according to Xenophon, peculiarly necessary, that he might judge for himself of favourable or unfavourable omens ; and thus escape the deceptions to which he was exposed from unprincipled magicians and soothsayers. Such an education, united with the very superior endowments of his mind, would enable him soon to perceive the difference between the Jehovah of the Jews and the Gods of his ancestors; and the dispositions of his heart would induce him to embrace the pure and sublime morality of the Jewish religion. Thus prepared, the miraculous events at Babylon, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, and the astonishing scenes of which he was not only the witness but the principal agent, were calculated to make the deepest impression upon his own mind, and also upon that of his uncle Darius; and which afterwards proved so peculiarly favourable to the Jews.

The wisdom of Daniel, who was advancing