“WITHDRAWING the greater part of his army from the vicinity of the city, and leaving behind him only certain corps of observation, Cyrus marched away up the course of the Euphrates for a certain distance, and there proceeded to make a vigorous use of the spade. His soldiers could now appreciate the value of the experience which they had gained by dispersing the Gyndes, and perceive that the summer and autumn of the preceding year had not been wasted. They dug a channel or channels from the Euphrates, by means of which a great portion of its water would be drawn off, and hoped in this way to render the natural course of the river fordable. [“A drought is upon her waters; and they shall be dried up.” “And I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry.” Jer. 50 : 38; 51 : 36.]
“When all was prepared, Cyrus determined to wait for the arrival of a certain festival during which the whole population were wont to engage in drinking and reveling [“Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink.” Isa. 21 : 5], and then silently in the dead of night to turn the water of the river and make his attack. [“Arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield.” Isa. 21 : 5.] All fell out as he hoped and wished. The festival was held with even greater pomp and splendor than usual; for Belshazzar, with the natural insolence of youth, to mark his contempt of the besieging army, abandoned himself wholly to the delights of the season, and himself entertained a thousand lords in his palace.
[“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father [grandfather, margin] Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, might drink therein. . . . They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.” Dan. 5 : 1-4. “For it is the land of graven images . . . and they are mad upon their idols.” Jer. 50 : 38. But, “The night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me.” Isa. 21 : 4. “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.” Dan. 5 : 5. “My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me; therefore are my loins filled with pain; pangs have taken hold upon me, . . . I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it.” Isa. 21 : 4, 3. “Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.” Dan. 5 : 6.
“Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee . . . none shall save thee.” Isa. 47 : 13, 15. “The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers . . . but they could not read the writing nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof. Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonished. Now the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet house; and the queen spake and said, . . . There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; . . . now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation. Then was Daniel brought in before the king. . . . Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Thou . . . hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of Heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou and thy lords, thy wives and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know; and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified; then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UTHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” Dan. 5 : 7-28.]
“Elsewhere the rest of the population was occupied in feasting and dancing. Drunken riot and mad excitement held possession of the town; the siege was forgotten; ordinary precautions were neglected. Following the example of their king, the Babylonians gave themselves up for the night to orgies in which religious frenzy and drunken excess formed a strange and revolting medley.” [“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, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the Lord of Hosts.” “In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord.” Jer. 51 : 57, 39.]—Seven Great Monarchies, Fourth Mon., chap. 8, par. 47-51.
“We are told in Daniel that Babylon was captured on the night of a great feast to the idol gods, at which the wives and concubines joined in a wild revelry. But the women were not in the habit of feasting with men—how is this? An account, by Cyrus himself, of his capture of Babylon, was dug up only three or four years ago. In it he declares that Babylon was captured ‘without fighting,’ on the fourteenth day of the month Tammuz. Now the month Tammuz was named in honor of the god Tammuz, the Babylonian Adonis, who married their Venus or Ishtar; and the fourteenth of Tammuz was the regular time to celebrate their union, with lascivious orgies. On this day of all others, the women took part in the horrible rites; and it was in this feast of king, princes, wives, and concubines that Babylon was taken and Belshazzar slain. The Bible is here fully and wonderfully corroborated.”—Wm. Hayes Ward, D. D., in Sunday-School Times, Vol. 25, No. 48, pp. 659, 660.
“Meanwhile, outside the city, in silence and darkness, the Persians watched at the two points where the Euphrates entered and left the walls. [“Set up the watchmen, prepare the liers in wait.” Jer. 51 : 12, margin.] Anxiously they noted the gradual sinking of the water in the river-bed; still more anxiously they watched to see if those within the walls would observe the suspicious circumstance and sound an alarm through the town. Should such an alarm be given, all their labors would be lost. If when they entered the river-bed, they found the river-walls manned and the river-gates fast-locked, they would be indeed ‘caught in a trap.’ Enfiladed on both sides by the enemy whom they could neither see nor reach, they would be overwhelmed and destroyed by his missiles before they could succeed in making their escape. But, as they watched, no sounds of alarm reached them—only a confused noise of revel and riot, which showed that the unhappy townsmen were quite unconscious of the approach of danger. [“Therefore shall evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know from whence it riseth; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off, and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know.” Isa. 47 : 11.]
“At last shadowy forms began to emerge from the obscurity of the deep river-bed, and on the landing-places opposite the river-gates clusters of men grew into solid columns. [“The Lord of hosts hath sworn by himself, saying, Surely I will fill thee with men, as with caterpillars; and they shall lift up a shout against thee.” Jer. 51 : 14.] The undefended gateways were seized; a war-shout was raised; the alarm was spread, and swift runners started off to ‘show the king of Babylon that his city was taken at one end.’ [“One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end, and that the passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.” Jer. 51 : 31, 32.]
“In the darkness and confusion of the night a terrible massacre ensued. [“Against him that bendeth let the archer bend his bow, and against him that lifteth himself up in his brigandine [coat of mail]; and spare not her young men; destroy ye utterly all her host. Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through in the streets.” “Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the Lord.” Jer. 51 : 3, 4; 50 : 30.] The drunken revelers could make no resistance. [“The mighty men of Babylon have forbore to fight, they have remained in their holds; their might hath failed; they became as women; they have burned her dwelling places; her bars are broken.” Jer. 51 : 30.]
“The king, paralyzed with fear at the awful hand-writing upon the wall, which too late had warned him of his peril, could do nothing even to check the progress of the assailants who carried all before them everywhere. Bursting into the palace, a band of Persians made their way to the presence of the monarch, and slew him on the scene of his impious revelry. [“In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.” Dan. 5 : 36.] Other bands carried fire and sword through the town. [“A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the Lord, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men. A sword is upon the liars; and they shall dote; a sword is upon her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed. A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women.” “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire; and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.” Jer. 50 : 35-37; 51 : 58.] When the morning came, Cyrus found himself undisputed master of the city, which if it had not despised his efforts might with the greatest ease have baffled them.” [“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” Isa. 45 : 1.]
“Thus perished the Babylonian Empire.” [“And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates; and thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shalt not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her; and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.” Jer. 51 : 63, 64.]—Seven Great Monarchies, Fourth Mon., chap. 8, par. 52-55.
“The fall of Babylon was also the fall of an ancient, widely spread, and deeply venerated religious system. Not, of course, that the religion suddenly disappeared or ceased to have votaries, but that, from a dominant system, supported by all the resources of the State, and enforced by the civil power over a wide extent of territory, it became simply one of the many of the tolerated beliefs, exposed to frequent rebuffs and insults, and at all times overshadowed by a new and rival system—the comparatively549pure creed of Zoroastrianism. The conquest of Babylon by Persia was, practically, if not the death-blow, at least a severe wound, to the sensuous idol-worship which had for more than twenty centuries been the almost universal religion in the countries between the Mediterranean and the Zagros Mountain Range. The religion never recovered itself—was never reinstated. It survived a longer or a shorter time, in places. To a slight extent it corrupted Zoroastrianism; but on the whole, from the date of the fall of Babylon it declined. Bel bowed down; Nebo stooped [Isa. 46 : 1]; Merodach was broken in pieces [Jer. 50 : 2]. Judgment was done upon the Babylonian graven images; and the system, of which they formed a necessary part, having once fallen from its proud pre-eminence, gradually decayed and vanished. [“Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods hath he broken unto the ground. O my threshing, and the corn of my floor; that which I have heard of the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you.” Isa. 21 : 9, 10.]—Id., Fifth Mon., chap. 7, par. 27.
“So long as Babylon, ‘the glory of kingdoms,’ ‘the praise of the whole earth,’ retained her independence, with her vast buildings, her prestige of antiquity, her wealth, her learning, her ancient and grand religious system, she could scarcely fail to be in the eyes of her neighbors the first power in the world, if not in mere strength, yet in honor, dignity, and reputation. Haughty and contemptuous herself to the very last, she naturally imposed on men’s minds, alike by her past history and her present pretensions; nor was it possible for the Persian monarch to feel that he stood before his subjects as indisputably the foremost man upon the earth until he had humbled in the dust the pride and arrogance of Babylon. But, with the fall of the great city, the whole fabric of Semitic greatness was shattered. Babylon became ‘an astonishment and a hissing’—all her prestige vanished—and Persia stepped manifestly into the place, which Assyria had occupied for so many centuries, of absolute and unrivaled mistress of Western Asia.”—Id., par. 26.
The geographical extent of the Fifth Monarchy [the Medo-Persian Empire] was far greater than that of any one of the four [Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, and Media alone] which had preceded it. . . . The dominions of the Persian kings covered a space fifty-six degrees [about 3,878 miles] long, and in places more than twenty [about 1,400 miles] wide. The boundaries of their empire were the desert of Thibet, the Sutlej and the Indus [rivers], on the east; the Indian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian and Nubian Deserts, on the south; on the west, the Greater Syrtis, the Mediterranean [and] the Ægean [seas], and the Strymon River [the Kara-Soo, of European Turkey]; on the north the [river] Danube, the Black Sea, the Caucasus [mountains], the Caspian [sea], and the Jaxartes [the present Syr Daria River]. Within these limits lay a territory, the extent of which from east to west was little less than 3,000 [4,000] miles, while its width varied between 500 and 1,500 miles. Its entire area was probably not less than two millions of square miles, or more than half that of modern Europe. It was thus at least eight times as large as the Babylonian Empire at its greatest extent.—Id., chap. 1, par. 1.
The Persian Empire continued to the defeat of Darius Codomannus by Alexander the Great, near Arbela, B. C. 331, October. A. T. J.
The Skeptic Answered.
By The Presbyterian
“I don’t believe in a personal God,” remarked a skeptic to Rev. R. F. Jones, a Welsh Presbyterian minister, who was a fellow-traveler in a railroad train between Toledo and Cleveland some time ago.
“Why not?” asked the minister.
“Because I can’t see him. His existence is not demonstrable, capable of proof, like facts of science.”
The minister asked, “Don’t you believe that you are alive, and that I am alive?”
“Yes,” he answered.
“Why do you believe it?”
“Because I can see you move.”
“Well,” said the minister, “the locomotive that is drawing this train also moves—is it alive?”
“No,” he answered, “but the engineer who runs it is alive.”
“Please tell me,” said the minister, “whether the engineer is a part of the machinery or a living person?”
“He is a living person,” replied the skeptic.
“Now, sir,” retorted the minister, “consistency is a jewel—please tell me why you attribute the movement of the locomotive to a living person, but deny that God, who sets the universe in motion, is a living person?”
He could not answer. Silenced on this argument, he branched off into another objection against Christianity.
“What I hate,” said he, “in orthodoxy is this endless talk about creed, creed, creed, thrust upon us everywhere and at all times.”
“What do you mean by a man’s creed,” asked his opponent.
“I understand by a creed that which a man believes.”
“Well, sir,” rejoined the minister, “you have just as much creed as I have. I believe there is a personal God; you believe the opposite doctrine. I believe in the incarnation of the Son of God for our redemption; you believe the opposite. I believe in the ruined estate of man; you believe the opposite. What difference is there in the bulk of our creed, only that I believe one side of the question and you believe the other? Now, sir, when we come to that point you have just as much creed on your side as I have on mine; but you want the right to advocate your sentiments, but wish to deny me the right on my side.”
He was silenced again.
“But,” said the skeptic, resuming the attack by another argument, common at this day, “Christianity is not capable of scientific demonstration. When we take the sciences, all truths are capable of demonstration by experiments which prove them. You can put them to the test. I take peculiar pleasure in the study of chemistry. Its propositions are plain and capable of proof by facts and experiments which appeal to the senses.”
“You have studied chemistry, have you?” inquired the minister.
“Yes, sir,” he answered.
“Well,” resumed the minister, “if you are a student of chemistry you are acquainted with the fact that charcoal, coal, and the diamond are the same in their molecules—namely, carbon. Now can you take a molecule out of the charcoal and put it into the diamond and get a perfect thing of it?”
He acknowledged he could not.
“Where, then,” said the minister, “is your demonstration in chemistry? But so far as Christianity is concerned, your objection is not valid, for it is capable of spiritual demonstration. You can try it and find it all that God has represented it to be. God says to all, ‘Oh taste and see.’ Try it, and experience will attest its truth. Millions have put it to the test of their experience, and have found it ‘the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.’"
The skeptic, then, in a somewhat conciliatory spirit acknowledged that his father and mother were orthodox, Christian people.
The minister inquired, “Were they good people?”
“Yes, excellent; my father was an excellent, good man.”
“Well,” inquired the minister, “what practical benefit do you get by changing the religion of your parents for skepticism? Does it make you a better man? Are you a better husband to your wife, a better father to your children, a better citizen in the community in which you live?”
He frankly acknowledged he was not.
“Have you a watch?” inquired the minister.
“Yes, an excellent timepiece,” he said, taking it out and displaying a fine gold watch.
“It keeps good time, does it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how would you trade it off? Would it not be for a better timepiece and more valuable, rather than for an inferior one?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Here, again,” retorted the minister, “you are not acting consistently with reason; for you have changed the creed of your parents for one that, by your own confession, does not benefit you at all!”
He had no reply to make.
“Now, my brother,” concluded the minister, “why do you embrace infidelity in preference to the faith of your parents? Is it not only because you love sin, and the first principle of Christianity is holiness—opposition to sin? Is it not so?”
He was speechless.—The Presbyterian.
Act Before Eternity
By Frederick William Robertson
ETERNITY is crying out to you louder and louder as you near its brink. Rise, be going! Count your resources; learn what you are not fit for, and give up wishing for it; learn what you can do, and do it with the energy of a man.—F. W. Robertson.
I WANTED to drive an iron bar through a piece of timber. I bored a hole of the right size, but the bar was rusty, and the hole was rough. I made slow progress, and was beginning to split the wood. Then I thought of the oil can. I oiled the bar; I poured oil into the hole; a few blows of the hammer sent the iron into its place. The oil had not diminished the size of the bar, nor enlarged that of the hole. It had only relieved the friction. It had smoothed both surfaces. A few drops of oil were more effective than many blows of the hammer. How slow some good people are to learn this simple lesson! They take hold of an important enterprise with great zeal. They are immensely earnest, and even morbidly conscientious. Everybody ought to see it just as they do, and whoever does not is hammered at without mercy. Such uncharitable zeal provokes opposition. It excites all the friction of the natural heart. Men will not appreciate the truth presented when they are repelled by the spirit in which it is presented. Let the reformer be careful to have plenty of oil. Let him speak the truth in love.—Dr. Babb.
Practical Workers Needed
THE world needs practical men, not men of theories and abstract speculations, but men who can comprehend the needs of society, wisely plan for the supply of those needs, and then successfully execute their plans. How many men are living an aimless, dreamy life, cultivating an idea, but doing little or nothing to better the condition of those around them! What we need in the church, and everywhere else, is workers, heroic, persistent workers, men who are not afraid of toil, but are willing to do and dare for the right. Nothing great was ever accomplished without hard work. Ordinarily, work is the measure of success. The command of Christ to every one of us is, “Go work to-day in my vineyard.” There must be no loitering there. Men may stand idle in the market place, but when they enter the vineyard of Christ they must work. Neither the church nor the world has any use for men who can do nothing but theorize.—Sel.
The Sabbath-School.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
LESSON FOR THE PACIFIC COAST—OCT. 3.
Nebuchadnezzar's Dream.
LAST week our lesson left us with Daniel about to relate and interpret the dream which had made so wonderful an impression on the mind of Nebuchadnezzar, who could not recall any portion of it. This week we have the dream itself, and a portion of the interpretation. Without the least hesitation, Daniel repeated the dream, which we quote entire.
"THOU, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth." Dan. 2: 31-35.
IN this dream, by these symbols, the Lord had shown Nebuchadnezzar what should be "in the latter days." Verse 28. Beginning with his own time, the history covered by this dream reaches to the end of time. This is shown by the fact that the four divisions of the image, marked by the four different metals, represented four empires, the last of which was to be dashed in pieces by the setting up of the everlasting kingdom of God, represented by the stone which smote the image. Verses 44, 45. Immediately after relating the dream, the prophet addressed the king as follows: "Thou, O king, art a king of kings; for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold." Verses 37, 38.
THESE verses are as plain a statement of fact as any in the Bible. Two things are told. First, that Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom was represented by the head of gold, and second, that his empire was universal. The second item was of course well known to Nebuchadnezzar; the first must have riveted his attention. We say that the head of gold represented Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, because the prophet immediately adds, "And after thee shall arise another kingdom;" and the Babylonian empire did not give place to another until twenty-three years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar.
THE extent of the empire is indicated in verse 38: "Wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all." This means universal dominion. A few years later, the prophet Jeremiah bore testimony to the same effect. The kings of Tyre, Edom, Moab, etc., with Zedekiah, king of Israel, were contemplating a revolt from Babylonian rule. To show them the folly of such an attempt, the prophet, by the command of the Lord, sent messengers to them, saying, "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Thus shall ye say unto your masters: I have made the earth, the man and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the beasts of the field have I given him also to serve him. And all nations shall serve him, and his son, and his son's son." Jer. 27: 4-7.
THIS language is not figurative nor hyperbolical. It is plain history, and is substantiated by the writings of profane historians. The "Encyclopedia Britannica," art. "Babylonia," after telling how Nabopolassar, ruler of the province of Babylonia, revolted from Assyrian rule, says:—
"The seat of empire was now transferred to the southern kingdom. Nabopolassar was followed in 604 by his son Nebuchadnezzar, whose long reign of forty-three years made Babylon the mistress of the world. The whole East was overrun by the armies of Chaldea, Egypt was invaded, and the city of the Euphrates left without a rival."
THE city of Babylon is described at great length by Rollin ("Ancient History," Vol. 1, book 3, chap. 1), and by Prideaux ("Connexion," Vol. 1, book 2). Our space, however, will allow us to give only the brief yet very clear description given by Herodotus, as quoted by Lenormant ("Ancient History of the East," Vol. 1, book 4, chap. 5, section 3). It is as follows:—
"The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it. It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height.
"And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought. As fast as they dug the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were completed, they baked the bricks in kilns. Thus they set to building, and began to brick the borders of the moat; after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber, facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the walls are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side posts. The bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from the Is, a small stream which flows into the Euphrates at the point where the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from Babylon. Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this river.
"The city is divided into two portions by the river, which runs through the midst of it. This river is the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift stream, which rises in Armenia and empties itself into the Erythraean [Arabian] Sea. [The river does not flow directly into the Arabian Sea, but into the Persian Gulf.] The city wall is brought down on both sides to the edge of the stream; thence from the corners of the wall there is carried along each bank of the river, a fence of burnt bricks. The houses are mostly three and four stories high; the streets all run in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the water side. At the river end of these cross streets are low gates in the fence that skirts the stream, which are, like the great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and open on the water.
"The outer wall is the main defense of the city. There is, however, a second, inner wall, of less thickness than the first, but very little inferior to it in strength. The center of each division of the town was occupied by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size; in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square inclosure, two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass, which was also remaining in my time."
THE royal cubit was twenty-one inches. The reader will therefore see that the outer wall of the city was eighty-seven feet thick, and three hundred and fifty feet high. The city being divided into two parts by the Euphrates, the banks of which were protected by walls, the following means of passage was devised:—
"In each of these walls were twenty-five gates, corresponding to the number of the streets which gave upon the river; and outside each gate was a sloped landing-place, by which you could descend to the water's edge, if you had occasion to cross the river. Boats were kept ready at these landing-places to convey passengers from side to side; while for those who disliked this method of conveyance, a bridge was provided of a somewhat peculiar construction. A number of stone piers were erected in the bed of the stream, firmly clamped together with fastenings of iron and lead; wooden draw-bridges connected pier with pier during the day, and on these, passengers passed over; but at night they were withdrawn, in order that the bridge might not be used in the dark. Diodorus declares that besides this bridge, to which he assigns a length of five stades (about 1,000 yards), and a breadth of thirty feet, the two sides of the river were joined together by a tunnel, which was fifteen feet wide and twelve high to the spring of its arched roof."—Seven Great Monarchies (Rawlinson), Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 6.
THE public buildings of the city were on the same magnificent scale. Of one of them we read:—
"The most remarkable edifice in Babylon was the temple of Bel, now marked by the Babil on the northeast, as Professor Rawlinson has shown. It was a pyramid of eight square stages, the basement stage being over 200 yards each way. A winding ascent led to the summit, and the shrine, in which stood a golden image of Bel, forty feet high, two other statues of gold, a golden table forty feet long and fifteen feet broad, and many other colossal objects of the same precious material."—Encyclopedia Britannica, art. Babylon.
"THE great palace was a building of still larger dimensions than the great temple. According to Diodorus, it was situated within a triple inclosure, the innermost wall being twenty stades, the second forty stades, and the outermost sixty stades (nearly seven miles), in circumference. The outer wall was built entirely of plain baked brick. The middle and inner walls were of the same material, fronted with enameled bricks representing hunting scenes. The figures, according to this author, were larger than the life, and consisted chiefly of a great variety of animal forms."—Rawlinson, Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 9.
"But the main glory of the palace was its pleasure ground—the 'hanging gardens,' which the Greeks regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. This extraordinary construction, which owed its erection to the whim of a woman, was a square, each side of which measured 400 Greek feet. It was supported upon several tiers of open arches, built one over the other, like the walls of a classic theater, and sustaining at each stage, or story, a solid platform, from which the piers of the next tier of arches rose. The building towered into the air to the height of at least seventy-five feet, and was covered at the top with a551great mass of earth, in which there grew not merely flowers and shrubs, but trees also of the largest size. Water was supplied from the Euphrates through pipes, and was raised (it is said) by a screw working on the principle of Archimedes."—Id., par. 10.
THE city, thus briefly outlined, well deserved the title given to it by the prophet,—"The glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." It was brought to this state of grandeur by Nebuchadnezzar, whose life almost measured the length of the empire, and did fully cover the period of its glory. The empire dates, however, from about the accession of his father as governor of Babylon, in 625 B. c. (Encyc. Brit.), and with whom Nebuchadnezzar was associated in the year 606, the date of the beginning of the seventy years' captivity of the Jews. Three years later, in 603, the prophecy under consideration begins.
TO THE mind of man it would seem that the city so substantially built must stand forever, but God had spoken to the contrary. Said he: It "shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation. . . . But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there," etc. See Isa. 13: 19-22. Also Isa. 14: 23: "I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts."
Now learn how completely the "besom of destruction" did its work, and know that no word of the Lord shall ever fail:—
"The traveler who passes through the land is at first inclined to say that there are no ruins, no remains, of the mighty city which once lorded it over the earth. By and by, however, he begins to see that though ruins, in the common acceptation of the term, scarcely exist, though there are no arches, no pillars, but one or two appearances of masonry even, yet the whole country is covered with traces of exactly that kind which it was prophesied Babylon should have. Vast 'heaps' or mounds, shapeless and unsightly, are scattered at intervals over the entire region where it is certain that Babylon anciently stood, and between the 'heaps' the soil is in many places composed of fragments of pottery and bricks, and deeply impregnated with nitre, infallible indications of it having once been covered with buildings."—Rawlinson, Fourth Mon., chap. 4, par. 15.