is remarkable, that it is God who does all this, who lays a snare for Babylon: I have laid a snare for thee; (Jer. 1. 24;) who drieth up the waters of the river; I will dry up her sea; (Jer. 1. 24;) and who brings that drunkenness and drowsiness upon her princes: I will make drunk her princes. (Jer. li. 57.)

5. The King shall be seized in an instant with an incredible terror and perturbation of mind: My loins are filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing of it: I was dismayed at the seeing of it: my heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me: (Isa, xxi. 3, 4.) This is the condition Belshazzar was in, when in the middle of the entertainment he saw a hand come out of the wall, which wrote such characters upon it as none of his diviners could either explain or read; but more especially when Daniel declared to him, that those characters imported the sentence of his death. Then, says the Scripture, (Dan. v. 6,) 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 the other. The terror, astonishment, fainting, and trembling of Belshazzar, are here described and expressed in the same manner by the prophet who was an eye witness of them, as they were by the prophet who foretold them 200 years before.

As soon as Cyrus saw that the ditch, which they had long worked upon, was finished, he began to think seriously upon the execution of his vast design, which as yet he had communicated to nobody. Providence soon furnished him with as fit an opportunity for this purpose as he could desire. He was informed that in the city a great festival was to be celebrated; and that the

Babylonians, on occasion of that solemnity, were accustomed to pass the whole night in drinking and debauchery.

Belshazzar himself was more concerned in this public rejoicing than any other, (Dan. v. 1, 29,) and gave a magnificent entertainment to the chief officers of the kingdom, and the ladies of the court. When flushed with wine, he ordered the gold and silver vessels, which had been taken from the Temple of Jerusalem, to be brought out; and as an insult upon the God of Israel, he, his whole court, and all his concubines, drank out of those sacred vessels. God, who was provoked at such insolence and impiety, at the same instant made him sensible who it was that he affronted, by a sudden apparition of a hand, writing certain characters upon the wall. The king, terribly surprised, and affrighted at this vision, immediately sent for all his wise men, his diviners, and astrologers, that they might read the writing to him, and explain the meaning of it. But they all came in vain, not one of them being able to expound the matter, or even to read the characters. It is probably in relation to this occurrence, that Isaiah, after having foretold to Babylon that she shall be overwhelmed with calamities which she did not expect, adds, Stand now with thy enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries. Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee. (Isa. xlvii. 12, 13.)

The queen-mother, (Nitocris, a princess of greatmerit,) coming, upon the noise of this great prodigy, into the banqueting-room, endeavoured to compose the mind of the king, her son, advising him to send for Daniel, with whose abilities in such matters she was well acquainted, and whom she had always employed in the government of the state.

Daniel was therefore immediately sent for, and spoke to the king with a freedom and liberty becoming a prophet. He put him in mind of the dreadful manner in which God had punished the pride of his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar, and the flagrant abuse he made of his power, when he acknowledged no law but his own will, and thought himself empowered to exalt and abase, to inflict destruction and death wheresoever he would, only because such was his will and pleasure. And thou, his son, says he to the king, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knowest all this, but 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, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. 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. This interpretation, one would think, should have aggravated the consternation of the company; but they found means to dispel their fears, probably upon a persuasion, that the calamity was not denounced as present or immediate, and that time might furnish them with expedients to avert it. This, however, is certain, that for fear of disturbing the general joy of the present festival, they put off the discussion of serious matters to another

time, and sat down again to their banquet, and continued their revellings to a very late hour.

Cyrus, in the mean time, well informed of the confusion that was generally occasioned by this festival, both in the palace and the city, had posted a part of his troops on that side where the river entered into the city, and another part on that side where it went out; and had commanded them to enter the city that very night, by marching along the channel of the river, as soon as ever they found it fordable. Having given all necessary orders, and exhorted his officers to follow him, by representing to them that he marched under the guidance of the gods; in the evening he made them open the great receptacles, or ditches, on both sides of the city, above and below, that the water of the river might run into them. By this means the Euphrates was quickly emptied, and its channel became dry. Then the two forementioned bodies of troops, according to their orders, went into the channel, the one commanded by Gobryas, and the other by Gadatas, and advanced without meeting any obstacle. The invisible guide, who had promised to open all the gates to Cyrus, made the general negligence and disorder of that riotous night subservient to his design, by leaving open the gates of brass, which were made to shut up the descents from the quays to the river, and which alone, if they had not been left open, were sufficient to have defeated the whole enterprise. Thus did these two bodies of troops penetrate into the very heart of the city without any opposition, and meeting together at the royal palace, according to their agreement, surprised the guards, and cut them to pieces. Some of the company that were within the palace, opening the doors to know what noise it was they heard without, the soldiers rushed in, and quickly made themselves masters of it; and meeting the

king, who came up to them sword in hand, at the head of those that were in the way to succour him, they killed him, and put all those that attended him to the sword. The first thing the conquerors did afterwards, was to thank the gods for having at least punished that impious king. These words are Xenophon's, and are very worthy of attention, as they so perfectly agree with what the Scriptures have recorded of the impious Belshazzar.

The taking of Babylon put an end to the Babylonian empire, after a duration of 210 years from the beginning of the reign of Nabonassar. Thus was the power of that proud city abolished just fifty years after she had destroyed the city of Jerusalem and her temple. And herein were accomplished those predictions, which the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel, had denounced against her, and of which we have already given a particular account. There is still one more, the most important and the most incredible of them all, and yet the Scripture has set it down in the strongest terms, and marked it out with the greatest exactness; a prediction literally fulfilled in all its points; the proof of which still actually subsists, is the most easy to be verified, and indeed its nature is not to be contested. What I mean is the prediction of so total and absolute a ruin of Babylon, that not the least remains or traces should be left of it. I think it may not be improper to give an account of the perfect accomplishment of this famous prophecy, before we proceed to speak of what followed the taking of Babylon.

This prediction we find recorded in several of the prophets, but particularly in Isaiah, in the thirteenth chapter, from the 19th to the 22d verses, and in the 23d and 24th verses of the fourteenth chapter. It is declared, that Babylon shall be utterly destroyed, as the criminal