the body; and it is inevitable that we should turn towards our collegiate institutions with mingled pride and solicitude. They have won the confidence, and secured the prayerful interest of the majority of our people, and they will, by their unabated consecration to the interests of evangelical truth, continue, we are sure, to command them. fountain send forth, at the same place, sweet waters and bitter?"

"Doth a

Let me add that it is our sacred obligation to maintain, in the spirit of the Gospel, an increasingly conscientious separation from the Endowed Church of the realm.

Could we be persuaded to look upon the important ecclesiastical movement around us exclusively through the medium of Dissent, we might be tempted rather to rejoice than to repine; but there are interests, whatever our accusers may pretend, far dearer to us than those which such a relative position to surrounding parties implies; interests which lived long before the English Church was framed, and which will survive when that Church has passed away. It may not be a matter of indifference to us whether the Episcopal, the Synodical, or the Independent form of Church Government prevails; but this is, after all, but a trifling consideration when compared with the honour of our Great Redeemer, and the progress of His cause in the land. When, therefore, we find men of high celebrity circulating doctrines not according to godliness, and observe them encouraged in their course by the highest sanction of law, and witness their conduct, receive the imprimatur of the most august authorities of the realm, we hold it to be an occasion, not for triumph, but for lamentation and woe,-we mourn as civilians, as Christians, and as patriots. But surely this spectacle is

adapted to nourish our principles, and nerve our purposes as seceders from the Church of England. If the representatives of that community be sincere in their expressed desire to recall us to her fellowship, they adopt strange measures to secure it. What possible inducement is there to seek the shelter of a body which has pomp without power, canons without unity, and ambition without freedom?-a body, which, however regally attired, grows pale and motionless under the patronage of senators and princes, and which, had it not called to its aid the principle on which free-churches repose, would by this time have been a stately corpse. What temptation could be adequate to attract us from our chosen seclusion, into the midst of a theatre, the stage of which is crowded by a motley group of clergymen of every grade accompanied by councillors from every court contending about the first principles of revealed religion, with a polished acrimony which inspires thoughtful spectators with shame and disgust? We, as a body, in conjunction with other sections of the Dissenting community, yield to none in loyalty to the Queen, and in attachment to her dynasty, and shall not cease to offer our prayers at the throne of the heavenly grace for her prolonged happiness and for the continuance. of her line-we honour and obey her as the head of the civil authority of the empire. But we repudiate with renewed determination the connection which subsists between the Church and the State, and conscientiously believe it to be dishonouring to God and to be fraught with manifold and grievous mischiefs to men; so that its dissolution would conduce to the promotion of pure religion and to the honour and progress of the Commonwealth. The connection which subsists between

cause and effect must be strangely disturbed and the laws which imperceptibly determine the processes of decay must have been mysteriously suspended, if recent events do not hasten this issue. It is contrary to the reports of all history and utterly discordant with the experience of ages, that prolonged internal contentions should not unsettle and weaken the communities or institutions they disturb,-that contending policies and conflicting interests should not engender incongruities and consuming animosities, which are the forerunners of decay. Beside the fatal disease they feed and influence within, they inspire by degrees, distaste, and aversion from without, so that spectators stand prepared for their overthrow. The hour may be delayed and the process be apparently slow, but the catastrophe is inevitable and such as no human strategy can avert. In the meantime, it is for us to hold fast the liberties we have won, to use all peaceful means to sweep away the petty tyrannies that remain, to substitute equality for toleration in all

that relates to conscience and to right; and while labouring in the vineyard of the Great Master with increasing solicitude and care, and wishing "grace, mercy, and peace, to all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs. and ours," serenely to await the day, when, emancipated from all worldly policies, an unfettered Christianity shall summon the nations to liberty and life.

I have, then, my brethren, ventured to point to some of the features of the times, and to their attendant obligations. In observing the one, and in fulfilling the other, we shall, I venture to submit, be acting worthily of our ancestry, have the approbation of conscience, and the smile of our common Lord; shall conduce to the prosperity of our beloved country at home, and to its augmented moral influence abroad, while each in his turn descends to the grave, enrolled among those who, through evil report and good report, have sought the establishment among us of that spiritual kingdom which can never be moved.

ONE hundred and seventy years before the event, the Prophet Isaiah foretold the destruction of Babylon. She was then the "glory of kingdoms," the centre of civilization and empire. The period of her greatest magnificence was when Nebuchadnezzar lavished upon her temples, her palaces, her hanging gardens, her walls three hundred feet high, her fortresses, and her brass-leaved gates, the wealth his conquests had procured.

But the inspired man sees beyond the splendour the ruin into which the metropolis of nations should fall, and foretells that her battlements should be forsaken, her palaces become caverns, in which the beasts of the wilderness would dwell, and her fertile fields be turned into swamps, echoing with the bittern's cry. She should be plunged into the very gulf of destruction.

So clear is the vision of the

divinely-inspired seer that he forecasts the name of the conqueror, and describes with wondrous minuteness the circumstances of Babylon's fall. "Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden to subdue nations before him. . . . I will go before thee and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron." Flushed with victories over the nations of Western and Central Asia, Cyrus should hasten with his conquering Medes, to the plains of Chaldæa, from their northern mountain homes, to "put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and bring down the haughtiness of the terrible." The assault on Babylon should be sudden, and the success complete. Her throne should be exchanged for a seat in the dust; her fall be like that of a noble maiden, the child of luxury, reduced to the indignity of grinding meal. Her astrologers, her augurs, her soothsayers, with all their sorceries and enchantments, would be unable to avert her doom. It should come in the "night of pleasure," when the carousals of the palace and the revelry of the watchmen would cover the noise of the tramp of the armed host, as it bursts upon the riotous multitude from the dried channel of the river's bed. Then should Bel bow down and Nebo crouch. Then should "all hands be faint, and every man's heart melt ;" and the "golden city," the "ornament of the pride of the Chaldees, become the prey of the spoiler. It shall come as a destruction from the Almighty."

Time rolls on, and Nebuchadnezzar reigns in Babylon. Fifty years are yet wanting to complete the tale of her iniquities when Jeremiah stands forth to renew the warning, and to remind her of the approaching day of doom, Again does the seer point

to the north, to the nations of the Medes, as the quarter whence the thunder-clouds of the Divine wrath should come. On their approach the sower should be cut off from the field, the reaper should cease to gather in his harvests from the open country. The warriors should be content to hold watch and ward on the walls to which they hasten for safety. But a snare should be laid for them; the waters of the river should be dried up, and in the night of feasting, when Babylon's defenders are drunken,

"Her dwellings are burned,

Her barriers are broken in pieces.
Courier runneth to meet courier,
And messenger to meet messenger,
To announce to the King of Babylon,
That his city is altogether taken;
That the passages are captured,
That the stockades are burned with fire,
And the military thrown into con-
fusion.

And Babylon shall become heaps,
An abode of jackals:

An object of astonishment and derision,
Without an inhabitant."*

No prophecies of Scripture are more precise than the above, or present more points by which to test the reality of their inspiration; and providentially secular history has preserved to us ample proofs of their accuracy. Three historians may be adduced, by whom the story of the fall of Babylon is with more or less minuteness recorded, while in the book of Daniel the Prophet, we have vividly described what was passing in the palace of the monarch on that fatal night.

Herodotus, the father of history, is the first of the secular historians who relate the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. He informs us that the expedition of Cyrus was undertaken against Labynetus, who was the king of the Assyrians. After some delay, occasioned by the rapid tor

* Jeremiah, Ch. li., vs. 30, 31, 37. Henderson's Translation.

en

rent of a tributary to the Tigris. which he had to pass, he marched forward against Babylon in the early spring. The Babylonians, camped in the open fields, awaited his coming; but defeated in battle, they withdrew to their defences. Secure as they thought behind their lofty walls, and provisioned for many years, they hoped to hold out for a long time. Their resolve perplexed Cyrus. No progress could be made in reducing the place, so strong were the ramparts, so watchful the defenders. At length Cyrus thought upon the plan of diverting the Euphrates from its bed. This was accomplished. "Hereupon the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the river side, entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town."

The Babylonians were taken by surprise. The street gates that opened on the river were found open, and the walls unguarded. "Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents at Babylon declare), long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced; but as they were engaged in a festival, continued dancing and revelling until they learnt the capture but too certainly." * How it fared with the monarch, Herodotus does not say.

Our next authority is Xenophon. Herodotus wrote a hundred years after the event; the date of Xenophon's work is about fifty years later. The book in which this eminent writer records the overthrow of Babylon, is usually regarded as a work of fiction, written to display the virtues of Cyrus, and to recommend to the Greeks a form of government that Xenophon approved.

* Rawlinson's Herodotus, i. 188, 191.

to

It cannot, however, be doubted that he embodied many of the events of the life of Cyrus in an authentic form, the knowledge of which he acquired when he led the ever memorable retreat of his ten thousand Greeks through Persia. The first step of Cyrus on arriving before Babylon, Xenophon says, was reconnoitre the city. From information derived from a deserter, as well as from seeing the strength of the defences, he was induced to change the position of his army, and to determine on reducing the city by famine. The idea of diverting the river from its course then occurred to him, and he immediately gave orders for digging trenches, and building towers to defend the workmen, and which at the same time would lead the Babylonians to suppose that he intended only to blockade the city. "But those who were on the walls laughed at this blockade, as being furnished with provisions for more than twenty years." They were still more amused when Cyrus ordered his allies, the Phrygians, Lydians, Arabians, and Cappadocians, to guard his trenches; for these nations were deemed more friendly to the besieged than the Persians.

The trenches were now dug, and Cyrus when he heard that there was a festival in Babylon, in which all the Babylonians drank and revelled the whole night, took, during the time of it, a number of men with him, and as soon as it was dark, opened the trenches on the side towards the river. When this was done, the water ran off in the night into the trenches, and the bed of the river through the city allowed men to walk along it."

Cyrus now summoned his hosts around him and addressed them. He urged them to enter boldly; they would find their enemies intoxicated and asleep; and consternation would

He

render the foe defenceless. placed at their head two Babylonian deserters, and the word to march was given. "They went forward; of those that met them, some were struck down and killed, some fled, and some raised a shout. They that were with Gobryas, one of the deserters, joined in the shout, as if they were revellers themselves, and marching on the shortest way that they could, arrived at the palace. As a great clamour and noise ensued, those who were within heard the tumult, and as the king ordered them to see what was the matter, some of them threw open the gates and rushed out." The soldiers of Cyrus burst in, and found the king standing with his sword drawn. "The party of Gadatas and Gobryas being numerous, mastered him; those who were with him were killed, one holding up something before him, another fleeing, and another defending himself in whatever way he could." Cyrus then sent his cavalry throughout the city, subduing and disarming the inhabitants, and made arrangements for its future govern

ment.*

We now turn to the Jewish historian, Josephus, who has preserved a very valuable extract from Berosus, a Babylonian priest. He wrote a history of the Chaldeans, founded on the archives of his native country. His means of information were therefore of the best kind, and such as were denied to Herodotus and Xenophon. After relating how certain conspirators put the crown of Babylon on the head of Nabonnidus, he proceeds :

"In his reign it was that the walls of the city of Babylon were curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen; but when he was come to the seventeenth year of his reign,

* Xenophon's Cyropædia, Book vii. ch. 5, Watson's Translation.

Cyrus came out of Persia with a great army, and having already conquered all the rest of Asia, he came hastily to Babylonia. When Nabonnidus perceived he was coming to attack him, he met him with his forces, and joining battle with him, was beaten, and fled away with a few of his troops with him, and was shut up within the city Borsippus. Hereupon Cyrus took Babylon, and gave order that the outer walls of the city should be demolished, because the city had proved very troublesome to him, and cost him a great deal of pains to take it. He then marched away to Borsippus, to besiege Nabonnidus; but as Nabonnidus did not sustain the siege, but delivered himself into his hands, he was at first kindly used by Cyrus, who gave him Carmania as a place for him to inhabit in, but sent him out of Babylonia. Nabonnidus spent the rest of his time in that country, and there died."†

+

If now we turn to the Scripture account, we find some important points of correspondence with these narratives, and also what appear at first sight to be some very important differences. It was on a night of revelry and feasting that the city

fell.

It was when the city was wrapt in fatal security, and the revellers "drank wine and praised the wall, interpreted by Daniel, angods," that the handwriting on the nounced that the kingdom was about to be taken away on the victorious assault of the Medes and Persians. But according to to Daniel, the name of the reigning king was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, shazzar; on "that night was Belslain." In the general circumstances of this fearful event our authorities agree; but in the last two points the disagreement appears striking and irreconcileable. All modern writers affirm that the Labynetus of Herodotus and the Nabonnidus of Berosus are one and the same person; but by no etymological craft can either of these names be tortured into Bel† Whiston's Josephus, cont. Apion i. 20. + Daniel chap. v.