son of Josiah, King of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, (in the year before Christ 606.)

Thus said, the Lord of Hosts, because ye have not heard my words. Behold I will send and take all the families of the North, saith the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this Land, and against the Inhabitants thereof, and against all those Nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them perpetual desolations. And this whole Land shall be a desolation, and these Nations shall serve the King of Babylon, SEVENTY YEARS. And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the King of Babylon, and that Nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the Land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.

In this same year, as we have read, Nebuchadnezzar besieged and took Jerusalem. And exactly seventy years after, Babylon itself was destroyed.

CHAPTER 107.

THE PROPHET JEREMIAH.

OF THE DESTRUCTION OF BABYLON.

THE word that the Lord spake against Babylon, and against the Land of the Chaldeans, by Jeremiah the Prophet. Declare ye among Nations, and publish, set up a standard, say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces.

For out of the North there cometh up a Nation against her, which shall make her Land desolate, and none shall dwell therein. In those days, saith the

Lord, the Children of Israel shall come, they and the Children of Judah together, going and weeping, they shall go and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask their way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying, Come let us join ourselves to the Lord, in a perpetual Covenant that shall not be forgotten.Remove out of the midst of Babylon; for lo, I will cause to come up against Babylon, an assembly of great Nations from the North Country; and Chaldea shall be a spoil, all that spoil her shall be satisfied,— Israel is a scattered sheep, the lions have driven him away. Therefore, thus saith the Lord, I will punish the King of Babylon and his Land, as I have punished the King of Assyria; and I will bring Israel again to his habitation, and he shall feed on Carmel, and his soul shall be satisfied on Mount Ephraim. How is the hammer of the whole Earth broken! How is Babylon become a desolation among the Nations!

Behold I am against thee, O thou most proud, for the day is come that I will visit thee. A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the Lord, upon the Inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her Princes, for it is the Land of graven images, and they are mad upon their idols. Therefore the wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and the owls shall dwell therein; and it shall be no more inhabited for ever. I will render unto Babylon all the evil that it hath done to Zion, and it shall be desolate for ever, saith the Lord.

Set ye up a standard in the Land, blow ye the trumpet among the Nations, prepare the Nations against her, with the Kings of the MEDES, the Captains thereof, and all the Land of his dominion; for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon, to make the Laud a desolation without an inhabitant, The

mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds; her bars are broken; one messenger shall run to meet another, to shew the King of Babylon that his City is taken at one end, that the passages are stopped, and the reeds of the river are burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted; I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry. And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing without an inhabitant. I will make them drunken that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, saith the Lord...

In those days, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sius of Judah, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon them whom I reserve.

This is the word which Jeremiah wrote in a book and gave to Seraiah, when he went for Zedekiah into Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign, saying, When thou come to Babylon read this book, then bind a stone to it, and cast it into Euphrates.

Thus have we read the predictions of the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, against the great but wicked City of Babylon. Now mark the event.

Babylon was seated on the River Euphrates, which ran through the midst of the City. In the year before Christ 538, Darius, King of the Medes, and Cyrus, King of Persia, besieged the City. And after two years siege, when all the People were revelling in their feasts, with Belshazzar their King;-Cyrus having caused the water of the River Euphrates to be drawn off through a new channel, entered the City at night, through the dry channel, and thus surprised and became master of the capital, and overthrew the monarchy of Assyria.

CHAPTER 108.

THE BOOK OF THE PROPHET EZEKIEL

EZEKIEL the third of the great Prophets, was like his contemporary Jeremiah, carried away captive to Babylon, with Jehoiachin, King of Judah, in the year before Christ 598. And was placed with others of his countrymen, on the banks of the River Chebar in Mesopatamia; where he received the Divine Revelations contained in this book, and prophesied for a period of twenty years.

Ezekiel denounces God's judgments against his countrymen for their great sins, and tells them of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, and many of the particular circumstances which would attend its seige.

Ezekiel then prophecies against many neighbouring Heathen Nations, the destruction that also awaited them by Nebuchadnezzar. Particularly the Sodomites

and the rich famous City of Tyre, foretelling that it should become a mere rock to dry fishermen's nets on, as it is at this day. And of the City of Zidon, the neighbour and companion of Tyre. And of Egypt, that great and haughty Kingdom, the Kingdom of Pharaoh. For Egypt having come up to help Zedekial against Nebuchadnezzar; Nebuchadnezzar after he had taken Jerusalem attacked and conquered that Kingdom. Mark what the Prophet Ezekiel says,-It shall become the basest of Kingdoms, neither shall it exalt itself any more above the Nations;--and see what Egypt is at this day.

But it is impossible in this little book to give a just idea of the sublime writings of Ezekiel, Isaiah, or Jeremiah; we will conclude with these beautiful words of the Prophet Ezekiel.

As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. When I shall say to the righteous that he shall surely live; IF HE TRUST TO HIS OWN RIGHTEOUSNESS AND COMMIT INIQUITY, all his righteousness shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, HE SHALL DIE for it.

Again when I shall say unto the wicked thou shalt surely die; IF HE TURN FROM HIS SIN, AND DO THAT WHICH IS LAWFUL AND RIGHT; if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; HE SHALL SURELY LIVE, he shall not die. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him; he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.

Yet the Children of thy People say, The way of the Lord is not equal: but as for them, their way is not equal.

CHAPTER 109.

THE PROPHET DANIEL.

DANIEL was carried away captive to Babylon, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, about the twentieth year of his age, and on account of his wisdom was selected to stand before Nebuchadnezzar, and continued with his successor Belshazzar, and was afterwards in favor with the conquerors of Babylon, Darius and Cyrus.

Now Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon, chose out from amoug the Children of Israel, children well favoured and skilful in wisdom, to stand in the King's Palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. Now among those were of the Children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael,