of the eleventh of Daniel. That passage describes the victorious progress of the last great king of the Gentile dynasty-the last oppressor of Israel, who, after planting the tabernacles of his palace in the glorious holy mountain (i.e., Zion), shall come to his end at the time when Michael shall stand up and Israel be delivered, and the saints who sleep, arise. The futurity of these events, and of the whole connected passage, is unquestionable. Few dispute its futurity. Nothing is more certain than that the power and conquests of this last great king of the Gentiles is future. What then at that time will be the condition of Moab, and Ammon, and Edom? they remain in their present desolation? They will not only be re-peopled, but they will be strong enough to escape out of the hands of that great monarch. "These shall escape out of his hand, even Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon." Edom, therefore, must be restored at that hour; and not only restored, but restored to strength. If Edom then is to be thus restored it would seem very unlikely that Babylon should not be restored, especially when we remember that this great monarch from whom Edom escapes, is the king of Babylon.

Will

No!

On Jerusalem also, days of peculiar vengeance are resting; yet Jerusalem is to be revived and to flourish for a little with a false prosperity, whereby Satan will endeavour to counterfeit the millennium

of God. In a former treatise we have seen abundant evidence of the return of Israel to Jerusalem in unbelief, and of their there developing those energies of evil which Antichrist will concentrate around himself, and, constructing out of them the fabric of his own greatness, glorify himself on Zion. Can we then conceive it to be possible that the wealth, and intelligence, and mercantile energy of the Jews should be planted in Palestine, and that Babylon and the Euphratean district should remain unaffected thereby? When a nation of traffickers like the Jews shall re-occupy Palestine, the Euphrates would be to them as necessary as the Rhine to Germany, or the Thames to London. The Euphrates would be Israel's great channel of communication with the Indian seas not to speak of the commerce which would flow towards the Tigris and the Euphrates from the central and northern districts of Asia. The land of Israel, by the very circumstance of its position, will be to the world, what Corinth was to Greece-the Isthmus over which the commerce of the nations will pass. Even already the Euphrates has been coveted by our own mercantile country. It would be strange therefore, if there should arise on its banks no city of which it might be said that “ her merchants were the great men of the earth." A miracle might indeed be wrought to prevent the revival of Babylon; but surely it would be nothing short of miraculous for Israel to be restored and to flourish in Palestine, and for Babylon to remain a desolation.

That the blow therefore which has already fallen upon Babylon should be regarded as premonitory only, so far from being inconsistent with the method of the Divine acting in other similar cases, is on the contrary in strict harmony therewith; and so strongly do present facts as well as events known from Scripture as about to occur in the land of Israel and in the East, indicate the likelihood of Babylon's restoration, that, even if Scripture were silent respecting its final history, we should nevertheless conclude that its revival was not only antecedently probable, but well nigh certain.

On questions however, like these, we rest nothing on mere probabilities. Antecedent probabilities may be collaterally referred to; but they cannot be depended on for proof. They may show the unreasonableness of certain prejudices by which we create for ourselves difficulties, and impede our own progress in learning from the Scripture; but on probabilities we can ground no conclusion. Our conclusion, if any be arrived at, must be distinctly founded on the word of God. Let us return therefore to the direct evidence of Scripture.

I say return, because it must be remembered that many arguments immediately derived from Scripture have been already given. It has been shown that the last great Gentile persecutor of Israel is yet to come-that he is called in Scripture "the king of Babylon" and "the Assyrian"-that his fall is expressly connected with the period when Babylon

itself shall be swept with the besom of destruction all this has been already proved from Scripture. It has been shown also that the fall of Babylon and its king is to be coincident with the period when Israel is to be forgiven and restored to their own land in blessing. "Her time (i.e. Babylon's time) is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged; FOR the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land; and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob: and the peoples shall take them, and bring them to their place; and the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids: and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall rule over their oppressors. And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee (Israel) rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!" This passage and the twenty-fifth verse of the same chapter, so distinctly fix the period of Babylon's final destruction as being when Israel is forgiven, and not only forgiven but made to "rule over its oppressors," that the whole conclusion might be safely allowed to rest upon the testimony of the fourteenth chapter alone. It constrains us to admit that Babylon, and Babylon's king, and Assyria, are mighty and prosperous when the time comes for Israel to be forgiven.

Babylon may be addressed as "the golden city" then; but its hour will have come. It will be smitten never to rise again.

Let us however see how this conclusion is confirmed by other parts of Scripture. The commencement of the fiftieth chapter of Jeremiah speaks of a desolation that is to fall not only on Babylon, but on THE LAND of Babylon. "Out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her LAND desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast. In those days, and in that time, 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 the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten." (Jer. 1. 4, 5.) These words can scarcely need any comment. Great as the desolation is that has already visited Babylon, yet neither the land nor the city has been so desolate as for no one to dwell therein, and for man and beast to be removed. Moreover, if a desolation adequately great had rested upon Babylon, yet it cannot be that here spoken of. It must recur again-for the time is here marked as being when Israel and Judah together (and since Rehoboam's time they have never been united) shall not only seek the Lord, but "join themselves to Him in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten." The eighteenth verse of the same.

C