hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!" The period then of the destruction of this king of Babylon is marked in Scripture as being the time when Israel shall be forgiven, made to rest, and caused to rule over their oppressors. No one can deny that that hour is future. A king of Babylon will arise who shall be visited with destruction THEN. Few, I believe, attempt to question the futurity of the fourteenth of Isaiah.* If then it be admitted that this KING is yet to be-if he be in this chapter expressly styled "king of Babylon," and also "the Assyrian," is it possible that he should be so great, so wonderfully glorious, and that Babylon and Assyria, whose king he is, should be unconnected with that greatness? Could Babylon's king

* See, for example, both Lowth and Horsley. Lowth, commenting on the words, "shall yet choose Israel," which occur in the first verse of the fourteenth chapter, observes: "Circumstances mentioned in this and the next verse, which did not in any complete sense accompany the return from the captivity of Babylon, seem to intimate that the whole prophecy extends its views beyond that event."-Lowth.

Bishop Horsley also, commenting on the thirteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter, says: "The schemes of impious ambition ascribed in this verse to the Babylonian despot, suit exactly with the character of the Man of Sin, as delineated by Daniel and St. Paul, and seem to indicate that the prophecy extends to much later times than those of the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian monarchs were in some measure types of Antichrist, as they seem to have affected divine honours. Vitringa conceives that there is a manifest allusion to Antichrist in this passage."

be so great, and Babylon itself be nothing? Nor is there any ambiguity in the name Babylon. It is expressly said in this passage to be "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency" (Isa. xiii. 19); and the mention of Assyria marks it beyond a doubt as being the Euphratean city. The futurity, therefore, of the king as glorious, involves the futurity of his city as glorious. Indeed the period of their fall is distinctly spoken of as being contemporaneous. Let the twenty-first and succeeding verses of the fourteenth chapter be well considered. They are as follow: "Prepare slaughter for HIS (i.e., the wicked king's) children for the iniquity of their fathers: that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities. FOR I will rise up against THEM, saith the Lord of Hosts, and cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, and son, and nephew, saith the Lord. 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." Here then is a destruction of this wicked king's children plainly spoken of.* But at what time? At a time when the Lord rises up against Babylon-when He cuts off from Babylon name and remnant, son and nephew-when He sweeps Babylon with the besom of destruction. If then the de

* The children here spoken of appear to be his subjects -the inhabitants of his cities. Hence the mention of their fathers—not their father, which would have been the expression used if they were regarded as born of him.

struction of this wicked king is yet future (and this is admitted by Lowth, Horsley, and Vitringa), it follows that this final desolation of Babylon is future likewise.*

But it will be said, perhaps, How can this be? Has not Babylon already been smitten? Has it not already been swept with the besom of destruction? Our answer is: not at the time and with the concomitant circumstances specified in the pas

* Lowth (referring to Herodotus i. 199, and to Strabo, lib. xvi. for confirmation) very properly observes on this passage (Isaiah xiv. 25) that the Assyrians and the Babylonians are the same people. Babylon is reckoned the principal city in Assyria. The truth is, that we are in the Scripture concerned with two periods of Assyrian history-the first extending from Pul to Nabopalassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar―during which period Nineveh, not Babylon, was the head of Assyria. But Nabopalassar, who was governor of Babylon under the king of Nineveh, revolted, and uniting with the king of the Medes, attacked and overthrew his sovereign, the king of Nineveh; and after this, Babylon was always the head of Assyria. Thus there are some passages in Scripture, that is to say, those which refer to the period before Nineveh was overthrown, which speak of the king of Assyria as a different person from the ruler of Babylon (see for example Jeremiah 1. 18), but this is never the case when the period after Nabopalassar and Nebuchadnezzar is referred to. "The Ancient Universal History" may be consulted as giving an excellent abstract of early Assyrian history-excellent and clear, because it takes Scripture as the primary guide of its statements, and does not, like some other writers on this subject, make the statements of Scripture secondary to those of profane historians.

sage just quoted. It is true indeed that the Euphratean countries have been smitten-sorely smitten under the hand of God. God is wont in His goodness to give premonitory blows. He is accustomed to warn before He finally destroys. Egypt, Jerusalem, and many other places, have all experienced premonitory desolations; and so has Babylon. Its present ruin (which came on it slowly, and if I may so speak, gently) is a memorial of what God's righteous vengeance can do, and a warning of what it will more terribly do, if human pride in contempt of all His admonitions, shall again attempt to rear its goodly palaces where He has written desolation. But if it be the habit of God thus graciously to warn, it is equally the habit of man to say, "The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stone; the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars." Unbidden, the hand of man vives what God has smitten. Without therefore undervaluing the lesson given by past visitations of God's judgments-without hiding, but rather seeking to proclaim the reality and extent of the ruin His holy hand has wrought, we have also to testify, that the hand of man uncommissioned from above will, sooner or later, reconstruct the fabric of its greatness -its last evil greatness, on the very plains which teem with the memorials of a ruin entailed by former and yet unrepented of transgressions. Egypt, Damascus, Palestine, and in a measure, Jerusalem, are already being revived. And if these and neigh

bouring countries, which have been visited by inflictions similar to those which have fallen on Babylon, are yet to revive and flourish with an evil prosperity at the time of the end, why should Babylon be made an exception? Why should Egypt and Edom, and Moab and Ammon, and Jerusalem again revive, and Babylon remain a solitary exception to the general rule of Eastern renovation?

It will, perhaps, be said that a doom peculiarly severe is pronounced against Babylon. But it is not more severe than that pronounced against Edom; scarcely more severe than the doom of Ammon and of Moab; and yet we know that these countries are to revive for a little period, before they are visited with their final blow. A premonitory stroke has, it is true, fallen on those countries and on their cities. Indeed nothing except the last great hour of accomplishment, when the day of the Lord shall really come, and when "the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever" (Isa. xxxiv. 9, 10)— nothing except the results of that great day of final visitation could exceed the ruin that has already fallen upon Edom. Where then, it will be said, is the proof of its temporary revival? It is found in a prediction given at the close