house of my kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty."

While the arrogant boast was yet on his lips, there fell a voice from heaven, saying,

"O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: Thy kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee; until thou knowest that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will."

That same hour Nebuchadnezzar was seized with madness. In the midst of unbounded luxury, and at the summit of human grandeur, the hand of God struck him, and he sunk below the lot of the meanest of his slaves: even the very form of humanity could scarcely be recognised, in this once proud and vain glorious conqueror. Reason left him, and he was driven from men, to live with the beasts of the field.

For seven years the disease of Nebuchadnezzar continued unabated, and during this period the kingdom was governed by his son Evil-Merodach. At the end of that time the king's reason returned to him, and he remounted the throne. He lived one year after his restoration, and then died, in the forty-third year of his reign, leaving the reputation of being the greatest monarch of his age, and the most famous of all the princes of the Babylonian-Assyrian Empire.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF DANIEL: HIS VISIONS: BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST; THE TAKING OF

BABYLON BY CYRUS.

Dan. v., vii., viii.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR was succeeded on the throne of Babylon by his son, Evil-Merodach. It is stated in a Jewish tradition, that this prince governed so ill during the insanity of his father, that when that king was restored, he threw his son into prison; the same in which was confined Jehoiakin, the captive king of Judah, who had been a prisoner for thirty-six years. Being thus thrown together in misfortune, an intimate friendship sprung up between the princes, which only ended with their lives. This account appears probable, for it is certain that immediately on mounting the throne, Evil-Merodach released Jehoiakin from prison, and treated him with great kindness and distinction: he appointed him a place at his own table, and assigned him an honourable pension, giving him a rank higher than any of the other captive kings, whom his father's conquests had brought to Babylon. Jehoiakin did not however enjoy these advantages long: for he died before his benefactor Evil-Merodach, whose reign was short.

By the death of Jehoiakin, the kingly dignity became extinct in the house of David, and thus

was fulfilled the prophecy of Jacob, "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and to him shall the gathering of the people be."* The sceptre did now depart from the house of Judah, nor has there been a king on the throne of the family of David since. The Jews, to avoid the application of this prophecy to the Messiah, and the coming of Christ (Shiloh), pretend that Salathiel, the son of Jehoiakin, succeeded to his father's royal dignity: they style him the Head, or Prince of the Captivity, and he enjoyed many honors and privileges amongst his own people; he also had a certain degree of authority, so far as was consistent with a state of subjection in a foreign land; and when the kings of the east acknowledged this assumption of the regal title, the pageantry of a court was kept up, and money was collected from the dispersed Jews, to maintain it in splendour. This, however, was an uncertain and precarious state of prosperity, depending upon the goodwill and tolerance of the reigning monarch of Babylon: nothing, in fact, but an empty title, devoid of real power, yet it is brought forward by modern Jews when pressed by the arguments of Christians, who refer to the fact of the sceptre of Judah having departed from Israel, as one of the signs which was to precede the advent of Christ, the Son of David.

* Gen. xlix.

In like manner, there was no longer a law. giver in Israel: and here too the Jews are reduced to a subterfuge, to avoid the plain-meaning of the text. They pretend that the lawgiver here indicated is the chief of the Sanhedrim, or great council, whose existence they endeavour to trace up to the time of Moses;* though there is not any record of its proceedings as a political body, until after the return from Babylon, when the royal authority being extinct, a council to assist the governors, or high priests of the time being, naturally assumed an important share in the government.

Besides these fulfilments of ancient prophecy, as if to prepare the minds of the Jews for the advent of the Messiah, and to impress upon them its certainty, (when apparently they were cast out of their country, and hardly to be called a people,) Daniel was a few years later inspired to see again into futurity, and to give prophecies so clear and minute, that they remain to this day one of the most striking and irrefragable evidences of the divine authority of the Sacred Books, in which they are recorded. Two of these visions are related in the seventh and eighth chapters of the book of Daniel. In the first, under the image of four beasts, is again prefigured the four kingdoms of the Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians, and Romans.

The Jews trace the Sanhedrim to the appointment of seventy elders, to assist Moses in the government of the Israelites in the Wilderness.

In the second vision, the kingdom of Persia is typified by a ram, and Macedon by a He-Goat, with a notable horn between its eyes, by which is signified Alexander the Great: the continuation of the prophecy is yet more fully detailed than in the former visions, but as it would exceed our limits to give the whole of these prophecies and the commentaries upon them, we refer our readers to the book of Daniel, and to the many able works of the learned upon the fulfilment of the predictions it contains; only referring to them where the circumstances naturally remind the attentive historian of the word of divine inspiration, which preceded the events under review.

Evil-Merodach, whose name was Merodach, but who had the cognomen of Evil, or foolish, added to it on account of his unfitness to govern, became so obnoxious by his tyranny, that his brother-in-law, Neriglissar, conspired against him and slew him, in the second year of his reign.

Evil-Merodach was succeeded on the throne of Babylon by this same Neriglissar, whose reign lasted four years. He governed wisely; but he was unsuccessful in the war he undertook against the Medes, whose power was already rising rapidly, through the military talents of Cyrus this famous prince was, about that time, placed in command over the united forces

Cyrus was the son of Cambyses king of Persia, and he married the only daughter of his uncle, Cyaxares, king of Media.