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men who must work, but are not therefore induced to lay aside their nationality. Among others, Daniel and his three friends grew from childhood to youth, under able teachers. They were committed to the care of a man high in rank about the palace, and soon won his good opinion; for they were as rigid in matters of principle as they were docile in their studies; and God blessed them with a daily increase of health and wisdom.

B. C. 570.-Nebuchadnezzar was a great warrior. He conquered the whole of the countries in the south and west of Asia Minor. He overran Egypt and plundered it. He punished the Jews again. for the murder of Gedeliah, and found himself lord of the greatest empire which had ever obeyed the rule of one man. His next care was to adorn his capital with all that art could supply, and to encourage learning and learned men. But success proved a snare to him. He became very proud and very cruel.

B. C. 569.—One night he dreamed a dream which troubled him, and in the morning when he awoke it was forgotten. He sent for all his magi, or wise men, and desired them to set his mind at ease. But as he could not repeat the dream, they assured him that it was beyond their power to give the interpretation of it. Upon this he commanded them all to be put to death. God, however, had mercy upon them, and the king's dream was revealed to Daniel, who repeated it to him, clause by clause, as it had passed through his mind. And Daniel did more. He explained that in this vision God gave him a foresight into the revolutions which should come to pass; that his empire should give place to another, and all finally become "the kingdom of God and of his Christ." Nebuchadnezzar

was struck with amazement, and from that day forth ceased not to treat Daniel with the greatest favour. The young Hebrew became governor of the province of Babylon, and head of the college of Magi.

The advancement of Daniel was followed by that of his three friends; and they all became, as under similar circumstances most men are apt to be, objects of envy and hatred to those whom they had passed in the race of life. Repeated attempts were therefore made to destroy them, but God and their own uprightness carried them through all. Once when required to worship before a golden image, they refused; and three of them were cast into a burning furnace, which refused to consume them. At a later period and under a different reign, Daniel prayed thrice a day, as he had been wont to do, in spite of an order craftily obtained, that no one, on pain of death, should, for thirty days, ask a petition of any God or man, save of the king. For this he was cast into a den of hungry lions, whose mouths God closed so that they injured him not. But these were events, which to the eye of the careless might seem to affect the fortunes of individuals only: there were others occurring more extended in their influence at the moment, of which I must now speak.

Time passed, and Nebuchadnezzar, carried out of himself by the tide of continual success, began to exact from his subjects divine honours. He was in the beginning of this wild career, when he saw, in his dream, a tree of which the top reached to heaven, and under the shadow of which all the beasts of the field seemed to lie. Suddenly, as he gazed at it with admiration, a voice was heard to say, "Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit: let the

beasts get away from under it, and the fowls from his branches: Nevertheless leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth: Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him." Terrified and perplexed, he sent for Daniel, who at once revealed God's doom. The man who aimed at being treated as a God, became a lunatic for seven years, and crawled like a beast upon his hands and knees.

B. C. 561.- Nebuchadnezzar recovered from his sore malady, as Daniel had promised. He came back to his people and to his palace also, a changed man. He lived humbly and piously a few years more, and died in peace. His successor, Evelmerodoch, did not tread in his steps, and, after three years of trouble and difficulty, made way for Belshazzar. It was during the reign of this latter prince, that to Daniel visions were granted, which indicated the rise, in succession, of the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome, and shadowed out the consequences which were to ensue to the world. But perhaps the most striking incident of the period befell on the night which brought to a close at the same instant the life and the reign of the king. The circumstances were these.

Belshazzar is described by historians as one of the greatest tyrants that ever oppressed mankind. His delight was to spread misery around him; and he became, as might be expected, an object of hatred as well as of terror to all his subjects. Frequent conspiracies were formed to destroy him; and the discovery of each of these served but to deepen the

tone of his atrocities. It came to pass on a certain night, when he was indulging in one of his brutal orgies (for he was as polluted as he was cruel), that he commanded the sacred vessels belonging to the Jewish temple to be introduced into the hall, and to be applied to the vilest uses. Suddenly there appeared against the wall the form of a man's hand, which wrote thereon words in characters of fire. There was dismay and anguish in that degraded company. All saw the hand, all gazed upon the burning scroll, but none could read or gather a meaning from it. Daniel was sent for; and while he was yet explaining that "God had taken the kingdom from the tyrant," the mission was fulfilled : a band of conspirators rushed in, and Belshazzar was hewn to pieces.

B. C. 553.

- The successor of Belshazzar was Cyaxares, called in Holy Scripture Darius the Mede. Descended, through an early intermarriage, from the same stock as Belshazzar, he seems to have had some claim, by right of birth, to the Babylonian throne. At all events he won it, and thus reunited in his own person the kingdoms of Babylonia and Media. But being of an indolent disposition, he preferred the comparative quiet of Ecbatana to the pomp and magnificence of Babylon, and did not, therefore, after his coronation, reside much in the latter city. He was greatly attached to Daniel, and behaved kindly to the Jews for the prophet's sake. His reign was, however, very short it terminated B. C. 551, and as he left no son to succeed him, or to hold his immense empire together, a series of divisions and civil wars ensued. At last, in 536, Cyrus, king of Persia, who, besides being the nephew of Darius, had married his daughter, overcame all opposition, and made himself master of

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Babylon; and though he wielded the sceptre only five years, they were years of great moment in the history of the chosen people.

CHAP. XXXIX.

BOOKS OF EZRA, NEHEMIAH, AND ESTHER.

FIRST RETURN FROM BABYLON. ZERUBBABEL, EZRA, MORDECAI, ESTHER, AND NEHEMIAH.

B. C. 536.-SIXTY-NINE years had run their course since the commencement of the Jewish troubles under king Jehoiachin, when Cyrus, moved by compassion for the remnant of an ancient race, issued a proclamation permitting the Israelites to return to their own land, and to dwell therein. It was read with tearful eyes in many a dwelling; and about fifty thousand persons declared their willingness to act upon the suggestion. They chose for their leaders Zerubbabel, grandson of the late king Jehoiachin, and Joshua, the second in descent from him who had been high priest in Nebuchadnezzar's day; and laden with the precious furniture of the temple, as well as furnished with letters of commendation to the several governors of Palestine, they set out upon their journey. Their first business naturally was to provide themselves homes. Old landmarks were sought out, old houses restored, and as much of the soil as time would permit was reduced to a state of cultivation; and by and by, round the ruins of Jerusalem, some of the great national festivals were held. Then followed a collection of means and of money; after which the