the one effect, which is all he seeks from one cause. If consequences follow not foreseen in the original intention, he calls them accidental. But there are no accidents to Deity. All results are harmonies; seeming variety is held in the line of unity; branch, leaf, flower, and fruit, the graceful treeform, its mid-day shadow, the evening whisper of its foliage, and all capacities for use or beauty, are hidden in one seed. The end which we may discover in a fact of history, a truth of revelation, a Divine interposition, may not be its only purport; it may have multiplied bearings which a limited understanding and an exclusive method prevent our seeing. The mysteries of the Cross cannot be reduced to one theological formula. Mira cles are not only evidences of authenticity, but symbols of the various help which salvation brings.

Thus, then, the wonders wrought in Egypt were not only a triumph over royal pride, a confusion of priestly craft, a testimony to all the heathen who knew the land of Pharaoh, but also presented lessons to the church of God, which the Sabbath, the passover, and the perpetual gratitude of faith should never cease to commemorate. At the same time, one most immediate design was to signalize by decisive tokens the segregation of the chosen people, so that they might never forget the obligations and duties attached to their distinguished calling. The great doctrine, which they were to maintain with jealous care, was frequently rehearsed, and its violation denounced with fiercest threatenings. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord......Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The whole economy was anti-idolatrous. They were not to inquire after the names or mysteries of the prevailing idols, lest they should be ensnared in their abominations. They were commissioned to inflict summary destruction upon the Canaanites, not leaving them a dwelling-place in the land. Their altars and groves, their pillars and graven images, were to be destroyed, until not a remnant of the former superstition survived. They were warned that, if they forsook the covenant of God, and partook of heathen sins, the vengeance which had overtaken the Canaanites would fall upon them. By the public reading of the law, by home education, by the recurrences of ordinances of worship and sacrifice, as well as by victory or defeat in battle, and by many miracles of wrath or mercy, they were continually reminded of their vocation and its claims. A hedge of defence was thrown around them, and every advantage secured, that their witness might be majestic, unequivocal, and convincing.

It would have been grievous if this grand arrangement of means had altogether failed. The original revelation given to man had been basely bartered for worthless errors, or otherwise squandered by the ignorant and depraved nations. And what, if this new dispensation of religious truth and power, bearing in it the hope of the Gentile, as well as the trust of Israel, had, in like manner, though defended by special guards against worldliness and sin, been corrupted or made worthless? But this was not permitted. Those intrusted with its advantages came far short of fulfilling its great demands. Their witness was at best feeble and intermittent,

The success of Jonah's mission at Nineveh proves that its inhabitants had some fear of God among them. His disobedient flight was turned to good account; for he told the sailors of Tarshish that he was a Hebrew, and served the one God of heaven and earth. The storm and its cessation, when the lot had fallen upon Jonah, and he was cast into the sea, convinced them of the power of his God :-"The men feared the Lord exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord, and made vows." The prophet's warning gained immediate attention and belief in the great city. The king heard and trembled; a great fast was proclaimed; and God's anger was turned away. "They repented at the preaching of Jonah." The fate of these ancient peoples may be solemn. We look with hearts appalled upon the extermination of the Canaanites; on the entombed grandeur of Nineveh, and the burnt and charred palaces of Babylon; on the sea-swept site of Tyre, and the extinction of whole races of men; and are ready to ask, "Was God indeed merciful to these nations, who knew so little, yet suffered so much?" Jonah, gazing angrily upon the city yet unstricken, gives an answer:-"Therefore I fled unto Tarshish; for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil :" and the reply of the Almighty to the reproach of His wilful servant, weeping over the withered gourd, demonstrates that no visitation of death falls undeserved: "Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle ?"

The captivities of Israel and Judah, though alarming experiments, with their national integrity, and their dispersions through many lands, "would tend to preserve in part, and in part to revive, the knowledge of the once common and universal faith; for we have instances that, in the worst periods of their history, there were, among the captive Israelites, those who adhered with heroic steadfastness to their own religion." "The frequent and public restorations of the Israelites to the principles of the patriarchal religion, after they had lapsed into idolatry, and fallen under the power of other nations, could not fail to make their peculiar opinions known among those with whom they were so often in relations of amity or war, of slavery or dominion." The hand of God was with them in foreign lands. Often they were allowed the free exercise of their own religion; some of them rose to prosperity and eminence; and, in many instances, were not “mindful of that country from whence they came out," when they had opportunity to return. The painfulness of their fate in the great captivity in Babylon, and the Divine interpositions wrought in their behalf, had their designed effect, and after the seventy years they worshipped idols no more. They settled in Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, and other parts of Africa; in the rising colonies of Europe, and in the ancient cities of Asia. God opened the hearts of many rulers towards this people, among whom were

Watson's Theological Institutes, part i., chap. v.

Ahasuerus, the master of Nehemiah, and Alexander the Great. In the Egyptian city called after the latter celebrity, they gathered in great numbers; and there, three hundred years before the birth of Jesus, was written and published the Septuagint version of the Scriptures in Greek, which had become the language of civilization, and of the world's maturing intelligence. Mythology, human cosmogonies, and legendary lies were here confronted with the true genesis of man. The barren teaching and broken traditions of heathenism were contrasted with the stern dogmas of Moses; polytheism and fatalism with the doctrines of the Divine Unity and of human responsibility. The faltering and dubious oracles were eclipsed and silenced by the unmistakable predictions of Jewish prophets, many of which had already been fulfilled in the histories of Assyria, Persia, Judæa, and Greece. This light shone so powerfully, that heathen histories and religions were modified, philosophy rekindled its taper with beams from heaven, and Gentiles, as well as Jews, began, through its teachings, to share the hope of the coming Messiah, who was in very deed "the Desire of all nations." The names of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus, are prominently con. nected with this chapter of providential history. We may only hint at the punishment inflicted upon the boasting Rabshakeh, and the haughty Sennacherib, whose armies were desolated in a single night by an unseen blast from heaven. The defiant iniquity of Babylon and Nineveh demanded punishment; but ere their glory was finally blighted, it was employed as a beacon of warning to the whole heathen world. Their unprecedented conquests, and accession of wealth, territory, and subjects, by which the king of Babylon was inflated with pride even to madness, were parts of the premeditated plan. "O Assyrian, the rod of Mine anger, and the staff in their hand is Mine indignation!" "Howbeit, he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so." Nebuchadnezzar knew nothing of the Divine purposes he was advancing by his various successes, but regarded them as proofs of his own sagacious energy. In due time, however, and by singular means, he was brought to know the truth.* A dream forgotten by himself, and of necessity hidden from the astrologers and magicians of the court, was revealed to the captive Daniel. The confusion of magicians, the rebuke of false gods, the vindication of Jehovah's rights, the agency of captive Israelites before a foreign court, remind us of the ancient controversy with Egypt. Centuries have passed away, but idolatry, necromancy, and imperial despotism exist still. Pharaoh, bloated with pride and stained with selfish infamy, re-appears in Nebuchadnezzar; while popular ignorance, superstition, and bondage attest the abiding hopelessness of human nature. The nation delivered by Moses has held the promised inheritance for several centuries, has seen the zenith of its glory, and is now in adversity. The rest of the world had utterly forsaken, if not forgotten, the God of heaven. In Babylon and Nineveh,

* See Horæ Biblicæ, No. lxxxvi., p. 261 of this Magazine, a paper entitled, "The Stricken King," by the Rev. L. H. Wiseman, which anticipates these observations on the history of the proudest and most magnificent king-conqueror of antiquity.

all elements of warlike passion or skill, all developments of science, and all phases of idolatrous iniquity, existed in perfection. Nowhere would the voice of God be heard with greater effect than in the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and at no period could His testimony be seen by a larger circle of witnesses than when he was on the throne. The God of Moses was the God of Daniel; and He who shamed Pharaoh, humbled Nebuchadnezzar. And how mysteriously the dream of the image connects the world-wide empire of Babylon with the unlimited and triumphant rule “of our Lord, and of His Christ!" Though the Gentiles had cast off the government of Jehovah, and the Jews had proved themselves unworthy of their high vocation, yet the onward purpose does not halt; the ascendency of Babylon, and the subjection of Judæa, were features of the progress; and, while the human power would loftily lift itself for ages to come, its glittering head of gold was soon to fall, its gigantic frame to be stricken and scattered; and in following times the stone rolling from the mountain wears down into dust the image fragments, reduces to its own purposes the elements of national life, and, on the crumbling, worn-out systems of man, that kingdom takes its stand which the last age shall not see overthrown.

Would that the spirit of Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego, had been more characteristic of their nation! How different then might have been the fate of the Jew and of the Gentile also! The colossal image of gold is set up, and a command is given to the satraps of the many-peopled empire to assemble at its consecration. On the appointed day the crowding sycophants gather round the idol; and, as the music-signal floats over them, with one consent, forgetful, under the claims of present well-being, of their former faith or prejudice, "all the people, the nations, and the languages, fall down and worship." But prosperity had not turned either the heads or the hearts of the three companions of Daniel. Heedless of the wrath of the king or of his dismal threat, they steadfastly refused to honour his idol. He knew their reasons, and perhaps approved them, but his honour was too deeply involved for him to acknowledge the truth; and, with indescribable fury, he consigned them to the seven-times heated furnace. If they had perished, they had deserved the martyr's memory; but a glory, more sublime, if possible, at least less common, awaited them. Hurled with the violence of strong men, they "fell down bound in the midst of the burning fiery furnace;" but, to the amazement of the raging monarch, they rose up again in the middle of the scorching fire, and walked unhurt; while a fourth figure, pronounced by the king to be supernatural, trod the floor of flame with them. Scarcely staying to express his astonishment, the impulsive tyrant came to the door of the furnace, and summoned the saved men, whom he now recognised to be "servants of the Most High God," to come out of the fire. They did so; but the "fourth" did not appear. Angels that stand with us in the day of trial are not seen when the contest is past. This deliverance was a public, indisputable fact. "The princes, governors, and captains, and the king's counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair

of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them." Nebuchadnezzar had brought these functionaries from every part of his vast dominion, to witness the splendours of his royalty, and to do homage to his tyrant will; but the "King of kings" made that multitude His own, and caused them to see His glory, and to know His

name.

The fulfilment of the last dream involved the humiliation of the monarch himself. "A watcher and a holy one came down from heaven." At his word the great tree was hewn down; its branches stripped; its leaves and fruit scattered. The minions who had sheltered under its shadow, or lodged in its sumptuous branches, fled. "A beast's heart is given unto him." Yet "the stump of his roots" is left in the earth, that bis glory might flourish again. All this could man bear and live. Only one fate can be worse, and that is to dwell among fiends, and to be changed into the same image. But it was better to be a brute for seven years than to be a lost spirit for ever. At the end of the time the punishment ceased, reason returned to its forsaken haunts, and the chastened monarch re-ascended the throne; for the great demonstration was accomplished. Babylon, the mighty, corrupt, and idolatrous; whose crimes were as gigantic as its architecture and military feats; that enslaved and cruelly entreated other nations; now knew that there is a God who "ruleth in the kingdom of men." Many nations were gathered under its yoke, and even Israel and Judah were brought as captives to the great theatre of special providential operation, that they might be witnesses of the power of God. By signs and wonders the pride of the court was abased. "He frustrated the tokens of the liars, and made the diviners mad:" the religion of the Jew was exalted before the assembled peoples, and from the mightiest potentate of the earth was wrung the most unreserved confession of the power and prerogatives of Jehovah.*

The precise effect of these Divine interventions upon individuals and communities is not recorded, but their influence for good must have been immense. Their adaptation to excite inquiry is evident. The royal proclamations must have carried into many lands the name and fame of the God of Israel. Even if the impression were temporary, and if idolatry again became rampant, the testimony against it had been given, and the Divine justice in succeeding dispensations cleared from imputation. The miracles of Jesus did not convince the Jews, but were a sufficient reason for their condemnation. The Gospel is preached to some only "as a witness against them." When Daniel came before Belshazzar, alarmed at the finger-writing on the wall, he rehearsed the history of the king's grandfather, and charged home upon the trembling monarch the guilt of rejecting these lessons; for, said he, "Thou, his son Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this." His sins were aggravated by the knowledge which, if followed, would have precluded them and their

The history of this remarkable man proceeds no farther; but it is probable that he died in the faith avowed at his restoration.