amongst the jews, in the disconsolate state in which they were to continue for seventy years; and to establish his character and reputation at court, that he might both in the present and succeeding reigns, be an able protector for his nation.

Nebuchadnezzar had been a terrible scourge in the hand of God upon the surrounding nations, as well as the degenerate people of Israel, for their idolatry and excessive wickedness. He was now made, by the over ruling power of God, an instrument of conveying to them comfort and hope of restoration, if at length (convinced of their folly and ingratitude) they would believe and repent. Daniel, by his great piety, and zeal for God, and his admirable natural talents, seems to have conducted his ministration with so great success, that the jews, though carried into the centre of "the land of graven images," were entirely cured of their former strong propensity to the worship of idols.

Remarkable, as this dream of Nebuchadnezzar was, and notwithstanding the strong

impression of terror, as well as curiosity, which it had made upon the king's mind, yet upon his awaking, he had only a confused idea of something that had given him great uneasiness, but the particular circumstances of the vision were totally obliterated from his recollection. He sent in all haste for his di viners and astrologers, for which pretended sciences Babylon was at that time famous, and demanded of them the repetition of the particulars of his dream, and likewise their interpretation of the will of heaven intimated to him thereby.

It was to no purpose that the wise men reasonably enough remonstrated against a des mand so unusual, and utterly impossible, by their art, to be answered.* None, said they,

It must be candidly confessed that these CONJURORS were far too bonest men for such a profession to confess their incapacity, or own that any thing exceeded their powers. They were mere BUNGLERS to the PAPAL JUGLER for certain. For he has been able to keep all Europe in a deep sleep for many cen turies, and favoured them with dreams into the bargain, and the in terpretation of them too, all adjusted with consummate dexterity, to the augmentation of the papal greatness.

but the author and giver of divine impressions of this nature, can revive the obliterated traces of those mystic characters in prophetic dreams, which none but himself can make. The God whose dwelling is not with flesh, to whom all things are known, only can tell the king his dream. Art may, indeed, presume so far as to fix an interpretation, when the cir cumstances of a dream are previously made known: but what the king requires is not within the limits of our art.

It is not the humour of impatient tyrants to endure disappointment, or to hear reason. The interposition of a few impossibilities is no excuse for the audacity of opposition to their demands. The wise men were ordered to be dragged from his presence, and put to death for their contumacy. This occasioned the introduction of Daniel, to whom it pleased God to communicate, by divine inspiration, the evanescent dream and the interpretation required the former an indisputable pledge for the infallible truth and certainty of the latter.

For it was no sooner recited to the

king by Daniel, than the same power of God which had blotted it out, now retraced upon his memory the perfect and vivid recollection of the lines originally there impressed. And he immediately acknowledged Daniel to be a true prophet of the most high God, and worshipped (with a temporary fit of devotion) the God of Daniel, which alone was able to make known the things that were buried in total oblivion, and had become as though they had never been, as well as the communications respecting futurity, which depended upon

them.

It had pleased God by this means to convey to this proud and imperious monarch, a salutary lesson of the instability of power, and the emptiness, and frailty, and short duration of the highest state of earthly greatness. . A lesson which there was nevertheless occasion afterwards to teach him again, in the lowest and most degrading school of adversity. Having been indulging his fancy in a prospective contemplation of the effect of his mighty conquests, and the prodigious empire

raised, as he fondly conceived, by his own abilities, and destined by the propitious Fates for a duration of endless ages; the substance of the real vision, which succeeded this waking dream of vanity, had been a mystical representation of the four great monarchies, which were in succession to possess the empire of the world. The first of these was the Assyrian or Babylonian empire, at that time subsisting; after this, the Persian, which overthrew that and succeeded in its place; the Grecian, or Macedonian, next in order; and, last of all, the ROMAN, of far greater importance in the eye of prophecy than all the others, as the fortunes of the church were to be involved in its various vicissitudes, almost to the end of the world. For this last was to give rise to a fifth monarchy, of a different description from any of the preceding, which should be engrafted upon it, and subsist along with it for a great length of time, and at length, upon its removal, should be set up in its place, and continue to the consummation of all things.-Ver. 44, "And in the days of these kings shall the God of