And all their frame, in one tremendous crush,

With trailing flames to earth its arches bend;

As when the vine's sere foliage falling plays,

And ripe figs drop in autumn's lonely days,

So shall those countless worlds of light descend.

5 The purple of their crime has fill'd the sky,

And stain'd it with a deep, a guilty die;

And there Jehovah bathes his burning sword:

High o'er Chaldea's land that falchion waves,

A people doom'd and destin'd to their
graves;

It falls-urg'd onward by the avenging
Lord.

6 It falls and every soul a victim dies; In mangled heaps their welt ring corpses rise,

The King, the Prince, the servant, all are gone:

That sword, with slaughter wearied,. drips in gore;

With clots and hair and brains bespatter'd o'er,

It rests-the work of vengeance now is done.

Scar'd by the terrors of the Conqueror's eye,

Like sheep and goats, a timorous flock, they fly;

The sword behind them thirsts and
flashes still:

It longs on all their carcases to feed,
And as the palpitating victims bleed,
From the warm stream of life to drink
its fill.

7--8 Armies and peasants, camps and cities, all

Doom'd to one spreading desolation, fall,

Like bulls and lambs before the lion driven :

The soak'd earth steams a hot and feverish cloud,

And gore-fed weeds their crumbling bones inshroud

Come near, and see the wrath of injur'd heaven.

Their captains; all their pomp and pow'r is gone:

The courts and chambers to the Arab's tread,

Ring, like the vaulted caverns of the dead,

And Silence sits upon the Monarch's throne.

And there the Pelican shall build her nest,

And feed her young ones from her bleeding breast,

And by the Bittern's boom the hush be broke;

The Owlet sit and marn in every tower,

And when the day is dark, and tempests low'r,

The Raven in sepulchral omens croak.

On every tumbling wall, and mould'ring shrine

The Lord, the unerring Lord, shall stretch his line,

And in eternal ruin thou shalt lie; Sure, as the plummet settles to the ground,

Thy courts shall echo, with an empty sound,

To the scar'd wanderer, as he hurries by.

13 And thorns shall choke the palace of her kings,

The bramble and the nettle twine their stings,

And mantle o'er her bulwarks and her walls;

The lurking lizard there shall dwell and breed,

The Ostrich on the tall, rank grass shall feed,

That rustling, waves in her deserted halls.

14 In the dark watches of the lonely night, In one infernal chorus shall unite The Wild-cat's yell, the gaunt Hyena's howl;

The Baboon to his fellow Baboon cry, The wild blast of the desart whistling by

Ring with the harpy screaming of the Owl.

15 There shall the viper nestle, and shall lay

Her filmy eggs, and there her young shall play;

There she shall coil, and watch beneath the shade,

And on the traveller darting, fix her sting;

And there the vulture fold his sooty wing,

Beside his mate in sordid slumber laid.

16-17 Go, read the fatal volume of the Lord;

Go, listen to his sure, unerring word: Thou, Babylon, shalt rise in glory—ne

ver;

But I will sweep my besom over thee, And all thy pomp shall fade, and thou shalt be

A desolation and a hiss forever.

P.

The imagery throughout, has been adapted as much as possible to Babylon. Wherever a variation from the common translation has been made, the notes to Michaelis Hebrew Bible have been followed.

Review of the Lives of Wesley and Whitefield.

(Concluded from page 489.)

While Wesley and Whitefield, now in the prime of their lives, were preaching with such unexampled success and popularity in London and Bristol, a phenomenon occurred among the Methodists, which turned the attention of the whole community upon them, and which, while it served to increase the opposition of such as were before opposed, gave unbounded confidence to themselves, who regarded it as a special testimony of God to the truth and justice of their cause. It appeared first under the preaching of Wesley in London, and may best be recorded in his own words. He is describing the effects of his preaching in Bristol, whither he had gone, at the request of Whitefield from London.

"One day, after Wesley had expounded the fourth chapter of Acts, the persons present called upon God to confirm his word.' 'Immediately,' he adds, 'one that stood by, to our no small surprise,

Publications.

cried out aloud, with the utmost vehemence, even as in the agonies of death but we continued in prayer, till a new song was put into her mouth, a thanksgiving unto our God. Soon after, two other persons (well known in this place, as labour ing to live in all good conscience towards all men) were seized with strong pain, and constrained to roar for the disquietness of their heart. But it was not long before they likewise burst forth into praise to God their Saviour. The last, who called upon God as out of the belly of hell, was a stranger in Bristol; and in a short space be alSo was overwhelmed with joy and love, knowing that God had healed his backsl dings. So many living witnesses bath God given, that his hand is still stretched out to heal, and that signs and wonders ar even now wrought by his holy child Jesus At another place, a young man was saddenly seized with a violent trembling all over, and in a few minutes, the sorrows of ground; but we ceased not calling upon his heart being enlarged, sunk down to the God, till he raised him up full of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Preaching at Newgate, Wesley was led insensibly, be says, and without any previous design, to declare strongly and explicitly that God wil leth all men to be saved, and to pray that if this were not the truth of God, he would not suffer the blind to go out of the way. but if it were, that he would bear witness to his word. 'Immediately one, and an

1

other, and another, sunk to the earth; they dropt on every side as thunderstruck.' In the evening I was again prest in spirit to declare that Christ gave himself a ransom for all. And almost before we called upon him to set his seal, he answered. One was so wounded by the sword of the Spirit, that you would have imagined she could not live a moment. But immediately bis abundant kindness was showed, and she loudly sang of his righteousness.' -Vol. 1. p. 122

"While,' he says, 'I was earnestly inviting all men to enter into the Holiest by this new and living way, many of those that heard began to call upon God with strong cries and tears; some sunk down, and there remained no strength in them; others exceedingly trembled and quaked; some were torn with a kind of convulsive motion in every part of their bodies, and ! that so violently, that often four or five persons could not hold one of them. I have seen many hysterical and epileptic fits, but none of them were like these in

many respects. I immediately prayed

that God would not suffer those who were weak to be offended; but one woman was greatly, being sure they might help it if they would, no one should persuade her to the contrary; and she was got three or four yards, when she also dropt down in as violent an agony as the rest. Twenty-six of those who had been thus affected, (most of whom, during the prayers which were made for them, were in a moment filled with peace and joy,) promised to call upon me the next day; but only eighteen came, by talking closely with whom I found reason to believe that some of them had gone home to their houses justified; the rest seemed to be patiently waiting for it."-Vol. I. p. 134.

It is not surprising, that when facts like these were witnessed, for the first time, they should make a deep impression upon such a mind as Wesley's, and still more upon weaker minds, into whom he had infused his own spirit and sentiments. They considered them as undoubted marks of Divine power, and as "outward signs" not to be questioned, of a work grace wrought upon the heart. It is remarkable, however, that even then Whitefield doubted concerning them.

of

"These effects had never as yet been produced under Whitefield's preaching, though they now followed Wesley whereever he went; and it appears that Whitefield, who came once more to Bristol at this time, considered them as doubtful in

dications, at least, and by no means to be encouraged. But no sooner had he begun to preach among a congregation, among whom the outward signs' bad previously taken place, and who therefore were prepared for the affection by their state of mind, as fear, in times of pestilence, predisposes the body for receiving the conta gion, than four persons were seized almost at the same moment, and sunk down close

by him. This was a great triumph to Wesley. From this time,' he says, 'I trust we shall all suffer God to carry on his own work, in the way that pleaseth him.' Whitefield, however seems rather to have been perplexed by the occurrence than satisfied; for he makes no mention of it in his journal, which assuredly he would have done, had he been convinced with Wesley, that these fits were the immediate work of God."-Vol. I. pp. 138-139.

Even Charles Wesley, who had the greatest respect for his brother, and followed him, in almost every thing, with a devoted attachment and confidence, but who was less inclined to enthusiasm than John, judged in this instance more correctly.

"Charles was not so credulous in such cases as his brother. That the body would sometimes partake of the violent emotions of the soul, and sink under the passion which the preacher had raised, he could not doubt, because it often occurred under his own eyes to persons whose sincerity could not be impeached; but he saw that this was not always involuntary; he frequently attempted to check it with success, and he sometimes detected imposition. A woman at Kingswood was distorting herself, and crying out loudly while he preached; she became quite calm when he assured her that he did not think the better of her for it. A girl at Bristol being questioned judiciously concerning her frequent fits and trances, confessed that what she did was for the purpose of making Mr. Wesley take notice of her.

To-day,' he says in his journal, one came who was pleased to fall into a fit for my entertainment. He beat himself heartily: I thought it a pity to hinder him; so instead of singing over him as had often been done, we left him to recover at his leisure. A girl, as she began her cry, I ordered to be carried out: her convul

sions were so violent as to take away the use of her limbs till they laid her without at the door, and left her; then she immediately found her legs, and walked off. Some very unstill sisters, who always took care to stand near me, and tried who could cry loudest, since I have had them remov. ed out of my sight, have been as quiet as lambs. The first night I preached here,

balf my words were lost through the noise of their outcries last night, before I began, I gave public notice, that whosoever eried so as to drown my voice, should, without any man's burting or judging them, be gently carried to the furtherest corner of the room: but my porters had no employment the whole night."'-Vol. 1. pp. 148-149.

Those who live in the present age when such phenomena have long been common, and who have seen what is the evidence, in after life, of a change of heart, given by many who have been the subjects of these bodily exercises, have better means of forming a cool, correct judgment of their value, than those had among whom they first occurred. We do not believe that such appearances are always the effect of fraud, nor of the special agency of the Almighty; but sometimes the effect of the agitations of the mind upon the body, and to be explained upon the common principles of philosophy. We agree therefore on the whole with the opinion expressed by Mr. Southey, in the following passage.

"A powerful doctrine preached with passionate sincerity, with fervid zeal, and with vehement eloquence, produced a powerful effect upon weak minds, ardent feelings, and disordered fancies. There are passions which are as infectious as the plague, and fear itself is not more so than fanaticism. When once these bodily affections were declared to be the work of grace, the process of regeneration, the

throes of the new birth, a free license was proclaimed for every kind of extravagance. And when the preacher, instead of exhort

ing his auditors to commune with their

own hearts, and in their chambers, and be

still, encouraged them to throw off all re.

straint, and abandon themselves before the congregation to these mixed sensations of mind and body, the consequences were what might be anticipated. Vol. I. p.

123.

Even Wesley himself, as he had greater experience, was led to regard bodily exercises very differently from what he had done at first.

"In later years Wesley neither expected paroxysms of this kind, nor encouraged them; nor are his followers in England forward to excite or boast of them. They maintain, however, that these early cases

were the operation of grace, and attempt to prove it by the reality of the symptoms, and the permanence of the religious impressions which were produced. Perhaps,' says Wesley,' it might be because of the hardness of our hearts, unready to receive any thing, unless we see it with our eyes and hear it with our ears, that God in tender condescension to our weakness suffered so many outward signs at the very time when he wrought the inward change, to be continually seen and beard among us. But although they saw signs and wonders, for so I must term them, yet many would not believe.'"-Vol. I. p. 124.

It is much to be regretted that Wesley did not form a correct opinion of the real nature and importance of these bodily affections, or had not the candour fully to express such an opinion if he did form it. Such an avowal would have had a great and salutary effect on his followers, who, in this country, at least, still regard them precisely as he did when they first appeared; and endeavour to make the same use of them to promote their cause, even after the most zealous Methodists in England, it is said, have ceased either to expect, or encourage, or desire them. Such an avowal however, would have been, in no small degree, mortifying, after all that he had published on the subject, and might perhaps have operated unfavourably on the progress of Methodism, to which Wesley was so ardently devoted, that he could cheerfully sacrifice every thing to it,—unless it were' a good conscience' ;—and even in regard to that, he could hardly view any thing as evil, which manifestly promoted the good cause. Hence he has been accused of a degree of disingenuousness in arguing in favour of those" outward symptoms," after he is suspected to have doubted, Many years after the events recorded at least, concerning them himself. above, he says he found a remarkable difference in the manner of the work."

"None now were in trances, none cried out, none fell down, or were convulsed. Only some trembled exceedingly; a low murmur was heard, and many were refreshed with the multitude of peace.' The disease had spent itself, and the reflections