Isaiah chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII.

The Burden of Babylon.

THE burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the Son of Amoz did see.” So run the first words of this thirteenth chapter.

The introduction of Babylon immediately after the vision of the glorious and final triumph of Zion, is a great and effective contrast. Zion and Babylon are thus before us throughout the Scriptures ; even the closing visions of the Book of Reve­lation giving us the picture of the Lamb upon Mount Zion, surrounded by the hundred and forty-four thousand, and immediately afterwards that of the downfall and utter obliteration of “ Babylon the Great.” Rightly to understand and appreciate this divinely expressed relation of things, we must have clear percep­tions of the beginning and characteristics of Babylon, as repre­senting the head and front of human antagonism to the divine purpose—which human antagonism, however, God has used for the furtherance of that purpose, making even the wrath of man to praise Him, as the prophets declare.

The prophets have much to say concerning Babylon, and it will be convenient to consider their sayings collectively ; but first we look back to the beginning, and notice what the book of Genesis has to tell us of the origin and characteristics of Babylon and the Land of Shinar. All human history, from the Garden of Eden to this day, is but an exhibition of the great strife going on between the two seeds, by reason of the enmity which God put between them at the beginning (Gen. iii. 15). The seed of the woman versus the seed of the serpent has been the order of the day from that time to the present.

As if to preserve the memory of this, the serpent figures in the monumental inscriptions of the most ancient times. The seed of the serpent deified the serpent. Among the people of God the emblem had a place, but it was the place of cruci­fixion, first represented in Israel by the serpent of brass hung on a pole.

The first phase of the struggle between the two seeds was closed by the deluge, and a new departure was divinely made with the family of Noah. A generation or two from Noah brings us to the founding of Babylon. Noah, Ham, Cush, Nimrod—that is the line of descent; and in Gen. x. 8, we read: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh in the Land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur and builded Nineveh,” etc. The eleventh chapter of Genesis opens with the account of the Tower of Babel, and closes with the exodus of Abram from Ur of the Chaldees.

“A plain in the land of Shinar ” was the site selected by the remnant of human kind, on which to erect the metropolis of the world, and the colossal tower that should be seen from afar as the landmark of their capital. The ruined monuments of this enterprise are still visible, and a not less wonderful monument is the confusion of tongues that exists to this day as the consequence of what God did at Babel some two thou­sand years before Christ. The design of the Babel builders was centralization, and the establishment of a great dominion for their own and their posterity’s gratification, in apostasy from “ the way ” of God. The design of God, in opposition to this, was that the seed of the serpent should be employed in subduing the earth, and getting it ready to its utmost bounds for transfer to the seed of the woman (Christ and his people), in whose hands God proposed to establish His everlast­ing kingdom, for their salvation, and the blessing of all nations.

The ministry of the prophets is throughout subordinate to the details of this mighty work, that has its roots in the exodus of Abram from the land of the Chaldees, and its final fruit in the blessing of all nations in Abraham’s seed. The necessary scattering of the concentrating human forces in the land of Shinar was accomplished by the marvel of confounding human speech, and “ Babel,” or its Greek version, Babylon, (that is Confusion), is the memorial of it to this day. “So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth :    and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there con­found (balal) the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth ” (Gen. xi. 9). On this verb, balal, Davidson says it means (1) to suffuse, (2) to mingle, mix, confound, as Hos. vii. 8. Of Babel, he says :  “Babel (for Balbel, confusion), Babvlon; also used for the Kingdom of Babylon.’’ We notice this because of learned attempts to substitute another derivation and meaning in opposition to the explicit statement of Genesis xi. Babylon then, from its very foundation, comes before us as the symbol of antagonism, apostasy, confusion and scattering.

A few traces in the Book of Genesis are enlightening con­cerning the relation of Babylon and its peoples to the people of God. After the account of the migration of Abram, the next glimpse we get is in Gen. xiv., where Amraphel, King of Shinar, is among the kings who, under the leadership of Chedorlaomer, made successful war upon the cities of the plain, and carried off Lot among the captives. Abraham, with a handful of armed servants, pursued the returning army and defeated them, recapturing Lot and his family, and returning in peace to be blessed at Salem by Melchizedek, and to give him tithes of all.

After these things, there arose for a moment the question of the suitability or otherwise of a Chaldean matrimonial alliance for Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen. xxiv. 4). The faithful Eliezer contemplated the possibility of failure in his mission to Haran to procure a wife for his master’s son. “ Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land ; must I needs bring thy son again unto (Ur of the Chaldees) the land from whence thou earnest ? And Abraham said unto him, Beware that thou bring not my son thither again.” And he absolved his servant from all responsibility if the woman of his search should refuse to come; but under no circumstances was Isaac to be brought back to Chaldea. As to Abraham, “ He looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

 If they had been mindful of that country whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is an heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he is preparing for them a city ” (Heb. xi.). This is Paul’s comment on the matter. We must not be tempted aside to the application of these things, beyond the passing remark that Chaldean or Babylonian matrimonial alliances are still fenced with a " Beware ” to the faithful sons and daughters of Abraham.

In the Scriptures we lose sight of Babylon from the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, until much later times—some eight or nine hundred years afterwards. Some outlines of its history it will be profitable to pass under review. The fol­lowing is extracted from the article “ Babylon,” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Babylon (the modern Hillah) is the. Greek form of Babel or Babili, “ the gate of God ” (or, as it is sometimes written, “ of the gods ”). It is doubtful whether the god meant was Merodach or Anu, Merodach being the patron divinity of Babylon in the Semitic period, and Su-Anna, “ the valley of Anu ” (Annammelech), being one of its oldest names Babylon figures in the antediluvian history of Berosus, the first of his mythical monarchs, Alorus, being a native of it. The national epic of the Babylonians, which grouped various old myths around the adventures of a solar hero, knows of four cities only—Babylon, Erech, Nipur (Niffer), or Calneh, and Surripac or Larankha ; and according to Gen. x., Babylon was a member of the tetrapolis of Shinar or Sumir, where the Semite invaders of the Accadians first obtained permanent settlement and power. It seems, however, to have ranked below its three sister cities, among which Erech took the lead until conquered bv the Accadian sovereigns of Ur.

It was not until the conquest of Khammuragas that Babylon became a capital, a position, however, which it never afterwards lost, except during the Assyrian supremacy. But it suffered severely at the hands of its northern neighbours Tiglath Adar drove the Cassi from it, and established an Assyrian dynasty in their place, and after being captured by Tiglath Pileser I. (1130 b.c.) and Shalmaneser (851 b.c.), it became a dependency of the Assyrian Empire in the reign of the son of the latter. The decline of the first Assyrian Empire restored Babylon to independence ; but it had soon afterwards to submit to the Caldai, and from the reign of Tiglath Pileser II. to the death of Assur-bani-pal, it was a mere provincial town of Assyria, breaking now and then into fierce revolt under the leadership of the Caldai and repeatedly taken and plundered by Sargon, Sennacherib, and Assur-bani-pal. Sennacherib indeed rased the city to its foundations. After the defeat of Suzub (690 b.c.) he tells us that he “ pulled down, dug up, and burned with fire the town and the palaces, root and branch, destroyed the fortress and the double wall, the temples of the gods and the towers of brick, and threw the rubbish into the Araxes,” the river of Babylon.

It was under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors that Babylon became the huge metropolis whose ruins still astonish the traveller, and which was described by Greek writers. Of the older city we can know but little. The Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and his father, Nabopolassar, must have suffered when taken by Cyrus, but two sieges in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, and one in the reign of Xerxes, brought about the destruction of the defences, while the monotheistic rule of Persia allowed the temples to fall into decay. Alexander found the great temple of Bel a shapeless ruin, and the rise of Selucia in its neighbourhood drew away its population and completed its material decay. The buildings became a quarry, first for Selucia, and then for Ctesiphon, A1 Modain, Baghdad, Kafa, Kerbelah, Hillah, and other towns, and our only cause for wonder is that the remains of the great capital of Babylonia are still so extensive.

Our two chief authorities for the ancient topography of the city are Herodotus and Ctesias, and though both were eye­witnesses, their statements differ considerably. The city was built, we are told, on both sides of the river in the form of a square, and enclosed within a double row of high walls, Ctesias adds a third wall, but the inscriptions refer only to two, the inner enciente; called Imgur-Bel, and its salkhu, or outwork ; called Nimitti-Bel. Ctesias makes the outmost wall 360 stades (42 miles) in circumference, while according to Herodotus, it measured 480 stades (56 miles), which would include an area of about 200 square miles! Pliny follows Herodotus in his figures, but Strabo with his 385 stades, Qu. Curtius with his 368 stades, and Clitarchus with 365 stades, agree sufficiently closely with Ctesias. Even the estimate of Ctesias, however, would make Babylon cover a space of about 100 square miles, nearly five times the size of London.

Such an area could not have been occupied by houses, especially as these were three or four stories high. Indeed Q. Curtius asserts that even in the most flourishing times nine- tenths of it consisted of gardens, parks, fields, and orchards. According to Herodotus the height of the walls was about 335 feet, and their width 85 feet ; while Ctesias makes the height about 300 feet. Later writers give smaller dimensions, but it is clear they have merely tried to soften down the estimates of Herodotus (and Ctesias) ; and we seem bound, therefore, to accept the statement of the two oldest eye-witnesses, astonishing as it is.

But we may remember that the ruined wall of Nineveh was 150 feet high even in Xenophon’s time, while the spaces between the 250 towers irregularly disposed along the wall of Babylon were broad enough to allow a four-horse chariot to turn. The clay dug from the moat had served for the bricks of the wall, which was pierced with 100 gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and posts. The two inner enclosures were faced with coloured brick, and represented hunting scenes. Two other walls ran along the banks of the Euphrates and the quays with which it was lined, each containing twenty-five gates, which answered to the number of the streets they led into. Ferry-boats plied between the landing places of the gates ; and a movable drawbridge (30 feet broad), supported on stone piers, joined the two parts of the city together.

At each end of the bridge was a palace ; the great palace of Nebuchadnezzar on the eastern side (the modern Kasr), which Herodotus incorrectly transfers to the western bank, being the most magnificent of the two. It was surrounded, according to Diodorus, by three walls, the outermost being 60 stades (7 miles) in circuit. The inner walls were decorated with hunt­ing scenes painted on brick, fragments of which have been discovered by modern explorers Two of its gates were of brass, and had to opened and shut by a machine; and Mr. Smith has found traces of two libraries among its ruins. The palace, called “ The Admiration of Mankind,” by Nebuchad­nezzar, and commenced by Nabopolassar, overlooked the Ai-ipur- sabu, the great reservoir of Babylon, and stretched from this to the Euphrates on the one side, and from the Imgur-Bel (or inner wall) to the Libil (or eastern canal) on the other Within its precincts rose the Hanging Gardens, consisting of a garden of trees and flowers on the topmost of a series of arches at least 75 feet high, and built in the form of a square, each side measuring 400 Greek feet. Water was raised from the Euphrates by means, it is said, of a screw. . . The lesser palace in the western division of the city belonged to Neriglissar, and contained a number of bronze statues.

The most remarkable edifice in Babylon was the temple of ^1, now marked by the Babil, on the north-east, as Professor Rawlinson has shown. It was a pyramid of eight square stages, the basement stage being over 200 yards each way. A winding ascert led to the summit, and the shrine in which stood a golden image of Bel, 40 feet high, two other statues of gold, a golden table 40 feet long and 15 feet broad, and many other colossal objects of the same precious material. At the base of the tower was a second shrine, with a table and two images of solid gold. Two altars were placed outside the chapel, the smaller one being of the same metal.

A similar temple represented by the modern Birs Nimrud stood at Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon. It consisted of seven stages, each ornamented with one of the seven planetary colours, the azure tint of the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, being produced by the vitrifaction of the bricks after the stage had been completed. The lowest stage was a square 272 feet each way, its four corners exactly corresponding to the four cardinal points as in all other Chaldean temples, and each of the square stages raised upon it being placed nearer the south-western than the north-western edge of the underlying one. It had been partly built by an ancient monarch, but, after lying unfinished for many years, like the Biblical tower of Babel, was finally completed by Nebuchadnezzar.

From this description, we may conjure up some kind of vision of the surprising magnificence and beauty of Babylon in the zenith of its glory about a century after the date of Isaiah’s prophecy, and can the better appreciate many of the details in the prophetic allusions to the judgments by which at length it should fall.

The Word of God Against Babylon. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk and Daniel have much to say concerning “ the burden of Babylon.” All foretell her utter extinction and the ultimate and everlasting triumph of Israel.

Isaiah is the earliest, and prophesied before Babylon arose to the fulness of its beauty and power. Like the other prophets, he pronounces destruction against the things most boasted of and delighted in, in Babylon. Her enormous walls, her brazen gates, her beautiful river, her glorious but idolatrous worship, her astrology, her magnificence and pride of every sort were doomed to utter obliteration, incredible as it must have appeared in the day when the prophet spoke.

The chapter (xiii.) opens with a call to the enemies of Babylon. “ Lift ye up a banner upon the high mountain, exalt the voice unto them, shake the hand that they may go into the gates of the nobles.” The language throughout is highly figurative ; but with sufficient literal allusions interspersed to guide the discerning enquirer aright. Literally Babylon was built on a plain. Politically the Babylonian power was “ a high mountain.” The figure is com­mon, and is unmistakable in Jer. li. 25 : “ Behold I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyed all the earth, and I will stretch out mine hand upon thee and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.” But the rival dominion—the kingdom of God in Israel—is to become a great mountain and fill the whole earth (Dan. ii. 35).

The executors of God’s judgment on Babylon are alluded to in verse 3, and openly specified in verse 17. “I have commanded my sanctified ones, I have also called my mighty ones for mine anger, even them that rejoice in my highness.” We might from this have expected quite another instrumentality than that which is specified further on—“ I will stir up the Medes against them.” God has various instruments and weapons for different stages and phases of His work—idolatrous warriors “ sanctified ” for judgment on others of like kind, and sons of God “ sanctified ” for inheritance of the Kingdom of God and the subjugation of the nations to Him. It is remarkable that even Nebuchadnezzar and Christ himself bear the same designation, “ my servant,” but the extreme difference of the service in each case needs no emphasising.

The fate of Babylon at the hands of the Medes and Persians is a typical illustration of the coming fate of the kingdoms of men as a whole at the hands of the Sons of God, and this fact must not be lost sight of in reading the prophecies, or much instruction will be missed and many allusions become quite obscure. It is difficult for us with our brief and limited lives to rise up to anything like a comprehension of the divine style which regards a thousand years as one day, and sees the end from the beginning ; but if we receive the prophets as a divinely- given “ light that shineth in a dark place,” we shall use our best endeavours in that direction, and shall be rewarded with some measure of success.

The Assyrian had been described as “ the rod of God’s anger,” His " axe ” and “ saw ” to chastise and hew down Israel. The Medes and Persians are now before us as His “ weapons ” to do the like for the Babylonian successor to the Assyrian Power. “ They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord and the weapons of his indig­nation to destroy the whole land.” If we can thus regard so apparently natural a matter as the taking of Babylon by Cyrus, we shall have no difficulty in extending the principle, and in like manner, agreeably with Christ’s -words, accounting the Roman overthrow of Jerusalem and the Jewish State as the act of God, who " sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burnt up their city.” Further, we can extend the view from the time of Christ’s departure to our own time, by reason of the movements depicted in the book of Revelation, until we come to the impressive evolutions now before us of “ the kings of the earth, and of the whole habitable,” preparing for “ the war of the great day of God Almighty,” in which “ Great Babylon ” comes into remembrance before God for wrath and destruction. “ From a far country, from the end of heaven,” of course literally imports no more than from the extremities of the Babylonian World, which was a very much smaller habitation than its latter-day antitype. The gradual extension of “ the ends of the earth ” from the original eastern central dominion must be borne in mind that the true scope of the prophecies may be rightly perceived.

How often in the prophets we read of “ the day of the Lord ” upon this nation or that. In this place it is the day of the Lord as a destruction from the Almighty upon Babylon. Previously the prophet had spoken of “ the day of the Lord of Hosts,” in which, in “ the latter-days,” all human pride should be abased and God alone exalted. He had spoken of “ the day of Midian ” as the likeness of the coming time when Israel’s yoke should be broken by Christ. In the detailed characteristics of this day of the Lord on Babylon, and in the history of the judgment it brought, we may form an accurate estimate of what is still before the world. “ Behold the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate : and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.”

The Ground of Babylon’s Condemnation.

“The sinners thereof ” ? Were the Babylonians accounted sinners before God ? What was their sin ? It is defined in v. 11, as in many other places. “ I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible.” Babylon arrogantly opposed God, and desolated His land and city. Though used as His weapon, this did not excuse her blasphemous attitude towards Him. Belshazzar’s feast was a deliberate insult that was very promptly avenged. Bel and Nebo, to whose imagined strength Babylon imputed her victories, were ridiculous rivals of Jehovah, upon whom He pronounced judgment. Her intoxicating doctrine obscured the truth of God, and made nations mad. Therefore she was destroyed

There are sinners and sinners. In proportion to the closeness of relationship to the purpose of God is the divine estimation of sin and its punishment. Israel is the ever-living example of the principle. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth : therefore I will punish you for all your

iniquities ” (Amos iii. 2). Israel’s history is a long and terrible exhibition of the scope of this brief enunciation. Some have made the mistake of supposing that men cannot be rightly accounted sinners unless they be directly related to the Gospel. Such must needs ignore the testimony which speaks otherwise. “ The men of Sodom were wicked, and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.” The nations of Canaan defiled the land by their “ iniquity ” and were therefore by the land “ spued out.” The nations that afterwards surrounded Israel were by God held accountable for their attitude to His nation and land. “ Sinners of the Gentiles ” is a phrase the apostle uses in Gal. ii. 15, and he says elsewhere (Rom. v. 8), “ While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And as Christ himself said, “ There is joy in the presence of the angels of heaven over one sinner that repenteth,”

National sin brings national punishment, and when directly wrought against God is purged by judgment as direct. So individual sin may be of the order of blindness and ignorance that only consigns the sinner to the common tomb ; or of the nature of witting sin against the light that merits and will meet “ sorer punishment " than death, ending in the “ second death.” This is both scriptural and reasonable, and is in harmony with the prophetic pictures, which always exhibit the nations as obnoxious to the divine judg­ments according to their lights.

The language of the tenth verse that amplifies the statement that the Lord will destroy the sinners of Babylon out of her is highly figurative, and runs thus : “ For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light : the sun shall be darkened in his going forth and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.” The Babylonian heavens are of course in question ; the royalty and the priesthood corresponding to the sun and to the moon according to the analogy of Bible figures elsewhere, beginning we might say with the beautiful symbolism of Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon and eleven stars making obeisance to him.

Then again sun and moon worship was the order of the day in Babylon from the earliest times, “ Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the river in old time, even Terah the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor ; and they served other gods.” So said Joshua to Israel (Josh. xxiv. 2). Those other gods are revealed to us in some measure by seals and monuments that have come to light of recent years. Their engraved legends have at length been deciphered, and discovered to relate to the worship of the Moon-God, and the Sun-God, and the goddess Ishtar (Ashtoreth), who is described as the “ Daughter of the Moon-God,” and is the “ Great Oriental Venus,” whose worship as “ The Queen of Heaven ” is rebuked by Ezekiel and Jere­miah. Accurate pictorial reproductions of these monuments, etc., now deposited in various museums, are available in published form, and they show that the rulers of Babylon, the Sun, Moon, and Stars of her “ heaven,” conceived themselves to be the special favourites of these gods, upon whom, as upon the gods of Egypt, the God of Israel was about to execute judgment.

Cyrus : the Type of Christ.

The chief instrument in this judgment is thus alluded to (v. 12):“I will make a man more precious than fine gold ; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.” This was Cyrus, who, while in a certain way precious in himself, though a Pagan, was but a type of the much more precious “ man Christ Jesus ” the Heir of all things. Cyrus was so named by God in the prophecy of Isaiah. “ The Lord . . . saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd ’ (xliv. 28), “ Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden ... I have even called thee by name: I have surnamed thee though thou hast not known me ” (xlv. 1-4)

Some have used these sayings to prove the later origin of this part of Isaiah’s prophecy—even in the days of Cyrus himself. Isaiah, of course, was dead long before that. This has made them invent “ Isaiah the second,” and there is no need to stop at the “ second ” when once the reins are given to the imaginative speculations of the so-called “ higher criticism.” The principle upon which they work is expressed by God in Psa. 1. 21 :  “ Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.” Upon this mistaken principle, denying to God the ability to see the end from the beginning, they would have likewise to mutilate the words of the prophet who spoke beforehand of Josiah, (1 Kings xiii.) and reject the word of God concerning Jeremiah . “ Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee: and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations ” (Jer i. 5). Indeed, with Christ in view as the Coming One in all the Old Testament Scriptures, it would be more consistent to discard them altogether, than nominally to reverence them while actually discrediting them.

The name of the “ man more precious than gold ” who was to destroy Babylon is, like all the other divinely bestowed names, supremely expressive. “ Cyrus, whose Hebrew name Choresh, which is a contraction of Chayoraish, and signifies Like the Heir, was, as his name was intended to express, the type of Christ, in the execution of his mission against “ the Great City Babylon ” of the latter-days. So says Dr. Thomas in his exposition of Rev. xvii. History reveals many striking points of comparison; and even the sculptured portrait that has been discovered is in agreement.

Mr. C. J. Ball, in Light from the East, or the Witness of the Monuments, says of this stele, or monumental column, an illus­tration of which is given :

“ This famous bas-relief of the Liberator of the captive Jews is the oldest known relic of Persian sculpture. It stands at Meshed- Murghab, among the ruins of the ancient Pasargadae, which Cyrus made his royal residence after the conquest of Asia Minor and Babylonia. The age of the remains at this site is determined by the inscriptions of Cyrus engraved upon them in Persian, Median, and Babylonian cuneiform; the last indicating that Cyrus had already added Babylonia to his dominions (b.c. 538). It will be noticed that the features are distinctively European, and quite unlike the Assyrian and Egyptian types. Yet the ornamentation of the figure is entirely borrowed from Egypt and Assyria.”

The face is in profile, and reveals what a phrenologist would at once pronounce to be a good head, the sweep of the curve from the eye to the back of the head being such as is invariably indicative of intellectual and moral nobility and decision of character.

This interesting monument is in harmony with the history of Cyrus, in which the likeness to the Heir appears in many things. He was of quick understanding from his earliest youth, occasioning surprise at the soundness of his judgment and wisdom of his operations in military matters when only in his teens. He was conspicuously sober, and temperate in all things, and enterprising in his father’s business. He was mighty in battle, but not covetous, delighting not in gold and silver for its own sake, or for the purpose of personal aggrandisement. He was among his people, though in different manner and degree, what the Heir of all things afterwards was in Israel. God’s shepherd (Is. xliv. 28)—a man endeared to them by his wisdom, power and benevolence, and the humility of his deportment in recognition of the transient character of human affairs.

Such men are “ more precious than fine gold,’’ even in the mortal state, and in subordinate relation to the divine purpose. How much more “ precious ” (1 Peter ii. 7) the immortal Son of God, the “ Chief Shepherd ” whom He has given to the world, and who will by-and-bye, after the destruction of Babylon the Great, restore again the Kingdom to Israel, and bless all nations in his righteous reign.