w;
The timbrel, dulcimer, and song
Are hushed, or wake to woe."

--_"The Land and the Book," Vol. II, pp. 626, 627._

The Desolation of Babylon

Yet another city of ancient times there was, the mightiest of them all,
whose fate was a subject of prophecy, and whose history bears special
testimony for us today; for, more than any other, the Lord used that
city as a symbol of the pride of life and the exaltation of the selfish
heart against God.

Let us study briefly the desolations pronounced upon Babylon of old.

[Illustration: BABYLON IN THE DUST

"Babylon shall become heaps,... without an inhabitant." Jer. 51:37.]

While Babylon was still the mightiest city of the world, with the period
of greatest glory yet before it, the Lord revealed its ignoble end. By
the prophet Isaiah He declared:

"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency,
shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be
inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation:
neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds
make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there;
and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall
dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the
islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their
pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not
be prolonged." Isa. 13:19-22.

Never could a more doleful future have been pictured for a city full of
splendor, the metropolis of the world. About one hundred and
seventy-five years after this word was written on the parchment scroll,
the Medes and Persians were at the gates of Babylon. Her time had come,
and Chaldea's rule was ended.

"Fallen is the golden city! in the dust,
Spoiled of her crown, dismantled of her state.
She that hath made the Strength of Towers her trust,
Weeps by her dead, supremely desolate!

"She that beheld the nations at her gate
Thronging in homage, shall be called no more
'Lady of Kingdoms!'--Who shall mourn her fate?
Her guilt is full, her march of triumph o'er."

But still, under Medo-Persia, and later under the Greeks, the city
itself was populous and prosperous and beautiful. The skeptic of the
time may have pointed to it as evidence that here, at least, the Hebrew
prophet had missed the mark.

Apollonius, the sag