In whatever direction we turn our eyes, the same moral progress meets our view. The Antediluvian world we have seen swept away "by the waters of the flood;" and Egypt is become indeed "the basest of kingdoms."

Shall we look at Tyre, the mistress of the seas,-"the renowned city,"-"the joyous city, whose antiquity is of ancient days?" Or to her conqueror, "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency? Or to the barbarians of Palestine, the Hittite and the Amorite? Still we see the same course of events; the lapse into idolatry, the corruption that ensued, and the destruction that swallowed up the whole.

In Tyre, "the crowning city," was established a system of idolatry, whose chief deities were Bel, Venus, and Adonis, or Thammuz. These were doubtless corruptions of the creative Deity, the Divine Wisdom,* and the slain Son of God; and at first they were doubtless recognised as such, by the more enlightened of the priesthood. In the magnificent denunciations of Ezekiel against Tyre, (xxviii. 15) we read-"Thou wast perfect in thy ways, from the day thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee." We may doubtless understand this to imply that, in its earliest days, Tyre worshipped the true God. But such a state did not long continue, for in the second verse of the same chapter, we read this reproach—“Thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas-yet thou art man, and not God, though thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God."

Some may perhaps object to this derivation of Venus from the Divine Wisdom; but the ancient Tyrian Venus was only another name of Isis, who was distinctly known as the goddess of wisdom. The Grecian goddess of beauty was a very different being.

up because

And again, verse 5,-" Thine heart is lifted of thy riches." Then, probably, the idolatry gradually crept in; the true God was forsaken, and corrupted notions of His various attributes occupied His place. National pride seems to have been the first step in this grand declension; that lifting up of the heart ascribed by the prophet to the abundance of wealth and prosperity. "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy riches." And again, "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty." (ver. 17. National corruptions ensued, for in the eighteenth verse we read-“Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic."

The sanctuaries were indeed defiled; many of the Egyptian abominations were practised in the rites of Tyre; and the follies of self-flagellation, frantic wailings, and riotous orgies prevailed not only there, but throughout Phoenicia and Syria.

The prophet goes on-" By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned; therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire."-"Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, and it shall devour thee; and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth, in the sight of all them that know thee.". '-"I will bring upon thee Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a king of kings." Ezek. xxvi. 7.

Such were the prophecies; their fulfilment is history. The predicted "King of Babylon" came "with horses and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies and much people." He made "a fort," and "cast a

mount," and "set engines of war" against the walls. After thirteen years of desperate resistance, the city was deserted and left to the conqueror. Alexander finished what the Babylonian had begun; and the mighty Tyre has long been "a place to spread nets upon," the barren "top of a rock, desolate, annihilated." The history of Babylon is but another version of the same tale. The names are changed, the facts are the same. Perhaps the only difference is the broadly profane and idolatrous commencement of the empire at Babel.* From idolatry sprang vice, national as well as personal, and all the vile superstitions of the Babylonian worship; while the high prosperity of the victorious kingdom induced a state of luxury and profligacy, which found its fullest exhibition in the persons of a Sardanapalus and a Belshazzar.

The judgment upon Nebuchadnezzar did not reform the nation it was to be visited in another manner. The predicted Mede and Persian were to Babylon what Babylon had been to Tyre; they swept over the doomed city of Belus, and left it, a heap of desolate and dreaded ruins, to the wondering gaze of posterity. Isaiah xiii. 17-22.

The Mede and Persian worshippers of the sun, of Mythras and Mythra, degenerated from the hardy and virtuous followers of a Cyrus to the profligate sycophants and adorers of a Xerxes, fell in their turn, beneath the wide-spreading dominion of Alexander;

*The idea of the tower of Babel being built to invade heaven, is too absurd to be tolerated. The Hebrew Scripture says only "a tower whose top may be (or for) the heavens ;" and the most obvious purpose is that of dedication for worship. The Jewish Targum says, that an image of the heavenly host was to have been placed on the top of the building; with a sword in his hand, to fight against the Divine armies, and prevent the dispersion of his worshippers.

and the great empires of Asia retained only the name of the glory that had passed away.

If we turn to those Asiatic nations of whom we find mention only in classic authors, the state of things is no better. The Pagan historians, as before observed, give us no moral clue to the fall of kingdoms; but though we have not here the rationale of history, we have its prominent features well marked out. Among the barbarous Nomades of the desert, we find the idolatry, the degradation and the subsequent catastrophe distinctly recorded. Our chief authority concerning these tribes is Herodotus; and his report exhibits indeed less of luxury than we see amid the palaces of Babylon, but quite as little of true religion or morality. They seem to have been but one remove above the beasts of the field; cruel, rapacious, and totally uncivilized. Should the gold-bedecked armour and brazen lances of the Massagetæ be held forth as an exception to this generally savage state, we can only reply that however warlike this tribe might be, and however skilful in the arts connected with their favourite pursuit, they had as little pretension to the name of civilized beings as their neighbours; for the chief peculiarities recorded of them are the sacrifice of their horses to the sun, a community of wives, and the fearful custom of murdering their aged parents and feasting upon their flesh.

All these tribes are now lost nationally. The Persian and Greek arms swept them away, either by conquest or extermination. Their successors, or perhaps descendants, bow to the authority of Mahomet, and people the wilds of Georgia and the Caucasus; but the Massagatæ and their fellow-Nomades are now nationally extinct.

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[I AM sorry to add that the manuscript ends here; various difficulties connected with the subject, and the writer's health, having prevented its completion.]

A. F.

THE scriptural expression, the seal of the Spirit, seems plainly to signify that the soul of the Christian upon whom it is impressed, bears as evident marks of conformity with the will of God, as the wax does of similarity to the seal by which it has been stamped.Faber.