them, and one of the grounds of my confidence in his government, and of my firm conviction that the heavens do rule-precious in this world, and infinitely comforting in the prospect of that which is to come.

God reigns; and the evidence of it is this, that he is showing.

age,

year after year and age after that all the wiles of Satan, and all the power of men, cannot permanently build up a falsehood, and that all the combinations of them both together cannot uproot the truth that he has given to us. Is there no evidence of the present action and government of God in this fact, that every false religion is proved by history to be a blunder, and that every atom of divine truth is proved by experience to be immortal and permanent. Is it not evidence that the heavens do rule, when we see all men, of all pursuits, in all acts, and under all circumstances, consciously or unconsciously, designedly or undesignedly, contributing to the spread and adding to the splendour of the claims and glory of the Christian faith? Is it no evidence that the heavens do rule, when we see proofs of the truth of the Bible dug from the lava of Herculaneum and Pompeii, excavated from the grave of Nineveh by Layard, brought forth by Young and Champollion from the mummies hidden thousands of years in the pyramids? Is there not evidence that there is a God watching over that blessed book called the Bible, and guarding that divine treasure called the gospel, in the fact that he is bringing forth elucidations of its truth and proofs of its authority, from the grave of Nineveh-the pyramids of the Pharaohs-the crash of cities-the wreck of nations-till at last the most skeptic minds are constrained to own that the religion of the despised Nazarene is the religion of the great God, and to predict that it will last, and flourish, and reign for ever and ever? Is it no evidence that God reigns, or that the heavens do rule, when we see all things working together for good to the people of God; and their light affliction, which is but for a moment, issuing in their eternal glory; and all the facts of history, and all the phenomena of science, and all the phases of national experience, helping, and in no respect retarding or obstructing the cause of Christ? Is it not an evidence that God reigns, when we see the church and the university flourish together-religion and science, like sisters,

walk arm-in-arm, the one casting its glory upon the other, and both arrayed in priestly robes, witnessing to Him who gave them. their commission, and ministering to the wants and necessities of mankind?

And is not all this tending to accelerate the advent of that blessed day when science shall come forth from her cells, and students from their colleges, and philosophers from their studies, and historians from their labours, and all men from all places in the world, and all things in their maturity and ripeness, to combine with one heart, and with one mind, and with one mouth, in saying, "The heavens do rule," and "Jesus is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world?"

166

LECTURE XII.

BELSHAZZAR'S FEAST.

Daniel v.

BEING unable to select a verse on which to construct an epitome of this sublime and interesting chapter, I have taken as the subject of comment the whole chapter. The main facts in it, as far as these relate to Nebuchadnezzar the grandfather, and Belshazzar the king his grandson, we have considered in the successive expositions of various passages in the preceeding chapters: we have now the account of Belshazzar's reign, his sensual life, the departure of his kingdom, his own slaughter in the midst of his revels, the victorious army of the Medes in the midst of Babylon, and the first or the golden empire passed over to the second or the silver one.

There was no sin in the feast over which Belshazzar presided. I mean, it was not necessarily sinful. It was an annual festival, commemorative of a great event. The sin was not in the eating, or in the drinking, if both were in moderation, but in the spirit which actuated the eaters and the drinkers, and the excess to which they went in both, and the defiance they showed toward God.

It was during this festival that Babylon was taken. The Mede knew beforehand its date, its nature, and its accomplishments, marched his troops into the midst of Babylon, took possession of its palaces, its halls, and all its glory, and instituted that second empire, the history of which we have briefly sketched in a previous discourse. It is well known that the siege of Babylon had already lasted two years and a half; all the besieger's stratagems had failed, and he was on the point of retiring from Babylon as a city impregnable, and fitted by its great strength to defy all human aggressive power; but on this night, one day's bacchana

lian excess did for Babylon what all the siege and stratagems of two years under the Mede had been utterly unable to accomplish. And it seems from this, as from kindred instances in the history of nations, that when God has pronounced the hour of a nation's doom, the inhabitants of that nation seem to lose the caution, the skill, the energy they had exhibited before, and precipitate the very result they themselves are anxious to avert. Nations rarely fall before a foreign aggressor; their ruin or their glory is, under God, within themselves. Nations die suicides; they are seldom or never destroyed by any force from without. Let a nation be true to God, loyal to its laws-let purity and piety and true religion irradiate its palaces, and cast their softening influence over all its lanes, its alleys, and its hovels, and that nation has within it the grounds, as it has over it the promises, of immortality. But let a nation be corrupt in its lower classes, profligate and sensual in its higher classes-let there be education without religion -let there be profession without principle-let there be a name and a form without the substance, and it needs no prophet to predict that nation's doom, and no long or deep calculation to count the years that are sure to precede it.

The great sin which seemed to characterize the feast celebrated on this occasion was, Belshazzar's impious mockery in taking the sacred vessels which his father, as he is here called, or, strictly, and as it might be rendered, his grandfather, had carried from Jerusalem and brought into the midst of Babylon, and in making use of those vessels for the loose and licentious purposes of an impious festival, as if he could hurl defiance at the God of Abraham, and despise and defy the power of him by whom kings reign and princes decree justice. There was in this act needless insult to the captive Jews, and impious blasphemy against the God whom they worshipped. If the vessels were taken by superior power, and in just judgment for the sins of the people, it became him in the presence of that people to lay them aside and shut them up from their reach, but not to insult them by profaning them. We have no warrant to insult the humblest rite of another's faith. Let it be Hindooism, let it be Mahommedanism, which we come into contact with; convince, convert, enlighten, explain, but never think that you can put down a sentiment that

is sacred, by mere ridicule; or that you can exalt a dogma that is divine, by a needless reproaching of the creed and rites of the victims of a superstitious faith. No misfortune is so great as to have become the worshipper of a false god; no man is so deeply to be pitied as he that has lost his way to heaven: to insult him is inhuman; to turn his rites into ridicule is unchristian; to try 'to enlighten, convince, and bring him into the more excellent way, is at once worthy of our highest efforts and our greatest sacrifices, most likely to succeed because owned, and blessed, and recognised by Him without whose blessing nothing can prosper, nothing is wise, nothing is holy, and whose blessing nothing sinful ever inherits.

The sin then, I have shown, was the desecration of that which was holy, or the application to profane and licentious purposes of the vessels that were outwardly dedicated to the God of Israel. Is it possible that we, "on whom the ends of the world are come," can in any respect be guilty of a similar offence? It is possible, and in many ways. Where religion is dragged from its lofty and controlling sphere, and made to gild the claims of a party or to enforce the peculiar principles and power of a sect, it is a holy thing desecrated to an unholy purpose. When the sacrament is taken, not to commemorate the death of Christ, but to obtain a passport to an office and a qualification for a political or civil sphere, we see a sacred vessel desecrated to an unholy end. When the facts and the expressions of the Bible, its sublime, its pure, and its holy truths, are used, as they not unfrequently are, to point a pun, add edge to a jest, or keenness to a sarcasm, to excite a laugh or to provoke a sneer, you have God's vessels desecrated to unhallowed and profane ends. Never try to construct jests from the Bible. The jest that is based upon a text of Scripture will come across you like a dark horrid spectre when the most solemn appeals are made from the pulpit and the most holy lessons are being read from the Bible. I know not a more reckless act, or a more offensive sin, than that of taking divine truths and making puns on them, or using them as double-entendres, or for other purposes of a like nature. Such deeds reflect little credit on the piety, and still less, let me add, on the good taste of those that so use them.

I think we desecrate holy things when the sublime descriptions