is more certain than the other; and alike in reference to what is sure to occur in the present life, and what we are told will occur in the future state, the sinner should allow himself to be influenced by the anticipation of what is to come. Repentance, reformation, and a holy life, would, in many cases, go far to arrest these calamities—or, in the language of Daniel, 'lengthen out tranquillity.'"

THE MYSTERIOUS WRITING ON THE WALL.

CHAPTER V.

In this chapter we have one of those remarkable incidents in the history of heathendom which are pregnant with most important lessons to kings, to rulers, to pagans, and to Christians. Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, whose history, and deposition from his throne, and herding with the very beasts of the field, we have learned in the previous chapter. This Belshazzar succeeded to his throne. He seems to have been unhumbled by what befel his royal father, and to have forgotten everything that was worth remembering, and to have profited by nothing. "He made a feast to a thousand of his lords"-that was not necessarily sinful; "he drank wine before the thousand"-if he did so in moderation, and within the limits of sobriety, that was not sinful. But while he tasted the wine, -whether it was owing to the excitement of excess, or whether it was deliberate and designed insult to the God of heaven, it is impossible to say,-while he tasted the wine, "he commanded to bring the golden and the silver vessels of the temple of Jerusalem,"-consecrated to a sacred purpose, associated with holy and sublime recollections, the profane use of which was the highest desecration,-"that the king, and his princes, his wives,

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and his concubines, might drink therein," not in libations to the God of heaven, not in expressions of gratitude to Him who filled them of old in his holy temple, but to the honour of the "gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone," which could neither see, nor hear, nor understand. A royal command in those days was law; and they brought the golden vessels, and the king and those that were around him drank from them. Retribution may be fast or it may be slow: it is always sure. An ancient poet has said it sometimes comes with halting foot, but it always comes up with the transgressor. Great sins, perpetrated in the high places of the land, are sure to be visited by judgments visible to all mankind, that, seeing the wrecks, and the beacons that remain there, others may be warned, and take heed to their ways, that they depart not from the living God.

In the midst of this feast, when all was mirth, excitement, and song, mysterious fingers, associated with no visible hand, came forth from behind the walls, wrote upon the plaster hieroglyphic letters as mysterious as the mission it was meant to accomplish, and as hidden in meaning as the Author of it, to whom the fingers belonged. And when the king looked up, and saw the hand that wrote, his counten-> ance became pale as the plaster, and his thoughts troubled him. Conscience makes cowards of us all; and when that conscience smites us with a sense of sin, what ever we see which we cannot decipher, we are sure to interpret as an emissary of judgment come to punish us before the time. By a great law, in the conscience of a sinner, the unknown is always the feared and the terrible. We put the interpretation

of evil upon what we do not understand. The poor guilty disciples, often unbelieving, often sinful, oftener still misinterpreters, were tossed upon the ocean on the lake or sea of Gennesaret; at the fourth watch, the Saviour himself came walking on the waves, that formed themselves into a pavement for his sacred feet; but the disciples were afraid, they thought it was a spirit. What made them afraid? Their own consciousness of sin and of imperfection. So this king, because his conscience smote him with the frightful indiscretion, as well as crime, of which he had been guilty, and being caught in the very midst of his profane merriment and blasphemy, when he saw the handwriting, found that his conscience could interpret what his intellect could not decipher; and "his countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another." How strange that an immaterial thing, called a thought, can unstring all the nerves of the bravest heart, and make weak as water the strongest frame! I have often thought, if I may be pardoned a digression, that we have here an evidence-it may be very small evidence, but I think important in its measure-of the immateriality of the soul, and its distinction from, though connection with, the body. For instance, we find, as every medical man knows, that a certain dose of opium, or prussic acid, or any other sedative, will act upon the body, and through the body it will stupify and deaden the mind. We know that excess of wine-I hope none know it from experience, but from physiological fact— such as probably occurred in the case of this king, acts upon the body yet makes the mind stupid; so

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that a man intoxicated speaks nonsense, and is not in possession of himself: he has a mind for the moment deranged and lunatic. A material poison, that we call alcohol, or opium, or prussic acid, acting through a material medium that we call the body, influences an immaterial thing that we call the mind. We may reverse the process: material thing that we call fear, acting through an immaterial thing that we call the mind, influences a material thing which we call the body. You see, therefore, the connection of the two; but as a material poison requires a material medium by and through which to act, so an immaterial poison, called terror, requires an immaterial medium, which we call the mind, through which to act; and therefore, while the two are connected, yet the stimulants by which they are distinctively and reciprocally influenced, indicate as truly the immateriality of the mind as they indicate the materiality of the body, and the union of the one with the other. Here, then, was a dose of terror acting upon this king; and, in language most expressive, "the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. And the king cried aloud."

When men are in a state of terror and alarm, and especially when conscience is the source and seat of the alarm, they have recourse to anything for relief. "The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers;" and he asked them to interpret the writing; and if they should succeed in this, there was no reward that he would not thankfully bestow upon them.

No man who knows and feels the unseen and eter