to say to their masters, that Jehovah, who by his great power made "the earth, man, and the beast upon it," had given all lands to Nebuchadnezzar, that they might serve him till the time came for his kingdom to be overthrown. Whatever nation or kingdom would not submit to his yoke, should be destroyed. Jeremiah spoke the same message to the king of Judah, admonishing him not to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar.

Zedekiah this year, Jer. 51:59, went a journey to Babylon, one object of which is supposed to have been to solicit a restoration of the vessels of the temple carried to that city. The prophet Hananiah predicted, as if from the Lord, that the vessels would, within two years, be brought back. He predicted further, that Jeconiah, the former king and favorite of the people, who had now been a prisoner in Babylon fifteen years, would return to his kingdom together with all the captives from Judah. This, as one observes, was "just such a message as some men would call pure gospel—all encouragement, promise, and privilege, without warning, discrimination of character, exhortation, or precept." Doubtless it was much more popular in that wicked age than the preaching of Jeremiah, which pointed men to their sins, and pressed on them the need of penitence and reformation if they would escape the judgments of heaven.

To gain credit for his words, Hananiah took from

the neck of Jeremiah the yoke which he had continued to wear, and broke it, declaring in the name of the Lord that within two years the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar would thus be broken from the neck of all the nations. When Jeremiah heard this, he retired from the temple, not choosing to notice his violence or reply to his groundless prediction. But the Lord bade him return with a message to Hananiah, who was now probably vain of having, in the estimation of the people, achieved such a victory. With a tone of authority, but not of triumph, Jeremiah addresses him: Hear now, Hananiah ; The Lord hath not sent thee, but thou makest this people to trust in a lie. Therefore, thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will cast thee from off the face of the earth this year thou shalt die, because thou hast taught rebellion against the Lord." Within two months Hananiah died-a solemn warning to all who knowingly falsify the word of God, and through hatred of the truth oppose or ridicule his messengers.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PROPHECY CONCERNING BABYLON.

We have already remarked that the mission of Jeremiah extended to the Gentiles. By one of the princes who accompanied Zedekiah to Babylon, he sent the predictions against that city which are contained in the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters of his book. They are of surpassing beauty and sublimity. He ordered Seraiah, after reading them there, to bind a stone around the roll on which they were written, and cast it into the Euphrates, and say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her." If the spirit of the captives in Babylon was such at that time as when they hung their harps on the willows in the midst thereof," they would sing exultingly, "Happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us."

The fulfilment of this remarkable prophecy against a nation with which so much of the public life of Jeremiah was concerned, we will briefly illustrate. It was delivered fifty-six years before the overthrow of Babylon.

Chaldea was an immense plain, watered by the Euphrates and Tigris. These rivers, especially the Euphrates, annually overflowed their banks, and

together with the canals, some of which extended from one river to the other, rendered this plain one of the most fertile regions in the whole East. Herodotus describes its richness as wonderful, and supposes he shall not be believed when relating what he actually saw. According to his account the soil of this plain never yielded less than two hundred bushels of corn for one sown, and sometimes it yielded three hundred. The grain, too, was of a very large size. After the Persians had subdued Chaldea, they reckoned it one of their best provinces; and when their empire extended from the Hellespont to India, Chaldea, including perhaps Syria, supplied a third part of the subsistence of the king and his army. If Jeremiah had predicted that the plain would be watered by another river in future times, the prediction would seem no more improbable than that the plain would become desert and barren. In the days of Jeremiah there was no more reason to suppose, from any thing to be seen, that the plain of Chaldea would lose its fertility, than that the Euphrates would cease to flow. And in fact Chaldea was a fertile country for a long time after the prophecy was spoken. It was "fruitful and pleasant" when invaded by Julian, in the fourth century. According to Gibbon, in the pastures were covered with flocks and herds." The celebrated city Seleucia was built in the neighborhood of Babylon about

seventh century the "

three centuries before Christ, and four hundred years afterwards it contained more than half a million of inhabitants. This shows that the region must have been fertile and populous.

But fruitful and populous as this plain was, the prophet had predicted, when Babylon was in all her glory, the mistress of the earth, and when the fields were rich almost beyond imagination, that it would become waste. "As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbor cities thereof, saith the Lord, so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein.” "Chaldea shall be a spoil, a wilderness, a dry land, and a desert." "There cometh up a nation against her which shall make her desolate, and none shall dwell therein." "Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle."

The present state of the region around the ruins of Babylon shows the truth of these predictions. A late traveller remarks, “The whole country between Bagdad and Hellah," modern Babylon, "is a perfectly flat and, with the exception of a few spots as you approach the latter place, uncultivated waste. That it was at some former period in a far different state, is evident from the number of canals by which it is traversed, now dry and neglected; and by the quantity of heaps of earth covered with fragments of bricks and broken tiles, which are seen in every direction-the indisputable traces of