ries of the Mediterranean dimly emerging like a vast archipelago "the islands," as they appear to the inhabitants of the old continent of Asia; he watches them loosed from their moorings in the Ægean or Tyrrhenian waters, and standing ready for the Divine command; he sees the white wings of the sails of the Tyrian ships advancing from the distant Tarshish of Carthage and of Spain, and heading the argosies that are to bring in the treasures from the unexplored regions which only those hardy adventurers could reach.1 Thus is for the first time unfolded the strange and striking contrast between the East and the West, which, even after the lapse of more than two thousand years, has never ceased to impress the imagination of mankind; which inspired the Father of History with the motive idea of his great work; which has given its peculiar and unique interest to the One Religion of after times, which, springing from the East, has been developed to its full proportions only by travelling Westward the Religion of the one Master who belongs to both "Jesus Christ," - as He has been called by a gifted son of the far Oriental World" the inheritance "of Europe and of Asia. "2 The sense that this prospect was beginning to open was quickened and deepened by the imminence of the great event which shall be described in the next Lecture. 2 Isa. lx. 4-9. 1 Keshub Chunder Sen's Essays. LECTURE XLII. THE FALL OF BABYLON. Primæval THE moment of the Jewish history which we have now reached coincides with one of the most stronglymarked epochs in the history of the world. As far as the course of human progress is concerned there have been three vast periods, of which two have already passed away. They may be called, in general terms, Primæval History, Classical History, and Modern History. Each of these periods has its beginning, middle, and end its ancient and modern stage- but the whole of each is marked by its own general chraracteristics. In the Primæval History we must include all that series of events which begins with the first The end of dawn of civilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia, History. It is a period of which the Semitic races (taking that word in its most extended sense) were the predominant elements of power and genius- the Assyrians at Nineveh, the Phoenicians in Tyre and Sidon and their distant colonies, the Israelites in Palestine, the Egyptians, though with infusion of other races, in the valley of the Nile, the Chaldæans, though with a like heterogeneous infusion, on the banks of the Euphrates. Of these nations, with the single exception of the Israelites, we have, properly speaking, no history. Their manners and customs, their religion, the succession of their sovereigns are known to us. But we have no con tinuous series of events; although the knowledge of them is fuller, through the investigations of the last fifty years, than in former times, yet it is still shadowy, fragmentary, mythical. They are like the figures seen Beginning in the dreams of Sardanapalus, as depicted by History. the modern poet; here a mighty hunter or conqueror like Nimrod, or Sesostris, or Sennacherib, there a fierce and voluptuous queen like Semiramis - yet All along of Classical B. C. 566. B. C. 572. Of various aspects, but of one expression." 1 But the time was now arrived when this giant age was to come to an end. It is the epoch in the Eastern World when we begin to discern the lineaments and traits of the first teachers of farther 2 Asia, whose careers are distinctly known to us, and whose influence still lives down to our own time. In the Western World it is the date, almost to a year, when Grecian literature begins to throw its light far and wide on everything that it touches. Even in Egypt, Amasis is the first king of whose personal character we have any knowledge as distinct from the public acts, or the length of the reigns, of the other Pharaohs. In the same generation, even in the very same year, we meet the accession of two great potentates in Greece and in the Grecian colonies of Asia Minor Pisistratus at Athens, Croesus at Sardis. The same date brings us into the midst of the first authentic characters of Roman history in the reign of the Tarquins. From this time forward the classical world of Greece and Italy occupies the whole horizon of our thoughts, till its own days are numbered by the fall of Rome and the inva 1 Byron's Sardanapalus, act iv., scene 1. 2 See Lecture XLV. sion of the German tribes, which was to usher in the period of Modern History in Europe. With a like catastrophe did the earlier epoch come to its conclusion, but in the continent which had been its chief seat - in Asia. And it is exactly this momentous juncture of secular history, this critical pause between the middle and the final epoch of Jewish history, at which we are now arrived. The fall of Jerusalem coincides with the fall, or the beginning of the fall, of those ancient monarchies and nations which had occupied the attention of civilized men down to this time. We have already seen how the chorus of the Jewish Prophets at the close of the monarchy prepared the way for the final overthrow of the oldest historic world, much as the Christian Fathers heralded the overthrow of the Greco-Roman world. We have seen how Ezekiel sat over against the grave of the nations, into which tribe after tribe, kingdom after kingdom, even the stately ship of Tyre, the cedar of Assyria, the venerable Egypt, went plunging down to the dark abyss where "the bloody " of the past, corpses 66 1 yet but green in earth, Lay festering in their shrouds. But now the oldest, the grandest of all was about to descend into the same sepulchral vault which had received all its successors and rivals. The event when it came to the Israelite captives could have been no surprise. It had been long foreseen by those who sang by the water-side. They were told how, even before the Captivity, on occasion of a 1 Ezek. xxiv.-xxxii. See Lecture 2 Psalm cxxxvii. 3. visit of homage which the Jewish King Zedekiah paid to Nebuchadnezzar in the early part of his reign, Jeremiah had recorded his detailed prediction of the overthrow of Babylon in a scroll, which he confided to Seraiah, brother of Baruch, himself a high1 officer in the Judæan Court. Not till he reached the quays of the Euphrates was Seraiah to open and read the fatal record, with the warning that "Babylon shall sink, and "shall not rise again from the face of the evils that "shall come upon her."2 Deep in its bed the mighty river was believed to have kept its secret as a pledge of the approaching doom. What that doom was the events now began to disclose. It will be our object to indicate the impression left by it on the Israelite spectators, the only spectators who by means of these thrilling utterances, remain, as it were, the living witnesses of the whole transaction; confirmed on the whole by the broken and scattered notices preserved in later Chaldæan annals, or gathered together by the Greeks who penetrated during the next century into Central Asia. It might have been thought difficult to imagine from what quarter the destroyer should come. The chief rivals of Babylon were gone. The dominions that had with it played their part on the battlefield of the nations had passed away, and the Empire of Nebuchadnezzar was left, as it seemed, in solitary and unassailable majesty. "I have made completely strong the "defences of Babylon," said Nebuchadnezzar in his great inscription; "may it last for ever! "3 1 Jer. li. 59. A. V., 66 a quiet "prince" - probably the "officer "of the king's bed-chamber," and therefore indispensable on the journey. 2 Jer. li. 61-64; xxix. 10. 8 Standard Inscription in Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 586. |