This would not be the place to notice in detail the various passages in which this city is introduced. I would only remark here, that whenever God has a corporate witness on the earth, Satan has a Babylon to mar and corrupt that witness. When God connects his name with a city on the earth, then Babylon takes the form of a city; and when God connects his name with the Church, then Babylon takes the form of a corrupt religious system, called "the great whore," "the mother of abominations," &c. In a word, Satan's Babylon is always seen as the instrument moulded and fashioned by his hand, for the purpose of counteracting the divine operations, whether in Israel of old, or the Church now. Throughout the Old Testament Israel and Babylon are seen, as it were, in opposite scales; when Israel is up, Babylon is down; and when Babylon is up, Israel is down. Thus, when Israel had utterly failed, as Jehovah's witness, "the king of Babylon broke his bones," and swallowed him up. The vessels of the house of God, which ought to have remained in the _city_ of Jerusalem, were carried away to the _city_ of Babylon. But Isaiah, in his sublime prophecy, leads us onward to the opposite of all this. He presents, in most magnificent strains, a picture, in which Israel's star is in the ascendant, and Babylon entirely sunk. "And it shall come to pass in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!... since _thou_ art laid down, no feller is come up against _us_." (Isa. xiv. 3-8.) Thus much as to the Babylon of the Old Testament. Then, as to the Babylon of Revelation, my reader has only to turn to the 17th and 18th chapters of that book to see her character and end. She is presented in marked contrast with the bride, the Lamb's wife; and as to her end, she is cast as a great millstone into the sea; after which we have the marriage of the Lamb, with all its accompanying bliss and glory. However, I could not attempt to pursue this most interesting subject here: I have merely glanced at it in connection with the name of Nimrod. I feel assured that my reader will find himself amply repaid for any trouble he may take in the close examination of all those scriptures in which the name of Babylon is introduced. We shall now return to our chapter.