Of this, Belshazzar is a remarkable instance. He was grandson to Nebuchadnezzar, and had an opportunity of seeing, in the divine dispensations towards his royal ancestor, how hateful pride is, even in royalty itself; how instantly God can blast the most blooming dignity of the brightest crown, and reduce him that wears it to a condition level with the beasts that perish; how quickly, when the divine decree goeth forth, a haughty rational can be converted into a brute, and a Nebuchadnezzar, in all the pomp of majesty upon his throne, be driven from human converse, and become a fit associate only for oxen that graze the field, and are wet with the dew of heaven; and how much, therefore, the prosperity of kings, and the stability of their thrones, depend upon acknowledging, that “the MOST HIGH ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will—that all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; that he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?—that his works are truth, and his ways judgment; and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.” Dan. iv. 25, 35, 37. But this instruction, though conveyed through a dispensation, calculated to write it upon his heart as indelibly as with a pen of iron, or the point of a diamond, seems to have been all lost on Belshazzar. In a depraved and debauched mind, the most striking memorials of divine interposition are soon buried in oblivion; and all the impressions, which the most tremendous judgments of God generally make in such a case, only resemble characters made in the sand, which the first flux of the tide totally obliterates. Belshazzar had undoubtedly often heard the memorable history of his royal grandfather, and could not avoid seeing in it the great outlines of that divine system of truth, which inculcates the evil of sin, and recommends the fear of the Lord as the supreme wisdom. The very sight of those fields, where Nebuchadnezzar once roamed, or of the animals with which he herded, when deposed from his throne, and deprived of his understanding, must have brought to his recollection the singular event, that so strongly marked God’s displeasure at all sin; especially that kind of it, which lifts up the heart with atheistic pride, and prompts arrogant worms of the earth to affect independence of Him, “in whom they live, and move, and have their being.” But Belshazzar, like libertines in all ages, buried the remembrance of these things in his cups, and company; or sought relief from any disquieting apprehensions, in the fulsome flattery of the civil and ecclesiastical sycophants, that herded round his throne, and constituted his levee. Thus soothed into a false security by court adulation or pulpit-daubing, he became a beast in sensuality, and indulged in every sordid gratification, that could make him hateful to