While Belshazzar was thus employed in filling the vessels of the temple with intoxicating liquor, God was filling for him the phials of his indignation. He bent his bow and made it ready; and the moment was approaching in which the barbed arrow of swift destruction was to be directed by an unerring hand against Belshazzar and his kingdom. A most awful presage of this event is given, when least expected. In the midst of the entertainment, while the king and his guests are absorbed in pleasure; behold! a strange phenomenon arrests the solemn attention of the gay circle, and suddenly damps all their mirth. Every face turns pale, and every heart is filled with a horrible dread. Their festivity and carousings are changed into confusion and despair. The sumptuous entertainment entertains no longer; and the wine, sparkling in the glass, or mantling in the goblet, can yield no antidote against the chilling fears that seize the hearts of the disturbed guests. The mirth and gaiety of this festive assembly are changed into silence, solemnity, and distraction. But what occasioned so instantaneous a perturbation? Was it the appearance of some angry cherub, like him whom God appointed as the flaming guardian of the tree of life? or, was it the discovery of some instrument of death suspended from the ceiling over the king’s head, like that sword, which hanging by a hair over Damocles, the base flatterer of a Sicilian tyrant, disturbed his peace in the midst of a banquet? No; it was nothing more than “the fingers of a man’s hand, writing over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace,” verse 5, “and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.” He saw, and trembled. But what ailed thee, O Belshazzar! that thy peace should be broken at the sight of an object, that carried nothing hostile in its outward appearance? Ah! it is not the first time that a sinner has been made to tremble at hand-writing, when the hand of God appears to hold the pen. Belshazzar’s conscience instantly commented upon the mysterious characters. The hand of God wrote his doom, and his own guilty fears anticipated it. “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.” Verse 6. To what an abject and pusillanimous condition, a consciousness of guilt, and a dread of punishment, reduce often the most stout hearted! Nay, “the wicked fleeth, when no man pursueth, while the righteous is bold as a lion.” Prov. xxiii. 1.