Behold Belshazzar upon his throne! Contemplate the magnificence of his palace, and the extent of his empire. He looks around upon Babylon, the superb residence of his court, and calling “the glory of the Chaldees excellency” his own, thinks himself the happiest and most august monarch of the East. Thousands do him homage, and tens of thousands bow at his footstool. The earth and seas are ransacked to supply his table with delicacies; and he needs only ask, to have every luxury that the most unbounded appetite could desire. Multitudes live upon his smile, and princes triumph in the honor of being in the train of his dependants. His word is a law, and confers dignities or death at pleasure. And the grand emulation among courtiers, domestics, and subjects, is, who shall be first in obedience to the tyrant’s edicts.—Such is Belshazzar on his throne. But could we only have followed him to his secret retirements, or looked into his breast, we should have seen all this semblance of splendor and felicity tarnished by some corroding care, that banished repose even from his bed of down; or some vicious passion, that preyed continually upon his heart. A dreadful rival in power, a sullen contemner of his false dignity, like another Mordecai, refusing to bow to impious Haman, or a single disappointment in the pursuit of dominion and conquest, were sufficient to make his diadem tremble on his brow, and to plant such sharp thorns in the crown that adorned it, that a man upon the rack could not be more miserable than the haughty monarch of Babylon seated on his imperial throne. Who, therefore, would not have preferred the situation of a peasant in his cottage, or that of the poorest captive Jew within the walls of Babylon, before the grandeur of a palace, in which wretchedness and sin took up their abode?