“All this came upon the King Nebuchadnezzar.” It seems that after he or his father had destroyed the old Babylon, the downfall of which Isaiah had prophesied, he built a great city, after the fashion of Eastern conquerors, near the ruins of the old one; and “at the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon. The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken, The kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar.” What a lesson! The great conqueror of all the East now a brutal madman, hateful and disgusting to all around him—a beast feeding among the beasts: and yet a cheap price—a cheap price—to pay for this golden lesson. Seven times past over him in his madness. What those seven times were we do not know. They may have been actual years: or they may have been, as I am inclined to think, changes in his own soul and state of mind. But, at the end of the days, the truth dawned on him. He began to see what it all meant. He saw what he was, and why he was so; and he lifted up his eyes to heaven; and from that moment his madness past. He lifted up his eyes to heaven. That is no mere figure of speech: it is an actual truth. Most madmen, if you watch them, have that down look, or rather that inward look, as if their eyes were fixed only on their own fancies. They are thinking only of themselves, poor creatures—of their own selfish and private suspicions and wrongs—of their own selfish superstitious dreams about heaven or hell—of their own selfish vanity and ambition—sometimes of their own frantic self-conceit, or of their selfish lusts and desires—of themselves, in short. They have lost the one Divine light of reason, and conscience, and love, which binds men to each other, and are parted for a while from God and from their kind—alone in their own darkness. So was Nebuchadnezzar.