All nations are under the government of the King of kings and Lord of lords. “His kingdom ruleth over all;” all are instruments in His hand to accomplish the secret purpose of His will. They may be rebellious and disobedient, but they cannot harden themselves against God and prosper. He exhorts and warns, He threatens and visits; but if they go on still in their wickedness, they soon fill up the measure of their iniquity; the messenger of justice speeds forth, the sentence is delivered, and they cease to be a nation. It is thus great empires in succession have passed away; human reason discovers in their rise, their progress, their decay, and their destruction, nothing more than the ordinary operation of natural causes; revelation raises the veil which envelopes the records of remote antiquity, and discovers the workings of a Divine agency, by which Providence overrules the selfish and short-sighted policy of man, to the development of the mighty and mysterious plans which embrace the government of the world. And that blind and presumptuous man may have no ground to suppose, that the fate of empires is dependent solely upon human causes, the overthrow of the guilty nations of antiquity, by the Divine command, was foretold, and exactly fulfilled. Hence we may learn the sudden and swift destruction, which neglect of Providence, disregard of the authority, and disobedience to the commands of Him, who has said, “I am the Lord, I change not,” {102} will, at last, bring upon any Christian nation, which long continues to refuse the overtures of pardon and reconciliation, made by a gracious, a merciful, and long-suffering God. Predicted destruction overtook the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; and the final desolation of their capitals was foretold. The book of the prophet Nahum opens with “the burden of Nineveh,” which abounds with the most powerful descriptions of the terrible overthrow of the Assyrian empire, and the utter desolation of its vast and splendid capital. Zephaniah looks still further into futurity, and presents a sad but faithful picture of its final doom. “THE LORD WILL BE TERRIBLE UNTO THEM:”—“_And he will stretch out his hand __against the north_, _and destroy Assyria_; _and will make Nineveh a desolation_, _and dry like the wilderness_. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations; both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it: their voice shall sing in the windows, desolation shall be in the thresholds; for He shall uncover the cedar-work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, _I am_, _and there is none beside me_: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in; every one that passeth by her shall hiss and wag his head.” {103a} So literally have these striking images of entire and lonely desolation been fulfilled, that in the second century, the very site of the once proud and famous capital of