moral sympathy with the man who wrote it. It was written by one of the poor Jewish prisoners carried away captive into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar six centuries or more before Jesus was born. Try and picture the scene. Across eight hundred miles of desert that melancholy procession winds its way, leaving the highland home behind and going into slavery in the cruel city of the plain. One by one the weakest fall and die; and where a baby is left without a mother, or the mother cannot walk with the weight of the helpless child, the cruel Babylonian ruffians riding at the side will snatch it from the anguished bosom and dash its brains out against the rocks. Should we be likely to forget that if we had ever formed part of such a procession of prisoners of war? Hence when Psalm cxxxvii came to be written by some poor suffering father who had lost maybe both wife and child, he gave vent to his feelings in one of the most plaintive patriotic songs ever sung:-- By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down--yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof, for there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.... O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones! One can feel deep sympathy with this unknown poet and his suffering people without adopting the absurd view that this passage represents God's word to our souls. It is a cry of suffering mingled with a desire for vengeance, and that is all. But when a preacher declares that he takes his stand and bases his gospel on the infallible Book, he is either a fool or--a rhetorician.