It may not be improper to explain more fully the reason for the opinion expressed on page 178, that the Gospel writer John did not believe that Christ first came into existence through human birth, but believed that he, like some of the oriental Gods, was "The Word" personified, without the process of birth; though he may, like the heathen orientalists, have cherished the tradition that the second God in the trinity (as he represents Christ to be), after having sprung into existence as "The Word" was subsequently subjected to human birth. Either so, or else his allusion to "the mother of Christ" was done in condescension to the general belief among the people, that he had a human mother. Be that as it may, he declares, '"His Word was made flesh" (John i. 14); nearly the same language used by the orientalists,--which with them did not imply human birth. And the declaration, "All things were made by him" (John i. 3), is proof positive he believed in Christ's existence as the creator, before his human birth. Much of John's language is so strikingly similar to that employed by the disciples of some of the oriental religions, who believed that a second God emanated from the mouth of the Supreme, to perform the act of creation, that we cannot resist the conviction that this was John's belief; especially as many of them believed, like him, that this creative "Word" became afterward a subject of human birth. Thus, as we conceive, the proposition is established. NOTE TO PAGE 346. Our most reliable authorities testify that Babylon never was destroyed, but successfully resisted, for one hundred and fifty years after Isaiah's time, many of the most powerful sieges, and "the mightiest munitions of war," conducted by seven of the most skilful generals that ever wielded the sword--Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the Great, Antigonus, Demetrius, Poliorcetes, and Antiochus. She then gradually declined by the removal of her inhabitants to other and newer cities; thus falsifying the prediction of Jeremiah (li. 8), "Her end has come," and of Isaiah (xiii. 22), "Her days shall not be prolonged," and that "desolation shall come upon her in a day," and her destruction shall be effected suddenly--all of which are falsified by the facts just presented. And even if Babylon had been destroyed, the present existence of Hillah, built in 1101 upon the same spot, with a population, according to Wellstead, of twenty-five thousand, is a signal overthrow of Jeremiah's prophecy, that it "shall become a wilderness, wherein no man dwelleth" (li. 43), and of Isaiah, also, that it should not be dwelt in from generation to generation. Jeremiah first predicted that her sea and springs should dry up (li. 38), and then declared the waves of the sea should come upon her (li. 42); and finally, that she should sink to rise no more (li. 64). And Isaiah's prediction of ruin and destruction included with Babylon, "the land of the Chaldeans" (l. 39), which was