The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1892-11-17
LIlLENBD TO BABYLON.
AMERICAN CITIES ARE THUS
COMPARED.
Explorations OF the Ruins OF the
Ancient and Wicked City--Des-
4, crLptlon of Its MaRnificence
--lts Final Doom. q

Brooklyn, Special. Rev. DR.. Tall
mage selected for his text Rev. xviii,
10: "Alas, alas, that great city OF
Babylon, that mighty city! for in
one hour is thy judgment come. 2
Modern scientists are doing SPLEEN
did work in excavating the tomb
Of q dead empire holding in it's arms q
dead city, mother and child Of the
same name Babylon. The ancient
mound invites the spades and shovels
and crowbars while the unwashed ma
tlves look on in surprise These
scientists find yellow bricks still i'm
pressed with the name of Nebuchad-
nezzar, and they 20 down into the sar.
cophagus Of a monarchy buried more
than two thousand years ago. May
the explorations Of Rawlinson and
Layard and Chevalier and Opperto
and LOTUS and Chesney be eclipsed
by the present archaeological uncover
ing.
But is it possible this is all that re-
mains OF Babylon? a city once five
times larger than London and ~
times larger than New York? Walls
373 feet high and SO feet thick.
Twenty-Five FURNISHED gates on each
side, with streets running clear
through to corresponding gates on
the other side. Six hundred and
twenty-five squares. More pomp and
wealth and 80. e.-S s-'+a...
sPLENDOR AND SIN .al
than could be found in any five mod
ern cities combined. A city OF palaces
and temples. A city having within it
a garden on an artificial hill 400 feet
high, the sides of the mountain ter
raced. All this built to keep the
kings wife, Amytis from becoming
homsick for the mountain region in
which she had spent her girlhood.
The waters OF the Euphrates spouted
up to irrigate this great altitude in
to fruits and flowers and arborescence
Imaginable. A great river running
from north to south clear through
the city, bridges over it, tunnels under
it, boats on it. j. 49, r. ~-5s@
A city OF bazaars and of market
places, unrivalled for a, oma tics and
unguents and high-mettled horses
with groons by their side, and thyme
wood, and African evergreen, and
Egyptian linen, and all styles of cost
ly textile fabric, and raresr puppies
extracted from shellfsh on the Medi-
terranean coast, and rarest scarlets
taken from brilliant insects in Spain,
and worries brought from successful
elephant hunts in india, and <dia-
! monds whose flash was a repartee to
| the sun. Fortress within fortress,
embattlement rising above embattle-
ment. Great capital OF the ages. But
one night, while honest citizens were
asleep, but all the saloons of satur-
MALTA were in full blast, and at the
kings castle they had filled the tank
ards for the tenth time, and Keeling
and guffawing and hiccoughing around
the state table were the rulers of the
land, Gen. Cyrus ordered his besieging
army to take shovels and spades, and
they diverted the river from it's usual
channel into another direction so
that the forsaken bed of the river be-
came the path on which the besieging
army entered. When the morning
dawned the conquerors were inside
the outside trenches. ' w..
Il. BABYLON HAD FALLEN,
and hence the sublime threnodv of the
text: "Alas, alas, that great city,
Babylon, that mighty city, for in one
hour is the Judgment come" But do
nations die? Oh, yes, there is great
mortality among monarchies and re-
publlcs. They are like individuals in
thefact that they are born, they have a
middle life, they have a disease,
they have a cradle, and grave.
Some OF them are assassinated. some
destroyed by their own hand. Let
me call the roll of some OF the dead
cities and let some one answer for
them. VI,
Egyptian civilization, stands up.
"Dead!' answer the ruins of Karnak
and Luxor, and from 70 pyramids on
the east side OF the Nile there comes
up a great chorus, crying: dead,
dead" Assyrian empire, stand up
and answer ''Dead!" cried the char
red ruins Of Ninevah. After 600
yards of magnificent opportunity,
dead Israelitish kingdom, stand up.
After $50 years Of divine interpretation
and OF miraculous vicissitude and OF
heroic behavior and OF appalling de-
pravity, dead. Phenicia, stand up
and answer. After inventing the
alphabet and giving it to the world,
and sending out her merchant cara
vans in one direction to Central
Asia, and sending out her navi-
gators to the Atlantic Ocean in
another. direction, dead. Pillars
OF Hercules and rocks on which
the Tyrian fisherman dried their nets,
all answer, dead Phenicn.'' Athens,
after Phidias, after Demosthenes, after
Msiltiades, dead, Sparta, after Leonli-
das, after Fury blades, after Salamis,
after Thermopyla; dead. Roman EN-
pre-, stand up and answer. Empire
once bounded by the British channel
on the north, by the Euphrates on
the east, by the great Sahara desert
IN Africa on the south, by the Atlantic