Author Description

Ancient Babylonia has made stronger appeal to the imagination of Christendom than even Ancient Egypt, because of its association with the captivity of the Hebrews, whose sorrows are enshrined in the familiar psalm: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows.... In sacred literature proud Babylon became the city of the anti-Christ, the symbol of wickedness and cruelty and human vanity. Early Christians who suffered persecution compared their worldly state to that of the oppressed and disconsolate Hebrews, and, like them, they sighed for Jerusalem--the new Jerusalem. When St. John the Divine had visions of the ultimate triumph of Christianity, he referred to its enemies--the unbelievers and persecutors--as the citizens of the earthly Babylon, the doom of which he pronounced in stately and memorable phrases: Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, And is become the habitation of devils, And the hold of every foul spirit, And a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.... For her sins have reached unto heaven And God hath remembered her iniquities.... The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her, For no man buyeth their merchandise any more. "At the noise of the taking of Babylon", cried Jeremiah, referring to the original Babylon, "the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among the nations.... It shall be no more inhabited forever; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation." The Christian Saint rendered more profound the brooding silence of the desolated city of his vision by voicing memories of its beauty and gaiety and bustling trade: The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters shall be heard no more at all in thee; And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: Fo