| 314 of Ezekiel's being told to lay on his left side and hear the iniquity of the house of Israel, three hundred and ninety days, and forty days on his right side, for the iniquity of the house of Judah, and to mix up his food with his own dung; Ezekiel 4: iv. The circumstances of Jeremiah's being told to hide the girdle until it should be marred, and so his command to break the potter's vessel, in the presence of the Jews, as typical of their overthrow are not without their peculiarities. Indeed the whole of the dealings of God with the human family, are to us mysterious, and can only be accounted for upon the principle of faith. Hence we are told that "as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are the Lord's thoughts above our thoughts, and his ways above our ways."
(To be Continued.)
(For the Times and Seasons.)
WHAT IS BABYLON.
Ancient Babylon was a large city, in the land of Chaldea, which was destroyed, or left desolate, because of its pride and wickedness.-To this land the Israelites were taken captive, and for their sins, the Lord required of them that they should put their necks under the yoke of the King of Babylon, which took place about five hundred and ninety-seven years before Christ-a very few years after Lehi left Jerusalem, at the command of God, to go to the land of America; and it was partly to escape this that he was directed to go out. Jeremiah first prophesied of Israel's captivity there; and while Israel were there, he prophesied of the overthrow of Babylon, in the fiftieth and fifty-first chapters in particular, as well as Isaiah and others; but these two chapters he wrote and sent Seraiah with it to Babylon-told him to read it in the city, and then tie a stone to the writing or roll, and cast it into Euphrates, saying "thus shall Babylon sin, and shall not rise again from the evil that I will bring upon her:" and in about seventy-four years, according to his story, drinking wine in the golden and silver vessels which had been taken out of the house of the Lord, and put in the house of his gods, a hand-writing appeared on the wall, and struck him with horror, which the prophet Daniel interpreted thus: "Thou are weighed in the balance, and found wanting; * * * * thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." The king was slain, and all the judgments pronounced against the city were duly fulfilled; but it is plain that this Babylon was a type of something else. Of this anti-type, John the Revelator speaks in the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters. There are also many references to the same in Jeremiah, which any one, who carefully compares the prophecies together, will readily see; and this Babylon John calls Mystery, Babylon the great, the Mother of Harlots, &c., the Whore of all the earth A whore is one who has been espoused to some one, and another has committed adultery with her; and a harlot is one who has not been espoused, but has been committed adultery or fornication with. These terms will apply only to the female sex. Now we see that Paul spoke of the church in this manner: "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy; for I have espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ." In another place, he says:-"The law was dead, so that she (the church) might be now married unto another, even to Christ." And again in the nineteenth chapter of Revelations, "The marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready." And again: "She (the church) is called the Bride, the Lamb's wife" and in Revelations chapter twelve; "There appeared a wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the Sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron." See also the second Psalm. This woman is evidently the church of Jesus Christ, in her purity, and beauty and strength; and as the bride is expected to be adorned, so also was the church. 1st Corinthians, 12c: 8v.-Her ornaments were wisdom, knowledge, faith, the gifts of healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, divers kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues; with a band of guards, or a foundation of apostles and prophets, which were to guide and direct her as the high council of her Lord, until he should return, by which means she was beautified with charity, and all the graces of the spirit of her lord and master, to be the light of the world, and in whom God himself always dwells through the spirit, that all who should come into her bosom might find delight, and joy, and peace; until the Lord should return-yea, that she might be, and exhibit the fullness of him that filleth all in all: and as the faithful wife has a right to act in her husband's name, and whatever she does, her husband must be accountable for. She has the key of his house, and has access to his treasuries, so whatever she (the church) bound on earth, was acknowledged in heaven, and bound there; what she loosed on earth, was loosed in heaven, and whatever she did in the name of her lord, was the same as though he himself had done it-but only while she walked according to the rule
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