The Two Babylons

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,

A summer's day; and, with the setting sun,

Dropped from the zenith, like a falling star,

On Lemnos, the Aegean isle."

These words very strikingly show the tremendous fall of Molk-gheber, or Nimrod, "the Mighty King," when "suddenly he was cast down from the height of his power, and was deprived at once of his kingdom and his life." Now, to this overthrow there is very manifest allusion in the prophetic apostrophe of Isaiah to the king of Babylon, exulting over his approaching downfall: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" The Babylonian king pretended to be a representative of Nimrod or Phaethon; and the prophet, in these words, informs him, that, as certainly as the god in whom he gloried had been cast down from his high estate, so certainly should he. In the classic story, Phaethon is said to have been consumed with lightning (and, as we shall see by-and-by, AEsculapius also died the same death); but the lightning is a mere metaphor for the wrath of God, under which his life and his kingdom had come to an end. When the history is examined, and the figure stripped off, it turns out, as we have already seen, that he was judicially slain with the sword.

Such is the language of the prophecy, and so exactly does it correspond with the character, and deeds, and fate of the ancient type. How does it suit the antitype? Could the power of Pagan Imperial Rome--that power that first persecuted the Church of Christ, that stood by its soldiers around the tomb of the Son of God Himself, to devour Him, if it had been possible, when He should be brought forth, as the first-begotten from the dead, to rule all nations--be

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represented by a "Fiery Serpent"? Nothing could more lucidly show it forth. Among the lords many, and the gods many, worshipped in the imperial city, the two grand objects of worship were the "Eternal Fire," kept perpetually burning in the temple of

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Vesta, and the sacred Epidaurian Serpent. In Pagan Rome, this fire-worship and serpent-worship were sometimes separate, sometimes conjoined; but both occupied a pre-eminent place in Roman esteem. The fire of Vesta was regarded as one of the grand safeguards of the empire. It was pretended to have been brought from Troy by AEneas, who had it confided to his care by the shade of Hector, and was kept with the most jealous care by the Vestal virgins, who, for their charge of it, were honoured with the highest honours. The temple where it was kept, says Augustine, "was the most sacred and most reverenced of all the temples of Rome." The fire that was so jealously guarded in that temple, and on which so much was believed to depend, was regarded in the very same light as by the old Babylonian fire-worshippers. It was looked upon as the purifier, and in April every year, at the Palilia, or feast of Pales, both men and cattle, for this purpose, were made to pass through the fire. The Epidaurian snake, that the Romans worshipped along with the fire, was looked on as the divine representation of AEsculapius, the child of the Sun. AEsculapius, whom that sacred snake represented, was evidently, just another name for the great Babylonian god. His fate was exactly the same as that of Phaethon. He was said to have been smitten with lightning for raising the dead. It is evident that this could never have been the case in a physical sense, nor could it easily have been believed to be so. But view it in a spiritual sense, and then the statement is just this, that he was believed to raise men who were dead in trespasses and sins to newness of life. Now, this was exactly what Phaethon was pretending to do, when he was smitten for setting the world on fire. In the Babylonian system there was a symbolical death, that all the initiated had to pass through, before they got the new life which was implied in regeneration, and that just to declare that they had passed from death unto life. As the passing through the fire was both a purgation from sin and the means of regeneration, so it was also for raising the dead that Phaethon was smitten. Then, as AEsculapius was the child of the Sun, so was Phaethon. To symbolise this relationship, the head of the image of AEsculapius was generally encircled with rays. The Pope thus encircles the heads of the pretended images of Christ; but the real source of these irradiations is patent to all acquainted either with the literature or the art of Rome. Thus speaks Virgil of Latinus:--

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"And now, in pomp, the peaceful kings appear,

Four steeds the chariot of Latinus bear,

Twelve golden beams around his temples play,

To mark his lineage from the god of day."

The "golden beams" around the head of AEsculapius were intended to mark the same, to point him out as the child of the Sun, or the Sun incarnate. The "golden beams" around the heads of pictures and images called by the name of Christ, were intended to show the Pagans that they might safely worship them, as the images of their well-known divinities, though called by a different name. Now AEsculapius, in a time of deadly pestilence, had been invited from Epidaurus to Rome. The god, under the form of a larger serpent, entered the ship that was sent to convey him to Rome, and having safely arrived in the Tiber, was solemnly inaugurated as the guardian god of the Romans. From that time forth, in private as well as in public, the worship of the Epidaurian snake, the serpent that represented the Sun-divinity incarnate, in other words, the "Serpent of Fire," became nearly universal. In almost every house the sacred serpent, which was a harmless sort, was to be found. "These serpents nestled about the domestic altars," says the author of Pompeii, "and came out, like dogs or cats, to be patted by the visitors, and beg for something to eat. Nay, at table, if we may build upon insulted passages, they crept about the cups of the guests, and, in hot weather, ladies would use them as live boas, and twist them round their necks for the sake of coolness....These sacred animals made war on the rats and mice, and thus kept down one species of vermin; but as they bore a charmed life, and no one laid violent hands on them, they multiplied so fast, that, like the monkeys of Benares, they became an intolerable nuisance. The frequent fires at Rome were the only things that kept them under." The reader will find, in the accompanying woodcut, a representation of Roman fire-worship and serpent-worship at once separate and conjoined. The reason of the double representation of the god I cannot here enter into; but it must be evident, from the words of Virgil already quoted, that the figures in the upper compartment having their heads encircled with rays, represent the fire-god, or Sun divinity; and what

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is worthy of special note is, that these fire-gods are black, the colour thereby identifying them with the Ethiopian or black Phaethon; while, as the author of Pompeii himself admits, these same black fire-gods are in the under compartment represented by two huge serpents. Now, if this worship of the sacred serpent of the Sun, the great fire-god, was so universal in Rome, what symbol could more graphically portray the idolatrous power of Pagan Imperial Rome than the "Great Fiery Serpent"? No doubt it was to set forth this very thing that the Imperial standard itself--the standard of the Pagan Emperor of Rome, as Pontifex Maximus, Head of the great system of fire-worship and serpent worship--was a serpent elevated on a lofty pole, and so coloured, as to exhibit it as a recognised symbol of fire-worship.

As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, the powers of light and darkness came into collision (Rev. xii. 7,8):--"Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out;.... he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." The "great serpent of fire" was cast out, when, by the decree of Gratian, Paganism throughout the Roman empire was abolished--when the fires of Vesta were extinguished, and the revenues of the Vestal virgins were confiscated--when the Roman Emperor (who though for more than a century and a-half a professor of Christianity, had been "Pontifex Maximus," the very head of the idolatry of Rome, and such, on high occasions, appearing invested with all the idolatrous insignia of Paganism,) through force of conscience abolished his own office. While Nimrod was personally and literally slain by the sword, it was through the sword of the Spirit that Shem overcame the system of fire-worship, and so bowed the hearts of men, as to cause it for a time to be utterly extinguished. In like manner did the Dragon of fire, in the Roman Empire, receive a deadly wound from a sword, and that the sword of the

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