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bridge of Mosul, the great
Nineveh had formerly been erected: the city, and even the ruins of the
city, had long since disappeared; the vacant place afforded a spacious
field for the operations of the two armies."--"The History of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. 46, par. 24.
And to this day, the site of Nineveh is pointed out across the river from
Mosul, only mounds of ruins, these almost obliterated by the drifting
sands of centuries. The word spoken is fulfilled, though at the time it
was spoken it little seemed to proud and prosperous Nineveh that such
a fate could ever be hers.
"Before me rise the walls Of the Titanic city,--brazen gates, Towers,
temples, palaces enormous piled,-- Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!
In all her golden pomp I see her now, Her swarming streets, her
splendid festivals.
* * * * *
"Again I look,--and lo!... Her walls are gone, her palaces are dust,-- The
desert is around her, and within Like shadows have the mighty passed
away."
From Nineveh's mounds we seem to hear a voice that says: "All flesh is
as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass
withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord
endureth forever." 1 Peter 1:24, 25.
The Burden of Tyre

[Illustration: TYRE BY THE SEA
"They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers."
Eze. 26:4.]
Tyre was the greatest maritime city of antiquity. Its inhabitants, the
Phoenicians, traded in the ports of all the known world. Ezekiel
describes the heart of the seas as its borders. "Thy builders have
perfected thy beauty," he says. He tells how all countries traded in its
marts and contributed to its wealth. And then, obeying the word of the
Lord, the prophet bears a message of rebuke and warning,--"the burden
of Tyre,"--and pronounces the coming judgment:
"Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will
cause many nations to come up against thee.... And they shall destroy
the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her
dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for
the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith
the Lord God." Eze. 26:3-5.
The accounts of travelers bear witness that the prophecy has been
fulfilled. As to the site of the island city of Ezekiel's day, Bruce, nearly
a century ago, said that he found it a "rock whereon fishers dry their
nets." (See "Keith on the Prophecies," p. 329.)
In more recent times, Dr. W.M. Thomson found the whole region of
Tyre suggestive only of departed glory:
"There is nothing here, certainly, of that which led Joshua to call it 'the
strong city' more than three thousand years ago (Joshua
19:29),--nothing of that mighty metropolis which baffled the proud
Nebuchadnezzar and all his power for thirteen years, until 'every head'
in his army 'was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled,' in the hard
service against Tyrus (Eze. 29:18),--nothing in this wretched roadstead
and empty harbor to remind one of the times when merry mariners did
sing in her markets--no visible trace of those towering ramparts which
so long resisted the utmost efforts of the great Alexander. All have
vanished utterly like a troubled dream, and Tyre has sunk under the

burden of prophecy.... As she is now, and has long been, Tyre is God's
witness; but great, powerful, and populous, she would be the infidel's
boast. This, however, she cannot be. Tyre will never rise from her dust
to falsify the voice of prophecy.
"Dim is her glory, gone her fame, Her boasted wealth has fled; On her
proud rock, alas! her shame, The fisher's net is spread. The Tyrian harp
has slumbered long, And Tyria's mirth is low; The timbrel, dulcimer,
and song Are hushed, or wake to woe."
--"The Land and the Book," Vol. II, pp. 626, 627.
The Desolation of Babylon
Yet another city of ancient times there was, the mightiest of them all,
whose fate was a subject of prophecy, and whose history bears special
testimony for us today; for, more than any other, the Lord used that city
as a symbol of the pride of life and the exaltation of the selfish heart
against God.
Let us study briefly the desolations pronounced upon Babylon of old.
[Illustration: BABYLON IN THE DUST
"Babylon shall become heaps,... without an inhabitant." Jer. 51:37.]
While Babylon was still the mightiest city of the world, with the period
of greatest glory yet before it, the Lord revealed its ignoble end. By the
prophet Isaiah He declared:
"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the