But you remember that the Euphrates River ran beneath the walls and crossed right through the city. Well, one night when the young prince of Babylon named Belshazzar was having a gay party and enjoying himself, feeling quite certain that no one could enter the city, Cyrus made a dam and turned the waters of the river to one side. Then Cyrus’ army marched into the city through the dry river-bed and captured the surprised Babylonians without even a fight. It is supposed that some of the Babylonian priests helped him to do this and even opened the gates, for Babylon had become so wicked that they thought it time for it to be destroyed.
Old Lycurgus would have said: “I told you so. People who think of nothing but pleasure never come to a good end.”
This surprise party was in 538—5 and 3 are 8.
Two years later Cyrus let the Jews, who had been carried away fifty years before from Jerusalem, return to the home of their fathers, thus ending the Babylonian Captivity.
To-day the only thing left of this great city of Babylon, which was once bigger than New York and London together—Babylon the Wicked, Babylon the Magnificent, Babylon with all its great walls and brass gates and Hanging Gardens—is only a mound of earth. A few miles away is a ruined tower. This tower, we think, may once have been the Tower of Babel.
20
The Other Side of the World
There used to be a “missionary box” in my Sunday-school, and into this box we dropped our pennies to send a missionary to the heathen.
The heathen, we were told, were people who lived on the other side of the world and worshiped idols.
There was the heathen “Chinee,” the heathen “Japanee,” and the heathen Indian.