Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/263

 *agine, that in this glorious "clime of the east,"—away from the bloody strife between tyranny and faction, that distracted and desolated the once blessed land of Israel's heritage, during the brief delay of its awful doom,—among the scenes of that ancient captivity, in which the mourning sons of Zion had drawn high consolation and lasting support from the same word of prophecy, which the march of time in its solemn fulfilments had since made the faithful history of God's believing people,—here the chief apostle calmly passed the slow decline of his lengthened years. High associations of historical and religious interest gave all around him a holy character. He sat amid the ruins of empires, the scattered wrecks of ages,—still in their dreary desolation attesting the surety of the word of God. From the lonely waste, mounded with the dust of twenty-three centuries, came the solemn witness of the truth of the Hebrew seers, who sung, over the highest glories of that plain in its brightest days, the long-foredoomed ruin that at last overswept it with such blighting desolation. Here, mighty visions of the destiny of worlds, the rise and fall of empire, rose on the view of Daniel and Ezekiel, whose prophetic scope, on this vast stage of dominion, expanded far beyond the narrow limits that bounded all the future in the eyes of the sublimest of those prophets, whose whole ideas of what was great were taken from the little world of Palestine. Like them, too, the apostolic chief lifted his aged eyes above the paltry commotions and troubles of his own land and times, and glanced far over all, to the scenes of distant ages,—to the broad view of the spiritual consummation of events,—to the final triumphs of a true and pure faith,—to the achievement of the world's destiny.

Babylon.—The great Sir John David Michaelis enters with the most satisfactory fullness into the discussion of this locality;—with more fullness, indeed, than my crowded limits will allow me to do justice to; so that I must refer my reader to his Introduction to the N. T., (chap. xxvii. § 4, 5,) where ample statements may be found by those who wish to satisfy themselves of the justice of my conclusion about the place from which this epistle was written. He very ably exposes the extraordinary absurdity of the opinion that this date was given in a mystical sense, at a time when the ancient Babylon, on the Euphrates, was still in existence, as well as a city on the Tigris, Seleucia, to which the name of modern Babylon was given. And he might have added, that there was still another of this name in Egypt, not far from the great Memphis, which has, by Pearson and others, been earnestly defended as the Babylon from which Peter wrote. Michaelis observes, that through some mistake it has been supposed, that the ancient Babylon, in the time of Peter, was no longer in being; and it is true that in comparison with its original splendor, it might be called, even in the first century, a desolated city; yet it was not wholly a heap of ruins, nor destitute of inhabitants. This appears from the account which Strabo, who lived in the time of Tiberius, has given of it. This great geographer compares Babylon to Seleucia, saying, "At present Babylon is not so great as Seleucia," which was then the capital of the Parthian empire, and, according to Pliny, contained six hundred thou