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186 our exiled fathers the hand became the executive of the brain to establish the worship of the true God, and in the revolution of the wheels of nature, as seen by Ezekiel, the soldier is the machine of the thinker, and armies are assembled and battles fought to carry out a few ideas with which men of letters have filled the mind of a nation, and scholars and sages, prophets and impostors, good men and bad men, kings and generals, armies and revolutions, are all equally used to accomplish the purposes of that eternal Mind, who sitteth supreme over all, which we as the only nation known on earth recognize as Divine Providence.

"The ambition of Cyrus and his successors, though in a manner which they did not anticipate, was the means made use of by our Father of introducing among the enslaved and ignorant multitude of the East the civilization, the arts, and the learning which Greece, with her wonderful genius, had matured. Cyrus, whose sudden irruption into Babylon terminated Belshazzar's feast and fulfilled so terribly the writing on the wall, had already extended the Persian Empire over the greater part of Asia Minor. Belshazzar, the last king over Babylon, attempted to strengthen himself against the growing power of the Persians, by forming an alliance with Crœsus, King of Lydia, so famous for his riches. This monarch, made arrogant by his great wealth and the command of an army of nearly half a million, resolved to encounter the Persian power, but lately become formidable. To make assurance doubly sure, he sent to inquire of the Oracle at Delphi in Greece, and