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the gates of the royal palace, the sun-descended king would 

 issue from his chamber, clad in his gorgeous robes, before his 

 almost worshipping subjects, like his royal father in the signs 

 of his greatest influence, to scatter blessings on his people, or 

 destruction on his enemies. You must not suppose these 

 emblems confined to ancient Nineveh ; they belong to all the 

 Sabsean nations. It is remarkable, that amongst those very 

 sculptures in the tombs of Persia, from which a figure of the 

 winged king, " clothed with the sun,'' was obtained, we find 

 also the winged bull precisely as represented at Nineveh, only 

 of inferior sculpture ; and even when we go to other and more 

 distant nations still, and search the emblems of the Mongolian 

 monuments, we find the very same allusion. What emblem 

 could be better chosen for the royal tombs ? What could 

 more properly represent the expected resurrection of the sun- 

 descended monarch than the first rising of the solar orb, at 

 the commencement of a new year, upon the shoulder of the 

 Bull — the then vernal equinox ! Or what could be more 

 strikingly depicted upon the standard of the Sabsean monarch 

 than what we actually find upon the ancient standard of the 

 emperor of Mogul — the sun upon the royal chamber of the 

 lion, coming forth in his fury and majesty to defend his royal 

 son, and take vengeance on the enemies of the heaven- 

 descended monarch ! 



Should these views be founded in truth, as I believe they 

 are, so long as those monuments remain in our metropolis they 

 will be the standing memorials of the truth of Holy Scripture. 

 The antiquity of astronomical science which they prove, to- 

 gether with its rapid decline after the deluge, the great event 

 so often marked upon the astronomical sculptury, proclaims a 

 downward progress in the history of mankind. It tells us 

 what we miglit expect, that astronomy in its simple knowledge 

 of the general system of the heavens, fell with man ; with man 

 to rise again. The universality of the common zodiac, and 

 its groat antiquity proclaimed by the unanimous clioice of tlic 



