BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON. 199 



that when the Egyptian star was in the ascendant 

 they took the side of Babylon ; and when the Baby- 

 lonians had won the battle of Carchemish, the Jews 

 intrigued with the fallen nation. Nebuchadnezzar 

 gave them repeated warnings ; but at last his pa- 

 tience was exhausted, and he levelled the rebellious 

 city to the ground. Some of the citizens escaped to 

 Egypt ; the aristocracy and priesthood were carried off 

 to Babylon ; the peasants alone were left to cultivate 

 the soil. 



At Babylon there was a collection of captive kings, 

 each of whom was assigned his daily allowance and his 

 throne. In this palace of shadows the unfortunate 

 Jehoiachin ended his days. But the Jewish people 

 were not treated as captives or as slaves, and they soon 

 began to thrive. 



When the ten tribes seceded they virtually aban- 

 doned their religion. They withdrew from the temple, 

 which they had once acknowledged as the dwelling of 

 Jehovah ; they had no hereditary priesthood ; they had 

 no holy books ; and so as soon as they ceased to possess 

 a country they ceased to exist as a race. But the Jews 

 preserved their nationality intact. 



Moses had been an Egyptian priest, and the unity of 

 God was a fundamental article of that religion. The 

 unity of God was also the tenet of the more intelligent 

 Arabs of the desert. Whether therefore we regard 

 that great man as an Egyptian or as an Arab it can 

 scarcely be doubted that the views which he held of 

 the Deity were as truly unitarian as those of Mahomet 

 and Abd-ul-Wahhab. It is, however, quite certain 

 that to the people whom he led, Jehovah was merely 

 an invisible Bedouin chief who travelled with them in 

 a tent, who walked about the camp at night, and 



