3. A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES on the Various Forces of Matter, and their relations to each other. By Michael Faraday, D.C.L., F.R.S., Fullerian Professor of Chemistry, Royal Institution. Delivered before a Juvenile Auditory at the Royal Institution of Great Britain during the Christmas Holidays of 1859-1860. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers. 1860.

THESE Lectures, though having a conversational cast in adaptation to the youthful auditory to which they were addressed, have an unusual charm from their simplicity, intelligibleness, and the point and beauty of the experiments and exemplifications with which they are illustrated. They treat of gravity, cohesion, chemical affinity, heat, magnetism, electricity, and the correla tion of the several chemical forces. To these is added a Lecture on Light-House Illumination and the Electric Light, in which Fresnel's celebrated lamp is described.

4. THE BEAUTIFUL CITY, AND THE KING OF GLORY. By Woodbury Davis. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1860.

UNDER this title the writer gives a sketch of the great measures of the Divine Administration, past, present, and future, that are to issue in the redemption of the world from sin and its curse. Rejecting the theory that the millennium is to result from the labors of the church, and is to involve little more than the overthrow of idolatry and conversion of pagans generally to such a faith in the gospel as now prevails among Christianized nations, he receives the doctrine of the prophetic word that Christ is to come and assume the sceptre of the race, destroy by his own almighty hand the great powers arrayed against him, and deliver those absolutely who survive, from the power of Satan and the blight and misery of sin, and raise them at length to an immortal life. While his views are not on all points in harmony with those advanced in the Journal, they are in their main features the same, and are presented in an attractive form, and urged with modesty, candor, and earnestness

ART. I. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL, DANIEL V.

THE interposition of the Most High recorded in this chapter, was designed to show that the overthrow of Babylon was by his appointment, and in accomplishment of the revelation he had made to Nebuchadnezzar, to demonstrate again the nothingness of idols, and to verify his fidelity to his people, and confirm them in their faith and allegiance.

Belshazzar made a feast to his nobles, in which he caused the golden vessels taken from the temple at Jerusalem to be used as wine cups, in the homage they paid to their idol gods, vs. 1-4. Immediately the king saw the fingers of a man's hand writing on the wall of the apartment, vs. 5. Alarmed at the sight, he called the magicians to interpret the writing. But they could neither explain nor read it, vs. 6-8. The report of the king's agitation reaching the queen-mother, she entered the banquet-house, and advised that Daniel should be called to interpret the writing, vs. 9-12. Daniel was summoned to the king's presence and required to explain the mysterious words, vs. 13-16. He, reminding the king of the extraordinary manner in which Jehovah had punished the pride of his ancestor, Ne

buchadnezzar, and pointing to the impious act of which he had just been guilty, informed him that the words the hand had written on the wall, were prophetic of his doom and the doom of his kingdom, vs. 17-27. The prophecy was immediately verified in the capture of the city, and the slaughter of the monarch, vs. 28-30.

"Belshazzar, the king, made a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and drank wine before the thousand,” vs. 1. The feast was probably commemorative of some important event-perhaps of their successful resistance of the Persians by whom the city was then besieged; or expressive of their confidence in the protection of their gods for the future. That it had a direct reference to their deities, is seen from the homage they paid to them, as they drank from the vessels consecrated to Jehovah.

"Belshazzar, while tasting the wine, commanded to bring the vessels of gold and silver, which Nebuchadnezzar his father had carried away from the temple in Jerusalem, that the king, his princes, his wives and his concubines might drink out of them," vs. 2. The king's tasting the wine was doubtless an act of homage to the Babylonian god or gods; it being customary with the heathen to taste the wine, when a libation was offered at a sacrifice, or feast. But why did the king, after having commenced the ceremony, send for the golden and silver vessels that were consecrated to Jehovah's worship; that the libations of the feast might be drunk from them? A natural reason will appear, if we suppose the feast to have been held because of the success that had up to that point attended their resistance of their Persian besiegers; and to express their confidence that their gods would still defend them, and confute the revelation made by Jehovah to Nebuchadnezzar, that the empire was soon to be overthrown, and give place to another. Aud that is highly probable. The death of Nebuchadnezzar had taken place only twenty-three or twenty-four years before. The memory of the prediction made to him through the vision of the image, that the Babylonian monarchy, denoted by the golden head, was soon to be succeeded by another symbolized by the silver breast and arms, must have remained fresh in the minds of many belonging to the court, and become, as the war with Persia advanced, the

subject of comment. It might naturally have happened, that a motive sprung from that prediction for a festal commemoration of the care which they held their idol gods had so far taken of them, and expressive of their confidence that they should still continue safe under their guardianship; and disbelief of the doom foreshown of the empire by Jehovah. And if that were the design of the feast, the king sent for the sacred vessels taken from the temple at Jerusalem, doubtless, that he might show in that emphatic form, his contempt of the God of the Hebrews from whom that prediction proceeded, and his unhesitating trust in the idol deities whom the Babylonians worshipped; and this is very clearly implied in the 22d, 23d, and 24th verses, which indicate that he sent for them, not because of their superior beauty, but because they were designed for the service of Jehovah.

"Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken. out of the temple, the house of God, in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank out of them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, of brass, iron, wood, and stone,” vs. 3, 4. Their drinking out of them in homage of their idol deities, was meant therefore as a declaration of their belief in the power and purpose of their gods to defend them, and their disregard of the revelation that had been made to Nebuchadnezzar, that the empire was soon to reach its end; and was thus a studied rejection and defiance of Jehovah. That gratuitous, public, and official act of contempt and insult rendered it proper that he should interpose and verify his supremacy and truth, and was the reason of the revelation that was immediately made in a form to carry conviction to the king and his court, that the dynasty and empire were to be forthwith overthrown.

"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand which wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote," vs. 5. The wall of the apartment, and at a point opposite to the chandelier, was chosen as the place of the inscription, doubtless, not only because it was con picuous to all, but that all suspicion might be precluded, that it was the work of collusion. The distance of

the writing from the floor, the size and bold coloring of the letters, were such as carried the conviction to all that they were wrought at the instant the king noticed them, and by a supernatural power. That the fingers only of a man's hand were seen by the king, and that he witnessed the delineation of the letters, was doubtless also in order that he might see with the clearest certainty, that the writing was wrought at the moment, not previously, and that it was the work of a miracle. That his attention was first drawn to it, and that it overwhelmed him with surprise and fear, was also, that no suspicion might lurk in the minds of the courtiers, that it had been previously contrived by him to amuse or astonish them.

"Then the brightness (glow, hilarity) of the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts agitated him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against the other," vs. 6. These were the natural effects of sudden and violent fear; and show that the king was instantly seized with a resistless conviction that the fingers that wrote the inscription, were the fingers of a deity; and that the words were prophetic of evil to him. He perhaps recollected the celestial messenger that revealed himself at the side of the three Hebrews in the burning furnace; and the watcher who descended from heaven and announced to Nebuchadnezzar his dethronement and degradation to a life with the beasts; and the feeling shot with a convulsive power through his frame, that perhaps an equally terrible doom awaited him.

"The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. The king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whoever will read this writing, and shew me the interpretation of it, shall be clothed with purple, and a chain of gold about his neck, and shall rule as the third in the kingdom," vs. 7. The letters of the inscription, it would seem from this, were unknown to the king and the court, as otherwise they would at least have been able to read the words, though they had not known their meaning. His summoning the Chaldeans and astrologers to read and explain the writing, is not to be regarded as a proof that he thought the message, whatever it was, must have come from one of his own gods. While he had