conquests, and being now king of kings, lifted up his heart with
pride, that he caused a golden image to be reared on the plains of
Dura. He issued a royal edict, and commanded the princes and rulers of
all these nations as well as their principal subjects to assemble; and
being assembled, he commanded them to fall down and worship his golden
god. Daniel's companions refused to do this, and were cast into the
fiery furnace.

From this circumstance he was brought to acknowledge a Supreme Being,
and even issued a decree that any one who spoke amiss against the God
of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego should be cut in pieces. But as he
was gazing upon the massy walls of Babylon--a work of gigantic
achievement; as he was surveying, from the height of his palace, the
hanging gardens and lofty towers, (an aerial world!) as he was
admiring his own magnificence, by the sentence of that God whom he had
glorified, he was driven from men, and in the Hebrew style of
expression, is said to have eaten grass like oxen. By this we are to
understand that he was suddenly seized with a disease called by the
Greeks lycanthropy, and which is known among physicians at the present
day by the name of hypochondria. It is a species of madness that
causes persons to run into the fields and streets in the night, and
sometimes to suppose themselves to have the heads of oxen, horses,
dogs, or fancy themselves to be like some other animal, and doomed to
fare like them. And some have imagined themselves to be made of glass.
At the end of seven years Nebuchadnezzar's understanding returned to
him, and he was restored to his throne and glory. He died 562 years
before Christ in the 43rd year of his reign.

It is our intention to consider this text in a moral point of view, as
applicable to all men of all ages, and in all conditions in life.