concerns our tranquillity and hopefulness, in the contemplation of the
bewildering maze and often heart-breaking tragedy of mundane affairs,
to hold fast by the conviction that God's unseen Hand moves the pieces
on the board, and presides over all the complications. The difference
between 'sacred' and 'profane' history is not that one is under His
direct control, and the other is not. What was true of Cyrus and his
policy is as true of England. Would that politicians and all men
recognised the fact as clearly as this historian did!

I. Cyrus's proclamation sounds as if he were a Jehovah-worshipper, but
it is to be feared that his religion was of a very accommodating kind.
It used to be said that, as a Persian, he was a monotheist, and would
consequently be in sympathy with the Jews; but the same cylinder
already quoted shatters that idea, and shows him to have been a
polytheist, ready to worship the gods of Babylon. He there ascribes
his conquest to 'Merodach, the great lord,' and distinctly calls
himself that god's 'worshipper.' Like other polytheists, he had room
in his pantheon for the gods of other nations, and admitted into it
the deities of the conquered peoples.

The use of the name 'Jehovah' would, no doubt, be most simply
accounted for by the supposition that Cyrus recognised the sole
divinity of the God of Israel; but that solution conflicts with all
that is known of him, and with his characterisation in Isaiah xlv. as
'not knowing' Jehovah. More probably, his confession of Jehovah as the
God of heaven was consistent in his mind with a similar confession as
to Bel-Merodach or the supreme god of any other of the conquered
nations. There is, however no improbability in the supposition that
the prophecies concerning him in Isaiah xlv, may have been brought to
his knowledge, and be referred to in the proclamation as the 'charge'