This Great Babylon

There was in other days a tree whose leaves were fair and whose fruit was much, the height of which reached unto heaven, and the sight of it to the end of all the earth. The beasts of the field had shadow under it, the birds of the air dwelt in the boughs of it, and all flesh fed on it. It was the admiration and the boast of all; their desire was towards it. The heart of the man who planted it claimed it as his glory and joy—"Is not this great Babylon that 1 have built," said the king Nebuchadnezzar.
This was the fair, luxuriant tree. All flesh was content, and man's heart feasted on it; the ends of the earth gazed at it, and thus it got its sanction from all that was in man or of man.
In a little space, however, heaven visited it; it was altogether another thing in the opinion of heaven. The Watcher and the Holy One came down, as the Lord Himself had done in the still earlier days of Babel and Sodom. This visitor from heaven inspected this tree of beauteous, wondrous growth. But with Him it was no object of admiration or worship. He was not moved to desire its beauty. In His thoughts it was not a tree good for food, or pleasant to the eye, or desirable for any end as it was in the thoughts of all flesh. He looked on it as on a thing ripe for righteous judgment, and He said of it, "Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake off his leaves, and scatter his fruit.”
This was solemn, in a moment of common, universal exaltation, when the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, and all flesh were glorying in the thing which heaven was thus dooming to destruction. But Daniel was the only one among men in that day who had the mind of heaven, the mind of the Watcher and the Holy One respecting this tree. The saint on the earth has the mind of heaven in him. This is our place.