was that which he had represented, and that the events they foreshowed would infallibly come to pass: "For as much as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold-the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter and the dream is certain, and faithful is the interpretation of it." As surely as Nebuchadnezzar had beheld this image dashed to pieces by the stone cut out from the mountain without hands, and its relics blown away by the winds, like chaff from the summer-threshing floors;-so surely would the monarchies symbolized by the image be overthrown and swept from the earth, by the hierarchy of glorified kings, whom the God of heaven will set up, and whose kingdom is to stand for ever; for the dream was, as Nebuchadnezzar had believed, prophetic, and the interpretation that had been given, true. The prophet seems by this solemn asseveration to imply that the king and others would he more likely to hesitate in receiving the prediction of the final destruction of the powers denoted by the image by an order of rulers above the rank of men, whom the God of heaven should invest with the dominion of the world, than any other part of the prophecy. And many modern commentators have been extremely reluctant to admit his interpretation of that part of the vision. They recoil from the prediction that the powers symbolized by the image are to be destroyed. They are unwilling to believe that the Word of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, is to set up a kingdom on the earth and reign over it in power and glory. They are unwilling to believe that the stone cut out without hands symbolizes an order of rulers above men in the flesh, and who are to derive their power exclusively from Christ, and are to reign with him; though it is foreshown with the utmost distinctness in many other prophecies as well as this. They reject also the revelation here made with such clearness, that the kingdom Christ is to set up thus on the earth, is to continue for ever. Preoccupied with their own mistaken theories, they assume the office of prophets instead of interpreters, and substitute their own imaginings in place of his Spirit's teachings. Nothing, how

ever, can be more certain than that the prophecy declares, and in the most impressive form, that the monarchies denoted by the image are to be destroyed by a supernatural intervention, not moulded into a new form, and perpetuated under Christ's reign. Nothing can be more indubitable than that they are to be destroyed as the enemies of Christ and his kingdom. Why are they to be crushed, as the image was broken to pieces and swept from the scene, if they are not hostile to Christ and obstacles to his kingdom? Nothing can be more certain than that the power denoted by the stone, is not to consist of men in the natural life, nor be constituted by men, but is to be instituted without human hands by Christ himself, and is to consist, therefore, as is shown in the parallel prophecy, chap. vii., and many others in the Old and New Testament, Dan. xii. 2, 3; Isaiah lxvi. 15; Zech. xiv. 5; Rev. v. 10, xx. 4-6, of the risen and glorified saints; and nothing can be more unquestionable than that the kingdom which the God of heaven sets up as the successor of all human governments, he is to reign over himself, and in the person of Christ, who is the King of the kings of this world, and the Lord of its lords, and, as is foreshown in so many prophecies, is to reign here for ever and ever. But this great truth, the writers to whom we refer have failed to see. That the grand contradistinction of the kingdom the God of heaven is to set up in the earth, from all human empires, is, that God himself in the person of the Incarnate Word, is to reign in it in the glory with which he now reigns in heaven-while in the human kingdoms, which his is to supersede, only man in rebellion from him reigned: though graven in characters of light on this and every other part of the prophetic word, has escaped those commentators! God, they imagine, is after all, only to reign on the earth by a metaphor. Fallen, blind, sinning, dying man, they hold is to be the only monarch hereafter, as he has heretofore been of this world. But no fancy can be more groundless and unwarrantable. The prophecy has hitherto met a literal verification, according to the natural import of the symbols, and the grammatical sense of the inspired interpretation. And all its predictions that remain to be accomplished will receive a like fulfilment.

Such were the great futurities that were revealed by this vision. It taught the king of Babylon that he was not the master of his own destiny, as he had imagined, but was in the hands of the God of heaven, who could overthrow him at his pleasure. It taught him that the empire he had inherited and raised by his conquests to such a pinnacle of power and glory, was not to subsist for ever, but was itself soon to be conquered by another power, and that by a third, and the third by a fourth; and that after that series of bloody and cruel tyrannies had ravaged the earth for a period, they were to be struck from existence by a higher than human power, appointed by God to the sway of the world under his own immediate rule, and that that kingdom is to endure for ever. To the Israelites it conveyed a fresh assurance of what they had before been apprised by many prophecies, that their Messiah shall at length establish his throne on the earth; and disclosed to them what had not before been revealed, that the period that was to pass anterior to his advent, was to be measured by four great monarchies that should successively sway the great nations, among whom their lineage was for a long time to be dispersed. And that knowledge it has conveyed to all of subsequent generations who have received the divine word.

The purposes God thus disclosed respecting a most important part of the nations of the world, through so vast a series of ages, are wonderful in their nature, and must have ends of the greatest moment in respect to the divine empire. How are they to be contemplated by us? Why were these human tyrannies admitted into the great system of God's permissions? What exemplifications take place in them which his wisdom and righteousness and goodness will make the means of beneficial instruction to his empire at large, and preparatives to that redemption of the race, which is to be wrought under the administration Christ is to institute on his assumption of the sceptre of the world?

Had Adam not revolted, he would have been the head of the race, and would have exercised a sway over it, marked by a perfection of intelligence, wisdom, rectitude, and love, worthy of an unfallen being of his lofty rank. Under the providence by which the monarchies foreshown in this dream have been permitted to rise and run their career, an

exemplification takes place, on a great and decisive scale, of what fallen man is as a ruler of his fellow man, when allowed to gain supreme power over him-an exemplification, indeed, of an awful character, but essential, probably, to a full understanding by the universe of what man in his apostasy is towards his fellow man and towards God; and a demonstration of the necessity of Christ's assuming the sceptre of the world, and installing the risen saints in authority as kings with him, in order to the restoration of the race from sin to holiness.

First. The experiment has been conducted in such a way as to give eminent advantages to the race for a favorable issue. It has been made with those, who were the most highly endowed, the most cultivated, and in every relation the most hopeful of the human family. The nations over which these empires have had dominion, have consisted almost exclusively of whites, and the most gifted and the most highly cultured in those branches of knowledge that tend to give supremacy to the intellect, unfold and nurture the domestic affections, and raise man to a measure of virtue, refinement, and dignity.

Second. It was obviously essential, in order to a fair experiment, that it should be made in a large measure with those who rejected Jehovah as God, and paid their homage to false deities; as that is the attitude which the race at large assumed towards Jehovah. It has accordingly been made mainly with nations that were pagans. The Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, and the Romans for four or five centuries, had fallen universally from the knowledge of Jehovah, and paid their worship to idols and imaginary deities. The Romans, after their nominal conversion to Christianity, continued to be worshippers, in a great measure, of idols and creature shapes, and a large share of them have remained such to the present time.

Third. They all bad the means, however, of the knowledge of the true God and his will placed within their reach through their connexion with his chosen people; but they universally rejected it. The Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans till the fourth century, continued, both as governments and as nations, unaltered in their homage of idols; and the Romans, from Constantine to the

Reformation, remained, as a body, the votaries of creature gods, though under new names.

Such have been the nations with whom the trial has been made. How now has man exemplified himself in it? What have been the principles on which those who have ruled have proceeded?

1. They have founded their sway on mere violence and usurpation. They have not acquired their power, especially over foreign nations, by the gift or concession of their subjects, but by conquest and compulsion. It was only after long and violent resistance that Assyria, Syria, Judea, Tyre, and Egypt, submitted to the sceptre of Babylonia; Asia Minor and Babylonia to Persia; Asia Minor, Tyre, Egypt, and Persia to Greece; and western Europe, Carthage, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and Babylonia, and Persia to the Romans. The conquerors drove their victims to submission by mere power; their spontaneous assent they neither asked nor could have received.

2. They have proceeded in their conquests and tyrannies on the assumption that they had a right to make men, individuals, and nations, the vassals, as they could, of their lawless passions, without any regard to the prerogatives of God, or their wellbeing whom they vanquished and oppressed. Had they been the creators of the nations whom they scourged into subjection to their will, they could scarcely have claimed a more absolute property in them, and title to appropriate them to their uses as they pleased. In this they arrogated what belongs only to God.

3. They assumed that their prerogatives of conquest and dominion were so absolute, that resistance to their power, or a refusal to submit to their will, deserved death, the penalty of sin against God, and only of sin against him. They thus again arrogated rights over men as absolute as those of God, and treated resistance to their will as of the same guilt and merit of punishment as revolt from him.

Accordingly, proceeding on these assumptions, they have slaughtered on the battlefield, in the siege and sack of cities, and in conflicts on the sea, millions on millions of those whom they were endeavoring to conquer; and sacrificed in the strife nearly an equal number of those who were already their subjects. These monarchies were all in existence in