he discerned nails of brass. He saw that the looks of the horn were more stout than his fellows. He saw the horn making war with the saints and prevailing against them until the judgment of the Ancient of days.

Daniel then received a further explanation from this attendant minister: "The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down and break it in pieces." We should here note how king and kingdom are used interchangeably in symbolic visions. How truly has the fourth kingdom done all this. Not only has the Roman Empire, as we popularly regard it, subdued the world, but when we look at the history of its ten horns, how truly have they subdued much farther than even what is popularly regarded as the Roman Empire. The ten horns were to be ten kingdoms into which the empire was to be divided without destroying the corporate unity of the beast.

As this fourth beast of Daniel was slain without depriving the first three of life, it could only be the Western Roman Empire. In it therefore we must seek for these ten horns. They were not to be continuously ten from their rise to the destruction of the beast, for the little horn was to uproot three of them. The Pope, with his triple crown, brands himself as that little horn, which had five characteristics :

i. A horn-i.e., a secular power.

ii. Eyes-i.e., éπíoкожоs-an overseer, an ecclesiastic,

iii. A mouth speaking blasphemous words. How awfully fulfilled by Papal doctrines and self-assertions!

iv. Wearing out the saints of the Most High. Within the Latin revived empire the gospel has been effectually crushed.

v. The Papacy endeavoured to change times and laws, by substituting the authority of the Popes for the revelation of God.

The saints of the Most High were to be given into his hand for a time, times, and the dividing of a time— i.e., for 1260 years, viz., from Justinian's edict, A.D. 533, to the French Revolution, A.D. 1792.

Then indeed did the judgment sit. At one stroke the Papacy lost all its possessions in France. Soon after the Pope was made a prisoner. As time went on, Spain and Portugal, and more recently Italy, took away all the Church property. The ecclesiastics have become the pensioners of the State. This year has completed the overthrow of the temporal power of the Pope. Since 1792 he has never had power to wear out the saints of the Most High.

The manner of his destruction is twofold-" to consume and to destroy it unto the end." He retains a decrepit existence until he perishes as "the false prophet," A.D. 1896 or 1897.

After that, the saints of the Most High receive all earthly dominion "under the whole heaven."

Such is the history of the Western Roman Empire as

presented to Daniel, let us now examine its eastern history as given in chapter viii.

The eighth chapter of Daniel is written in Hebrew, although its subjects belong to the times of the Gentiles. Its predictions reach down to the cleansing of the sanctuary, and therefore more fully belongs to Jewish times. As I have already said, it contains the history of the other leg of Nebuchadnezzar's image, including that of the eastern thigh of the Grecian part of the same image. The vision was granted to him beside the river Ulai, near the palace in Shushan. Two rivers are mentioned in connection with Daniel's visions ;-here, Ulai; in chap. x. 4, Hiddekel. In symbolism a river represents a kingdom, as we learn from Isaiah viii. 7. The rivers are beautifully introduced in these prophecies. They symbolise Persia and Assyria. The man clothed in linen is the Lord Jesus. He takes possession of the symbolic river, thus claiming earthly kingdom as His own. It is like the claim made by St John, when, a captive under heathen power, he said Jesus Christ is the Prince of the kings of the earth.

It was while Belshazzar was still reigning that Daniel had this vision. Ulai therefore had not yet become part of the Persian Empire. He saw a ram pushing westward and northward and southward, victorious everywhere. That ram is declared to be "the Kings of Media and Persia." They are kings, because the conquests reach from Cyrus to Darius Hystaspes. After the ram Daniel saw a rough goat, who is declared to be the King of Javan (Greece)—i.e., Alexander the Great. When his

one horn was broken there sprang up four notable ones in its place. These were Greece, Asia Minor and Syria, Persia, and Egypt. Out of one of these four came the Mohammedan little horn. It is true that Mohammed was born in Arabia, but the first time that Mohammedanism became a secular power was when it conquered Persia. As a horn, therefore, it strictly came out of one of the Alexandrine horns. The whole description exactly suits the Mohammedan power:

1. It arose out of Persia.

2. It waxed exceeding great toward the South, and toward the East, and toward the land of the Roe. This Mohammedanism remarkably did,

* The (3) Roe is a beautiful title for Christ.

Cant. ii. 9" My beloved is like a roe or a young hart." Two clean animals, the very standard of purity, and yet not for sacrifice (Deut. xii. 15). It is an image of beauty. "The beauty (roe) of Israel is slain in thy high places" (2 Sam. i. 19).

It is of swiftness. "Asahel was light of foot as a roe in the field" (2 Sam. ii. 18; 1 Chron. xii. 8).

It is of wakefulness. "I charge you, by the roes and by the hinds of the eld, that ye stir not up nor awake my love till she please."

It is the Lord's own beauty. "In that day shall the branch of the Lord be for beauty (a roe) and for glory."

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It is the most excellent. Babylon, the glory (roe) of kingdoms" (Isa. xxiv. 16).

It is the Lord himself as our most precious possession. "From the uttermost part of the earth have we heard songs, even glory (a roe) for the righteous" (Isa. xxiv. 16).

It is the glory of creature beauty. fading flower" (Isa. xxviii. 1, 4). It is the Lord of Hosts himself.

"Whose glorious (roe) beauty is a

"In that day shall the Lord of Hosts

be for a crown of glory (roe), and for a diadem of beauty unto the residue of His people" (Isa. xxviii. 5).

increasing in Arabia, Egypt, &c., beyond the Euphrates; and in Palestine.

3. It increased "unto the host of heaven"-i.e., the Christian Church. The symbolical host of heaven is the divinely-appointed Church. In the times to which this vision belongs this would be the Gentile Church.

4. "It cast down to the earth some of the host, and of the stars." If the host be the body of the people, the stars would be their ministers. One signification of casting to the earth is to degrade and ruin. "How hath the Lord cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger" (Lam. ii. 1).

5. It protracted the degradation, "and stamped upon them." Awfully did Mohammedanism fulfil this part of the prediction.

6. It magnified itself "even unto the Prince of the host." Mohammed acknowledged Jesus to be a prophet from God, even declaring that He would yet judge the world, yet he proclaimed himself to be greater, the promised Paraclete.

It is Judah as compared with the nations. "A goodly (roe) heritage of the hosts of nations" (Jer. iii. 19).

It is the beautiful part of an ornament. "As for the beauty (roe) of his ornament, he set it in majesty" (Ezek. vii. 20).

It is Judea, the glory (roe) of all lands" (Ezek. xx. 6, 15; Dan. viii. 9 ; xi. 10, 41-45).

It is Christ, the glory of the purified world. "And I shall set glory (a roe) in the land of the living" (Ezek. xxvi. 20).

Putting all these together, how gloriously they illustrate the words, "My beloved is like a roe."

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