at that time, that any professing to be Christians should ever have regarded Popery in the least favourable light, and did not reject it as the master-piece of Satan to deceive and destroy mankind.

The angel next enters upon a description of the woman and of the beast that carries her; and as this is the last time it is introduced, we will endeavour to show that it is substantially the same as that described by Daniel, and in other parts of St. John's prophecy.

We will begin with chap. ii. of Daniel. While Nebuchadnezzar was ruminating on the changes of human life, and questioning with himself how long the empire he had erected would continue, he was favoured with a dream, which, as interpreted by Daniel, resolved his doubts. The clay-metallic image denoted four empires, that would follow each other, each in its turn arriving at universal dominion, and of which Babylon was expressly named the first, both in order of time and in magnificence. History proves

that Persia, Greece, and Rome very much answer to Daniel's description of the other three, and that no other empires do.

Verses 37, 38. "Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven, hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold."

Nebuchadnezzar was a king of kings, or emperor, for Babylon included under its sway the whole, or the greater part of the then known world.

Verse 39. "And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.”

Another empire, not the Babylonian under a new head, was to follow.

And the

metallic image denoted the merging of each into its successor by the blending of the

metals into one consistent form.

Persia had

a small beginning, but uniting with Media against Babylon, the war ended in the wasting away and absorption of the latter by these two powerful forces. The brass represented Macedonian Greece, that for the short time Alexander survived his last conquest attained to the highest eminence. It however dwindled into the two kingdoms of Antioch and Egypt, which answer to the thighs of brass.

Verses 40-43. And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things; and as iron breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potter's clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou

D D

sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."

Last of all comes Rome. As silver was the prevailing metal of the Persians, and brass of the Greeks, so was iron commonly used by the Romans. These, besides extending their dominion in Europe beyond the Greeks, conquered the greater part of the empires above mentioned. The firm iron legs of Rome sustained the ponderous and bulky frame of the Imperial body. But in the latter end of its empire, under its seventh head, it was reduced to its European states, which correspond with the feet and toes, the smallest part of the human frame. The never-ending contention between the civil and ecclesiastical powers in Europe is denoted by the impossibility of blending iron with clay.

Now it was in the days of these empires that God made his own spiritual kingdom conspicuous, preparatory to its establishment

man,

in every land. Jehovah styled himself King of the Jews; and Christ the God-man, has all power both in heaven and earth, that he may be with his Church efficiently to the end of the world. How suitably, too, does a stone cut out without hands describe God's true people, "who are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of but of God." a Now this kingdom, at first Jewish, and then Christian, the same in nature, though different in form, has ever been controlled and persecuted by these governments; but it will ultimately smite the fourth empire, when it is branched out into ten dependent kingdoms, and overthrow it; and as neither Christianity nor the kingdoms of the West are destroyed, we cannot deny that the prophecy may yet be fulfilled. It cannot indeed be affirmed, that God commenced his spiritual kingdom under any of these empires, since it has existed from the earliest times; his visible a John, i. 13.