LECTURE XIII.

THE DRAGON AND THE TWO BEASTS.

REV. XIII.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads, as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, and His tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship

the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

I. THERE is something picturesque in the form which this vision assumes, if we retain the reading of the first word which our own translators have adopted. The prophet is transported to the shore of his little island; as he looks upon the waters, this ugly creature rises out of them.

But there is another reading of more authority and more consistent with the general scope of the vision. The third person is substituted for the first. It is the dragon, not the prophet, who stands by the sea-shore. The beast which is seen to rise out of it is the earthly counterpart of himself. The sea will then, like the beast, have an emblematical force. Symbol and fact will be less confused.

I have said that the beast is the earthly counter

part of the dragon; that is the first point to remember in determining what this beast is. The dragon is emphatically a spiritual power; the self-willed power, the destructive power. He is cast out of heaven; he can no longer blacken the image of Him that sits on the throne to those who dwell there; to those who see the Man-child at the right hand of that throne. But he can wage war against that Man-child upon earth; he can set up a rival dominion to his. Next, it should be recollected that such a rival dominion had, according to the Bible, existed in all ages. This final book of the Bible contemplates it at a particular crisis, when it had reached its full development.

The language of the last chapter, taken literally, compels us to think of the actual birth of Christ into the world as in some sense the commencement of the crisis. Yet it fixes a time of forty-two months, or a thousand two hundred and sixty days, as one in which the battle was at its climax, the decision of it at hand. The notion of a wild beast, who is the counterfeit of a dragon, seems to demand-has been thought by almost all interpreters to demand-a fulfilment in some person who should be the complete embodiment of an evil principle. To reconcile these different conditions, to find something that shall answer to them all, is the problem. Other conditions too must be satisfied. There

is a description of this beast in the 17th chapter, which no conclusions we deduce from this ought to contradict. I believe it would be out of place to speak of that description here. It is mixed up with some topics of which at present we can take no notice. When we reach it in due course, we may consider how far it fits in with the interpretation I am about to give.

Seeing that the establishment of the Roman military despotism after the battle of Actium nearly synchronises with the birth of the Son of David; seeing that that despotism, after passing through its different stages of development in Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, was subjected to its great trial-day in the three turbulent reigns that followed, and came forth in its form of consummate brutality in the person of Vitellius; I take this to be the wild beast in which the dragon saw his own image reflected. The prophet beholds it first in that mild form which it wore when Octavius rose from the triumvir into the patron of arts, the preserver of order, the object of poetical adulation; when all the names and forms of the Republic (as the great historian observes) were so skilfully preserved to hide the tyranny which lay beneath them then after that tyranny had cast aside its veils, had come forth as the

But yet he has another On each one of the heads,

mere expression of the will of the soldiery, having no support but that which it derived from their arms. Because this beast is represented as having a continuous existence throughout these reigns, he appears with seven heads. Why with seven and not rather eight, we are to learn hereafter. The ten horns are, I apprehend, the legions in the different provinces. The real royalty is in them: the beast is sustained in his own power only by them. power distinct from theirs. upon that of the first and every succeeding one to the last, was the name of Blasphemy. Octavius, in becoming an Emperor, becomes a God. A poet so temperate and so wise, with so much of the older Italian spirit, as Virgil, would not have bestowed on him the title in a mere fit of exaggerated gratitude, if there had been anything shocking to his countrymen in it, if they had not accepted it as the natural and necessary meaning of his elevation to be the ruler of the world. In no case is the remark more applicable, that "words are things." The name blended itself with all legal forms, mingled itself in all popular writings. The general of armies was in very deed the God to whom the Capitoline Jove did homage. He protected the city, which the old object of republican worship had been unable to proHe was to take care of the worship of the gods;

tect.