We have now to consider the connection of this

Chaldean Magi would have a general idea, that the dream portended some great calamity to Nebuchadnezzar; though, without the divine inspiration which was specially vouchsafed to Daniel, they could not know its precise import. Under this ignorance in regard to its precise signification, the Magi were probably not unwilling to shelter themselves: for, in men who had recently escaped the penalty of death merely because they could not declare the particulars of a dream which the king himself had forgotten, it would require no small hardihood to inform an unreasonable oriental despot, that his second dream of the tree portended some great, though not perfectly definite, calamity to himself. Compare Dan. ii. 1—13, with iv. 7, 18. On the fixed principles of their art, I see not how they could be absolutely ignorant of the general import of the vision of the tree and, when we recollect the character of the prince with whom they had to deal, as it is impossible not to admire the divine courage of Daniel in fearlessly revealing the whole truth; so I deem it most probable, that the Magi were far too prudent courtiers to incur the danger of a sudden ebullition of imperial ferocity, by stating even what the rules of onirocriticism would doubtless require them generally to communicate. Knowing, that a tree was the fixed hieroglyphic of a sovereign prince; and perceiving, from the very fact of the royal dream, that the tree in question was the symbol of their own sovereign: they would clearly enough discern, so far as bare generalities could extend, that the hewing down of the tree, by a special command from heaven, could only denote some signal judgment which impended over the devoted head of Nebuchadnezzar. It may be observed, that the inspired writer himself no where says that the Magi were unable to give any interpretation of the dream: the assertion is made solely by the king, to whom, no doubt, the politic soothsayers had, with a mixture of truth and a mixture of falsehood, declared their ignorance.

remarkable narrative with the vision of the great metallic image.

1. Since the king of Babylon was a type of the great image; for it is equally said to him by the prophet, THOU art the head of gold, and The tree which thou sawest it is THOU O king: his predicted destiny will shadow out the destiny of that great compound Empire, to which he was the declared head and (according to the notions of oriental mythology) the animating principle; or, in the language of hieroglyphics as employed by the onirocritical writers, the fate of the lofty tree is the fate of the colossal image.

Hence the seven times, during which the king was to be physically deranged, are the figure of seven prophetic times or 2520 natural years, during which the great compound Empire, defined as the terms of the symbol require us to define it, should be subjected to the moral madness of Paganism or Popery or Mohammedism or Infidelity: hence, as, at the end of those times, the king was restored to the use of his intellect and became a faithful worshipper of the one true God; so, at the end of those corresponding prophetic times, the great compound Empire is to be restored to a state of moral sanity, and, after the predicted destruction of the antichristian confederacy, is to serve the Most High with a pure adoration during the long-expected millennium: and hence, as the king was translated to heaven, when he had piously reigned for a short season after his recovery from madness; so will the

Church of God be translated to heaven, when the comparatively short season of millennian holiness shall have rolled away.

2. This fate of the Empire is covertly pointed. out in the peculiar phraseology, by which the madness of Nebuchadnezzar is described; a phraseology, which forms the connecting link between Nebuchadnezzar the type and the four great Empires collectively the antitype.

Of the king it is said; Let his heart be changed from man's heart, and let a BEAST's heart be given unto him of the four great Empires, in the language of symbols, it is said; Four great BEASTS came up from the sea. Thus, as the physical madness of the type reduced him to the condition of a beast, so the moral madness of the antitype caused it to be represented by a succession of beasts.

Accordingly, from the commencement of the seven prophetic times in the middle of the seventh century before Christ, down to the present hour when we have nearly arrived at the end of them, the great image, with the exception of a single brief lucid interval, has laboured under the grievous evil of moral insanity: for, relinquishing the pure doctrines of revelation patriarchal and christian, it has either worshipped the successive demon-gods of Paganism and Popery, or it has been misled by the gross imposture of Mohammedism, or it has wildly followed the ignis fatuus of Antichristian Infidelity. But yet, by the general voice of prophecy, we are taught to expect, that the period is now rapidly

approaching, when all these hallucinations of a disordered intellect shall vanish away, and when (in the language of the Hebrew seer) the Lord shall be king over all the earth and there shall be one Lord and his name One1

3. For the full establishment of the interpretation here proposed, it remains only to notice one of those connecting links, which are so frequently employed both by Daniel and by St. John to bind together parallel or allied passages.

When Nebuchadnezzar, in his vision, beheld the symbolical tree hewn down; the stump was still left in the ground, firmly rivetted to the soil by a band of iron and a band of brass. The import of this hieroglyphical action, as literally applied to the king of Babylon, denoted, we are told, that his kingdom should be made sure to him. But it is obvious, that the same idea would have been expressed with sufficient force, if the stump had simply been left attached to the earth by its deepstruck roots alone, and if the band of iron and the band of brass had never been mentioned. Hence we may perceive, that a figure is here introduced into the hieroglyphic, which has no sort of relation to the individual Nebuchadnezzar: for what particular connection, as a mere insulated individual, can he be said to have with the two metals of iron and brass?i

Why, then, are those two metals thus promi on od srait

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nently introduced into the vision, when they are so wholly unnecessary if the literal fate of Nebuchad nezzar be alone shadowed out in the vision?

This question admits of no satisfactory answer, if the accomplishment of the prophecy be thus limited to a single individual: but a very natural reply immediately presents itself, if the prediction be extended in its application, as I have extended it.

The stump of the tree representing Nebuchadnezzar, during the seven times of his physical madness; and Nebuchadnezzar himself being the type of that great image or compound Empire, which, from the protrusion of its golden head to the end of the latter three times and a half, is to continue through a period of seven prophetic times it will follow from this intercommunion, that the stump of the tree, being the symbol of Nebuchadnezzar during the seven natural times of his physical madness, must also be the symbol of the great compound Empire shadowed out by the image during the seven prophetic times of that Empire's moral insanity. Now the image is described, as being compounded of four metals, gold and silver and brass and iron. But the gold and the silver soon passed away: the brass and the iron alone remained, from first to last, as dominant or binding metals. Respecting the actual duration of the iron through all the seven times, though in the vision first apparent only upon the legs of the image, there can be no dispute for the iron Empire of Rome commenced