. I.—THE (Daniel 1:1-2) This remarkable book opens with the scene or Israel’s deepest degradation and misery. Threatened judgments had at length come. Warnings had been addressed in vain. Divine expostulations had been unheeded. The kingdom of Judah, like that of Israel, had forsaken its God and King, and must now, like it, be forsaken by Him. Idolatry and wickedness can no longer be tolerated in the chosen people. Manasseh’s sin in filling Jerusalem with innocent blood had, on his repentance, been mercifully forgiven as regarded himself, but not as regarded his children and subjects, who still continued impenitent. The blow began to fall on Jehoiakim and the people of his reign (2 Kings 24:1-4). It was, as the text states, “in the third year of his reign” [1], after he had been some time tributary to Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, that Nebuchadnezzar [2], king of Babylon, “came up,” or rather “set out,” as in Jonah 1:3, on his expedition against Jerusalem, as the chosen instrument of Jehovah’s vengeance. The blow, however, even then did not immediately descend. It was the next or fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign before Nebuchadnezzar, who first encountered the king of Egypt at Carchemish on the Euphrates, arrived at Jerusalem (Jeremiah 46:2). Divine forbearance was still exercised. Jerusalem was taken, and Jehoiakim was “bound in fetters” to be carried away to Babylon, but was again released and allowed still to reign as a tributary prince. Many captives [3], some of them of noble and even of royal birth, were taken to Babylon, here called by its ancient name, “Shinar” [4], as well as a portion of the sacred “vessels of the Temple,” which Nebuchadnezzar placed “in the house of his god” [5] as the trophies of his conquests and the expression of his gratitude to Bel. The king, however, still remained impenitent. To all his other sins he added that which apparently sealed his doom. The book or roll, containing a divine message, which Jeremiah shortly afterwards sent by Baruch to be read in the Temple-court to the people (Jeremiah 36:1-25), he defiantly cut in pieces with a penknife, and threw the fragments in the fire. Some six years afterwards, after vain attempts to free himself from the yoke of Babylon, bands of Chaldeans and others were sent against him by Nebuchadnezzar. The threatened punishment then fell on the infatuated monarch. He was put to death in his capital, and, according to the word of the prophet, his dead body was ignominiously cast outside the gates of the city, and “buried with the burial of an ass” (2 Kings 24:7; Jeremiah 22:18-19) [6]. Observe— [1] “In the third year,” &c. No contradiction between this and Jeremiah 46:2, which says that Nebuchadnezzar smote the army of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Hengstenberg and Keil both prefer to render the word αָּ ?ΰ (ba), not “came,” but “set out or marched,” the word, as the latter observes, being frequently used of military expeditions. Objectors to the genuineness of the book have put this down among Daniel’s alleged historical errors. According to Jeremiah 25:1, say they, Nebuchadnezzar did not mount the throne of Babylon till the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim; and according to Jeremiah 46:1, the conquest of the Egyptians at Carchemish did not occur till the same year; and the subjugation of Jerusalem could only take place as a consequence of that conquest. Hence, it is said, the deportation here spoken of, if it really took place, could only do so in Nebuchadnezzar’s expedition to Lower Asia in the seventh year of his reign, and the eleventh of Jehoiakim’s. Hengstenberg and others have met this objection by stating that Berosus, in his Chaldean history, informs us that Nebuchadnezzar the father, also called Nabopolassar, on hearing that the governor whom he had appointed in Syria and Ph�nicia had revolted to the Egyptians, being too weak to go himself, sent his son Nebuchadnezzar with an army, who defeated the Egyptians at Carchemish, and brought Syria and Ph�nicia again under the Babylonian dominion, the campaign being brought to a close by the tidings of Nabopolassar’s death. The beginning of this expedition must fall, at least, in the end of the third year of Jehoiakim. Nebuchadnezzar soon succeeded in taking Carchemish, and marched into Judζa, whose king, Jehoiakim, was an ally and tributary of the king of Egypt, towards the close of his fourth year. It is thus historically certain that before the invasion in the eleventh year of Jehoiakim, Judζa was once conquered by the Babylonians. Indeed history tells of no other expedition of Nebuchadnezzar than that before us, the rest of his life, according to Berosus, being taken up with fortifying and embellishing the city, and in other internal arrangements. As to the title of “king” here given to Nebuchadnezzar, the same historian relates that Nabopolassar, being aged and infirm, conferred on his son, Nebuchadnezzar, who had attained the age of manhood, some share of the government. In reference to Jeremiah 25:1, Hengstenberg thinks that it is the first year of Nebuchadnezzar’s coregency, and not that of his sole reign, that is likely to be intended; while in Daniel 2:1, on the contrary, it is the second year of his sole monarchy, this reckoning being as natural to an author living in Babylon as the other would be to one living in Judζa. [2] “Nebuchadnezzar.” According to the canon of Ptolemy, the son of Nabopolassar, whom some call the elder Nebuchadnezzar. According to Josephus, the father reigned twenty-three years, and the son forty-three. Ptolemy states that it was in the nineteenth year of Nabopolassar’s reign that the Babylonish captivity began. His son, to distinguish him from the father, is sometimes called Nebuchadnezzar the Great. Keil observes that as Nabopolassar came into no contact at all with Judζa, the Jews knew scarcely anything of his reign and death; and the year of Nebuchadnezzar’s appearance at Jerusalem would be regarded in a general way, both by Jeremiah and his contemporaries, as the first year of his reign; and the commander of the Chaldean army would be viewed as the king of Babylon, no matter whether on account of his being co-regent with his aged and infirm father, or merely as he was clothed with royal power as the chief commander of the army. In this sense Keil thinks Daniel now names him king, who was only afterwards such, and not yet in actual possession of the throne. [3] Berosus relates that when Nebuchadnezzar heard of the death of his father, he set in order the affairs of Egypt and the neighbouring countries, and having commissioned some of his friends to transport to Babylon the prisoners of the Jews, Syrians, Ph�nicians, and the nations in Egypt, together with the heaviest part of the army, himself with a few attendants went across the desert to Babylon. Mr. Bosanquet thinks that the year in the text could not be the third of Jehoiakim’s reign, as, among other reasons, the author of the last chapter of Jeremiah, when enumerating the several occasions when captives were carried off in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, makes no mention of this in the third year of Jehoiakim, nor of any before the seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar, when Jehoiakim fell into this king’s hands and ceased to reign (Jeremiah 36:28-30); also, as the author of Second Chronicles, writing after the seventy years of captivity were ended, makes no reference either to this supposed important siege, or to this commencement of the captivity, simply relating that Jehoiakim reigned eleven years in Jerusalem, and that “against him came up Nebuchadnezzar,” &c. (2 Chronicles 36:6-7); finally, as Ezekiel appears to know of no other commencement of the captivity at Babylon than that which began in that eighth year of Nebuchadnezzar. He quotes the Rabbinical book Seder Olam Rabba as stating that Daniel is to be understood as speaking of the third year after the rebellion of Jehoiakim, and, speaking in reference to the year of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, says that Scripture reckons the years from the destruction of the Temple. He refers also to Josephus, who reckons that Daniel was carried to Babylon as late as the time of Zedekiah, and to Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, and others, who considered that it took place at the time when Jehoiachin or Jechoniah was taken prisoner to Babylon. He thinks the “desolations of Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:2) are clearly marked in 2 Chronicles 36:19-21 as beginning with the burning of Jerusalem. [4] “Shinar.” The name of the country indigenous to Babylonia itself, of which we find traces not only in classical writers, but in modern travellers. Bertholdt is led by it, according to his hypothesis of a plurality of authors, to maintain the composition of this first chapter in an earlier age and in Babylonia. The name found in historical prose only in the Book of Genesis. In later times it became quite antiquated among the Hebrews. Occurs again only in prophetic poetry,—twice in Isaiah and Zechariah. Here, however, it is found in simple prose, as the common geographical appellation of Babylonia. Assuming Daniel to be the author of the book, this is easily explained.—Hengstenberg. Dr. Rule observes that Babylonia is named Shinar in the cuneiform inscriptions. [5] “His god.” This was Bel, the tutelar god of the city of Babylon. According to Gesenius, the planet Jupiter intended by the idol. The name identical with Baal or Beel, denoting lord, possessor, or husband, corresponding to the sun or generative power in nature. Baal or Bel worshipped by the Carthaginians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and others. Supposed by some to be the same with Moloch, to whom the Ammonites made their cruel and bloody sacrifices, and to whom Israel was seduced to offer their children, causing them to pass “through the fire.” Bel’s worship prevailed through all ancient Scandinavia, and is supposed to have been general throughout the British Islands. To this day there are various superstitious observances in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales very closely resembling the ancient worship of Bel. A town in Perthshire is called Tilliebeltane, that is, the Hill of the Fire of Bel. In Ireland, Beltein, denoting the Fire of Bel, is one of the festival days, on which fires are made early on the tops of the hills, and all the cattle are made to pass through them, in order, it is said, to be freed from contagion and disease for that year.—Dr. Eadie. Dr. Rule observes that the cuneiform inscriptions show the name of Nebuchadnezzar’s deity to have been Merodach or Bel-Merodach. Berosus says Bel was Jupiter Belus, the son of Saturn, who had a temple there, with the stupendous tower in the midst of it, which, according to Pliny, continued till the reign of Vespasian. Dr. Cox remarks that this treasure-house was probably the edifice to which Herodotus refers, where a large golden statue of Jupiter was erected, and that historians compute the riches of this temple at upwards of twenty millions sterling. It is remarkable, says Hengstenberg, that Berosus, a Chaldean historian, states that with the spoils of this very war he magnificently adorned the temple of Belus and other sacred edifices. Dr. Rule quotes from the Standard Inscription Nebuchadnezzar’s boast of having repaired the temple, which he made his treasury. “I set up long beams to support it: with pillars and beams plated with copper and strengthened with iron: I built up its gates: I stored up inside silver and gold, and precious stones whose names were almost unknown: and placed there the treasure-house of my kingdom.” [6] Nebuchadnezzar made three incursions into Judζa. The first, in the time of Jehoiakin (606 b.c.), reduced the Theocracy to a tributary of the Babylonian world-power. Daniel was among the captives brought at that very time to Babylon. At the second inroad (598 b.c.), King Jehoiachin and the prophet Ezekiel were led into captivity. In the third (588 b.c.), Nebuchadnezzar destroyed at last the Holy City, brought the last Jewish king in fetters to Babylon; and thus the kingdom came to its end. Thus a new stage in the history of the development of the Theocracy begins with the Babylonish captivity, which may be reckoned from the first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar; for the independent existence of the Theocracy then terminated—a stage which may be designated as the rule of the powers of the world. This captivity, as well as its termination, was itself a fulfilment of prophecy. Micah (Micah 3:12; Micah 4:10) foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple, as also the return from Babylon. Isaiah (ch. 40–66) announced the deliverance of Israel out of Babylon, and the building up of the ruins of Jerusalem and Judah, with the final glory of Zion, through the creation of new heavens and a new earth; giving the very name of the Persian monarch through whom the return should be effected. Jeremiah (ch. Jeremiah 25:29-31) proclaimed the captivity under Nebuchadnezzar, but predicted the very period of its continuance (seventy years), after which Judah and Israel should return to the land of their fathers. The captivity of Babylon, however, was to succeeded in the space of 600 years by another and a much longer one—a captivity which still continues, called by the Jews the Great Captivity, commencing with the destruction of their city and Temple by the Romans. The reason of this second one acknowledged by the Jews themselves to be their national guilt. This time, however, that guilt consisted not in idolatry according to the ordinary meaning of the word—idolatry in its gross form, but the rejection of their promised King and Saviour, which was also rejection of their God who sent Him. “Not this man,” they cried out, “but Barabbas:” “We have no king but Cζsar;” as before they said, “Not Jehovah, but the gods of the heathen” (Jeremiah 44:17-19). Even still, however, the Lord has not cast off His people whom He foreknew. Israel shall yet look on Him whom they pierced, and mourn because of Him. All Israel shall yet be saved, and the receiving of them be life from the dead to the world, at large.—Auberlen.1. The certain fulfilment of divine threatenings. God’s word, whether of mercy or judgment, will not return to Him void. “Hath He spoken it, and will He not do it?” The promise and the threatening sure, sooner or later, to be fulfilled, unless prevented in the one case by unbelief, or in the other by repentance. Jehoiakim may cut the hated roll in pieces and cast it into the fire, but the threatened judgment is only brought so much nearer its fulfilment. The burned Bible only adds fuel to the fire. 2. The consequence of unrepented sin. Divine wrath against impenitence slow but sure. Justice travels with leaden feet, leaving time for repentance. Mercy rejoices over judgment; but, mercy despised, judgment strikes the blow. “Though sentence against an evil work be not executed speedily,” yet the judgment of the impenitent “lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” The sun rose on Sodom gladsome and joyous as usual, but set on it a heap of ashes. The path of disobedience, whatever it may promise of pleasure or of profit, is found, sooner or later, to be planted with thorns. In continuing to do what is forbidden or to neglect what is commanded, whether to avoid a difficulty or to gain an end, we one day discover that we have but “sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind.” 3. The terrible effects of the divine displeasure. The desolated land, the sacked city, and the burned Temple of the Jews only additional illustrations. “The wrath of a king is as the roaring of a lion.” What then the wrath of a God who is holy, righteous, and omnipotent? Slow in coming, fearful when it falls. “Who can stand when once Thou art angry?” “A fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” To hide one from the wrath of the rejected Lamb, rocks and mountains will be appealed to in vain. Men’s highest wisdom and interest to prepare for the Diet Irζ, “the great day of His wrath,” before it come. “If once His anger be kindled but a little, blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” The “blood shed for the remission of sins” the only refuge in that day; the only refuge now. 4. The awful evil of sin. It was sin that brought destruction upon Jerusalem and its king. “An evil thing and a bitter” to forsake the living God and to trample upon His laws. Only “fools make a mock at sin.” Sin the abominable thing that God hates. Kindles a fire in His anger that “burns to the lowest hell” (Deuteronomy 32:22). “Brought death into the world and all our woe.” Banished man from Paradise and buried the world in a deluge of water. Covers the earth at present with every form of sorrow and suffering, and will one day overwhelm it in a deluge of fire. Makes men and women partakers of the devil’s character now, and of his condemnation hereafter. 5. The reality of God’s government of the world. Nations and kings raised up or overthrown at His will. His to plant and to pluck up, to build and to throw down. The hearts of rulers in His hand to turn them whithersoever He will. The Lord “gave” Jehoiakim into Nebuchadnezzar’s hand. The king of Babylon but Jehovah’s executioner, “the axe in the hand of him that heweth therewith.” “Against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge: howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so” (Isaiah 10:6-7; Isaiah 10:15). Attila, taught by the light of nature, called himself the Scourge of God. Who did not recognise the same in the first Napoleon? God Himself the author of the calamities that befall a sinful people, whoever or whatever the instrument. “Is there evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?” “I make peace and create evil” (Amos 3:6; Isaiah 45:7). An all-controlling and superintending agency where man sees only the operation of human passions. A great truth uttered by England’s favourite author, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them as we will.” 6. Desecration of sacred things often a divine chastisement. The only calamity here recorded in connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem, the removal of the sacred vessels of the Temple to Babylon, to be placed among the treasures of Bel, the abomination of Chaldean idolatry. The acme of Israel’s distress in the days of Eli that the Ark was seized and carried off by the Philistines. Fallen Churches in the East chastised when their sanctuaries were seized by the Saracens, and appropriated to a religion that robbed the Saviour of His divinity and placed Mahomet above Him as a prophet. The Church that shed the blood of the Huguenots like water saw its communion vessels seized and melted down to be coined into money for the payment of revolutionary armies, its bells converted into cannon, and the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris desecrated by the worship of the Goddess of Reason in the person of a prostitute. Such desecration often the chastisement of abused privileges and rejected truth. The warning addressed to Oriental Churches still applicable to those of the West, “Repent, or else I will come to thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent” (Revelation 2:5). Matthew Henry remarks: “See the righteousness of God; His people had brought the images of other gods into His Temple, and now He suffers the vessels of the Temple to be carried into the treasuries of those other gods. When men profane the vessels of the sanctuary with their sins, it is just with God to profane them by His judgments.” 7. The externals of religion no defence to a sinful, hypocritical nation. The Ark of God carried into the battle unable to save backslidden Israel from the hands of the Philistines. Christian sanctuaries unable to protect those who had already perverted the religion of Christ to one of formality, worldliness, and superstition. Hypocrisy and sin only make a Church or people a carcase where the eagles of divine vengeance will be gathered together. “Take away her battlements, for they are not the Lord’s.” “Israel fondly trusted to the Temple to defend them, though they went on in their iniquity; and now, to show them the vanity of that confidence, the Temple is first plundered.”—Henry. 8. Nebuchadnezzar, even in his profanity, an example of the recognition of, and gratitude to, a Supreme Being for favours received and success obtained. The vessels of the Temple placed in the house of his god rather than in his own, in recognition of the aid by which, as he supposed, those trophies were won. Belief in and recognition of a Supreme Being, among the first and plainest teachings of nature. The heathen, who knew not the true God, accustomed to impute their success to the favour of the deities they acknowledged (Habakkuk 1:11). After the plague in Athens, B.C. 434, the Athenians dedicated a statue to Apollo as the Averter of evil. After the battle of Salamis, the Greeks dedicated the throne of Xerxes as a thankoffering to Minerva. The Parthenon itself, where it was kept, was built in gratitude to the same imaginary deity, by whose assistance they believed their heroes had fought and conquered. The small community of the village of Phigaleia in Arcadia erected the beautiful Temple of Bassζ in gratitude to Apollo for deliverance from a pestilence. Pythagoras sacrificed an ox to the Muses on a new discovery made in geometry. The sin was, that in the blindness and depravity of the natural heart, the heathen substituted false gods for the true one. But may not the gratitude of the heathen to their false deities condemn many a professed worshipper of the true God? . II.—THE FOUR CAPTIVE YOUTHS (Chap. Daniel 1:3-7) Among the youths of noble or princely birth taken from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar as trophies of his conquest [7], and perhaps as hostages for the good behaviour of those who were left behind, were Daniel and his three companions, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. These, according to a custom prevalent in Babylon, similar to that of the Ottoman court which in more modern times originated the institution of the Janissaries [8], were, at the king’s command, immediately placed under the charge of an officer called Ashpenaz [9], the chief of the eunuchs [10]. To this often influential class these captive youths were henceforth to belong, having been selected for their handsome appearance, intelligence, and good address [11]. In token of their entire subjection to their Babylonian master, their names, according to a common usage, were changed for others intended apparently to obliterate all traces of their race and nation, and still more of their religion, and to mark them, if it could not also make them, worshippers of the gods of their new sovereign [12], as well as his property and slaves. Designed for high stations at court and about the king’s person, they were for three years to be dieted in a way judged most fitted to promote their health and more especially their good appearance; while they were carefully instructed in the learning [13] and language of the Chaldζans [14]. These captive youths, and Daniel more especially, were to be God’s chosen instruments in effecting, by their influence at court, the predicted restoration of their exiled countrymen at the appointed period. Observe from the passage— [7] “Certain of the children of Israel and of the king’s seed, and of the princes.” When Darius Hystaspes succeeded Cyrus, he obtained from Babylonia and the rest of Assyria a thousand talents of silver and five hundred boy-eunuchs. Keil observes that τַּ ?ψְ ?ϊְּ ?ρִ ?ιν (partemim) is the Zend “prathema” (Sansc. “prathama”), denoting persons of distinction—magnates, princes. [8] The Janissaries were originally Christian youths who had been taken captive by the Turks and brought to the Ottoman court, after which they were placed under the care of the chief of the white eunuchs, under whom they were trained and educated, taught some trade, and brought up in the religion of their masters. Those most gifted were employed about the ruler’s person, and in due time advanced to high and suitable offices in the state, to military commands, and to the government of provinces. Their Christian names were changed for such as their Moslem masters delighted in.—Kitto; also Ranke’s “Ottoman Empire.” [9] “Ashpenaz.” Keil observes that the name has not yet received any satisfactory or generally adopted explanation. He thinks the person so named was the chief marshal of Nebuchadnezzar’s court. Dr. Rule thinks he might be called master of the household. Junius observes that the word in the Chaldaic denotes the master of the chiders (objurgantium), or, as Willet translates it, the master of the comptrollers, i.e., the chief comptroller and governor of the king’s house. [10] “Eunuchs.” Dr. Rule remarks that the name ρψιριν (sarisim) may simply indicate members of the king’s household; the name being applied to officers in or about the palace, whether literally and physically eunuchs or not. [11] “Well-favoured.” The Assyrian and Babylonian kings, wishing to add to the lustre and magnificence of their court, admitted into their palace none but young persons of high birth, distinguished for the gracefulness of their person and the beauty of their countenance.—Gaussen. [12] “Gave names.” Daniel, which in Hebrew denotes, “God is my Judge,” was changed, according to the name of Nebuchadnezzar’s god (Daniel 4:8), into Belteshazzar, or “Bel’s treasurer,” or the “Depositary of Bel’s secret things;” but according to Gesenius and Nork, the “Prince of Bel.” Azariah, or “The Help of the Lord,” was changed into Abednego, the “servant of Nego,” or the Brightness, i.e., of the Sun or Fire, or perhaps one of the planets—also objects of Babylonian worship. The other two names given for Mishael and Hananiah believed to have also an idolatrous meaning, although not so obvious. Shadrach, according to some, is “The Inspiration of Rach” or the Sun; and Meshach, a “devotee of Shach “or Venus, the festival goddess. Kitto observes that the practice of changing the names of slaves is as ancient as the time of Joseph, whose name was changed by his Egyptian master to Zaphnath-Paaneah, or the Revealer of Secrets. In modern times the practice prevailed in the case of Negro slaves. [13] “Might teach the learning of the Chaldeans.” According to Pliny and Strabo, the priest-caste among the Babylonians had educational establishments in certain cities; for instance, in Babylon itself, Borsippa in Babylonia, and Hipparene in Mesopotamia.—Hengstenberg. According to Plato and Xenophon, the education of royal officers in Persia did not begin until they had passed fourteen years of age, and youths did not enter into the king’s service until they had completed their sixteenth or seventeenth year.—Rule. An objection has been made to the genuineness of the Book of Daniel on the ground that it is improbable that Daniel, with his strict principles, should be willing to be taught the principles of the magi. But Moses also was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). As Moses acquired the secular knowledge of the Egyptians without their debasing superstitions, so might Daniel that of the Babylonians. Nor was that learning all superstitious. Their philosophers were chiefly engaged about astronomy; and the Greeks thought that the birthplace of philosophy in general was among the magi of Persia and the Chaldees of Babylonia or Assyria. But the futility of the objection is at once obvious; at Babylon the king’s will was law, and especially with his slaves. The passage is rather a confirmation of the genuineness of the book, as affording an example of agreement with the customs and usages of the time and country. [14] “The language of the Chaldeans.” Michaelis, Winer, and others have supposed that by the “language of the Chaldeans” we are to understand that of the Chaldeans proper, and not the Eastern Aramζan branch, which is usually called the Chaldaic, and which in chap. Daniel 2:4, as in Ezra 4:7 and Isaiah 38, is called the Aramaic or Syriac. Hengstenberg thinks it to be the court language, spoken by the monarch himself and his attendants, which appears from chap. Daniel 2:4 not to be the Aramaic, as that is said to be the language in which the Babylonian sages answered the king. The exact knowledge of the languages prevalent in Babylon in the time of Daniel, as shown by the book, no contemptible proof of its genuineness. Keil thinks the “language of the Chaldeans” in the text to be that of the Babylonish priests and learned men or magi, called also Chaldeans in a more restricted sense, the same being afterwards applied to the whole body of the wise men of Babylon (Daniel 2:2). He adds: “If for the present no certain answer can be given to the question as to the origin of the Chaldeans and the nature of their language and writing, yet this much may be accepted as certain, that the language and writing of the Chaldees (λַּ ?ωְׂ ?γִּ ?ιν, casdim) was not Semitic or Aramaic, but that the Chaldeans had in remote times migrated into Babylonia, and there had obtained dominion over the Semitic inhabitants of the land; and that from among this dominant race the Chaldees, the priestly and the learned class of the Chaldees, arose. This class in Babylon is much older than the Chaldean monarchy founded by Nebuchadnezzar.” This instruction in the wisdom of the Chaldeans, Auberlen thinks, “tended, at all events, to develop the high prophetical gifts which Daniel possessed by nature;” and that “a similar school was thus provided for Daniel to that which his Egyptian education was to Moses, or which study of philosophy is for the theologian of our own day.” Dr. Rule observes that “seven or eight centuries later than Daniel, the learning of the Chaldeans or Babylonians was described as comprising astronomy, astrology, divination, augury, incantations, and the science of dreams and prodigies. Although idol-worshippers, Justin Martyr, in his Exhortation to the Greeks, affirms that the Babylonians differed widely from the Greeks and from all other idolaters of the world, inasmuch as they acknowledged a supreme and self-existent God.”1. The literal fulfilment of God’s word. The good King Hezekiah’s foolish vanity entailed a chastisement which, according to the word of the prophet, was to fall upon his descendants. Some of them were to become eunuchs in Babylon (Isaiah 39:7; 2 Kings 20:18). Probably Daniel and his three companions were thus made examples, that no word of God, whether in promise or threatening, falls to the ground. “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my word shall not pass away.” 2. The inscrutable providence of God. It is one of the mysteries of that providence that the innocent suffer with and through the guilty. Both rulers and people in Israel had deeply revolted from Jehovah. But it might be asked of those four godly youths, “What had they done?” “When the scourge slayeth suddenly, it mocketh at the trial of the innocent.” Yet God is still infinitely wise and just and good. A gracious end in view, though hidden at the time. Children often made to feel the effects of a parent’s sin, while these effects may be graciously overruled for their eternal good. The captivity of these youths made to turn to their own benefit and that of others. Apparent evil often a real good. “Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Genesis 1:20). 3. The sovereignty of divine grace. Nothing is said of the parents of these youths. The royal seed had become a reprobate one. Both the sons of Josiah who succeeded him on the throne were wicked. The princes of Jerusalem imitated them in their sin. Grace makes exceptions. Perhaps these youths were judiciously taken away from the evil example of the rest. Safer perhaps at the time to live in Babylon than in Jerusalem. One might hope from the character of these four youths that they had been taught the fear of God at home. But graceless parents may have gracious children. Grace steps in and makes men to differ. The wind bloweth where it listeth. Saints found in Cζsar’s household, and a godly Obadiah in Ahab’s court. 4. Mercy remembered in the midst of judgment. Preparations for the purposed and promised deliverance of Israel made from the very commencement of their captivity. One of the very first captives to be made God’s chosen instrument in bringing it about. The edict of Cyrus, at the end of the predicted seventy years, the result of Daniel’s influence at the Babylonian and Persian courts. The same influence doubtless effectual in mitigating the sufferings of his fellow-exiles [15]. A silver lining often in the darkest cloud. God’s bow of mercy set in the cloud of man’s deepest misery. Mercy and judgment the alto and bass in the believer’s song. [15] “The Lord in His great mercy had prepared for His people an influence in Babylon that must have mitigated the severity of bondage when the ten thousand captives [with Jehoiachin] were added to all that went before. The king and the princes indeed were prisoners of war; but young men of royal blood are at the head of the government, naturalised, and in rank next the imperial throne, but known as worshippers of the God of heaven, and as confessors of that God in opposition to the gods of the country, in full enjoyment of religious liberty and protected in the exercise of their sacred right by a decree in honour of Daniel’s God.”—Rule.5. God’s instruments prepared for their work. Daniel and his three companions prepared beforehand for the part they were to perform in the relief and deliverance of their countrymen. Gifted by nature and endowed by grace, they received an education at the Babylonian court that fitted them for the post they were to occupy about the king’s person and in the government of the country. Capacity for learning, united with conscientious application and the divine blessing given in answer to prayer, made the youthful exiles ten times more able to answer the king’s questions than all the wise men in the realm, and so prepared the way for their future elevation. The influence of that education in reference to the exercise of Daniel’s prophetical gift also not to be entirely overlooked. 6. Grace superior to circumstances. Captivity in a heathen land, residence in an idolatrous and luxurious court, a three years’ course of study pervaded with idolatry and superstition, the constant presence of the followers of a false religion and a low morality, all combined are unable to crush out the piety of these young men. Circumstances changed their names but not their nature. With names imposed upon them that seemed to designate them the worshippers of idols, they were enabled by grace to remain the faithful servants of the true God. The religion produced by the Holy Spirit in the soul is fast colours—not painted, but engrained. 7. The value of gracious principles in early life. Only the presence of divine grace in the soul able to withstand the temptations of the world and to conquer in the battle of life. “Evil communications corrupt good manners” only when those manners are not the fruit of a divine principle implanted in the soul. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith.” Only an apparently renewed Demas will forsake the truth, “having loved this present world.” Renewed by the Spirit and grafted into Christ, we are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,” and made “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” Probably these youths taught like Timothy to know the Holy Scriptures from early childhood. Daniel may have had a Eunice for his mother, though her name is not recorded. His early youth spent in the reign of good Josiah, who apparently died only four years before he was taken captive to Babylon. Few men have become at once great and good who have not been able to connect their religion with a mother’s prayers and the instruction received at a mother’s knee. One thing concerning these four youths is certain, that in early life they had been taught to say in truth, “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” . III.—THE (Chap. Daniel 1:8-10) The religion of Daniel and his three companions was soon to be put to the test. They were to be fed from the royal table [16]; but the Jews were forbidden by the law of Moses to eat certain kinds of food, as well as food prepared in a certain way. Some animals were to be avoided as unclean, and none ware to be eaten with the blood in them. Besides, what the heathen used of animal food had been already offered in sacrifice to their idols, while a portion both of the meat and drink on their table was presented as an offering and acknowledgment to the same false deities. Daniel saw that to partake of the royal provision [17] was thus to pollute himself by participation with idolatry and to transgress the law of God [18]. His purpose was at once taken. Be the consequences what they might, he would neither defile himself nor apostatise from his God. Persuaded that man does not “live by bread alone, but by every word of God,” he would request the superintendent to substitute pulse and water for the royal viands. He determined, says Matthew Henry, to let it be known from the first day of his residence in Babylon, that though but a young Jewish slave, he was the servant of the living God. If he could not preserve his dignity as a prince, he would preserve his purity as a child of the covenant. It was no small risk. The wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, as of all Oriental despots, was as the roaring of a lion. That wrath might well be apprehended for what must appear to him, if known, an act of disobedience, and even of contempt. Unless prevented by some remarkable interposition, the act may cost Daniel and his three friends their life. Daniel had indeed already gained the favour and affection of the chief or superintendent of the eunuchs, but for him to change the diet, or even allow or connive at such a change, must endanger his life also—with Daniel a considerable aggravation of the difficulty. Still he must obey the dictates of his conscience and do what he believes to be the will of God [19]. Prayer was no doubt his refuge. The God of Abraham would open up a way of deliverance. “On the Mount the Lord will be seen.” Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. Isaac was saved at the last hour, The Lord will provide. Jehovah-Jireh still lives. To the chief officer, therefore, Daniel communicates his difficulty and his purpose. The worthy heathen expressed his distress, and his fear for the consequences, even to himself. Daniel only requests a trial. Ashpenaz can do nothing but commend him to the good graces of the subordinate whose duty it was to attend immediately upon the young men, and whose responsibility was less than his own. Observe— [16] “A daily provision of the king’s meat.” Among the Persians, a number of persons, all the lower attendants of the court, received their support from the king’s table. This custom derived by the Persians from the Babylonians, or at least held in common with them. According to Jeremiah 52:33-34, King Jehoiachin, by the command of Evil-Merodach, received his daily sustenance from the royal table.—Hengstenberg. Dr. Rule observes that crowds of Israelites no doubt ate “unclean things in Assyria” (Hosea 9:3), defiling themselves in like manner; but a few noble souls lived above compromise. At this same time, Ezekiel, also a captive in the same land, witnessing the shame of those who “ate their defiled bread among the Gentiles” whither they were driven, could say, “O Lord God, behold, my soul hath not been polluted; for from my youth up, even till now, have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces, neither came there abominable flesh into my month” (Ezekiel 4:13-14). Their “barley-cakes” the prophet was commanded to treat with loathsome contempt. Good Queen Esther, too, is described in an apocryphal writing as appealing to God that she had not “eaten at Haman’s table, nor had pleasure in the king’s feast, nor had drunk the wine of the drink-offering.” [17] “The portion of the king’s meat,” Heb. τַּ ?ϊְ ?αַּ ?βδַ ?ξֶּ ?μֶ ?κְ (pathbag hammelek). Dr. Rule observes that what this might mean the old versions could not explain, and our English translators could only gather from the context. Some of the Rabbis understand it to be bread. He remarks, what Dr. Pusey has also told us in the Appendix to his Lectures on Daniel, that Professor Max Mόller, in his explanation of words in the Book of Daniel supposed to be Aryan, says that this word is Aryan, and is equivalent to the Sanscrit pratibaga, “a share of small articles, as fruit, flowers, &c., paid daily to the raja for household expenditure.” The Professor quotes a passage from Athenζus, where a Greek word is supposed to represent the word in Daniel, namely, potibazis, said to be put for ποτιβαγις, and to denote “barley bread and wheaten toast, and a crown of cypress, and mixed wine in a gold cup, out of which the king himself drinks.” Dr. Rule, after quoting a passage from Herodotus, which shows that the Assyrians at their sacrifices “poured libations and offered consecrated barley-cake with the sound of the flute and crowned with chaplets,” remarks that “if the pathbag of Daniel and the potibazis of Athenζus be the same, if the king of Babylon drank of the consecrated wine, tasted the consecrated barley-cake, and put on the chaplet of cypress, amid the noise of music and hymns to his god; if the like consecrated food was sent to members of the royal household, to partake of it would be nothing less than a formal participation of idolatry.” [18] “Would not defile himself” Keil observes that Daniel’s resolution arose from fidelity to the law, and from steadfastness to the faith that man lives “not by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3); and from the assurance that God would bless the humbler provision which he asks for himself and his companions. These ordinances in relation to food are part of the Levitical law, Exodus 22:31, Deuteronomy 14:2; Deuteronomy 14:21, where the principle of avoiding food inconsistent with holiness, only touched upon in Exodus, is expanded. [19] “He requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.” Dr. Cox remarks that, in the conduct of Daniel on this occasion, his moral triumph was complete and glorious; appearing perfectly conscientious and entirely decided while exhibiting a graceful modesty connected with his moral heroism, together with great judgment and wisdom, and a spirit of self-denial and temperance of the most exemplary kind. Dr. Rule observes that it was far more than a purpose on the part of Daniel. It was a resolve. Literally “he laid it on his heart,” εַ ?ιָּ ?ωֶׁ ?νγּ ?Ψςַ ?μΞμִ ?πּ ?εֹ (vai-yashem D. ’al libbo), made it a matter of conscience, not contemplating any possible contingency that might shake his constancy.1. Religious principle sure to be tested. The gold must be submitted to the fire to prove its reality and purge it from dross. The trial of faith a rule in God’s government and the universal experience of His people. That trial may be a “fiery” one (1 Peter 4:12). May throw into heaviness for a season; but has for its issue “praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7). Believers to be, like Apelles, “approved in Christ.” Difficult situations, involving danger, trouble, or loss, the ordinary means of the trial. The favour of God and conscious obedience to His will on the one hand, with suffering and worldly loss, or God’s displeasure and a wounded conscience on the other, with the short-lived favour of the world; which shall it be? Moses must choose between the treasures of Egypt and the reproach of Christ; worldly greatness with idolaters, or “affliction with the people of God.” 2. Trial a needful preparation for future service. Daniel and his companions destined to important service in Babylon. God was to be glorified in them as His faithful witnesses. The deliverance of their captive countrymen to be ultimately effected through their influence. Hence the necessity of discipline and trial. The instrument to be prepared and polished. The faith and obedience of these font godly youths to be afterwards severely tested. The trial to commence now, even at the beginning. Smaller trials must prepare for greater ones. The faith that is to face and triumph over the fiery furnace and the lions’ den to be made strong by exercise. 3. Self-denial necessary to true religion. Daniel and his friends must choose between the dainties of the king’s table and the diet of the humblest slave. A considerable difference to the flesh between the king’s savoury dishes and delicious wines, and mere boiled beans and water. But the choice was soon decided on. Grace enabled Daniel, “instead of yielding to the temptations of luxury, voluntarily to subject himself to the humblest fare, that appetite might not betray him into sin.” Like his ancestor Moses, he “chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” The Master’s rule, “If any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.” The part of good soldiers of Jesus Christ to “endure hardness.” Such endurance and self-denial the means of strengthening character and fitting for service in the world. The pulse itself probably made, even physically, a means towards Daniel’s elevation. Protogenes, the celebrated painter, said to have lived on lupins during the seven years he was engaged on his famous picture, “that his judgment might not be clouded by luxurious diet.” Calvin even thinks that Daniel might have desired pulse and water, on account of the injurious effects of good living. Auberlen remarks that “he who is to receive or interpret divine revelations, must not feed on the dainties nor drink from the intoxicating cup of this world.” 4. Abstinence from what is in itself lawful sometimes a sacred duty. The royal provisions in themselves good, but in the circumstances not to be partaken of by Daniel and his friends without sin and moral defilement. So even in his old age, Daniel for a special religious purpose abstained for a time both from flesh and wine (Daniel 10:3). “Every creature of God is good, and to be received with thanksgiving of them that know and believe the truth.” But there are times when, for the sake of others, if not for our own, it may be our duty to abstain from the use of some. Christian wisdom and an enlightened conscience needed to direct us in regard to such abstinence. The same Apostle who counselled Timothy to “use a little wine” for his stomach’s sake and his frequent infirmities, asserts that “it is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak;” and declares for himself, “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend” (Romans 14:21; 1 Corinthians 8:13). The character of the wines and other intoxicating drinks used in this country, the prevalence of the drinking customs, the continued evidence before our eyes of the terrible effects of the use of these drinks, both physically, socially, and morally, slaying as they do their tens of thousands, and drawing in their train both misery, poverty, disease, and crime—these facts are believed by many to make it the duty of Christian men and women in general, in the exercise of that charity that “pleaseth not itself” and “seeketh not her own,” to abstain entirely from the use of these beverages for at least the sake of those who must, one way or other, be influenced by our example. 5. Grace made sufficient for all situations. Grace needed most in times of difficulty and trial. That grace now afforded to Daniel and his friends in their perplexity. To Paul’s thrice-repeated prayer that the “thorn in the flesh” might depart from him, the only answer vouchsafed was, “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Believing this, Paul gloried in his infirmities and necessities. Neither tribulation, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, able to separate the genuine believer “from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 6. The value of courage and resolution in the matter of religion. These needful to serve God and keep a good conscience in the world. Constantly verified in the history of the Church, both in Old and New Testament times. To be faithful to God and faithful to the end, one must, like Daniel, “purpose in his heart,” and through grace adhere to it. Joshua exhorted more than once before encountering the Canaanites, and marching in to take possession of the land, to “be strong and of a good courage, and not be afraid.” Impossible at once to be a faithful Christian and a coward. The “fearful and unbelieving” among those who are excluded from the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:8). “We have received, not the spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind.” He that timidly will save his life shall lose it. The feet to be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, in order to tread on briars and scorpions, “and all the power of the enemy.” The promise, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.” In a world up in rebellion against God, His servants need to be “made as an iron pillar and a brazen wall.” The exhortation to Ezekiel always needed, “Be not afraid of their faces.” Reuben “unstable as water,” therefore “unable to excel.” Fear makes men deserters; but “if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” He that putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back is not fit for the kingdom of God,—neither for the enjoyment of it himself or the extension of it to others. A Christian needs to be a hero, and grace makes him one. Faith the foundation of true courage. Through faith, “out of weakness men were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” The faith that is “of the operation of God” makes men heroes, and in religion a man must either be that or nothing. 7. Fidelity to God the best way to favour with men. “When a man’s doings please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Psalms 106:46 verified in Daniel and his companions: “He made them to be pitied of them that carried them captives.” True religion commends itself even to worldly men. Grace a winning thing. Includes “whatsoever things are comely and of good report.” Favour with men not to be bought at the expense of religious principle, and need not be. Daniel found favour with the chief of the eunuchs and yet kept his religion, and indeed by keeping it. Daniel made God’s love and favour the first and chief thing, and God gave him in addition the love and favour of men. “The hearts of kings are in the hand of the Lord, and He turneth them as the rills of water.” True religion consists in love, and love naturally begets love. Jesus, the embodiment of that religion, “grew in favour with God and men.” The experience of Daniel in Babylon that of Joseph in Egypt. The chief of the eunuchs, like the keeper of the prison, won by the becoming behaviour and sweetness of disposition in a youthful Hebrew slave. The youth who pleases God likely to find acceptance with men. 8. The importance of faithfulness in little things. An apparently small matter, the kind of food Daniel should eat or not eat; but God’s law made even that a matter of conscience. Fidelity to God and His worship involved in it. Daniel was faithful to his conscience, and desired to be excused from eating what he could not partake of without sin. Thus prepared for proving faithful in greater things—faithful to all his duties and trusts under the king, and faithful to God at the peril of the lions’ den. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.” 9. The necessity of decision in the matter of religion. A distinct and settled purpose often our safety and preservation in the world. Daniel’s purity in Babylon due to his “purposing in his heart.” A firm purpose in God’s strength to do right, the girdle that binds the spiritual armour together. “I have said that I will keep Thy word.” “One shall say, I am the Lord’s.” “I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep Thy righteous judgments.” Jesus Himself an example of such decision. He “steadfastly set His face to go up to Jerusalem.” Temptations to turn aside are to be resolutely answered as He answered Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men.” “When people are in Babylon they have need to take special care that they partake not in Babylon’s sins.”—Henry. Safety often in a decided “No.” DANIEL A NOTABLE EXAMPLE OF “Daniel purposed in his heart”—(Daniel 1:8) Resolution both an act and a habit. As a habit, it marks the character of the man who makes a resolution and acts upon it. The habit formed by frequent acts of resolving and acting accordingly. As a habit, resolution a most important part of character. Gives a man moral strength, energy, backbone. Constitutes force of character. Makes a man strong. Forms the hero, the scholar, the statesman, the artist. Makes the successful merchant, the man of science, the philanthropist, and the benefactor of his kind. “I will be a hero,” the turning-point in Nelson’s history. Reynolds resolves at Rome to study the works of the old masters till he has understood their excellence, and becomes a master himself. Paley at college resolves to shake off his habitual indolence and rise at four o’clock to his studies, and produces works that cannot die. Daniel’s resolution in regard to his diet one of the means of strengthening his character and fitting him for future greatness. Each resolution carried out in spite of difficulty or natural reluctance makes a man stronger. An irresolute man a weak man. The part of weakness either to make no resolution, or to make it and fail to keep it. “Resolves and re-resolves, and dies a fool.” Broken resolutions leave a man weaker. One resolution kept prepares for keeping the next. A resolution manfully carried out often the turning-point in a man’s life and the determination of a man’s character. Resolution as an act should be— 1. Made deliberately. Rash resolutions often both foolish and dangerous. Resolutely to carry out such, worse than the making of them. Resolution not to degenerate into obstinacy and wilfulness, as in Herod the Tetrarch, and Pharaoh at the Red Sea. Daniel thought before purposing in his heart. “Ponder the path of thy feet.” 2. Directed to what is right. A resolution should be to pursue a right course—to act right, speak right, feel right. Daniel resolved to do what he saw and believed to be his duty. Resolution noble when it is to serve God, do good, and sin not; to be truthful, honest, industrious, kind, obliging; to avoid temptation as far as possible, and to resist it when it comes; to say “No “to every evil suggestion. If still with our back to God, our resolution to be that of the prodigal,—“I will arise and go to my Father.” The diseased woman’s resolution to press through the crowd and touch the hem of Christ’s garment brought health to her body and life to her soul. The Syrophenician mother pressed on with her suit till she obtained a favourable answer, notwithstanding discouragements and repulses, and she succeeded. So Esther resolved, at the risk of her own life, to plead with the king for the lives of her countrymen: “If I perish, I perish.” 3. Made in dependence on divine assistance. To make a right resolution needs divine aid; much more to keep it. The spirit willing when the flesh is weak. To will may be present, but how to perform that which is good we find not, and needs divine strength. Resolution to be linked with prayer. Strength given to them that ask for it. Daniel a man of prayer as well as purpose; the latter because the former. Peter resolved to follow his Master even unto death, but, trusting in himself, he denies Him at the challenge of a servant-girl. Neglect of the Saviour’s caution, “Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation,” likely to be followed with a fall. “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool.” David’s prayer, “Hold Thou me up and I shall be safe.” . IV.—THE TRIAL (Chap. Daniel 1:11-21). God works by means, and in doing so deals with men’s minds as well as their bodies. Daniel was delivered out of his difficulty in regard to the food by a suggestion made upon his own mind, and favourably regarded by the person with whom he had to do. This suggestion was the proposal of a trial for ten days with pulse [20] instead of the king’s meat, and water instead of wine. Melzar [21], the subordinate officer, who could agree to the proposal with less risk to his head than his chief, and who was, no doubt, in the meantime, to reap the material advantage of it, consented to the proposed trial. The trial was made, and proved, by the divine blessing on the humbler fare, eminently successful. At the end of the period, no doubt could exist that the four Jewish youths were not only no worse in their looks for their pulse diet, but actually appeared fairer and plumper than those who had subsisted on the royal dainties [22]. Nor was this all; for at the end of the three years’ study and preparation prescribed for them by the king, they were found, on examination, to have made much greater proficiency than the rest, and, indeed, to possess a wisdom and understanding greatly superior to any of the magicians [23] and astrologers [24] within the realm. The result was, in the providence of God, an influential appointment to each of the young men about the king’s person as his attendants and councillors [25]; God, as Calvin observes, aiming at exalting Himself in and through the person of His servants. They “stood before the king,” an expression that finds its parallel in such passages as Luke 1:19; Matthew 18:10; 1 Samuel 16:21; 1 Kings 12:6; 1 Kings 12:8. The purpose of Divine Providence in thus elevating Daniel is indicated in the closing words of the chapter, “Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus” [26]. Daniel was to acquire an influence which should operate on Cyrus to do what was already written of him in the Scripture of truth,—release the Jewish captives and restore the Holy City with its Temple and worship” (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1-4) [27]. We observe from the passage— [20] “Pulse,” ξִ ?οδַ ?ζֵּ ?ψֹ ?ςִ ?ιν (min haz-zero’im), “out of the vegetables.” Dr. Rule observes that according to Buxtorf, Daniel and his companions would thus be allowed free use of grain, pulse, and spices, not necessarily excluding vegetable oils for the preparation of such food as they had been accustomed to at home, like their ancestors before entering the land of promise, and many of them afterwards (1 Samuel 17:17-18), living as do multitudes in the Levant at this day. He thinks it cannot be inferred that they suffered any severe privation. They were content to live moderately and humbly. [21] “Melzar.” Hengstenberg thinks that Melzar was perhaps the official name of the sub-overseer of the royal attendants. Melzar, or “the Melzar,” observes Dr. Rule, whatever that may mean, being in a subordinate station, and therefore not directly responsible, like his chief, consented to make a brief trial by way of private experiment. [22] “Fairer and fatter in flesh.” Dr. Pusey remarks that even now God protects religious abstinence, and quotes the words of Chardin: “I have remarked that the countenance of the Keshicks (Keshishim or monks) are in fact more rosy and smooth than those of others; and that those who fast much, I mean the Armenians and Greeks, are notwithstanding very beautiful, sparkling with health, and with a clear and lively complexion.” [23] “Magicians,” δַ ?ηַ ?ψְ ?θֻ ?ξִּ ?ιν (ha-khartummim), from ηֶ ?ψֶ ?θ (kheret), a writing or graving instrument, a pen or style. Persons skilled in writing, especially hieroglyphics.—Nork and Gesenius. According to Hengstenberg, persons skilled in mystic writing. The existence of such among the Babylonians confirmed by the fact that they are found among the Egyptians, whose religious system stands in the closest historical relation to the Babylonian. The existence of a mystic writing in Babylon supposed in the narration in chap, 5, where the king thinks of calling for the wise men to interpret the writing on the wall. According to Gesenius, they were persons among the ancient Egyptians who studied the interpretation of dreams and wrought miracles by magic (Genesis 41:8; Genesis 41:24; Exodus 7:11; Exodus 7:22, &c.); the name also applied to the Chaldean wise men similarly versed in the interpretation of dreams; sacred scribes, or persons skilled in interpreting sacred writing, especially hieroglyphics. [24] “Astrologers,” δָ ?ΰַ ?ωָּׁ ?ξִ ?ιν (ha-ash-shaphim). Nork derives the name from ΰָ ?ωַׁ ?σ = ΰָ ?ρַ ?σ (ashaph = asaph), to “gather together,” and understands by it such persons as professed to foretell events by a contemplation of the stars in their situation relative to each other. According to Gesenius, they were enchanters or magicians, from ΰָ ?ωַׁ ?σ (ashaph), a root of uncertain meaning; but in Syriac, “to enchant.” Rendered by the Sept. and Theodotion, μαγοι (magic). So the Vulgate. The Venetian Bible has “astronomers.” So Abulwaled and Kimchi. Aben Ezra understands “physicians.” Hengstenberg thinks of “exorcists;” not “natural philosophers,” as Bertholdt and Mόnter suppose. According to Diodorus Siculus, the Babylonian wise men sought to avert misfortune by lustrations, sacrifices, and witchcraft. Isaiah (Isaiah 47:9; Isaiah 47:12) derides Babylon by saying that all the incantations of their wise men availed not to avert the threatened ruin from her. According to Claudian, a rain was ascribed to the incantations of the Chaldeans, by which the army of Antoninus was delivered from the threatened destruction. Dr. A. Clarke thinks the name may be derived from πτω (na-phash), “to breathe,” these men laying claim to inspiration; but supposes them to have been the philosophers and astronomers among the Babylonians. See further under chap. Daniel 2:2. [25] “Therefore stood they before the king.” Dr. Cox remarks that the king’s preference of the four young Jews was all the more remarkable from the fact that the Chaldeans boasted of their literature and science, and deemed all other nations to be barbarians; their superiority, which thus so greatly attracted the royal favour, being certainly from the Lord, who exalts and depresses according to His own good pleasure, and to subserve the purposes of His universal government. Keil observes that Daniel needed to be deeply versed in the Chaldean wisdom, as formerly Moses was in the wisdom of Egypt (Acts 7:22), so as to be able to put to shame the wisdom of this world by the “hidden wisdom” of God. Gaussen notices that four benefits were bestowed by God on these faithful youths as a recompense for their fidelity: knowledge, skill in all learning, wisdom in the conduct of themselves, and, in the case of Daniel at least, something supernatural, prophetic gifts, a miraculous knowledge of the secrets of the Lord. Matthew Henry quaintly remarks that the king was soon aware that a little of their divinity was preferable to a great deal of the divinations he had been used to. [26] “And Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus.” Hengstenberg remarks that the author considers it superfluous to describe more precisely the event which distinguished the “first year of Cyrus; “he takes it for granted that all his readers would of themselves remember it. He must, therefore, have written as a cotemporary for cotemporaries; a confirmation of the genuineness of the book. The year referred to, 536 b.c., exactly seventy years after the first captives were taken from Jerusalem to Babylon, of whom Daniel was one, being then probably fourteen or sixteen years of age. [27] That the authority of Daniel had a very great share in bringing about the liberation of the Jews is generally admitted. Bertholdt, who opposes the genuineness of the book, says that Daniel without doubt very much contributed to obtain the permission from Cyrus for the exiled Jews to return to their fatherland, and to build Jerusalem and the Temple anew. Kleinert expresses the opinion that the immediate occasion of the edict of Cyrus was the reading of the prophecies of Isaiah concerning the liberation to be granted to the Jews by a person of his name. But this supposes another more remote cause—the influence of Daniel. Daniel influenced Cyrus to take the step partly by his great credit with the monarch, resulting from all the preceding miraculous events, even those which had occurred under the reign of the Chaldeans, partly by his laying before him the prophecies of Isaiah concerning him, which he attested with his own authority.—Hengstenberg.1. Faith IN God and fidelity TO God sure to be rewarded. “They trusted and were not confounded.” “They shall not be ashamed that wait for me.” “Them that honour me I will honour.” God is a good paymaster, says Kitto; give what we may to Him of faith, or work, or trust, or love, or zeal, He gives back again with large interest. Trust in man or self may disappoint; trust in God never. “Better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:30-31). The trust reposed in God by these four youths, honoured by the blessing received from God on all their undertakings and pursuits. 2. Health and vigour often the result of God’s blessing on the humblest fare. Pulse and water, says Matthew Henry, shall be the most nourishing food, if God speak the word. The coarsest food with the divine blessing more conducive to health and good liking than the choicest diet without it. A natural connection with godliness and good looks not to be forgotten. Godliness promotes temperance, temperance health, and health a good complexion. Peace with God brings peace of conscience, serenity of mind, and sweetness of temper; and these the most certain means of bringing sweetness of countenance. One of the promises made to godliness, or godlikeness which is love—“The Lord shall make fat thy bones” (Isaiah 58:11). “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” A truly and abidingly merry heart the result of peace with God, trust in God, and obedience to God. 3. The divine blessing the best help to successful study. A sound intelligent mind as well as a sound and healthful body acknowledged even by the heathen to be given by the deity, and to be sought in prayer. One of the favourite gods of the Hindoos is one that is worshipped as the giver of wisdom and helper in study. That study likely to be barren enough that lacks the divine blessing. Daniel’s three years’ study with that blessing better than others’ ten without it. That blessing given in answer to prayer. Hence, bene orasse est bene studuisse,—to have prayed well is to have studied well. He studies to best purpose who has a closet for prayer as well as a study for his books, and who is much in the one as well as in the other. Godliness one of the best teachers. “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy precepts,”—a sentiment of which Daniel himself may have been the author. The most prayerful and conscientious usually the most proficient student. Hence the knowledge even of difficult languages so readily acquired by missionaries to the heathen, enabling them not only to preach the gospel, but to translate the Scriptures in the vernacular language. The late William C. Burn enabled to converse and preach in Chinese in a wonderfully short time after his arrival in the country. “We count it reasonable,” says Kitto, “to look to the Lord for our daily bread, and to apply to Him for aid and guidance in the trials and emergencies of life. But how few are they who seek for the same aid from Him, and feel the same dependence upon Him, in matters of the intellect,—in learning, in study, in thought! It is very reasonable and becoming,—it is very necessary,—that when we go forth to the toil and business of the day, or when our affairs present perplexing difficulties, we should cast ourselves upon the Lord’s protection, and look to Him for counsel and guidance. But is it,—can it be,—less needful that, when we sit down to write, to study, to think, we should lift up our hearts trustingly to Him?” Kitto himself an eminent example of the truth he teaches. 4. True piety the frequent path to worldly promotion. “Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour.” Daniel in Babylon and Joseph in Egypt distinguished examples. Worldly honour and advancement in God’s hand. “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south: but God is judge; He putteth down one and setteth up another” (Psalms 75:6-7). God promotes His servants in the world as He sees to be most for His own glory and the good of themselves and others. Such promotion often a natural consequence of true piety. Godliness, even on natural grounds, “profitable unto all things.” Makes a man more faithful, conscientious, truthful, honest, unselfish; hence more trustworthy and reliable. True piety connected with the exercise of thought; hence tends to make a man intelligent and prudent, even though poorly educated. Makes him acquainted with the best and most elevating book, the Bible; and gives him the best and most efficient teacher, the Holy Spirit. Hence a man with true godliness, though less gifted by nature and providence, more likely to acquire advancement in the world than a man more highly gifted without it. 5. God’s purposes and promises sure of fulfilment. Means for accomplishing divine purposes never wanting. Daniel’s good appearance, proficiency in study, and superior intelligence, with their result, his elevation at court, part of the means for accomplishing the divine purpose and promise in regard to Israel’s restoration. The same true of Daniel’s longevity. His life extended to about ninety years, in order to accomplish the purpose for which God had raised him up and sent him an exile to Babylon. His influence with Cyrus to be the principal means of leading that monarch, in the very first year of his reign, to liberate the Jewish captives, then under his dominion. An easy thing with God to make slaves and exiles, like Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon, his honoured instruments in accomplishing His designs in reference to His people, His kingdom, and the world. “I will work, and who shall let it?” 6. A happy issue given to a believer out of all his troubles. Believers have troubles promised to them, but with the troubles a joyous deliverance out of them. The angel “that redeemed Jacob from all evil” still lives, and does the same for all Jacob’s faithful children. With the godly, the end better than the beginning. “Always better on before.” Their latter end peace, whatever their previous experience. Those who mourn with Zion in her sorrows sometimes spared to rejoice with her in her joys. Daniel, after all his sorrow for his people, spared to see the promise made by Jeremiah fulfilled,—to see, at least in its beginning, “the good of Jerusalem and peace upon Israel.” “Weeping may endure for a night; joy cometh in the morning.” . V.—THE PRAYER (Chap. Daniel 2:1-19). We come to the first of the visions given to Daniel. The occasion of it was a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, of which it was required to give both the description and the interpretation. The vision thus in harmony with Daniel’s situation in Babylon, where pretensions to such wisdom and ability prevailed; a confirmation of the genuineness of the book. One object of the vision to elevate Daniel still higher in the king’s esteem and in the State, and so still further to prepare the way for Israel’s liberation at the appointed time. Another and more direct object to comfort the people of God, then and in all future time, with the assurance that God rules in the kingdoms of men, and that when the great monarchies of the world have run their allotted course, the kingdom of Messiah shall overthrow them all and bless the earth with a lasting reign of righteousness and peace. The vision was given in answer to prayer. The time of it was “the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar,” that is, as sole monarch, after having reigned two previous years conjointly with his father, Nabopolassar [28]. The king, having had his thoughts seriously exercised about the future (Daniel 2:29), [29] had a dream [30] which greatly disturbed him (Daniel 2:1); and as the wise men about him pretended to interpret dreams, he summoned the various classes of them [31],—magicians [32], astrologers, sorcerers [33], and Chaldeans [34], and required them to give both the dream and its meaning. Either in reality, as is generally supposed, the dream having left only a confused impression, or, as others perhaps more correctly think, in pretence, in order to put to the proof the pretended skill of his wise men, he declared that the dream had passed from his recollection [35], and they must give not only the interpretation, but the dream itself. In accordance with the character of Oriental despotism, the penalty of failure was to be death in most terrible and cruel form—to be “hewed in pieces” [36], with the utter demolition of their dwellings [37]. On the wise men disclaiming, in the Syriac or Chaldaic tongue [38], the entire inability of themselves or any mere man whatever, to gratify the king’s desire—a thing competent only to the gods, “whose dwelling is not with flesh”—Nebuchadnezzar, probably enraged at discovering, as he thought, the falsehood of their pretensions, but ostensibly at their wish only to gain time for the safety of their own persons [39], commanded the chief executioner [40] at once to inflict the penalty. Daniel and his three companions, being supposed to be included among the wise men, though apparently not among those who were summoned into the king’s presence, were sought out for execution with the rest. One refuge they knew, which the others had not. The God they worshipped was, as they had already experienced, a God that hears and answers prayer. At Daniel’s suggestion, they unite immediately in a concert of prayer for the preservation of their own lives and those of the wise men of Babylon, and, to that end, for ability from on high to describe and interpret the king’s dream. The prayer was graciously and speedily answered. [28] “In the second year,” &c. The dream occurring at this early period in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, observes Hengstenberg, agrees with the fame of Daniel’s wisdom and prevalency in prayer as indicated by Ezekiel. The first mention made of Daniel by that prophet was probably in the sixth year of the reign of Zedekiah (Ezekiel 8:1), consequently thirteen or fourteen years after the carrying away of Daniel into Babylon. The second mention of him five years later. The repeated mention of such a person quite natural in the circumstances. Yet this mention of Daniel by Ezekiel has been made the ground of an opinion, advanced by Ewald and espoused by Bunsen, that Daniel was led captive in the first Assyrian invasion, and that he lived and prophesied, not in Babylon, but in Nineveh! Kliefoth, quoted by Keil, observes that in Daniel 1:1 Daniel reckons Nebuchadnezzar’s years “according to the years of the Israelitish kings, and sees in him already the king; on the contrary, in chap, 2., he treats of the nations of the World-power, and reckons here accurately the year of Nebuchadnezzar, the bearer of the world-power, from the day in which, having actually obtained the possession of that power, he became king of Babylon.” Keil himself remarks: “If we observe that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed his dream in the second year of his reign, and that he entered on his reign some time after the destruction of Jerusalem and the captivity of Jehoiakim, then we can understand how the three years appointed for the education of Daniel and his companions came to an end in the second year of his reign; for if Nebuchadnezzar began to reign in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, then in the seventh year of that king three years had passed since the destruction of Jerusalem, which took place in the fourth year of his reign. A whole year or more of their period of education had passed before Nebuchadnezzar mounted the throne.” It is, however, perhaps scarcely correct to speak of what took place in Jehoiakim’s fourth year as the destruction of Jerusalem, which did not happen till some years afterwards. [29] “What should come to pass hereafter.” Dr. Pusey notices it as “a striking picture of the young conqueror, that, not contented with the vista of future greatness before him, he was looking on beyond our little span of life, which in youth so fills the mind, to a future when his own earthly life should be closed.” [30] “Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams.” Mr. Wood, in his Lectures on Daniel, observes, that “Nebuchadnezzar’s dream was an event in the Chaldean history which bore upon it the stamp and impress of divine interposition. It involved in its interpretation the future revolutions of the world, and had reference to that most important revolution, the introduction of the religion of Christ, which was to cover the earth.” [31] “The king commanded to call the magicians,” &c. On all occasions in the book, says Hengstenberg, not particular wise men are consulted, but the whole body of them, probably, as here, in the persons of their representatives, or of a selection made from them. Such in accordance with the information of Diodorus, that the observations of the Babylonian wise men were always instituted in company and by a college. The division of the wise men here indicated is not to be conceived of as if every individual always confined himself to the cultivation of only one particular branch of Babylonian wisdom; the division only amounting to this, that by rule each should particulary excel in only some one department. The different branches, too, were so nearly identified, that it would be difficult previously to determine whether any one of them would not, in any given instance, come into operation. [32] “Magicians.” See note under chap. Daniel 1:20. Dr. Rule observes that the Hebrew name is generally considered equivalent with the Greek ἱερογραμμαπεῖς or sacred scribes, not magicians. The Assyrians had a sacred writing, not like the pictorial hieroglyphic of Egypt, but a literal hieroglyphic or ideograph. The characters were arrow-headed or wedge-like (cuneiform), as in ordinary inscriptions on the Assyrian sculptures and Babylonian cylinders. The style was enigmatic, or at least obscure, by brevity or abruptness or abbreviation. [33] “Sorcerers,” ξְ ?λַ ?ωְּׁ ?τִ ?ιν (mechash-shephim), from a Syriac root meaning to “supplicate” or “perform sacred rites;” enchanters, magicians, Exodus 7:11; Deuteronomy 18:10; Malachi 3:5.—Gesenius. Sept., φαρμακὸς, one who uses drugs or incantations. Vulg., “maleficus.” Aben Ezra, one who uses horoscopes. Gesenius understands a magician, or one who pretended to cause eclipses by incantations. [34] “Chaldeans.” He rerepresented as a class of themselves. A thing in itself most probable. The priest-caste not likely first introduced into Babylonia by the Chaldeans. No civilised people of antiquity without an order of priests. Isaiah, in whose time the Chaldeans had not yet become masters of Babylon, describes that city as the prime seat of the arts of divination. These possessed a priest-caste before their invasion of Babylonia. The name of the people was at Babylon the name of the whole caste, and occurs as such in the oldest writers. The name given from this distinction between the Chaldean and Babylonian priesthoods. Curtius speaks of the Persian magi, the Chaldeans, and the Babylonians as so many different kinds of wise men in Babylon. The distinction here no small attestation to the trustworthiness, and so to the genuineness, of the book.—Hengstenberg. Dr. A. Clarke observes that the “Chaldeans” might be a college of learned men, where all arts and sciences were professed and taught; that they were the most ancient philosophers of the world; and that they might have been originally inhabitants of Babylon, and still have preserved to themselves exclusively the name of Chaldeans. Keil views them as the most distinguished class among the Babylonian wise men. [35] “The thing it gone from me.” The passage otherwise rendered by Michaelis, Gesenius, and others—“the word, or decree, has gone forth from me;” or, according to Winer, Hengstenberg, and others, “the thing has been determined by me,” or “the word stands firm,” like chap. Daniel 6:12, “the thing is true.” Others translate, “let the word from me be known,” “be it known unto you.” [36] “Cut in pieces.” This punishment, observes Keil, common among the Babylonians (chap. Daniel 3:30; Ezekiel 16:40). “A Chaldean death-punishment,” says Hengstenberg, “and in accordance with the cruel character of the people.” The king’s treatment of the magicians, he observes, was barbarous, but nothing more than, judging even by our sparing historical information, we might expect of him (2 Kings 25:7; 2 Kings 25:18; 2 Kings 25:21; Jeremiah 39:5, &c.; Jeremiah 52:9-11, Jeremiah 52:24-27). A mistake to expect an Oriental despot to use our standard in the estimate of human life. An example of the author’s acquaintance with the usages of the time and country, and so a confirmation of the genuineness of the book. The Persians had quite a different mode of inflicting capital punishment. [37] “Your houses shall be made a dunghill.” The houses of Babylon were built of earth burnt or simply dried in the sun. When a building was totally demolished or converted into a confused heap of rubbish, the entire mass of earth, in rainy weather, gradually decomposed, and the place of such a house became like a dunghill. Bertholdt admits that the accurate acquaintance here shown with the mode of building practised in Babylon shows the piece to have been written in that country.—Hengstenberg. [38] “In Syriack.” Therefore, in the opinion of Hengstenberg, not the language of the king and court. The language here meant is the Eastern Aramaic or common Chaldaic; that in which the following part of the book is written as far as the end of chap. 7. Originally the language of Abraham in his own country, but changed by his descendants in Palestine for that commonly called Hebrew, the language of Canaan (Isaiah 19:18), which was given to them for their possession. This language of Canaan naturally closely allied to the Ph�nician, whose characters, resembling the Samaritan, continued to be used by the Hebrews till changed after the captivity for those of the Chaldaic. Dr. Rule observes that the language of Aram (or Syria), now less properly called Chaldee in one dialect and Syriac in another, while yet the two dialects hardly differ, is very different from the old Chaldee, or language of Akkad, the classic tongue of Assyria used by the race of Akkadians, who had inhabited Babylonia from the earliest times. These Chaldees would converse, he thinks, with each other in their ancient language; but that speech the soldier-king would not have understood, and therefore they are under the necessity of speaking to him in his mother tongue. A different view from that taken by Hengstenberg. [39] “Ye would gain the time.” Either till the king could recollect the dream himself, or should become indifferent about the matter, or till they could invent something in the place of it, or get time to escape with life and property.—A. Clark [40] “Captain of the king’s guard.” Margin: “Chief of the executioners or slaughtermen.” “The chief of the royal bodyguard, who also executed the capital punishments. In Jeremiah 39:13 he bears a different name from that in this passage—an evidence of the genuineness of the book; as a spurious Daniel, if he had derived the corresponding statements from Jeremiah, would have surely transferred also the name, in order to give an appearance of trustworthiness.”—Hengstenberg. According to Keil, this man was regarded as the highest officer of the king (Jeremiah 39:9; Jeremiah 39:11; Jeremiah 11:1, &c.); his business being to see to the execution of the king’s commands (1 Kings 2:25; 2 Kings 6:8). Dr. Rule remarks that this was also the Egyptian title 1200 years before Nebuchadnezzar, and the repetition of both the office and the name may be noted as one of many affinities between Egypt and Babylon in customs, language, and tradition.From the whole section observe— 1. Men’s minds capable of being acted upon by God. Dreams themselves often from God, as well as the apprehension of their meaning. The power of recollection, as well as the want of it, also from Him. By divine revelation, mediately or immediately given, Daniel is enabled not only to interpret the king’s dream, but to describe the dream itself, without the slightest clue to it. The office of the Spirit to “bring all things to remembrance,” as well as to “show things to come.” The faculties of our minds as well as the members of our bodies under the influence and control of Him who made both, and that both while asleep and awake. “I awoke, and my sleep was sweet unto me.” “Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions.” 2. The misery of ungodly men. Nebuchadnezzar troubled and unhappy in the midst of all his power and grandeur. A dream by night or a thought by day, laying hold of the mind, able to poison all earthly enjoyments. The sword of Damocles suspended over the ungodly in the midst of their mirth. Armed guards around a king’s chamber unable to keep trouble from his spirit. Sleep, the gift of God to His beloved (Psalms 127:2), often far from the pillow of the ungodly. An evil conscience a sufficient tormentor. A vague terror the usual accompaniment of unpardoned sin. Apprehended anger on the part of God enough to rob a man of peace by day and sleep by night. The mere man of the world “generally impatient under suffering; apprehensive of danger at every change both of body and mind; alarmed at every circumstance which to him appears to portend either adversity or dissolution.”—Wood. 3. The evils of despotism and absolute power. Like Nebuchadnezzar, a despot usually unreasonable and arbitrary, cruel and oppressive, hasty and impetuous. Is easily irritated, while his wrath is “like the roaring of a lion.” The capricious disposer of his subjects’ lives and property. The will of an absolute monarch, who in his wrath rather resembles a madman or a wild beast, takes the place of law, justice, and reason. Sad condition of a people when the will of one man is law. Usually the character of Oriental monarchies. The beheaded Baptist and the slaughtered infants of Bethlehem melancholy examples. The tendency of absolute power to make good men bad and bad men much worse. Such power only safe in the hands of Him who is King of Righteousness and Prince of Peace. The happiness of a free and constitutional State, as well as the duty of gratitude to God for the privilege of living under such, best seen in contrast with the misery of being under a despotic one. Adam Clarke exclaims on the passage: “Happy England! Know and value thy excellent privileges!” “Thee therefore still, blameworthy as thou art,Thee I account still happy, and the chiefAmong the nations, seeing thou art free,My native nook of earth.”Plutarch relates that when Dionysius the Second took his departure from Syracuse, the whole city went out to behold the joyful sight, and that their hearts were so full of the happy event that they were angry with those that were absent and could not witness with what joy the sun rose that day on Syracuse, now at last delivered from the chains of slavery. 4. The fearful effects of sin, Sin makes men, who were created in the image of God, to resemble demons. Degraded Nebuchadnezzar into the likeness of a beast long before he was driven into the fields to eat grass. “When passion is on the throne, reason is under foot.” Both God and the devil stamp their image on their respective servants. Men must resemble the being they worship. We must either be like the God who is love, or him who was “a murderer from the beginning.” Causeless and unholy anger is murder in the germ. Anger may enter for a moment into the breast of a wise man, but “resteth only in the bosom of fools.” The maxim of Periander, the wise man of Corinth, was—“Be master of thine anger.” The Holy Spirit says, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Anger, Dr. Cox observes, is— (1) undignifying; (2) unreasonable; (3) destructive of that just and useful influence to which we should aspire, and for which every one is naturally capacitated by his position in society; (4) usually makes a rapid progress; (5) is productive of great unhappiness; (6) is a most guilty passion. It is remarked by Robert Hall: “Vindictive passions surround the soul with a sort of turbulent atmosphere, than which nothing can be conceived more opposite to the calm and holy light in which the blessed Spirit loves to dwell.” 5. The helplessness of heathenism and of men without God. Babylon’s wise men, with all their learning and science, unable either to find direction in their difficulty or deliverance from their danger. Like the mariners in the storm, they are “at their wit’s end.” They believed the gods could tell the king his dream, but they had no access to them. Their “dwelling is not with flesh.” Their gods do not dwell with them, and they confess that they have no converse with them. Thus heathenism, by its own confession, is powerless. Sorry gods, indeed, that cannot approach men, nor be approached by them! Even the great Bel of Babylon unable to help his royal and devoted worshipper. Contrast with this the God of the Bible, “a very present help in trouble,” and “near to all who call upon Him in truth.” Blessed are the people who know the “mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh;” and that, having been “made flesh” Himself, He can and does dwell with men on the earth. Matthew Henry notices the righteousness of God in causing men who imposed on others by pretending to do what they could not, to be threatened with death for not doing what they did not even pretend to do. 6. The happy privilege of prayer. Access to the throne of grace both the comfort and deliverance of Daniel and his three friends. A noble sight for angels to look down upon, those four young men on their knees, asking believingly, as children of a father, the gracious interposition of the God of heaven on behalf of themselves and others. They knew that for the God of their fathers nothing was too dark to know, nothing too hard to do, nothing too great to grant to His praying children. Nothing really good excluded from the subjects of prayer. “In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God” (Philippians 4:6). Even under the law, Moses could appeal to Israel, “What nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for?” How much nearer under the Gospel! “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, I will do it.” “What soever things ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” “If we ask according to His will, we know that He heareth us; and if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we desire of Him” (1 John 3:22; 1 John 5:14-15). The Spirit of God given to help us in prayer, and to teach us to pray for what is according to the divine will (Romans 8:26). Hence— 7. The happiness of the godly. Daniel, though exposed to the same danger as the wise men, is calm and collected. He knew in whom he believed. An example of the text, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord.” He knew the God of his fathers to be the God “that heareth prayer.” The glory of the gospel that it brings the apostolic exhortation into realised experience and actual practice: “Be careful (or anxious) for nothing: but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God, that passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Such a religion needed by men in the battle of life; and the last-quoted words show how it is to be found,—“through Christ Jesus.” Daniel an example of it in the Old Testament; millions such in the New. Tried by men and things as others are, yet kept in a peace to which the world is a stranger,—a peace found in the knowledge and possession of Christ Jesus. “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” 8. The special importance of united prayer. Daniel invites his three friends to unite with himself in prayer for the divine interposition. “Two are better than one,” no less in prayer than in labour. “If two of you,” said the Master, “shall agree as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them” (Matthew 18:19). So Esther asked her Jewish maids to join their prayers with hers in a time of great emergency. The promised baptism of the Holy Ghost bestowed on the disciples when engaged, as they had been for ten days, in united prayer. Peter’s deliverance from prison in answer to the united prayer made by the Church for that object. Those the most valuable friends who are able to join us in our suit at a throne of grace. Dr. Cox remarks on the passage: “While the individual supplication of the ‘righteous man availeth much,’ union in prayer is adapted to increase its fervency, and, through grace, to promote its success; and while it is adapted to our social nature and suited to our circumstances of common necessity, it has the express assurance of a divine blessing.” 9. A praying man a national benefit. Here are four men, captives in a strange land and occupying the position of slaves, made the means, by their intercession with God, not only of saving the lives of a numerous class of citizens, and of bringing peace and comfort to the troubled mind of the sovereign, but of bringing that heathen king to confess the worthlessness of his idols, and for a time at least to favour the worship of the true God among his subjects. How many national blessings have been bestowed and national calamities averted by the believing prayers of godly men, eternity alone will disclose. A poet reminds us how much the world— “Receives advantage from his noiseless hours,Of which she little dreams. Perhaps she owesHer sunshine and her rain, her blooming springAnd plenteous harvest, to the prayers he makes,When, lsaac-like, the solitary saintWalks forth to meditate at eventide,And thinks on her who thinks not on herself.”10. The special privilege of a godly ancestry. Daniel’s privilege that he could address his prayers to God as “the God of his fathers,” and then thank and praise Him as such, connecting with that relationship the gracious answer he had received. The title reminds us, as Dr. Cox observes, “that the recollections of piety are the most solemn and endearing that earth can afford. Some are privileged to look back upon an extended succession of holy ancestry, and to recount the names of those who are endeared by relationship as well as distinguished for their faith, who now form a part of the celestial society. Their sun is set, but their example continues to shed its holy twilight around the horizon of life, and cheer them on their pilgrimage.” The recollection of such an ancestry at once a stimulus to prayer and a help to faith. DANIEL AN EXAMPLE OF THE OF PRAYER “Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision” (Daniel 2:19). Daniel obtained what he asked of God. Important to inquire, How may we Reason and Scripture teach us that various things are necessary to efficacious prayer. Prayer, to be efficacious, must obviously possess the following conditions. It must be— 1. Offered in faith. This constantly required. “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering: for he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord” (James 1:6-7). “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). The ability to grant on the part of the Giver, as well as His faithfulness if He has promised, must be cordially believed. “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” (Matthew 9:28). We must be able to say, “Thine is the power;” and to believe “He is faithful that promised.” Daniel prayed in confidence that God was the “Hearer of prayer.” “The prayer of faith shall save the sick” (James 5:15). “As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.” 2. Earnest. Prayer offered without earnestness only begs a refusal. Daniel prayed as in a matter of life and death. It is the “fervent” prayer that availeth much. “Elijah prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not” (James 5:17). “I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me” (Genesis 32:26). “They constrained Him.” 3. Importunate and persevering. This the evidence at once of faith and earnestness. Answers to prayer not always, nor often, granted immediately. Prayer to be continued till the answer come. Thus prayed Daniel and his three friends. The disciples in the upper room “continued in prayer and supplication” till they received the promised baptism of fire. The Church prayed for Peter’s release till it was granted. To this end Christ spake a parable that “men ought always to pray and not to faint,” or give up because the answer is delayed. “Shall not God avenge His own elect who cry day and night unto Him continually, though He bear long with him?” Jesus Himself continued whole nights in prayer to God. Elijah returned to his knees “seven times” before the “little cloud” appeared. 4. From a right motive and for a right end. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3). God’s glory and the good of others as well as ourselves to be our true motive. “Thine is the glory.” “Hallowed be Thy name,” the first petition taught in the Lord’s Prayer. Daniel prayed that men’s lives might be saved and God’s name glorified. Prayer offered to gratify lust, pride, ambition, covetousness, either unanswered or answered without a blessing. “He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalms 106:15). 5. Offered with uprightness of heart and life. “Whatever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments” (1 John 3:22). The fervent prayer of the “righteous man” that which availeth much. The language of the man born blind that both of Nature and Scripture: “God heareth not sinners; but if any man be a worshipper of God and doeth His will, him He hearth” (John 9:31). “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” “The prayer of the wicked is abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the righteous is His delight.” The sinner, however, also heard, if he come confessing himself such and feeling his sin a burden. “God be merciful to me a sinner,” a prayer when offered sincerely never returned unanswered. Paul’s prayers heard and answered as those of a sinner before they were so as those of a saint. The prayers of a sinner, groaning under his sin, and pleading for pardon and a clean heart, make sweet music in heaven. “Behold, he prayeth.” 6. With submission to God’s will and desire only for what is according to it. “Thy will be done,” the third petition in the Lord’s Prayer. The great Teacher Himself an example. “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.” Prayer without submission to God’s will, only the language of rebellion. Prayer for what is not according to God’s will better left unanswered. “If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us” (1 John 5:14). The work of the Spirit to teach us to pray for what is according to the will of God (Romans 8:26-27). Prayer thus offered never unanswered. Connected with this is— 7. With entire self-surrender. For the submission of the will to God the surrender of our whole self necessary; without such surrender our prayer still that of rebellion. The language of our heart either, “O Lord, I am Thy servant,” or, “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” Prayer only safely and profitably answered where there is entire self-surrender. Such surrender secures either the blessing asked or something better. 8. In the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ. Daniel, in a recorded prayer of his (chap. 9.), renounces all merit and righteousness of his own as a ground of acceptance, and pleads only to be heard “for the Lord’s, that is, Messiah or Christ’s, sake.” “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name” (on my account or for my sake), “I will do it.” David taught to use the same prevailing plea—“Look upon the face of Thine Anointed” (Psalms 84:9). God can refuse no blessing so asked, because He cannot refuse His Son. To plead the name and merits of Christ, however, implies a cordial acceptance of and trust in Him as a Saviour. The consequence of such acceptance and trust is a personal union with Him, and the consequent indwelling of the Spirit as a “Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” With that Spirit we not merely say, “Our Father,” but “My Father,” and “pray in the Holy Ghost.” . VI.—THE (Chap. Daniel 2:19-23) The part of faith not only to pray but to look out for an answer. Daniel prayed in the firm expectation that, if for God’s glory, an answer would be granted. When the answer was given in the vision vouchsafed to him, he was in no doubt about its being such. The vision carried with it the proof of its divine origin. Revelations from God bear their evidence in their own bosom. No need for Daniel to wait till the king identifies his dream. Daniel therefore at once gives thanks and blesses the God of heaven. The text exhibits him at seventeen or eighteen years of age as a beautiful example of elevated piety and devotion, worthy of the mention made of him by the prophet Ezekiel some years afterwards. In Daniel’s thanksgiving we have— I. The Object of it. This is God, viewed under two aspects. 1. “The God of heaven” (Daniel 2:19). All blessings received to be traced immediately to God. The title indicates (1.) His unity. The one God in contrast with the “gods many “of the heathen. The only God known in heaven, though mysteriously subsisting in a Trinity of persons. (2.) His supremacy. Heavenly powers and heavenly bodies worshipped by the heathen. Israel’s God the God of them all. All in heaven as well as on earth subject to Him as His creatures. Daniel’s God not the sun nor the firmament, but He that made both. (3.) His majesty. Heaven His throne, the earth His footstool. Nations and their sovereigns as nothing before Him. This not to be forgotten in our approaches to Him. Prayer to be addressed to Him as “Our Father, who art in heaven.” (4.) His holiness. Heaven conceived of as the place of purity, untainted by sin. The abode only of pure and holy beings. That holy heaven the place of God’s throne and special residence. (5.) The source and centre of happiness. Heaven the place of blessedness. It is God that makes it such. The “God of heaven” makes heaven what it is. A heaven without God no heaven to holy creatures: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” 2. “The God of his fathers” (Daniel 2:23). The God known, served, and trusted in by his fathers, from Abraham downwards. A special mercy when the “God of heaven” is also the God of our fathers. Daniel recognises the privilege of having godly, praying ancestors. Answers to prayer and blessings in general to be then viewed in connection with such ancestry. The prayers of godly parents often answered in the blessings bestowed upon their children after them. Children often blessed for the sake of godly forefathers. The prayers of the righteous their children’s best inheritance. A special reason as well as encouragement to pray to Him who has been the God of our fathers. “Our fathers trusted in Thee and were delivered,” a scriptural and powerful plea in prayer. The God of our fathers likely to be our God too. The promise that comforted Jacob’s sorrowful heart on his way to Padanaram (Genesis 28:13-15). What God was to our fathers He will be to us, if we take Him and trust Him as our God. “I am the Lord; I change not.” The text a powerful argument with parents to make God in Christ their God, so as to hand down the blessing to their children and children’s children after them. II. The Subject of the thanksgiving. The special subject is the answer to prayer vouchsafed. “Who hast given me wisdom,” &c. (Daniel 2:23). The very thing that Daniel and his friends had asked had been granted—wisdom and power to interpret the king’s dream, and so to save the lives of others as well as themselves, as well as to relieve the king’s agitation. The thing granted in answer to prayer often the very thing asked. Examples, Eliezer, Hannah, Elijah, Nehemiah. Faith receives either the very thing asked or something better. With thanks for the special blessing vouchsafed, Daniel connects blessing and praise. 1. For what God is. (1.) Wise. “Wisdom and might are His” (Daniel 2:20). Divine wisdom seen in the manner in which all things have been created and in which all things are governed; in the plan of the universe and the means for carrying that plan out. Especially seen in the redemption of fallen mankind by the incarnation and mediatorial work of His own Son. God the only wise. His wisdom contrasted with the pretended wisdom of the wise men of Babylon. That wisdom revealed in part in the king’s dream. (2.) Mighty. “Might” as well as wisdom His. Has power to execute what His wisdom plans. Power as well as wisdom necessary to the government as well as the creation of the universe, and of every, even the smallest portion of it. One object of the king’s dream to exhibit the power of God, in opposition to the gods of the heathen and the rulers of the world. Constant reference to this contrast in the descriptions of Jehovah in this book. “It is He, not as the Chaldean kings in their pride fondly imagined, human power, that bestows kingdoms, sets up kings and casts them down, and that changes times.” The author of those great changes in the kingdoms of the world which Daniel announced in the interpretation of the king’s dream. (3.) Omniscient. “Knoweth what is in darkness,” &c. (Daniel 2:22). Able to “reveal the deep and secret things,” which the wise men of Babylon, with all their pretension, were unable to do, or their gods to do for them. All things naked and open before Him. No darkness or shadow of death where men may hide themselves from His sight. Hell and the invisible world without a covering before Him. The future as the present within His ken. Sees the end from the beginning. “Known unto Him all His works from the beginning of the world.” All history, including the lives and doings of the humblest of His creatures, only the development of His plan formed before the foundation of the world. No mysteries with God. The web of the universe, with its endlessly varied pattern, all before His all-seeing and all-contriving mind from the beginning, and that without any prejudice to the free agency of His intelligent creatures. DANIEL IN THE TEXT AS AN EXAMPLE OF “Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven” (Daniel 2:19). Mercies in general, and answers to prayer in particular, call for due acknowledgment. Favours demand returns. A thankless heart a graceless one. “Neither were they thankful,” among the marks of man’s apostasy from God. Of the ten cleansed lepers, only one “returned to give glory to God.” Not much prayer in the world, still less of thanksgiving. A gracious soul not only prays but praises, especially when prayer has been heard and answered. Thanksgiving for answers to prayer doubles the blessing. “More blessed to give than to receive.” Thanksgiving both God’s right and man’s happiness. The want of it a wrong both against God and ourselves. To give thanks not only right and “comely,” but “pleasant,”—pleasant both to God and man. The ungodly man prays at times in a way; the godly both prays and gives thanks. Prayer made in hell, though in vain; thanksgiving and praise the employment of heaven. Daniel’s thanksgiving was— (1.) Prompt. Followed immediately on the bestowment of the blessing. “Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.” Thanks delayed lose half their value. He gives twice who gives quickly. Christ gave thanks even before the answer to His prayer was actually given, though anticipated (John 11:41). (2.) Hearty. Indicated by the language and enlargement on the subject. Heartless thanks not real ones. The thankful leper fell down on his face on giving thanks to Jesus, a thing more like a person asking for a favour than giving thanks for one. Daniel as hearty in his thanks as he had been in his prayers. “I thank thee, O God of my fathers.” So the Psalmist: “I will praise thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart; for great has been Thy mercy toward me” (Psalms 86:12-13). (3.) Full. Daniel copious in his thanksgiving, as in his prayer (ch. 9.). Anxious to omit nothing in describing the blessing received. When God is not stinted in His gifts, we should not be stinted in our thanksgiving. SECT. VII.—THE (Chap. Daniel 2:24-30) Daniel’s thanksgiving to God immediately followed by his testimony to men. Life being at stake, the business required haste. Daniel repairs, therefore, at once to the captain of the guard, informing him he was able to meet the king’s wish, and desiring to be admitted to his presence. In answering the king’s question, “Art thou able,” &c. (Daniel 2:26), Daniel verifies the words of the Psalmist, perhaps his own,—“I will speak of thy testimonies before kings, and I will not be ashamed” (Psalms 119:46). His testimony includes reference to— 1. The wise men and soothsayers [41] of Babylon, and, by implication, the gods they worshipped. Daniel declares what they had already confessed, their utter inability to show the king’s dream (Daniel 2:27). The gods they served were equally unable to help them. Were they worthy of the name of gods and of the worship of men, they must know the secret of the king’s dream, and both for the sake of the king, their priests, and themselves, be willing to communicate it to their servants, now in danger of their lives. The pretensions of these priests were vain. They were either deceived themselves or sought to deceive others, or rather both [42]. [41] “Soothsayers.” An old English word literally denoting “truth-tellers,” strangely applied to those who, as a matter of fact, were generally the reverse. Isaiah (Isaiah 44:25) and Jeremiah (Jeremiah 50:36) both refer to the same class under the express term “liars,” αַּ ?γִּ ?ιν (baddim). The term in the text, βָּ ?ζְ ?ψִ ?ιο (gozrin), denotes, according to Hengstenberg, “definers of fate.” This name is supposed by some to be derived from βְּ ?ζַ ?ψ (gezar) to “divide,” “cut off;” the knowledge of fate being supposed to be gained from the observation of the stars, which were for that purpose divided into certain fields. Dr. Rule gives a different derivation, and observes: “If the word may be explained according to its literal meaning, they delivered the conclusion in doubtful questions, arrived at after the usual methods of divination had been employed without result. They were the deciders.” [42] Their fortune-telling, however, it appears, did sometimes happen to prove true. Plutarch relates of Otho, before he became emperor, that the Chaldeans and other diviners whom he had always about him, would not suffer him entirely to give up his hopes or abandon his design of assuming the purple. In particular, he relied on Ptolemy, because he had formerly predicted that he should not fall by the hand of Nero, but should survive him and ascend the imperial throne; for as the former part of the prophecy had proved true, he thought he had no reason to despair of the latter.2. The true God. “But there is a God in heaven,” &c. (Daniel 2:28). Daniel neither ashamed nor afraid to confess God before kings. He declares not merely His superiority to all the gods of Babylon, but His exclusive claim to deity. The wise men spoke of “the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh;” Daniel declares there is but one. The “gods many” of the heathen he tacitly intimates were mere figments, shadows, and worthless dumb idols, neither able to help their worshippers nor themselves. He declares, further, the spirituality and invisibility of the true God, in opposition to those idols that stood in their temples. The God who is able to reveal the king’s dream is the God of heaven, the invisible Being whose throne and abode is in heaven, and who fills it with His presence. The proof of His sole and exclusive claim to Godhead about to be given, Elijah’s challenge: “The God that answereth by fire, he is the God.” Daniel’s,—The God that revealeth the king’s dream, he and he only is the God. 3. Daniel himself. “As for me,” &c. (Daniel 2:30). Daniel disclaims any superior wisdom or merit in himself as the ground of his ability to show the king’s dream. Ascribes the revelation entirely to God and His good pleasure. God wished to reveal to the king what should hereafter happen to His kingdom and to the world. True excellence always lowly. Apparent room and a strong temptation in the circumstances for Daniel to glory. Daniel’s lowliness of mind the very ground of the distinction given him. God “giveth grace to the lowly; the proud He knoweth afar off.” Daniel, though young, taught the lesson so difficult to fallen humanity. “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” No glory due to the best of creatures. “Who maketh thee to differ? Or what hast thou that thou hast not received?” Quite natural that Ezekiel should refer to Daniel as an example of piety as well as wisdom. DANIEL A NOBLE EXAMPLE OF WITNESS-BEARING The high vocation of God’s servants and people to bear witness for Him in the world. “Ye are my witnesses” (Isaiah 43:10). This repeated by Christ to His disciples: “Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem,” &c. (Acts 1:8). This witness to be borne before all classes as occasion may offer and require. “Ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony” (Mark 13:9). To bear testimony to and for Christ in the world often the cross given a disciple to carry. Sometimes hard enough to do so before friends and neighbours, in the workshop, the market, or the drawing-room. The sneer of the unbelieving its frequent consequence. Sometimes something more than a sneer. “Martyr” literally a “witness,” or a witness-bearer. A cruel death in days past the frequent result of faithful witness-bearing. Hence courage necessary to make a consistent Christian. Such courage the offspring of the faith that makes a believer. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4). “Virtue” or courage to be added to “faith” (2 Peter 1:5). Hence faith’s noble roll of witness-bearers (Hebrews 11.) The “cloud of witnesses” not mere spectators but witness-bearers, who on earth bore faithful testimony for God and His truth. Christ Himself the great witness-bearer,—“who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession.” The world to be won to Christ and to God by faithful witness-bearing. The testimony to be borne as well by our life as our lips. Future glory the reward of faithful witness-bearing. “Whoso shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32). . VIII.—THE DREAM (Chap. Daniel 2:31-35) With the confidence of a man inspired and commissioned by the Most High, Daniel proceeds to declare the king’s dream. The dream one of no ordinary character. Exhibited the fate, not only of the empire of Babylon, but of those which should succeed it. Foreshowed their destruction and the means by which it should be effected. A little mysterious stone, with which the history of the world was bound up, was to accomplish the whole. The dream further unfolded what should ensue after the destruction of those empires. That stone should itself become an empire, and as such should fill the whole earth. A fifth monarchy, totally unlike its predecessors, should take their place, and last for ever. Thus the history of the world to the end of time was summarily comprehended in that dream. It is accordingly receiving its fulfilment at the present moment. Most of it has already been accomplished. The image has long ago been smitten, though not entirely destroyed. A little while and the whole shall be fulfilled. The stone is enlarging and will soon fill the earth. The time not distant when the predicted cry shall be heard in heaven, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ” (Revelation 11:15). A vague impression both of the import and importance of the dream made on the king’s mind in his sleep, probably the occasion of his perturbation when he awoke. The dream in itself fitted to alarm. A gigantic, dazzling, and terrible image stood before his eyes; then smitten on its feet by an insignificant-looking stone, mysteriously cut out of a mountain without hands; then broken in pieces till it disappeared “like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.” The dream all the more likely to alarm in a country where dreams were believed to have frequently an important meaning, and to foreshow future events, the interpretation of which formed one considerable branch of Chaldee learning. Natural for the king to feel that his dream had a meaning and a mission—a feeling which it was part of the divine purpose to produce, and to which his previous thoughts about the future had doubtless contributed (Daniel 2:29). No wonder the king was deeply concerned to discover what that meaning was. The dream consisted of four parts— I. The Image. Images of animal forms familiar to the heathen world, especially in Babylon at that time [43]. The figure here a human one. In a corresponding vision afforded to Daniel himself (chap. 7.), the figures those of wild beasts. The kingdoms of the world symbolised in both cases, but as naturally presenting different aspects to a worldly ruler and a servant of God [44]. The image in the king’s dream not unlikely the original idea of that which he afterwards erected on the plains of Dura (chap. 3.). An image the appropriate symbol of the world which men worship. The image in the king’s dream possessed of five leading features. It was— [43] “A great image.” The predominance of symbolism characteristic of the Chaldeans, especially a preference for symbolising by means of animal forms. “If Daniel sees a vision (or the king has a dream) in which animal forms denote kingdoms, symbolic shapes of that kind must have been no strangers to the waking world; for we dream only of forms which we see when awake, and in our dreams give them new and various combinations.”—Herder, quoted by Hengstenberg. [44] “Whose brightness was excellent.” “To Nebuchadnezzar, who aspired only after human power and glory, the various empires that were in their order to succeed his own and tyrannise over the world, were represented by a splendid image. But in the prophetic vision of the man of God, they appeared in other colours and assumed a very different form. And under the appropriate symbol of wild beasts, varying in fierceness and cruelty, and distinguished by monstrous peculiarities, the successive empires of Babylon, Persia, Macedon, and Rome, the future promoters of idolatry and oppressors of man, were aptly characterised.”—Kitto.1. Gigantic in its dimensions. “A great image.” That afterwards erected by the king sixty cubits or about thirty yards in height, probably, however, including the pedestal. Figures of monstrous proportions familiar to the eye in Chaldea as in Egypt [45]. A gigantic human figure an appropriate symbol of the world, with its great and universal monarchies succeeding each other. Yet how little that world when compared with the value of a man’s own soul, or the grandeur of eternity! An image indeed, and “vain show.” [45] “The form thereof teas terrible.” It was also characteristic of the Chaldeans to affect the gigantic and grotesque. This taste found throughout the book. “Great, high, and dreadful to behold is the figure which appears to Nebuchadnezzar; just as huge as the figure which he in reality set up.”—Hengstenberg, who also remarks that this mode of representation points to a Babylonian origin of the book, and is only to be explained on that supposition.2. Various in its composition. The head of gold [46], the breast and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, the legs of iron, terminating in feet and toes partly of iron and partly of clay. The great empires to have a diversity of character, distinguishing them from each other, while that character was uniform in each, except in the last, in which a diversity was to take place in the latter part of its existence. Some were to be conspicuous for splendour, riches, and show; others to be remarkable for strength, power, and destructiveness. The first the most splendid, the last the most powerful, though degenerating into a mixture of weakness and strength. The golden head contrasted with the feet of iron and clay. [46] “This image’s head was of fine gold.” “Thou art that head of gold.” Dr. Rule observes: “Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon are addressed as one; the “oppressor” and “the golden city” are identified (Isaiah 14:4). “The epithet “golden” is descriptive, for it is historically certain that Babylon was îַ ?ãְ ?äֵ ?áָ ?ä (madhhebahh), “an exactress of gold,” as it is rendered in the margin of our Bibles, beyond any other ruling city in the world.” It is noticeable that Achan’s wedge of gold is coupled with the Babylonish garment (Joshua 7:21).3. Terrible in its aspect. An object of terror notwithstanding its brilliancy. The form no further indicated than that it was that of a man. Dr. Rule observes that it would not be “sculptured in relief, but in the full round, and not connected with any other object. It was in form terrible and majestic, and we may also be almost certain that it was in a sitting posture, like the statues of Shalmanezer in the British Museum.” 4. Resplendent in its appearance. Its “brightness was excellent.” The metals composing it, for the most part, such as to dazzle the eyes of the beholder. So the tempter showed to the Saviour “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” This world and its kingdoms something dazzling to the carnal eye. Its contents “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Hence its witchery and its worship. 5. Symbolical in its character. This the king’s own conviction. Hence his desire for the interpretation of his dream. Dreams in ancient times often partaking, or believed to partake, of this character. Hence the class of wise men in Babylon whose business it was to interpret them [47], The dreams interpreted by Joseph in Egypt of this class, as well as his own in his father’s house. Not uncommon also to represent kingdoms and countries under the figure of a human being [48]. The great object to decipher the symbols. So in the Book of Revelations, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man” (Revelation 13:18). [47] Hengstenberg remarks that “the division of the wise men into distinct classes amounted merely to this, that by rule each should particularly excel in only some one department, as, according to chap. Daniel 1:17, Daniel excelled in interpreting dreams; and hence when anything belonging particularly to that department occurred, he was specially asked for or associated with the number destined for this branch.” It is distinctly mentioned, however, as God’s special gift to Daniel, that he “had understanding in all visions and dreams.” Daniel did not appear with those summoned by the king, the gift not having yet manifested itself in him, and indeed his three years’ course of study being barely completed. [48] “The human figure,” observes Adam Clark, “has been used both by historians and geographers to represent the rise, progress, establishment, and decay of empires, as well as the situation and importance of the different parts of the government.” Floras, in the Proœmium to his Roman History, represents the Romans under the form of a human being in its different stages from infancy to old age. The representation by the ancient poets of the four ages of the world, as those of golden, silver, brass, and iron, is well known.II. The Stone. Probably to Nebuchadnezzar the most remarkable object in his dream. To him the most alarming; to us the most comforting. That for which the whole dream was given. The stone that on which the happiness of the world and of the universe depends. Six features noticeable in the stone. It was— 1. Mysterious in its origin. “Cut out of a mountain” or rock “without hands.” No human power or instrument visible in its extraction. Its existence supernatural, and the result of an invisible superhuman agency. The very existence of Christianity a miracle. 2. Small in its beginning. Smites the image not on the head, nor on the body, but on the feet. From a small beginning it was to grow into a mountain. God’s great works generally small in their commencement. The grain of mustard-seed. 3. Humble in its appearance. A rough stone taken out of a quarry, mean and unattractive to look at. Striking contrast in its appearance with that of a dazzling image of gold, silver, brass, and iron. Things not to be judged according to outward appearance. 4. Wonderful in its growth. Stones not naturally things that grow. The peculiarity of this stone that it expanded in its dimensions till it became “a great mountain,” filling the whole earth. Progress and ultimate greatness its leading features. 5 Mighty in its effects. Small as at first it was, yet even then mighty enough to break, initially at least, the gigantic image in pieces. This amazing power of the stone doubtless the great disturbing element in the king’s dream. The stone given us to rest our hopes for eternity upon, powerful enough to grind the world to powder. 6. Lasting in its duration. No end is ascribed to the stone. That which it symbolised to “stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44). Contrasted with the image. That, notwithstanding its dazzling glory and apparent strength, is broken in pieces, carried away by the wind, and vanishes like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. This, notwithstanding its small beginning and humble appearance, not only outlives the image, but lasts for ever. III. The Action of the Stone upon the Image. The stone smote the image on its feet and “brake them to pieces” (Daniel 2:34). This probably to the king the most alarming part of his dream. Observe in it— 1. The part smitten. “Smote the image on its feet.” The blow to be given during the last of the empires symbolised by the image, and that in the period of its mixture and decay, the iron legs having been succeeded by feet of iron and clay. From the corresponding image of the four beasts, the stroke might appear to fall rather on the toes, into which the feet are divided (chap. Daniel 7:7-26). 2. The completeness of the destruction. The image was “broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them” (Daniel 2:35). The effect like that of the corner-stone on its rejecters, “It shall grind him to powder” (Matthew 21:44). The same effect indicated by the angel in the Revelation taking up a great stone like a millstone and casting it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all” (Revelation 18:21). So in the corresponding image of the four beasts, “The beast (the fourth one, corresponding with the legs and feet of the image) was slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame” (chap. Daniel 7:11). IV. The Growth of the Stone. “The stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). This perhaps the most conspicuous and wonderful part of the dream, with which it closes, leaving nothing to be seen by the king but the mysterious mountain-stone now filling all the earth. This the grand development of the dream, and that for which all the rest was intended. This glorious result the hope of the Church and the expectation of a groaning creation (Romans 8:21-22). The finishing of the mystery of providence and redemption. Observe— 1. The character of the growth. Growth either slow and gradual or sudden and rapid. Here not said which. Probably both. Slow and gradual for a time, and then towards the end sudden and rapid, when the stone assumes its mountain proportions. So in the vision of the beasts, it is after the destruction of the fourth beast that the Son of Man appears to be brought before the Ancient of Days, and to have given to Him “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him” (chap. Daniel 7:13-14). The growth into a mountain apparently following upon the destruction of the image, though commencing with the first smiting of it. So in the Revelation with reference to the same event, when the seventh angel sounded, announcing the third and last woe, great voices were heard in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). 2. The completeness of the growth. “It became a mountain and filled the whole earth.” No stop to its growth till then. The growth from its commencement not however necessarily uniform. Its earlier period slow, interrupted, and uneven. Often greatly hindered by the image itself. One among the ten toes, or the Little Horn in the head of the fourth beast, its great antagonist. This and the beast itself, or the great image having been destroyed, the growth of the stone rapid and onward till it fills the earth. The growth of the stone as complete as the destruction of the image. “The earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Habakkuk 2:14; Isaiah 40:5). . IX.—THE OF THE DREAM (Chap. Daniel 2:36-46) In the interpretation of the king’s dream we come to the prophecies of Daniel. Some of these prophecies were communications from God to Daniel alone, without any other medium; others, like the present, through Daniel as the interpreter of what was already given to another in the shape of a dream. “This vision,” says E. Irving, “was revealed, not to the prophet, but to the king, in order to mark its secular and subsidiary nature, but interpreted by the prophet to show that it was, if not immediately, yet indirectly, connected with the Church.” The prophecies of Daniel have a character peculiar to themselves, as marked by order and distinctness, and as having in them notes of time at which the events predicted should take place. These prophecies especially, like those of St. John, are, as Mr. Birks observes, continuous, beginning with some chief event near to the date when they were given. They are, therefore, said, like those of the Revelation, to be of the historical kind, as distinguished from the discursive, the character of the other prophetical books in general [49]. They constitute an important portion of that “sure word of prophecy, whereto we do well to take heed, as to a light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19). Very specially given, that “through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). A great part of the prophecies of Daniel have already been accomplished, and that with such remarkable exactness as to have given occasion to objectors to deny the genuineness of the book, as being, in their view, instead of prophecies, mere narrations of events already past. The past and present fulfilment of one large portion of them leaves no room for doubt as to the similar fulfilment of the rest. The prophecy before us we find repeated, with important additions, in a vision given to Daniel himself, and useful in assisting to understand the present one. That vision, given for the sake of the additions, is that of the four beasts, contained in chap. 7. In this and the other prophecies of Daniel, it is not the history of all nations that we find mapped out, but that of those only which have had to do with the people of God; that, namely, of the great universal empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, with the ten Gothic or German nations, into which the last of these came to be divided, comprehending what is called the prophetic earth, or the world as known by the ancients. [49] “The prophecies of Scripture are of two kinds; the one, Prophecy properly so called, or the showing forth of the purposes of God respecting the world and the Church; the other, Prophetic History, or the same purposes digested in a narrative of coming events, drawn up with reference to time and place.” The latter kind, of which are the Books of Daniel and the Revelation, “are nothing else than histories of the future, expressed for the most part in a natural or emblematic, not an artificial language, that it might be more expressive and universally intelligible. In the Book of Daniel this is done as it were by four main streams, all commencing from the period at which the prophet lived, and running down to the time of the end. In the first of these, are used the emblems of the four metals combined into an image, to denote a fourfold succession of empires, which should arise one out of the other; until at length a fifth, described by a stone cut out without hands, should destroy them all and fill the earth, and endure for evermore. In the second, under the emblem of four beasts, are described the same four empires, not with a view of repeating the former vision, but to connect this new vision with the same points of time, in order to give date and place to the description of a certain blasphemous power, which was to do strange things against the Most High in the time and territory of the last of the four great empires described in the former vision. The third of these four chief streams of prophetic history connecteth itself with the former at the struggle of the third kingdom with the second, in order that it may trace, within the territory of the third, the rise of another blasphemous power, which was also to prevail against the saints of God till the time of the end. Now the fourth (for we purposely omit the prophecy of the seventy weeks) is not symbolical, being the history of men, not of things, and also connects itself with the time of Daniel by the mention of certain kings immediately thereafter; which end of connection having been secured, it makes large leaps in order to reach the description of a third blasphemous and ungodly power, which was to arise in the form of an individual man, not of an institution, close to the time of the end.”—E. Irving.PART FIRST: THE IMAGE (Daniel 2:37-43). Daniel interprets the four parts of the image, distinguished by the different materials of which they were composed, as representing the four great successive monarchies of the world, commencing with that of Babylon, of which Nebuchadnezzar was the head, and thus subsisting in the prophet’s own time. These monarchies are styled indiscriminately “kingdoms” and “kings,” or ruling dynasties [50]. These are readily and almost universally understood to be the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome [51], all well known to have possessed, in a popular sense, the character of universality, and to have succeeded each other, the last of the four having also, according to the symbol, been divided in its later period into ten kingdoms. The first of these Daniel himself expressly declares to be that of which Nebuchadnezzar was the head (Daniel 2:38). According to Daniel’s interpretation of the writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace, the empire of Babylon was, at the death of that monarch, given to the Medes and Persians (chap. Daniel 5:26-31). The Persian, or, as it is sometimes called, the Medo-Persian, was thus the second of the four. In the subsequent vision of the ram and the lie-goat contending for the mastery, the latter, which gained the ascendancy, is said by Gabriel to be “the kings of Grecia,” and the former, which was cast down by the other to the ground, to be the “kings of Media and Persia” (chap. Daniel 8:3-21). The Greek empire was therefore the third. This, which was founded by Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, and therefore sometimes called the Macedonian empire, was, after being, at the death of its founder, divided among his four principal generals, Antigonus, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy, terminated by the Romans, who incorporated the whole into their gigantic empire, which therefore formed the fourth, and which, in its divided form, continues to this day [52]. The different materials composing the image and representing the four successive empires, descending from gold to iron and clay, have been viewed as not inaptly exhibiting humanity in its various stages, from its highest excellence to its lowest decay; and as not obscurely indicating a downward course, entirely opposed to the theory of human progress and perfectibility [53]. We now view the constituent parts of the image. [50] “After thee shall arise another kingdom” (Daniel 2:39). “The exposition of kings as ruling dynasties in the symbolic prophecies is confirmed alike by reason and Scripture usage.”—Birks. Gaussen remarks that in the image we may see a change of metal, indicating not properly a new empire, but a new people, a new language, a new dynasty, which rises up to rule over the world, and to hold under its sway the people of God; the time of the image being the “times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24), that is, the period during which the Gentiles are to rule over Jerusalem and to trample it underfoot, beginning with the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, and continuing under the Persians, until finally the Latins take the place of the Greeks in governing the world and oppressing the people of God. [51] Calvin says: “My assertion is perfectly correct, that interpreters of any judgment and candour all explain the passage of the Babylonian. Persian. Macedonian, and Roman monarchies.” “The rival interpretation which has prevailed the most is that of which Porphyry is the earliest known advocate, and which has been embraced since by Junius, Hayn, Lightfoot, Grotius, L’Empereur, Venema, and a few other writers down to our own day. Its main feature is to make the successors of Alexander, the fourth empire, distinct from that of Alexander himself, and thus to terminate the vision before the first Advent. This view has now scarcely an advocate. An opposite deviation from the general view has been adopted by a few writers in the last fifteen or twenty years. Their scheme, so far as it has any consistency, is the following. The empire of Persia is only the continuation of the first empire of Babylon; the second, of the Grecian; and the third is the Roman; the fourth is still future.”—Birks, written in 1845. Dr. Pusey says: “It is assumed in Rationalist interpretation that the fourth empire is no empire later than the Macedonian, to which Antiochus Epiphanes belonged. For else there would be prophecy: there is to be no allusion to the Roman empire; for in the time of Antiochus human foresight could not yet discern that it would become an empire of the world. But if the Grecian empire is to be the fourth, which are the other three?… Agreed as this school is as to the result, they have been nothing less than agreed as to the process whereby it is to be arrived at. Every possible combination has been tried.” All ancient authors speak of the kingdom of Alexander and his successors as one and the same kingdom. Josephus says: “Alexander being dead, the empire was divided among his successors.” “He doth not say,” observes Bishop Newton, “that so many new empires were erected. Even Grotius himself acknowledged that even now the Hebrews call those kingdoms by one name, the kingdom of the Grecians.” [52] “The Roman empire to be the fourth kingdom of Daniel, was believed by the Church of Israel both before and in our Saviour’s time; received by the disciples of the apostles and the whole Christian Church for the first four hundred years, without any known contradiction. And I confess, having so good ground in Scripture, it is with me tantum non articulus fidei, little less than an article of faith. Ephraim Syrus, in the fourth century, interpreted the fourth kingdom of the Greek, dividing that of the Medo-Persian into two, those of the Medes and of the Persians as the second and third,—the only exception to Mede’s assertion. Jerome, in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of it as what all ecclesiastical writers had “handed down,” that the ten kingdoms were to rise out of the division of the Roman empire. Cyril of Jerusalem, a century later, says “that this (the fourth kingdom) is that of the Romans has been the tradition of the Church’s interpreters.” Irenζus, in the second century, speaks of the division of the empire as a thing still future. HippoIytus, at the beginning of the third, says, “Who then are these but the Romans? which same is the iron, the kingdom which now standeth. For its legs, saith he, are of iron. After this, then, what remaineth, beloved, save the toes of the feet of the image, wherein part shall be of iron and part of clay, being mixed one with another?”—Newton. [53] “The world,” says Calvin, “grows worse as it grows older; for the Persians and Medes, who seized upon the whole East under the auspices of Cyrus, were worse than the Assyrians and Chaldeans. So profane poets invented fables about the four ages, a golden, silver, brazen, and iron one.” Dr. Coxe observes that the human figure has been often introduced by historians and poets to represent cities, peoples, the progress or decline of empires, or the relative importance of different parts of a government.1. The head, or the Babylonian Empire. This empire, from its riches, represented by gold. Babylon itself called the “golden city,” or, as the margin, the “exactress of gold” (Isaiah 14:4). The cruel oppressor of God’s ancient people (Psalms 137:8). The mother of idolatry (Jeremiah 51:7). Notorious for its practice of sorcery and divination. Doomed to destruction for its sins (Jeremiah 51:35; Psalms 137:8). Nebuchadnezzar exhibited in the history as an example of cruelty. Hence Babylon made a type of Rome, “drunk with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:5-6). The Babylonian empire, commencing with Nebuchadnezzar’s sole reign about 606–5 B.C., the year also of the commencement of Judah’s captivity, terminated with Belshazzar’s death, about sixty-eight years afterwards (chap. Daniel 5:30-31). The empire said to be universal (Daniel 2:37-38). The words, however, of prophetic Scripture not to be strained to their strictest and literal meaning. In point of fact, the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar never extended to Europe, nor perhaps into Africa beyond the boundaries of Egypt. Virtually, however, it was universal. Raised up by God in His providence for His own purpose. “God hath given thee a kingdom” (Daniel 2:37) [54]. Hence Nebuchadnezzar spoken of by God as His “servant” (Jeremiah 27:6). The purpose designed to be served by Him the chastisement of Israel and other nations, and the glory of Jehovah’s own name. The termination of that empire as truly of God as its establishment. “God hath remembered thy kingdom and finished it” (chap. Daniel 5:26). Babylon destroyed as foretold by Isaiah two centuries before the event (Isaiah 45:1-3). Greek historians relate that Cyrus took Babylon by first drawing off the waters of the Euphrates, and then entering the city from the bed of the river through the brazen gates which opened upon it, but which on the night of a great festival had been left unshut [55]. [54] “God hath given thee a kingdom” (Daniel 2:37). Dr. Rule observes that “this great king could not have forgotten that his father was only a satrap at first, a successful rebel, who perfidiously allied himself with his master’s enemies, and by that means overthrew Nineveh and set up as king at Babylon. By a suddenly acquired sovereignty over all the servant-kings, he became king of kings; and thus Nebuchadnezzar, as son of Nabopolassar, was the first Babylonian king of kings by inheritance.” Gaussen says: “Nebuchadnezzar was the successor of the kings of Assyria, the most ancient and the noblest of monarchies. Since Nebuchadnezzar’s father it had become the empire of Babylon; the Chaldeans formed but one kingdom with the Assyrians. The young King Nebuchadnezzar had met with the most extraordinary successes from the very commencement of his reign; everything had given way to him. He had been led from his victories and his brilliant achievements to regard himself as the creator of his own magnificent fortune, and to look upon himself as a kind of demigod.” [55] Herodotus relates that Cyrus, wearied with the length of the siege, devised the plan of diverting the course of the river; and that when this was done, those who had been assigned to that post entered by the bed of the river, which had ebbed to the height only of the thighs, and came upon the Babylonians unexpectedly while celebrating a feast with dancing and revelry; those living in the middle of the city not knowing when it was taken on account of its great extent.2. The breast and arms, or the Medo-Persian Empire. In the night in which Belshazzar was slain, “Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom” (chap. Daniel 5:30-31). The capture of Babylon, however, rather the work of the Persians. Media at first the stronger power, but under Cyrus, who took the city, became the inferior part of the combined monarchy. Both Medes and Persians, however, as indicated by the two horns of the ram in another vision, shared in the sovereign power till united under Cyrus, who was related to both, and from whom the empire has been generally called the Persian [56]. Represented by silver, as inferior to the first empire [57]. The conquests of Cyrus neither so extensive nor so numerous as those of Nebuchadnezzar. The grandeur of the latter and of his great metropolis never equalled by that of the Persian kings and their new capital, Susa or Shushan. The Persian monarchy more extensive in size, as indicated by the symbol, but inferior in imperial majesty. The two arms of the image symbolical of the two powers that first constituted the empire [58]. The monarchy, from its first establishment by Cyrus to the death of the last king, Darius Codomannus, lasted little more than two hundred years [59]. The two years assigned to Darius the Mede, generally supposed to be the same with Cyaxares, completed the seventy years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. It was under this second empire, on the accession of Cyrus, who succeeded his uncle Darius, that the Jews obtained permission to return to their own land, Judζa, however, still remaining tributary to the empire. Under the same empire lived Ezra and Nehemiah, Mordecai and Esther, as well as the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi; while under it Daniel himself spent the last years of his life. It was under the reign of Artaxerxes I., surnamed Longimanus, in the year B.C. 458, that the commission was given to Ezra to repair to Jerusalem and restore the Temple-worship, about eighty years after the edict of Cyrus. [56] Cyrus was the son of Cambyses, the brother of Darius, who was the son of Astyages and the uncle of Cyrus, and believed to be the second Cyaxares of the Greek historians. Cyrus at first fought under his uncle; and on the taking of Babylon he desired him to take the kingdom. On the death of his father and of his uncle, in the year 536 b.c., he became sovereign of the Medes and Persians. [57] “Inferior to thee.” Castalio renders the words, “worse than those.” The inferiority might have a probable reference also to the character of the monarchs, the Persian kings being, according to Prideaux, the worst race of men that ever governed an empire. Calvin says, “Cyrus was, it is true, a prudent prince, but yet sanguinary. Ambition and avarice carried him fiercely forwards, and he wandered in every direction like a wild beast, forgetful of all humanity.” [58] Josephus says that the two hands and shoulders of the image signify that the empire of the Babylonians should be dissolved by two kings. [59] According to the Canon of Ptolemy, the successors of Darius the Mede were: Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius (Hystaspis), Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius II., Artaxerxes II., Ochus, Arostes, Darius III.3. The belly and thighs, or the Grecian Empire. The Persians were, after many encounters, ultimately subdued by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, who thus established the Grecian, or, as it is from him sometimes called, the Macedonian empire. The symbolical metal of this, the third great monarchy, was brass, corresponding to the Homeric title, the “brazen-mailed Greeks” [60]. Brass also a frequent symbol of eloquence, for which the Greeks were distinguished. This third empire said, according to Scripture usage, to “bear rule over all the earth.” In the vision of the four beasts it is represented by a leopard with four wings and four heads, while “dominion” is said to be “given to it.” Alexander, after his extensive conquests, commanded that he should be called “king of all the world,” and is said to have wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. After colonising Asia with Grecian cities [61], he died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two, in consequence of a debauch [62]. The Greek or Macedonian empire was continued under his successors, who, however, were not the members of his own family, but his favourite generals. These, as already remarked, were four, being represented in the corresponding vision by the four heads of the leopard, and in another by the four “notable horns” of the he-goat (chap. Daniel 7:6; Daniel 8:8). In the fourfold division of the empire after the battle of Ipsus, the two principal portions, those of Syria and Egypt, fell to Seleucus and Ptolemy Lagus, hence called respectively the Seleucidζ and the Lagidζ, and probably represented by the two thighs of the image, it being with these alone that the Jewish Church and nation had to do [63]. The third empire was the period of the Jews’ greatest suffering, and at the same time their greatest national renown. It included the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the kings of Syria, and the heroic struggles of the Maccabees. [60] “Another third kingdom of brass.” Josephus explains the symbol by saying that another, coming from the west, completely covered with brass, should destroy the empire of the Medes and Persians. [61] “Which shall bear rule over all the earth.” Plutarch says that Alexander founded above seventy cities among the barbarous people, and sowed Asia with Greek troops. Dr. Pusey remarks that, apart from garrisons, towards seventy cities founded by him or by his generals at his command, have been traced in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Media, Hyrcania, Parthia, Bactria, Sogdiana, India on the Hydaspes, the Acesines, and the Indus, and in other countries; in modern terms, in the whole of Turkey in Asia, Egypt, all habitable Persia, north, east, and south beyond it, in Beloochistan, the Deccan, Cabool, Afghanistan, the Punjab; and yet northward in Khorassan and Khondooz, to Bokhara and Turkestan. In all this Alexander was imitated by his generals who succeeded him. [62] “Death,” says Gaussen, “in a moment silences that commanding voice which made the earth to tremble; and he for whom, the evening before, the world seemed too small, is enclosed in a tomb of porphyry, lately found in Egypt, and now in the British Museum.” [63] “Five years after Alexander’s death, his wife, his brothers, his sisters, and his children, had all perished; and his generals, plunged in blood, were now disputing for his vast empire. At length, after thirty years of war, they ‘divided it toward the four winds of heaven,’ into four kingdoms, two of which (the only ones that had to do with the people of God) soon became more powerful than the others. These were, north of Jerusalem, the Grecian kingdom of the Seleucidζ in Syria; and south of Jerusalem, the Grecian kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt. Seleucus and Ptolemy were two of Alexander’s generals; and their descendants, who in Daniel are called the kings of the North and the kings of the South, reigned until the arrival of the Romans, and ruled in turn over the people of God.”—Gaussen.4. The legs and feet, or the Roman Empire. The Greeks in their turn were subdued by the Romans, who established the fourth and last of the world’s universal monarchies [64]. The legs were of iron, while, in the feet, the iron was mingled with clay. The fourth empire represented as stronger than any of its predecessors, and as breaking them in pieces, “as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things” (Daniel 2:40). In the corresponding vision, it is represented by a beast without a name, “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly,” having great iron teeth, “devouring and breaking in pieces, and stamping the residue with its feet” (chap. Daniel 7:7). The Romans subdued and broke in pieces the empire of Alexander and his successors, as it did the whole known world. They made Syria a Roman province in the year 65 B.C., as they did Egypt thirty years later. “The arms of the republic,” says the infidel historian of the Roman empire, “sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.” The Roman empire fitly represented by iron as well from its immense strength as from the sternness, hardness, and valour of its people, and the vigour, perseverance, and oppressive consequences of its military achievements. It was an iron crown which was worn by its emperor, and an iron yoke to which it subjected the nations. The Romans pre-eminently “men of the sword.” With the god of war for their legendary parent, their national fierceness was represented by the she-wolf that nourished their founder. The iron feet, however, mixed with clay, aptly indicated that, in the later period of its existence, the empire should degenerate and be weakened by an admixture of foreign nations. The kingdom was to be “divided,—partly strong and partly broken” or brittle. The people were to “mingle themselves with the seed of men,” or with inferior races; but not so as to “cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Daniel 2:40-43). It is well known that the Roman empire, in its later period, was weakened by the irruptions of barbarous nations from the North, who gradually became mingled with the native inhabitants [65]. Their mingling themselves with “the seed of men” without cleaving to each other, is believed to point to the marriage alliances formed by the Romans with the barbarians, which were yet followed by no cordial union [66]; “reasons of state,” as Bishop Newton observes, being “stronger than the ties of blood, and interest generally availing more than affinity.” This fourth empire had the farther marked peculiarity that in its later period of weakness and decay, and in connection with this very admixture of foreign elements represented by the clay, it was to be divided into ten separate kingdoms, indicated by the ten toes of the image. The same remarkable circumstance symbolised, in Daniel’s corresponding vision, by the ten horns of the fourth beast, expressly said to be ten kings or kingdoms (Daniel 7:24). And it is a singular confirmation of the correctness of the application, that the number of inferior kingdoms formed out of the weakened and dismembered Roman empire, in consequence of the irruptions from the North, has been generally regarded as, with more or less exactness, ten [67]. The number of these Gothic or German kingdoms appears to have been exactly ten at the earliest period of their formation, but to have afterwards varied, in consequence of the frequent though temporary alliances predicted in the prophecy; the number, however, never departing far from the original ten. The tenfold character of the kingdoms, it has been observed, “dominant through the whole period of their existence, probably to appear at the beginning and close of their history, though not always strictly maintained throughout” [68]. The two legs of the image may be regarded as foreshadowing the division of the empire into that of the East and West, previous to the formation of the ten kingdoms. To the fourth or Roman empire also were the Jews made subject. It was soon after the battle of Pydna that they first came in contact with that power which, in the providence of God, was to be the instrument of a sorer chastisement and a longer captivity than that by Nebuchadnezzar. Their subjugation itself the consequence of trust in an arm of flesh. Leaning on Rome as they had done on Egypt, they were pierced by the broken reed. The league with Rome, sued for and obtained by Judas and Jason, the Maccabean leaders, against their Grecian masters, proved the step to their subjection to the new world-power. It was after Judaea had become a province of the Roman empire that the Redeemer of the world was born. The predicted manner of His vicarious death and crucifixion the consequence of that subjugation, exhibiting, as it did, Christ “made a curse for us” (Matthew 27:26; Galatians 3:13). It was the representative of this empire in Judaea that wrote the title over the cross, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS (Matthew 27:37). That same “King of the Jews” to be the Founder of a divine monarchy that shall “fill the whole earth.” [64] “His legs of iron” (Daniel 2:33). “The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron” (Daniel 2:40). Josephus says that the two legs might denote the two Roman consuls. “After the battle of Pydna, the Roman conqueror divided Macedon into four parts, and soon after reduced it into the form of a province; and not long after the fall of Macedon, Carthage was finally destroyed.”—Birks. Gaussen observes that we may date the destruction of the thighs of brass and the commencement of the legs of iron from the year 65 b.c., when Pompey overthrew the kingdom of Syria, and so broke the first thigh; or from the year 30 b.c., when Augustus Cζsar destroyed the second thigh, the Grecian kingdom of Ptolemy in Egypt, and became the first emperor of Rome, with his authority fully established in Jerusalem. [65] “His feet part of iron and part of clay” (Daniel 2:33). “The kingdom shall be divided, partly strong and partly broken (marg. brittle)” (Daniel 2:41-42). Jerome, who lived to see the incursions of the Northern barbarians, says in his Commentary: “The fourth kingdom, which plainly belongs to the Romans, is the iron which ‘breaketh and subdueth all things;’ but ‘his feet and toes are part of iron and part of clay,’ which is most manifestly proved at this time. For as in the beginning nothing was stronger and harder than the Roman empire, so in the end of things nothing is weaker; since both in civil wars and against divers nations we need the assistance of other barbarous nations.” “From the reign of Valens,” says Gibbon, “may justly be dated the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman empire. Especially from that time began the infusion of the foreign element, tending to weaken the strength and cohesion of the empire; the mixture being partly in barbarian levies, foreign mercenaries, and conquests made by the Northern invaders. In 412, the Visigoths had Aquitaine given them by the Emperor to retire to. The Burgundians had a region on the Rhine, which they had invaded, granted them for an inheritance. Pharamond, the prince of the Salian Franks in Germany, had seats granted to his people in the empire near the same river.” “And now,” says Sir Isaac Newton, “the barbarians were all quieted and settled in several kingdoms within the empire, not only by conquest, but by the grants of the Emperor Honorius.”—Quoted by Birks. “About four hundred years after Christ,” says M. Gaussen, “almost at the same moment, ten Gothic nations, speaking the same language (a kind of German), warlike and cruel, and countless as the sand, were seen pouring from the remote regions of the North towards the frontiers of the fourth kingdom: they crossed the Danube and the Rhine, seized upon the Roman empire, and established themselves in its capital, a.d. 476. But soon they too adopted the customs, the religion, the worship, the very language of the Romans; so that they continued the fourth empire under another form. Their Church was called the Latin Church, their religion the Romish religion, their empire the Latin empire, their sacred language the Latin language, and their history for ages the history of the Latin Church and empire.” [66] “Shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another” (Daniel 2:43). Dr. Keith observes: “The sovereigns of the different kingdoms into which the Roman empire was divided after being broken down have been perpetually contracting matrimonial alliances with each other; but notwithstanding this seeming bond of union, they have not united or adhered together.” Mr. Birks, in his book on the “First Two Visions of Daniel,” adduces a great number of instances in which this was the case. M. Gaussen, however, regards the mixture of the iron and the clay as rather pointing to the union between the Church and the State, occasioned by the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire, as well as that of the ten Gothic kingdoms. He remarks that at the time of the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, a great change was introduced into the government and internal constitution of the empire. Constantine exempted the ministers of the Christian religion from the payment of taxes, loaded them with riches and honours, and gave them palaces in the principal cities of his states. He established among them an ecclesiastical government, recognised in the empire and sanctioned by the laws, with its superior and inferior heads. After Constantine, almost all the emperors continued or added to his work. The clergy became a power that soon equalled that of the prince. The pastors of the cities governed those of the country. The priests of the large towns aspired to rule over those of the smaller ones. After some time they even aimed at being independent of the princes who had recognised them; and subsequently pushing their haughty pretensions still further, they set themselves above kings, and claimed the right of creating or deposing them at pleasure. The Bishop of Rome proclaimed himself the bishop of bishops, took the title of Pontifex Maximus, a title completely pagan, and which the Roman emperors had hitherto borne for the celebration of idolatrous rites. The mixture was to be an internal, not an external division like that of the toes, but taking place in the very essence of the constitution, and existing both in the feet and in the toes, exactly as we see in all the states of the Western empire—Italy, Austria, France, Spain, &c.; this change taking place eighty years after the arrival of the Gothic nations. Dr. Rule also suggests whether the weakening mixture spoken of as the “seed of men,” or, according to the Vulgate and Jerome, the “seed of man,” was not the uniting of a degenerate Christianity, a Christianity in name rather than in substance,—a system human in origin, in spirit, and in administration,—with all the governments of Europe until three or four centuries ago, and still with some of them, though continually in conflict with one or another. According to Keil, the figure is derived from the sowing of a field with mixed seed, and denotes all the means employed by the rulers to combine the different nationalities, among which marriage is only spoken of as the most important. Dr. Cox remarks that the Roman and Northern nations were so dissimilar in their habits and character that they never could form one uniform people. Hoffmann, quoted by Pusey, says in reference to the marriage alliances: “This was characteristic from the relation of the immigrating nations to Rome; they did not found a new kingdom, but continued the Roman. And so it continues until the end of all earthly power, until its final ramification into ten kingdoms.” [67] “The toes and the feet were part of iron and part of clay.” Machiavelli, a Roman historian, specifies by name the ten Gothic kingdoms into which, like the ten toes of the feet, the Roman empire was divided: the Herulo-Thuringi, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards, the Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Sueves and Alans, the Vandals, the Huns, and the Saxons. Jerome, speaking of his own day, in the beginning of the fifth century, says: “Innumerable and most savage nations have taken possession of the whole of Gaul. The Quadians, the Vandals, the Sarmatians, the Alani, the Gepidζ, the Heruli, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and the Pannonians, have ravaged the whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, the ocean, and the Rhine;” thus, as Archdeacon Harrison remarks, enumerating exactly ten nations. “The most usual list, however,” observes Mr. Birks in 1845, “of living commentators, is that which omits the Huns and introduces the Alans as a distinct power.” Gaussen omits both Huns and Saxons; the former, as not settling in the Roman empire, though they devastated it under Alaric, and were neither of the same language nor of the same race as the other kingdoms; the latter, because England did not form a part of the prophetic earth; neither that country, nor Holland, nor Lower Germany having made a part of the Roman State at the accession of Augustus Cζsar. Keil, Dr. Todd, and some others, think that the ten kingdoms belong to the future. On the other hand, Professor Lee thinks that the feet must necessarily symbolise heathen Rome in its last times, and that the kings represented by the toes may be supposed, in a mystical sense, as the digit ten, a round number, and signifying a whole series. [68] “Asia had been for ages the seat of power, the mightiest and most populous region of the globe. Europe was buried in darkness, and its western tribes were like outcasts from the family of nations. Greece itself had scarce risen into notice, and presented only a confused multitude of feeble and jarring tribes. That an empire was thus born among the barbarians of Latium which would extend its power over Judζa, Syria, and Babylon itself, was an event which no human wisdom could possibly divine. That this empire, like iron, should be endued with a political firmness beyond the mightiest monarchies of the East, was a prediction no less surprising, and would nowhere seem less credible than amidst the proud courtiers of Babylon. Two centuries later, in his various accounts of every region of the earth and of innumerable towns and rivers, Herodotus never once mentions the Tiber or the city of Rome. Yet here, amidst the splendour of Babylon, the prophet announces the rise and dominion of this fourth and greater empire.”—Birks. Speaking of the same unlikelihood in regard to Rome, Dr. Pusey remarks that we have two Jewish documents, the one probably a little after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the other not later than the death of John Hyrcanus, b.c. 105, which show two very different aspects of the Jewish mind towards the Roman commonwealth, the one in Alexandria, the other in Palestine; yet in neither is there the slightest apprehension of Roman greatness. The third Sibylline book is now generally held to be the work of a Jew in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. It threatens unhesitatingly that all the evils which had been done by the Romans to Asia should be requited with usury upon them. The first Book of Maccabees, on the other hand, relates the simple unsuspecting trust which Judas Maccabζus had in the Romans, as if they were wholly unambitious, and conquering only when assailed. “The secret springs of Roman greatness,” observes Mr. Birks, “had all been marked and defined in God’s everlasting counsels. While the empires of the East were sinking into unsuspected decay, this mighty power was nursing into strength amidst the gloomy shades of the West, which was soon to eclipse their greatness by a wider extent of dominion and a more enduring sway.… The foundations of the republic were laid in weakness, while Darius and Xerxes marshalled all Asia under their haughty banners, and precipitated their countless hosts on the States of Greece. While Miltiades, Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles broke the strength of Persia, and with a band of poets and sages carried the glory of Athens to its height, Rome was convulsed with the factions of the senate and people, gasping under the tyranny of the Decemvirs, struggling for existence with the Ζqui, Volsci, and Veientians, and scarcely heard of beyond their narrow sphere of barbarian hostility.”From this part of the interpretation of the dream we may notice— 1. The foreknowledge and omniscience of God. Here is a prophetic outline of the history of the civilised world for upwards of a thousand years; the four great world-monarchies, commencing with Nebuchadnezzar who had recently ascended the throne; their respective characters; the decay of the fourth from foreign mixture, with its division into ten separate kingdoms. History shows the prophecy to have been fulfilled as truly since the death of Antiochus Epiphanes as before it. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” It is natural that He who created the world should have had a plan, not only for its creation but its future history. All history but the fulfilment of that plan. Why should He not be able to communicate to His servants portions of that plan for His own glory and the comfort and guidance of His people? “The great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter” (Daniel 2:45). These future events, with all their connections, however unlikely to human foresight to occur [69], all open from the beginning to His omniscient eye, as simply His “works” of providence. [69] M. Gaussen calls attention to the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, while pursuing the study of the prophecies, saw, in counting back the years with the greatest exactness, that the epochs fixed by Daniel for the several events, proved perfectly correct. He saw also that the heathen astronomer Ptolemy, who lived 140 years after Christ, had, in order to mark the years of his eclipses, divided the ages of antiquity exactly in the same manner as the prophet had done 745 years before him; seeing the four great monarchies in the past, as Daniel had seen them in the distant future. He saw also that Ptolemy considered these four monarchies as a succession of reigns, as Daniel views them under the figure of a single statue, and as forming, in a manner, only one kingdom. So that the Babylonian was the commencement of the Roman, while the Roman was merely Babylon in its development and its plenitude. The same author observes that Le Sage or Las Casas, the friend and companion of Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena, drew out a chart of the history of the world, in which, unconsciously, he exactly followed Daniel—dividing the history into four parts, and employing four colours to designate the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome; dividing, further, the Greek or Macedonian empire into four kingdoms, noticing two of these as much more powerful than the others, viz., the Syrian and the Egyptian; and lastly, dividing the Roman empire in reference to the Northern invasions, as is usually done, including both Huns and Anglo-Saxons.2. The overruling providence of God. History the execution by divine power of a plan which divine wisdom devised. Such execution is providence. Daniel, in his thanksgiving, extolled Jehovah as the God of “wisdom and might,” who “changeth the times, and who removeth kings and setteth up kings.” He accordingly reminds Nebuchadnezzar that it was He who gave the nations into his hand. He did the same thing with his successors. Plutarch wrote a book about the Fortune of Alexander; but that fortune was only the providence of God regarding that monarch, employing him as His free and responsible instrument, as He had done Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar before him. “The Lord of hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle,” and giveth the victory to whomsoever He will. The providence of God, rather than the boatman, that which carried Cζsar and all his fortunes. That same providence carries the humblest believer and all that concerns him. 3. The evidence of the truth of revelation. Prophecy no mere guess or clever calculation, whether sage or scientific. As a simple declaration of future events, impenetrable to human foresight, it necessarily partakes of the nature of miracle. Its fulfilment, therefore, the credential of a divine message. Supernatural predictions must either be from above or from beneath. With holiness as their character and their object, they cannot be the latter. Necessarily therefore from above, and as such the testimonial of a messenger sent from God. Appealed to as such by Jesus Himself. “These things have I spoken unto you before they come to pass, that when they are come to pass ye may believe that I am He.” The character of the Book of Daniel as inspired Scripture, only attempted to be set aside by the assertion that its prophecies were merely narratives of the past. But these prophecies extended not only up to the times of the Maccabees, but far beyond them, and are receiving their fulfilment at the present day. The simple prediction of four, and only four, universal monarchies, is such, and in itself the evidence of a divinely inspired author. 4. The transient nature of human greatness and glory. These reached their height in the empires of Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome. Yet the three first and much of the fourth have passed away, leaving only vestiges behind, sufficient to testify their existence. The earth-mounds of Babylon, the petty town of Athens with its fragment-strewn Acropolis, and the wretched remains of the palace of the Cζsars, all echo the cry of the prophet in our ears, “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass” (Isaiah 40:6-7). The contrast that follows is striking: “but the Word of our God shall stand for ever.” History and science, observation and experience, constantly verify the declaration. Happy those who, relying on the truths and promises of that Word, secure to themselves, in the possession of that Saviour whom it reveals, a greatness and a glory that shall not pass away. . X.—THE OF THE DREAM—ContinuedPART SECOND: THE STONE (Daniel 2:44-45) The stone no less remarkable than the image. The most glorious part of the vision, and to Christians the most interesting. May be considered under three heads: the Stone itself, its Action on the Image, and its Growth and ultimate Greatness. I. The Stone itself. While totally unlike all the parts of the image betokening empire, the stone itself was to become a kingdom, or rather the kingdom that was to take the place of all the rest. To be viewed as symbolising both Christ and His kingdom [70]. The two in a sense identified. Nebuchadnezzar thus viewed as one with his empire: “Thou art this head of gold.” The kingdom is Christ reigning by His power and grace. Yet Christ and the kingdom to be viewed separately. The kingdom said to be something given to Him (chap. Daniel 7:14). [70] “A stone cut out without hands,” “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom” (Daniel 2:34; Daniel 2:44). “The Fathers generally apply the prophecy to Christ Himself, who was miraculously born of a virgin without the concurrence of human means. But it should rather be understood of the kingdom of Christ, which was formed out of the Roman empire; not by number of hands or strength of armies, but without means and the virtue of second causes: first set up while the Roman empire was in its full strength, with legs of iron.”—Bishop Newton. Mr. Birks regards the stone as being also the Church. “Our Lord Himself, by His miraculous conception and His resurrection from the grave, was ‘cut out without hands,’ with a direct and wonderful triumph of divine power. His people, in like manner, are ‘born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever.’ In the day of the resurrection their separation will be complete; and being then united to their Lord, they will form one mystical body, and will along with Him execute the predicted judgments.” Dr. A. Clarke remarks: “This stone refers chiefly to the Church, which is represented as a foundation-stone;” and adds: “As the stone represents Christ and His governing influence, it is here said to be a ‘kingdom,’ i.e., a state of prevailing rule and government.” Mede distinguishes between the “kingdom of the stone” and the “kingdom of the mountain;” the first, when it was cut out without hands; the second, when it became itself a mountain. The Jews acknowledge the stone to be the Messiah. “The ninth king is King Messiah, who reigns from the one end of the world to the other; as it is said, ‘And the stone became a great mountain.’ ”—Pirke R. Eliezer. Willet regards the prophecy as referring, in the first instance, to Christ’s first advent, but, by way of analogy, to His second coming, when He shall make a perfect conquest of all earthly kingdoms and powers. Calvin applies the prophecy both to Christ and His kingdom arriving at the close of the fourth monarchy; the stone indicating the humble and abject beginning of Christ, yet divinely sent, and His kingdom separated from all earthly ones, being divine and heavenly. Gaussen understands it of some “feeble and insignificant portion of the Christian Church,” which shall become the occasion of the overthrow of the image, and of the enemy of the Redeemer’s kingdom, without the will of men being directly employed in it, or having any ground of glorying therein, all being obliged to acknowledge in it the finger of God and the power of His grace alone.1. Christ Himself. The “stone of Israel” one of the Old Testament names of the Messiah. The stone laid for a foundation for sinners to build their hopes upon (Isaiah 28:16). The corner-stone of the spiritual temple (Psalms 118:22; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 2:7). A crushing stone of stumbling to those who reject Him, but a sure and precious foundation to all who accept and trust in Him (Matthew 21:42; Matthew 21:44). Like the stone “cut out of the mountains without hands” (Daniel 2:45), Christ’s birth supernatural. Born of a virgin and conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost. Humble in circumstances and mean in outward appearance. A “root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness” (Isaiah 53:2). His resurrection, or official birth as the Messiah, equally of God (Psalms 2:7; Acts 13:33). As a stone, he, as God’s appointed King of Zion, breaks opposing nations as a potter’s vessel (Psalms 2:9). In the corresponding vision of the Four Beasts, he who takes the kingdom is “one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven” (chap. Daniel 7:13). Applied by Jesus to Himself at the judgment seat of Caiaphas (Matthew 26:64). Christ, however, to be viewed as including His people. Christ and believers one (John 15:5; Ephesians 5:30). The head and the members one Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12; Revelation 11:15). Like the head, the members made such by a supernatural and divine birth (John 1:12-13). Believers associated with Christ in His government and judgment of the world (1 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 5:10; Revelation 20:6; Revelation 22:5; Revelation 19:14; Revelation 15). Employed as His instruments both of mercy and judgment (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Psalms 149:6-9; Jeremiah 51:20-24). 2. The kingdom of Christ. Under this aspect the stone ultimately expanded into “a great mountain, filling the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). This kingdom identified with the visible Church of the New Testament. Called the kingdom of “heaven,” from its origin and character; the kingdom of “God,” from its Author and end; and the kingdom of “Christ,” from its Ruler and King. Announced by John the Baptist and by Christ Himself as then nigh at hand (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17) [71]. The subject of much of Christ’s teaching both before and after His resurrection (Matthew 4:23; Acts 1:3). Preached by the apostles as in a sense already come (Acts 28:31; 1 Corinthians 4:21; Revelation 1:9). The kingdom, however, then as still, hidden or in mystery (Colossians 3:3-4; 1 John 3:2; 1 Peter 1:13; Romans 8:18-25). The kingdom connected with the “patience” or “patient waiting for” of Christ (Revelation 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:5). Now the kingdom of grace, hereafter the kingdom of glory; now the kingdom of the cross, hereafter the kingdom of the crown. The “kingdom” of Christ, in its manifestation, connected with His second “appearing” (2 Timothy 4:1). A kingdom, though heavenly in its nature, yet, like the preceding ones, to be set up on earth, and to be everlasting, having no successor (Daniel 2:44). Was to be set up in “the days of those kings” or kingdoms, namely, in the fourth or last of them (Daniel 2:44). Jesus born under Augustus, the first Roman emperor; and the foundation of the kingdom laid on the day of Pentecost under Tiberius, his successor. [71] “The ‘kingdom of God’ is a phrase which is constantly employed in Scripture to denote that state of things which is placed under the avowed administration of the Messiah, and which consequently could not precede His personal appearance. But during His residence on earth, until His resurrection, this kingdom is uniformly represented as future, though near at hand.”—Robert Hall.II. The Action of the Stone upon the Image. It “smote the image upon his feet, and brake them in pieces” (Daniel 2:34). “It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms” (Daniel 2:44). “Upon his feet;” therefore in the time of the fourth or Roman empire, and in the latter part of that empire, when it had already degenerated, and the iron had already or was soon to become mixed with clay, though prior to its tenfold division. It was in the reign of the first empire, when Rome, having reached its highest pitch of glory, began to enter on its gradual decline, that Jesus was born, the stone “cut out of the mountain;” and it was in that of His immediate successors that the smiting commenced [72]. Morally and secretly, that smiting might be said to commence when the idolatry and polytheism of the Roman empire was undermined by the preaching of Christ’s gospel and the new religion which it introduced into the world [73]. In the days of Nero, the fifth Roman emperor, the Apostle of the Gentiles could write, “Thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ.” “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5). The Roman empire may be said to have been shaken by the gospel in the first three centuries, and the great image smitten by it to its future destruction. “These that have turned the world upside down.” That destruction, however, was still distant. The judicial smiting of the stone was not to take place till long after. “This gospel of the kingdom must first be preached among all nations for a witness, and then shall the end come.” This judicial destruction prominent in the vision. In the corresponding vision of the prophet himself, after judgment is given upon the “little horn” of the fourth beast, that beast is slain, and its “body destroyed and given to the burning flame” (chap. Daniel 7:11). The judicial smiting probably in various stages, according to the three forms which that fourth beast or Roman empire should assume as Pagan, Papal, and Infidel [74]; the final stage being symbolically exhibited in the Apocalypse by the great battle of Armageddon, in connection with the pouring out of the seventh and last “vial of the wrath of God” (Revelation 16:13-16; Revelation 19:11-21) [75]. [72] “In the days of these kings.” Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in whose reign Jesus Christ was born, had completed the thirty-fourth year of his age when he returned to Rome after the overthrow of Antony. “From that period to the end of a lengthened life he remained in the possession of the greatest power, and at the head of the most extensive territory that had yet fallen to the lot of man.” Its now incipient weakness and decay may be marked in the following farther quotations from Roman history:—“The military operations in which Augustus himself took part were not important. The Arabian campaign was disastrous. The war of the Danube and the Rhine, from a struggle in defence of the frontier, became an aggressive movement against the tribes beyond those rivers, but no permanent impression was made upon them. While Tiberius effected the reduction of Pannonia, the district between the Danube and the great tributaries the Drave and the Save, establishing a line of forts along the river to guard against the future incursions of the Northmen, Drusus conducted an extensive plan of aggression against the Germanic nations in general. He led his troops to the Weser; but the difficulties of the country, want of provisions, and more than all, the firm opposition of the natives, compelled him to return to the Rhine, leaving two forts with garrisons on the east bank as a show of conquest. Tiberius took the command on the Rhine upon the death of his brother (Drusus), and constituted the country from thence to the Weser a Roman province, in a.d. 5; but was eventually succeeded by Publius Quintilius Varus, who lost all the advantages gained, in the autumn of a.d. 9. The army, consisting of above 24,000 men, after an attack of three days, was cut to pieces. The general fell upon his sword, and all the forts and posts on the right bank of the Rhine were taken. Rome was filled with consternation at the news of this defeat. Augustus, then an old man, was cowed by the stroke, and for a time could only exclaim, ‘Varus, Varus, give me back my legions.’ Tiberius was forwarded with reinforcements, but did not deem it advisable to re-occupy the country beyond the Rhine, which reverted to the Germans.” Tiberius, the successor of Augustus, “was favourably known for military capacity; but the dark features of his character were gradually developed by the possession of power, which allowed him to riot in sensual indulgences without restraint or disguise. Two formidable insurrections of the troops greeted his accession. Three legions, stationed on the frontier towards the Danube, revolted. The insubordination of the grand Roman army stationed on the Rhine presented more serious difficulties. The soldiers demanded to have their time of military service shortened. The reign of Tiberius, extending over an interval of twenty-three years, is barren of political events of importance in a general history, excepting the brief career of Germanicus beyond the Rhine. But just when Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe was on the verge of subjection, Germanicus was recalled by the Emperor, who was jealous of his fame, and the country reverted to the native tribes.” The reign of Caligula, who succeeded Tiberius, and whom despotic power so bereft of his senses that he raised his horse to the consulship, and built him a marble stable and an ivory manger, may be passed without notice. Claudius, his successor, now upwards of fifty years of age, was naturally an imbecile. “His society had been chiefly that of women and slaves. Female influence of the worst possible description predominated through his reign. One of the few extensions of territory under the emperors was made in the reign of Claudius, a departure from the policy exemplified by Augustus and bequeathed as a legacy to his successors,—that of restricting the empire to the limits provided by Nature. South Britain was now constituted a Roman province, but the Silures (in Wales) kept the field with unbroken spirit.” It was during the reign of Claudius, who died in a.d. 54, that Christianity was extensively planted in Lesser Asia and in Greece by the labours of Paul, as related in the Acts of the Apostles; eventually abolishing the polytheism of the civilised world, and thus tending to break the great image in pieces. [73] “Smote the image upon his feet.” The smiting, says Mr. Birks, is “referred by some early writers to the triumphs of the gospel after the first Advent. But Theodoret and others, with more justice, have referred it to His second coming. They saw that the stone was to smite the image on the toes of iron and clay, and that the event must therefore follow the division of the Roman empire. This opinion has, from the same reason, been received by the best expositors in modern times.” But the stone is not said to smite the image on its toes, but on its feet, and therefore, it may be supposed, before the division of the empire. Dr. Coxe remarks: “That the prediction of the stone does not refer exclusively to the uttermost periods of the world, appears evident from the distinctiveness of the intimation that it will strike the image upon its feet, not upon the toes: the latter are mentioned after the former, as, according to the general construction of the statue, subsequent in time. Consequently the empire of Rome was to be smitten when in its strength, or before the division into several kingdoms. This interpretation is verified by the fact that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, and the apostolic labours extended to the period of the commencing decline of Roman power.” “The fallen empire of Rome was forcibly struck when the Apostles fulfilled their Lord’s commission in going forth to preach the gospel to every creature, and fell to pieces when Constantine, in a.d. 331, issued an edict commanding the destruction of all heathen temples.” “We may hear,” says Gibbon, “without suspicion or scandal, that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.” “Christianity,” he says again, “erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or the limits of the Roman empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning, as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world unknown to the ancients.” Keil observes: “The stone which breaks the image becomes, from the first time after it has struck the image, ‘a great mountain which fills the whole earth’(Daniel 2:35); and the kingdom of God is erected by the God of heaven, according to Daniel 2:44, not for the first time after the destruction of all the world-kingdoms, but in the days of the fourth world-monarchy, and thus during its continuance.” “Daniel indicates its beginning in a simple form, although he does not at large represent its gradual development in the war against the world-power.… The last judgment forms only the final completion of the judgment commencing at the first coming of Christ to the earth, which continues from that time onward through the centuries of the spread of the kingdom of heaven upon earth in the form of the Christian Church, till the visible return of Christ in His glory in the clouds of heaven to the final judgment of the living and the dead.” Auberlen, however, thinks that “the chief point which it is necessary to recognise distinctly and express simply is, that the commencement of the kingdom, spoken of in the second and seventh chapters of Daniel, is nothing else but the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” With this he connects “the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel.” Calvin says the sense here is proper and literal. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/phc/ . XI.—DANIEL’S (Chap. Daniel 2:46-49) The king was convinced that Daniel had given a true description and interpretation of his dream. The truth also which the youthful prophet declared concerning the true God, approved itself to his understanding and conscience, and for a time at least was powerfully felt. Under the power of his convictions he confesses himself a believer in Daniel’s God (Daniel 2:47) [79]. This all the more remarkable as the interpretation of his dream seemed opposed to all his worldly projects and ambitious aims. Daniel’s faithfulness in confessing God and His truth before the king is rewarded by his hearing the same confession from the king himself. The result as important to Daniel’s future position and influence, as it was to the interest of God’s truth, honour, and kingdom in Babylon and in the world. The more immediate results were— [79] “Your God is a God of gods” (Daniel 2:47). “God must, by great revelations, lay open His omnipotence and omniscience, and show He is infinitely exalted above the gods and wise men of this world, and above all the world-powers. The wise men of the Chaldean world-power, that is, the so-called magi, maintained that they were the possessors of great wisdom, and such they were indeed celebrated to be, and that they obtained their wisdom from their gods. The Lord must, through great revelations of His omniscience, show that He alone, of all the possessors of knowledge, is the Omniscient, while their knowledge and the knowledge of their gods is nothing. He must lay open to the world-power the whole future, that He may show to it that He knows it all, even to the very minutest events, that all lies like a map before His eyes, and that to Him it is history. For He who fully knows the whole future must also be the same who forms the whole development of the world. Omnipotence cannot be separated from omniscience.”—Caspari, quoted by Keil.I. Daniel received the highest honour (Daniel 2:46). The prostration of the king and oblation presented to Daniel according to Oriental custom. Uncertain whether civil or religious obeisance intended—probably only the former; indicates, however, the proneness of fallen man to idolatry. Nebuchadnezzar ready to worship Daniel as a god, probably from seeing so much of God in him [80]. So the Lycaonians and Melitians in regard to Paul (Acts 14:11; Acts 14:15; Acts 28:6). Nothing said as to what Daniel did on the occasion. Perhaps he did what Peter did in regard to Cornelius in similar circumstances—“Stand up, for I also am a man” (Acts 10:25-26); or what the angel did in regard to John when offering similar obeisance—“See thou do it not; for I am of thy brethren the prophets: worship God” (Revelation 22:8-9). Those who cordially accept God’s message not slow to honour the messenger. Daniel had honoured God by his faithful testimony before the king; God now honours Daniel by the king’s grateful tribute to himself: “Them that honour me I will honour.” [80] “Fell upon his face and worshipped Daniel” (Daniel 2:46). Dr. Rule thinks that the king believed some god or genius to be present with the interpreter of his dream; and in its honour, or in honour of the God of heaven Himself, without intending to worship His servant, he might have caused the “sweet odours” to be poured out before him.II. Daniel elevated to a lofty position in the State (Daniel 2:48). Made governor of the province of Babylon, and president of the Magian College [81]. The king made Daniel “a great man;” but not so great as God had already made him, both by His grace and gifts. This official elevation of Daniel a wonderful movement in providence on behalf of the Jewish exiles. In accordance with God’s gracious promise regarding them: “I will be to them as a little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come” (Ezekiel 11:16). An important step to their ultimate deliverance. An enlargement also of Daniel’s sphere of usefulness. Found faithful in that which is least, he is now to be entrusted with much. “To him that hath, more shall be given.” His position as president of the “wise men” a precious opportunity for communicating to them a purer doctrine than their own. The light thus graciously made to shine in the darkness, whether or not the darkness comprehended it. Daniel’s place in the king’s gate [82], perhaps as one of his councillors, such as to give him ready access to the king’s person and influence in the king’s councils. Like Joseph, taken as a slave from prison to the right hand of Pharaoh as ruler of Egypt, Daniel is on a similar account taken as a captive exile, and placed next to Nebuchadnezzar over the province of Babylon. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” The elevation of Daniel as well as Joseph the foreshadowing of a still more important one (Philippians 2:7-10). [81] “Chief of the governors over all the wise men” (Daniel 2:49). “Wise men” (ηַ ?λִּ ?ιξִ ?ιο, khakkimin), here the general name of the members of the Babylonian or Chaldean priest-caste. So in Isaiah 44:25; Jeremiah 50:35. The presidents of the particular classes called here ρִ ?βְ ?πִ ?ιο (signin), and the grand president of the entire establishment, ψַ ?αρִ ?βְ ?πִ ?ιο (rab signin). So Daniel is called here. He appears as at the same time invested with important secular power. So Diodorus Siculus speaks of Belesys, who wrested Babylon from the Assyrians, as at once chief president of the priest-caste and governor of Babylon. And according to Jeremiah 39:3; Jeremiah 39:13, the same chief president, called there ψַ ?αξָ ?β (rab mag), or chief magus, belonged to the magnates of the kingdom, and was a member of the Council of State, and as such even took the field.—Hengstenberg. According to Kiel, ρִ ?βְ ?πִ ?ιο (signin) is the pural of an Aryan word incorporated into the Hebrew, and denoting “vicegerent “or “prefect.” Hengstenberg remarks that the writer’s exact acquaintance with the Babylonian customs and institutions, as shown in this and other instances, affords no small confirmation of the genuineness of the book. A Jew living in the time of the Maccabees not likely to possess such knowledge. [82] “Daniel sat in the gate of the king” (Daniel 2:49). Gates and gateways of Eastern cities anciently held an important place. Among other purposes, they served as places of public deliberation, administration of justice, and royal audiences (Deuteronomy 16:18; Deuteronomy 21:19; Deuteronomy 25:7; Joshua 20:4; Judges 9:35; Rth 4:1-11; 1 Kings 22:10). The gate of a royal residence seems to have been used for similar purposes. Thus Mordecai, like Daniel, sat in the king’s gate as one of the king’s councillors. An existing trace of this use remains in the name given to the Turkish court, the “Porte,” simply signifying the gate, that part of the palace where the court was originally held. Keil on the passage says, “Near the gate,” that is, at the court of the king, the gate or door named for the building (Esther 2:19; Esther 2:21). According to Gesenius, Daniel was made prefect of the palace. Junius and others think that his place was in the king’s gate, as having the power committed to him of admitting people into the king’s presence.III. Daniel’s Elevation shared in by his Three Friends (Daniel 2:49). At his request they are invested with a charge over the affairs of the province of which he himself was made ruler. Sharers in his prayers, they are made sharers in his promotion. Unlike the chief butler in Egypt, Daniel in his elevation forgat not former friends. So Jesus associates His faithful followers with Himself in His future kingdom. “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed unto me” (Luke 22:29). “Thou hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign upon the earth.” “They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years” (Revelation 5:10; Revelation 20:4; Revelation 20:6). We may notice from the passage— 1. Prayer often the path to promotion. The elevation of Daniel and his three friends the result of their united prayer for divine illumination. Earnest and believing prayer sooner or later turned into thankful praise. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south; but God is the judge: He putteth down one and setteth, up another” (Psalms 75:6-7). That God also the hearer of prayer (Psalms 65:2). 2. Believers’ trials only temporary. Daniel and his three friends involved in the trouble and dangers of the wise men in Babylon. Their sorrow soon turned into joy. “To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness” (Psalms 30:5; Psalms 112:4). “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,” &c. 3. The troubles of God’s people overruled for good to themselves and others. “Daniel’s captivity and the trouble in which the king’s dream involved him, overruled to his being made ruler over Babylon, and a blessing to his people. Joseph a similar example.” “Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). The comfort of God’s people in affliction and trouble, that “all things work together for good to them that love God, that are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). The loss of earthly things, as in the case of Saul and his father’s asses, often the gaining of a kingdom. . XII.—THE GOLDEN IMAGE (Chap. Daniel 3:1-7) Sudden conversions not always lasting ones. Mere impulses often evanescent. Men’s goodness sometimes “as the early cloud or as the morning dew that passeth away.” The stony-ground hearers “with joy anon receive the word, but dure only for a while.” Some more liable than others to be suddenly moved—impulsive characters. Nebuchadnezzar apparently such. Liable to be suddenly and strongly moved, both to good and evil. On hearing Daniel’s description and interpretation of his dream, he felt convinced that Daniel’s God was the true one. Under the influence of this conviction, he had raised Daniel, and at his request his three friends, to the highest offices in the state. He appeared a converted man, and in a certain sense perhaps was one. But there are different kinds of conversion. There are those which reach the centre of the soul, and those which only touch the circumference. Much may be changed before the heart is so. The suburbs of a city may be taken when the city itself is not. Even the city may be taken while the citadel remains in the hands of the besieged. Saul, the future king of Israel, had another heart given him, but not a new heart. We may have new notions without a new nature. Providences, appeals, human appliances may produce the one; only divine almighty power can impart the other. The sow, only washed externally, wallows again in the mire. As yet, at least, Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion only of this character. Time had effaced his impressions; and Daniel’s frequent and necessary absence from court might leave him open to unfavourable influences. Thus in an evil hour, whether from a feeling of pride in desiring to erect a symbol of his own greatness [83], or a wish to introduce a new deity for his own future glory, or a sudden fit of superstitious devotion to his god Bel-Merodach [84], or the idea of employing religion for a political purpose in the consolidation of his extensive but heterogeneous empire [85], or, finally, which is perhaps the most likely, from the wily suggestion of envious courtiers, as in the case of Darius and the lions’ den, Nebuchadnezzar, notwithstanding his former confession of the true God, resolves to erect in the plains of Dura [86] a colossal image of gold, and to command all his subjects, at a given signal, to fall down and worship it. We may notice— [83] “The image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had set up” (Daniel 3:2). Dr. Rule observes that about three centuries and a half before the event narrated in the passage before us, an Assyrian king, named Asshur-akh-bal, as he relates in his own annals, erected a similar image in one of the cities which he had conquered. The king says: “I made an image of my majesty; the laws and emblems of my true religion I wrote upon it, and in the city of Isuri I set it up.” Dr. Rule thinks that the object exposed by Nebuchadnezzar for public reverence was no doubt intended to be an image of his majesty. [84] “Whoso falleth not down, and worshippeth” (Daniel 3:6). Dr. Smith remarks that Nebuchadnezzar’s first care, after obtaining quiet possession of his kingdom after the first Syrian expedition, was to rebuild the temple of Bel (Bel-Merodach) out of the spoils of the Syrian war. Dr. Taylor thinks Bel-Merodach the idol intended by the image. “He who pays homage to Merodach,” one of Nebuchadnezzar’s titles. “We commonly observe, as peculiar to Nebuchadnezzar, a disposition to rest his fame on his great works rather than in his military achievements; and a strong religious spirit, manifesting itself especially in a direction which is almost exclusive to one particular god, though his own tutelary deity and that of his father was Nebo (Mercury), yet his worship, his ascriptions of praise, his thanksgivings, have in almost every case for their object the god Merodach. Under his protection he placed his son Evil-Merodach. Merodach is his ‘lord,’ his ‘great lord,’ the ‘joy of his heart,’ the ‘great lord who has appointed him to the empire of the world, and has confided to his care the far-spread people of the earth.’ He was to him ‘the supreme chief of the gods.’ ”—Rawlinson, quoted by Dr. Taylor. Dr. Taylor remarks that, according to Prideaux, the festival took place after Nebuchadnezzar’s return from the destruction of Jerusalem, with the blinded King Zedekiah among his captives; and that it is by no means improbable that he meant on that special occasion to exalt his god above the Jehovah of the Hebrews. [85] The erection of the statue is believed by Dr. Taylor and others to have had also a political design, the king’s religious fervour, as in the case of multitudes since his day, being subordinated to imperial policy, and unity of worship sought only that it might contribute to the political unity of the empire. [86] “The plain of Dura.” According to Dr. Smith and others, not Dur on the left bank of the Tigris, and a hundred and twenty miles from Babylon, but more probably in the vicinity of the mound of Dowair or Duair, to the south-east of Babylon, where Oppert discovered the pedestal of a colossal statue,—a singular attestation of the authenticity of the narrative. The older commentators, as Junius, Polanus, and Willet, thought of the Deera in Susiana, mentioned by Ptolemy. Hengstenberg observes that the name is found nowhere else, neither in the Scriptures nor in profane writers, and that the author omits to afford any more precise geographical definition, assuming the place to be known to his readers; a corroborative evidence of the genuineness of the book.I. The Image and its Erection. The image, doubtless erected on a pedestal, one of gigantic size [87], and constructed of, or overlaid with, the most precious metal [88]. What the king of Babylon did must be vast and colossal. Such was the city itself which he had built, or rather rebuilt, with its mountain of hanging gardens. Nebuchadnezzar’s empire colossal, and everything must be in keeping with it. A man’s ambitious aims often grow with his success. Nebuchadnezzar’s ideas now like those of his predecessors on the same plain of Shinar: “Let us build us a tower whose top shall reach into heaven.” Possibly the conception from the image seen in his dream. That dream, that should have humbled his pride and taught him the vanity of all earthly greatness and glory, perhaps made now the occasion of rebellion against the God who graciously sent it. Man’s fallen nature perverts mercies into mischiefs. Sin often makes what was designed for our benefit to become our bane. God’s gifts frequently made objects of idolatry to the dishonour of the Giver. The brazen serpent, which was given as the means of healing to one generation, made the object of idolatrous worship by another. Before the image is worshipped, however, it must be solemnly dedicated to the deity to honour whom it was erected and whom it was intended to represent. This was done in the presence of all the grandees of the realm [89]. [87] “Whose height was threescore cubits.” The immense image, says M. Gaussen, about a hundred feet high, though not higher than the bronze statue of Carlo Borromeo in the vicinity of the Lago Maggiore, which is sixty-four feet in height, and rests on a pedestal thirty-six feet high. The Colossus at Rhodes, dedicated to the sun, was seventy cubits high. [88] “An image of gold.” Dr. Taylor remarks that the same terms being else where employed to denote that which was simply overlaid with gold, we may conclude that the image was formed of wood covered with a thin layer of gold; even thus, however, sufficiently costly. Matthew Henry’s remark on the passage has too much truth in it: “The worshippers of false gods are not wont to stick at charges in setting up gods and worshipping them. ‘They lavish gold out of the bag’ for that purpose (Isaiah 46:6), which shames our niggardliness in the worship of the true God.” [89] “The King sent to gather together the princes, the governors,” &c. Of the officers of the court and state, we have (1.) The “princes” ΰֲ ?ηַ ?ωְׁ ?γַּ ?ψְ ?τְּ ?πַ ?ιָּ ?ΰ. akhash darpenaiya), according to Keil and Hengstenberg, from kshetra, a kingdom or province, and ban, an overseer or guardian; “princes.” Gesenius, however, regards the word as the Hebrew form of the Zend or Pehlevic kshatrap (a satrap), and understands “presidents of the greater provinces;” officers among the ancient Persians invested with civil and military power; deputies and lieutenants of the king, whose splendour they imitated. Wintle, like the Sept. and Vulgate, renders the word “satraps.” (2.) The “governors” (ρִ ?βְ ?πַ ?ιָּ ?ΰ, signaiya, a word of Persian origin), according to Hengstenberg, “chief magistrates of Babylon; the rulers of provinces;” Sept. “generals or commanders.” Wintle renders the word “senators.” Dr. Rule regards them as governors over districts, officers of the civil order. Rendered “governors” in chap. Daniel 2:48, and applied to those who presided over colleges of the Magi. (3.) The “captains” (τַּ ?ηֲ ?εָ ?ϊָ ?ΰ pakhavatha), superintendents of single parts of a province in the Assyrian empire, or of a smaller province than a satrapy. The word probably of Persian origin. According to Benfey, from the Sanscrit paksha, a companion or friend, and so a prefect of a province, as the associate of the king; a pasha.—Hengstenberg. Dr. Rule thinks them to have been of the military order, dukes or generals. (4.) The “judges” (ΰֲ ?γַ ?ψְ ?βָּ ?ζְ ?ψַ ?ιָּ ?ΰ adargoz-raiya), from ΰγψ (adar), dignity, and βζψιο (gozrin), judges; the chief judges.—Gesenius. So Wintle. Dr. Rule makes them viceroys over the provinces. (5.) The “treasurers” (βְּ ?γָ ?αְ ?ψַ ?ιָּ ?ΰ, gedobhraiya), like βִּ ?ζְ ?αָּ ?ψ (gizbar) in Ezra 1:8 and elsewhere, the sibilant ζ being changed into γ; from the original Semitic βπζ (ganaz), contracted into βζ (gaz), the Aramaic form, and the Persian termination var, serving for the formation of possessives. The officers who had charge of the royal exchequer, like the eunuch of Ethiopia in Acts 8.—Gesenius. According to Dr. Rule, they belonged to the fiscal order of officers and were collectors of the revenue. (6.) The “councillors” (γְּ ?ϊָ ?αְ ?ψַ ?ιָּ ?ΰ dethobraiya), promulgators of the law, from γַּ ?ϊ (dath), law, and the Persian termination var; lawyers, judges.—Hengstenberg. So Rule, officers of the legal class; doctors or lawyers. (7.) The “sheriffs” (ϊִּ ?τְ ?ϊָּ ?ιֵ ?ΰ, tiphtaye), perhaps from the Arabic fata, to give a legal opinion or judgment; whence mufti; counsellors, perhaps lawyers or pleaders.—Hengstenberg. The Vulgate has “prefects.” Dr. Rule thinks them officers in the executive department, being responsible for the execution of justice. The exact knowlege displayed by the writer of the entire political constitution of the Chaldees, a corroborative evidence of the genuineness of the book. Bertholdt admits that the statements in this chapter respecting the Chaldean political constitution are so copious that it must necessarily have been written in Upper Asia. Gesenius also admits the authenticity of the statements; remarking that “since the constitution of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires had certainly great similarity; since, too, the descriptions of the Persian court occurring in the Book of Esther always differ essentially from those of the Book of Daniel; and finally, since the incidental but cotemporary notices of Jeremiah agree in many points; these statements, which besides have the analogy of the whole East in their favour, are not to be rashly rejected.” Impossible to explain this knowledge in a Maccabean Jew. With the occupation of the Greeks everything took another form, and most certainly the administration of the court and of the highest offices of the state.—Hengstenberg.II. The command to worship it. The image erected not for the people to admire but to worship. The people not left to worship it at their option, but commanded by royal authority to do so, and that with the penalty of death on refusing. As the king’s god, it must be worshipped by the people also, and that as a matter of obedience and loyalty to himself. Natural for fallen man to stretch his power and authority to the utmost limits. Rulers, not content with obedience in things civil and secular, must also prescribe in sacred ones; not satisfied with the things that are Cζsar’s, they must have also the things that are God’s. Perhaps they think to render themselves and their kingdom more acceptable to God by compelling others to worship Him in the way they themselves think best; forgetting that religion is a matter between each man and God, and that conscience is a domain which even kings may not enter. Persuasion and example in matters of religion, a prince’s privilege; authority the prerogative of God. To command here, without a command from God, both a mischief and a mistake. Hence persecuting edicts, Inquisitions, and Star-chambers. To all such Nebuchadnezzar [90] now led the way. The command was, within one short hour after the sound of the music [91] to worship the image or die the death. The penalty, doubtless, annexed with special reference to the Jewish exiles: the idolatrous Chaldeans needed no such enforcement. The death a very terrible one—cast into a fiery furnace [92]. The penalty the flames. That furnace the prototype of the auto da fιs, and the fires of Smithfield in later days. Superstition and cruelty twin sisters. The Babylon of the Old Testament followed by the Babylon of the New. Both of them the “mother of harlots” and the persecutor of the saints. The saints burned by the former under the title of rebels; by the latter, under that of heretics. The Papal Bull, De Comburendo, ‘concerning the burning of heretics,’ a subsequent edition of the present edict of Nebuchadnezzar. [90] “The same hour.” Dr. Rule remarks, that if, as Sir H. Rawlinson calculates, there were sixty divisions of the day and night in Babylon, and not twenty-four, as afterwards in Greece, the vengeance would be swift indeed—only twenty-four minutes. “Who can say that the shadow of the pillar (image) itself would not serve to measure the brief space between the sentence and the execution?” [91] “All kinds of music,” ζְ ?ξָ ?ψָ ?ΰ (zemara), music in general, though among the modern Egyptians the name of a pipe. The Greek names of some of the instruments mentioned are alleged as an objection to the genuineness of the book. One of the objectors to certain parts of it, however, J. D. Michaelis, remarks in reference to his own arguments on this head, that “the more closely they were examined, the more completely most of them disappeared.” Hengstenberg remarks, “The dispute is at most about the names of three musical instruments; and who can deny that these might, by even the slightest intercourse of the Greeks with the Babylonians, have found their way to the latter?” Dr. Pusey, who ably follows up Hengstenberg on this subject, observes: “It were rather a marvel if the golden music-loving city had not gathered to itself foreign musical instruments; or if, in a religious inauguration at Babylon, all the variety of music which it could command had not been united to grace the festival and bear along the minds and imaginations of the people.” Dr. Pusey properly insists on the well-known fact that “the name follows the thing;” but Pareau, quoted by Hengstenberg, observes that the similarity in the names of musical instruments is of such a kind that the Greek appellatives are rather to be considered as having an Eastern origin. The instruments mentioned are—(1.) The “cornet,” χַ ?ψְ ?πָ ?ΰ (karna), the Hebrew χֶ ?ψֶ ?ο (keren), a horn. (2.) “Flute,” ξַ ?ωְׁ ?ψεֹ ?χִ ?ιϊָ ?ΰ (mashrokitha), the Chaldaic for a flute or pipe. The Septuagint and Theodotion: σύριγξ; Gr. Ven.: αὐλός. (3.) “Harp,” χַ ?ιϊְ ?ψεֹ ?ρ (kathros or kithros), which Gesenius says was received into the Semitic language from abroad, being the Greek κίθαρις or κιθάρα, a “harp,” as both the Septuagint, Theodotion, and the Vulgate translate it. Hengstenberg admits that it certainly appears to be the same word as the Greek κίθαρις, but asks, since most of the names of Greek musical instruments were of foreign origin, why should just this one be originally Greek? (4.) “Sackbut,” ρַ ?αְּ ?λָ ?ΰ (sabbecha), according to Hesychius, an instrument like a harp, but with only four strings. Athenζus says that the sambuca, called the Ph�nician lyre, was an invention of the Syrians. Its foreign or non-Greek origin is maintained by Gesenius, and generally admitted. (5.) “Psaltery,” τְּ ?ρַ ?πְ ?ϊְּ ?ψִ ?ιο (pesanteriu), according to Gesenius and others, the Greek ψαλτήριον, received into the Chaldaic language; which, however, is questioned by Hengstenberg. (6.) “Dulcimer,” ρεּ ?ξְ ?τֹּ ?πְ ?ιָ ?ΰ (sumponia), retained untranslated by the Septuagint, Theodotion, the Vulgate, and the Greek Venetian; according to Gesenius, a bagpipe with two pipes inserted into a bag, which he says, on the authority of Polybius in Athenζus, was, at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, used by Greeks living in Syria under that name. Symphonia, though with the old Romans used to indicate “music,” or the concert of various instruments, was used also by the later Latins to denote a musical instrument, but rather a drum than a pipe. Saadias, on the passage, explains it as a pastoral instrument of the nature of a bagpipe, as a similar instrument used in Italy is still called sampogna. Hengstenberg questions the Greek derivation of the word, and the name of such an instrument in the older Greek language. [92] “Be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace.” The punishment of death by burning in ovens was entirely Babylonian, while that practised by the Medes and Persians was the casting into a lions’ den. The description here given of the former mode of punishment admitted to be a proof that the writer had seen such an oven, and had been present at an execution of the kind; while the accuracy of his knowledge is also shown by the fact that in the sixth chapter he attributes to the Medo-Persians, not this mode of punishing, but that peculiar to themselves—an incidental corroboration of the genuineness and authenticity of the history.—Hengstenberg.III. The obedience to the command. The edict not only issued, but obeyed. No sooner were the first strains of the music heard, than, according to the proclamation of the herald [93], the blinded multitude fall prostrate before the image. The music probably intended also for greater honour to the god and greater attraction to the service. Perhaps to stimulate and intensify the devotion of the people. The power of music recognised in the church as well as on the battlefield. The fairest gifts often perverted to the foulest purposes. Superstition and idolatry greatly indebted to the strains of music. The people bow down to the royal idol with abundant goodwill. In the East especially, people follow a superior like a flock of sheep. One also must follow another. Each must be like his neighbour. If not the true God, it matters little what men worship. ‘Gods many and lords many.’ Babylon the land of graven images. Its people mad upon their idols. Rome acknowledged the gods of all nations. Christianity was opposed and persecuted, because it was opposed to all other religions, as the only true one. The carnal mind enmity against God, not against gods, or a god of our own imagining. Idolatry the depth of human degradation. The prostrate thousands on the plains of Dura a sight that might make angels weep. “There is nothing,” says Matthew Henry, “so bad which the careless world will not be drawn to by a concert of music, or driven to by a fiery furnace.” [93] “An herald,” λְּ ?ψεֹ ?ζ (c’roz), a crier, from λְּ ?ψַֽ ?ζ (c’raz), a Chaldaic word meaning “to cry,” as a herald; used in the Targums and Talmud, and also in the Samaritan. The same word is found extensively in the Indo-Germanic tongues, the Sanscrit, Zend, and Persian; being the Greek κηρύσσω, to proclaim as a herald, and κράζω, to cry; the middle Latin criso; the German krieschen; and the English cry. Gesenius thinks the word is of Persian origin, though Hengstenberg believes it to be originally Semitic, and its relation to the Greek only accidental, or from onomatopoeia. He remarks that it is almost unanimously agreed by modern linguists that the names of Babylonian gods, kings, and other persons, which occur in the Bible and in profane writers, find their explanation in the Persian, the Chaldaic, and Assyrian languages; belonging, according to Gesenius and others, to the Medo-Persiau stock; and according to others, as Rosenmόller, to the Assyrian language, a dialect of the Medo-Persian, and so naturalised in Babylon, though the Assyrian predominated. Words of Persian origin also found in Jeremiah, and apparently even in Isaiah and Nahum. No argument therefore against the genuineness of the book.We may observe as lessons from the passage— 1. The danger of losing good impressions and turning asiae from a good profession. Too many copies of Nebuchadnezzar to be found in the Christian Church. “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Constant need of David’s prayer: “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.” 2. Impressions, however good and deep, not to be mistaken for conversions. Present feelings neither to be slighted nor trusted to. A true conversion will in time produce its own evidence. “Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” 3. Mere human authority neither to be exercised nor yielded to in matters of religion. “Render to Cζsar the things that are Cζsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). So Acts 4:19. The case of a parent in regard to his children who are under the years of discretion, an apparent exception to the above rule. But even here the authority is to be exercised only in commanding what God has already enjoined. “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment” (Genesis 18:19). 4. Care to be taken not to follow the multitude to do evil. That a practice is popular, no proof that it is right. Neither the rectitude of a course, nor the truth of an opinion, to be decided by the law of the greater number. “The customs of the people are vain.” “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat.” . XIII.—THE FIERY FURNACE (Chap. Daniel 3:8-27) God has never left Himself without a witness. An Enoch and a Noah found on the eve of the Flood; an Abraham in Chaldea, and a Lot in Sodom. While the multitude were falling prostrate before the golden image, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were in their closet on their knees. Where was Daniel? Probably now, as often, at some distance from the court. Wherever he is, he is worshipping the God of heaven. If at hand, like his three friends, fearless of the consequences, he refuses to obey the summons to the plain of Dura, but for this time left unmolested by his enemies, for reasons which we can only conjecture. Now not Daniel, but his three friends, are to be made illustrious through all time for their faith in and fidelity to the true God. Daniel, in noble self-forgetfulness, is content to leave them the honour of the deed, without being careful to give the grounds of his non-participation in it; an incidental confirmation of the genuineness of the history. We may notice in the narrative— I. The accusation (Daniel 3:8-12). The accusation probably the offspring alike of envy and religious zeal. The accusers the Chaldeans, the priests and religious teachers of the country. The charge, as in Daniel’s own case (chap. 6.), probably the thing the accusers desired, expected, and waited for. “Who can stand before envy?” The accusation betrays itself. “There are certain Jews, whom thou hast set over the affairs of the province of Babylon.” The language indicative of the spirit which prompted the accusation. Three faithful Jews so exalted, a likely butt for the shafts of envious idolatrous natives. Nothing to be found against these men except, as in the case of Daniel, “concerning the law of their God.” In a world “lying in the wicked one,” fidelity to God hardly able to escape the malice of men. In a corrupt time, “he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey.” False or hostile accusation for the truth’s sake, according to the Sermon on the Mount, to be rather rejoiced in by the servants of God. The footprints of the prophets and of the Master Himself. The servant not greater than his lord. II. The answer (Daniel 3:13-18). The charge, true in itself, though made with evil intention, answered with meekness, firmness, and faith. The answer calm, dignified, and courageous. “O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter” [94]. The naming of the king, as one has remarked, not disrespectful, but expressive of the deep earnestness of the speaker, and the desire to impress the mind of the hearer. The purpose declared, whatever may be the consequence. “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” The fiery furnace with the favour of God and a good conscience to be preferred to the comforts of a palace without them. The choice was wise and according to reason. To a Jew or a Christian enlightened by a divine revelation compliance was sin, though to heathens and polytheists it might be a matter of indifference. The three exiles knew their duty, and they knew in whom they believed. The God they served was able, if He pleased, to deliver them from the furnace or preserve them in it, as, according to tradition, He had done their father Abraham before them in that very land. He who had answered prayer at the time of the king’s distress could answer prayer now. If not His pleasure, no matter. While the fire consumed their body in the furnace, their spirit should be with God in paradise. Better a thousand times over to die with His favour than live without it. Better a fiery furnace for the body than the fire of hell and a guilty conscience for the soul. Pleas for compliance, suggested by the flesh and the tempter, would not be wanting. It was only an act of the body, in which the mind, the principal thing, would not participate. It was from compulsion, not from choice. The king commanded it, and rulers are to be obeyed. It would be ungrateful to the king, from whom they had experienced so much kindness. To die now would terminate their usefulness. It would only be what many, perhaps all, of their countrymen would be found doing. To all these, and perhaps other arguments, these noble confessors had but one answer, No. “It is written, Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor worship them.” Those, says Henry, who make their duty their main care, need not be careful concerning the event. [94] “In this matter” (Daniel 3:16). τִ ?ϊְ ?βָּ ?ν (pithgam), from the Zend paiti or Sanscrit prati, = πρὸς, to, and gam, to go; hence a message, edict, and in general a word or matter.—Keil. Calvin paraphrases the answer of the captives thus: “Thou hast erected this statue, but thy authority is of no moment to us, since we know it to be a fictitious deity, whose image thou wishest us to worship. The God whom we worship has revealed Himself to us; we know Him to be the maker of heaven and earth, to have redeemed our fathers from Egypt, and to intend our chastisement by driving us into exile. Since, then, we have a firm foundation for our faith, we reckon thy gods and thy sway valueless.”III. The consequence (Daniel 3:19-23). Arbitrary power brooks no opposition. The soft answer did not turn away wrath, while the firmness of faith and fidelity to God seem only to have inflamed it. Pride and passion shut both ears and eyes to reason. These Jewish captives’ past faithfulness and the king’s own former declarations alike forgotten. The decree goes forth with added cruelty. The victims are bound for the furnace. As if to defy the God of the Jews and make escape impossible, the furnace is heated seven times more than usual [95], while the strongest men in the army are employed to bind the three youths. So the Jews themselves thought afterwards to prevent the resurrection of Jesus by “sealing the stone and setting a watch.” So great was the heat of the furnace and the haste of the king, that the death designed for the accused at once overtook their executioners, possibly glad, as Matthew Henry suggests, to do their cruel work. “The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.” Bound in their ordinary clothes [96], the martyrs descend into the fiery furnace. But Abraham’s God will again vindicate His honour in Babylon. There are times when He may see it needful, for His own glory and for the welfare of His creatures, to arrest the processes of nature and to suspend for a time the laws which He Himself imposed on material things. The fire is made for a season to lose its power to consume or to give pain. The bonds which bound the victims were indeed consumed by the flames, but neither their persons nor their clothes were affected by the fire. The hair of their head was not singed, neither did the smell of fire pass on them. Whether in vision or otherwise [97], a strange spectacle presented itself to the king. “Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?” he suddenly exclaims to those about him; “lo! I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” [98]. The light of nature guided a heathen poet to speak of a crisis worthy of divine interposition [99]. It is with the Almighty Himself to judge as to what is such. Here is a city standing at the head of the civilised world. The land is one of graven images. The worshippers of the only true God are captive in it, while Bel, the great idol, is apparently triumphant. Three faithful servants of Jehovah and witnesses to His truth have been cast into a burning furnace for their protesting fidelity, declaring at the same time that their God, if He pleased, was able to deliver them. Shall God vindicate His honour, and support the much-tried faith of His people? Or shall the heathen still tauntingly ask where is their God? [100][95] “To heat the furnace one seven times more” (Daniel 3:19). An apocryphal addition at this place, attributed to Theodotion, the Greek translator, who flourished in the second century of the Christian era, contains a statement that the king’s servants were made to keep up the fire by flinging into the furnace naphtha, tow, pitch, and brands, such as were used in sieges for burning down cities; and that the flames rose forty-nine cubits high.—Rule. [96] “In their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments” (Daniel 3:21). According to Herodotus, the garments worn by the Babylonians were the tunic (κιθών), an under-garment of linen or cotton, reaching down to the feet; on this was another tunic of woollen; and over this again a white mantle (χλανίδιον). This threefold clothing, though not such as we might expect in a warm climate, found on Babylonian cylinders. In the present passage, in the dress of the three Jews, we meet with it complete, though not according to our own and ordinary translations. We have (1.) ρַ ?ψְ ?αָּ ?μֵ ?ιδεֹ ?ο (sarbalehon), “their coats,” marg. “their mantles,” which the Sept., Aquila, Theodotion, the Syriac, and the Vulgate leave untranslated, and which Symmachus renders by a word denoting drawers or breeches reaching down to the feet, such as were worn by the Persians and Scythians. It is rather intended to denote a mantle or cloak, which Luther adopted, and which is favoured by Gesenius. Hengstenberg gives “upper garment.” (2.) τְּ ?ιִ ?θֹ ?ωֵׁ ?δεֹ ?ο (petishehon), “their hosen,” but which Gesenius, after the Syriac and Hebrew interpreters, renders “tunic.” Theodotion and the Vulgate render it “tiara” or turban. (3.) λַּ ?ψְ ?αְּ ?μָ ?ϊְ ?ιδεֹ ?ο (carbelathehon), “their hats,” but which the Sept renders by περικνημίσι, a garment for the legs or feet, and the Vulgate by calceamentis, “shoes.” Keil renders it “mantles” and thinks that the other articles of clothing, coverings for the feet and the head, are to be understood under the word μְ ?αεֹ ?ωֵׁ ?ιδεֹ ?ο (lebhushehon) “garments.” [97] “Was astonied” (Daniel 3:24), ϊְּ ?εַ ?δּ (levah), like the Heb. δִ ?ωְׁ ?ϊּ ?εֹ ?ξֵ ?ν (hishtomem), chap. Daniel 8:27, or simply ωׁ ?εֹ ?ξֵ ?ν (shomem), Ezra 9:3. Between the 23d and 24th verses, the apocryphal “Song of the Three Children,” as it is called, has been inserted by Jerome and others. The Septuagint, followed by the Arabic, inserts the clause, “heard them singing praise” (ὑμνούντων), thus accounting for the king’s astonishment. To connect the two verses, Houbigant adds the words found in the Vulgate, “But an angel of the Lord went down with Azariah and his companions into the furnace, and drove out the flame of fire from the furnace, and they walked in the midst of the furnace.” Added to show the reason of the king’s astonishment, and to account for the appearance of a fourth person in the furnace.—A. Clark. [98] “It like the Son of God,” αַּ ?ψΰֱ ?μָ ?δִ ?ιο (bar elahin), which some prefer to translate, “a son of the gods,” as more likely to be found on the lips of a polytheist. The expression, according to Gesenius, is equivalent to “one of the immortal gods,” as, according to the Syriac idiom, “Son of man” means simply a man or a mortal. Keil thinks that Nebuchadnezzar speaks in the spirit and meaning of the Babylonian doctrine of the gods, according to the representations peculiar to all Oriental religions, the inferior divinities being regarded by them as begotten by the superior ones, Mylitta, a female deity, being associated with their higher god, Bel. According to Hengstenberg, the designation cannot be explained by these theogonic ideas. Willet, after Rupertus, thinks that Nebuchadnezzar thought only of some divine presence, whether god or angel, but that in reality it was Christ, the Son of God, who appeared at this time in human shape. Calvin thinks it was a single angel that was sent to these three men. Though the words were probably only intended by the king “to describe the dignified and exalted deportment of Him whom he thus characterised,” yet they declared, unknown to himself, a precious truth,—the presence of Him who is the Son of God with His suffering servants. In Daniel 3:28, the king calls him God’s “angel,” which He no doubt was—the “angel of the Lord,” otherwise called the “Messenger, of the Covenant,” the Son of God, who in the fulness of time was “made flesh and dwelt among us.” [99] “Nec deus intersit, nodus nisi vindice dignus Inciderit.”—Horace, De Arte Poetica. [100] Keil remarks: “Since all the heathen estimated the power of the gods according to the power of the people who honoured them, the God of the Jews whom they had subjugated by their arms would actually appear to the Chaldeans and their king as an inferior and feeble God, as He had already appeared to the Assyrians (Isaiah 10:8-11; Isaiah 36:11-20).” “It is explicitly affirmed by Mr. J. S. Mill (System of Logic) that on this view of the constancy of nature,—on the hypothesis that the governing power of the universe is an infinitely wise and Almighty God,—a miracle is no infraction of nature’s harmony and concord, and, of course, not beyond reach of proof.… Lord Bacon declared that, in regard of redemption, ‘to which all God’s signs and miracles do refer,’ the Almighty could indeed ‘break the law of nature by miracles.’ The Saviour is called by the father of modern philosphy ‘the Lord of nature in His miracles.’ … Miracles are thus shown to be in harmony with a higher constancy than that of physical nature—a constancy of eternal purpose and everlasting wisdom, a course of mercy in the moral government of the world, a constancy of creative power, varying at pleasure its modes and its habitudes.”—P. Bayne, “Christ’s Testimony to Christianity.”IV. The result (Daniel 3:26-30). The king’s former impressions and convictions are revived and strengthened. A stronger declaration than before is made in favour of the true God. A decree is issued on behalf of His servants forbidding, in the style indeed of Oriental despotism, a single word to be uttered against Him [101] on pain of death. The three [102] confessors are restored to their office with increased honour. No wonder; those most likely to be faithful to their king that are faithful to their God. The effect of the whole probably a considerable furtherance of the cause of true religion in the land, the strengthening of the hands and encouraging of the hearts of God’s servants, and an important step towards the final release of the Jewish captives. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain” (Psalms 76:10). From the whole we may observe:— [101] “Speak anything amiss,” marg. “error,” ωָׁ ?μָ ?δ (shalah), “that which is erroneous or unjust,” from ωְׁ ?μδ (shelah), to err, commit a fault; changed by the Masorites into ωָּׁ ?μֵ ?δ or ωָׁ ?μεּ (shalu), an error or fault, as in chap. Daniel 6:5. Objection has been made to the difficulties connected with the carrying out of such a command. But such difficulties only confirm the historical character of the narrative.—Keil. [102] “Promoted,” δַ ?φְ ?μַ ?η (hatslakh), literally, as the margin, “made to prosper.” The Septuagint adds: “And he advanced them, and appointed them to rule over all the Jews that were in his kingdom.” Dr. Cumming remarks that this may be the meaning of the verse, as these three men were more likely to be set over the Jews than over the Chaldeans.1. Persecution the frequent lot of God’s faithful people. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). In a world of which God’s enemy is the prince, His faithful servants not likely to be long without trouble. As surely as a knife cuts and fire burns, so surely will he who by his life and lips reproves the ways of the world incur its hatred and persecution. “The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil” (John 7:7). 2. The power and preciousness of faith. The noble act and glorious deliverance of these three Jewish captives ascribed to this divine principle. “By faith they quenched the violence of fire.” “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even your faith” (1 John 5:4). Faith able to triumph over every difficulty and every trial. The same principle that enabled Moses to choose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, raised these exiles above the fear of a fiery furnace. Its natural effect to make men heroes. Its property to give “substance” and reality to “things hoped for,” and “evidence” or conviction in regard to “things unseen.” Looks not at the things that are seen and temporal, but at those which are unseen and eternal. Believes that God not only can, but that according to His promise He will, in one way or other, deliver. To faith deliverance is certain, whether in this world or the next. Looking into the glorious future, it thinks it matters little which. Eyeing Him who said, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” it sings, even at the stake, “O death, where is thy sting?” “Deny Christ,” said the Roman governor to Polycarp, “or thou shalt be thrown to the wild beasts.” “Call for them,” said the venerable bishop; “we have no mind to change from better to worse.” “But if thou thinkest so lightly of wild beasts, I shall have a fire that will tame thee.” “You threaten me,” replied Polycarp, “with a fire that will burn for an hour and then be extinguished, but remember not the fire of eternal damnation reserved for the punishment of the ungodly. But why do you delay? Execute whatever you please.” “The emperor commands thee to do sacrifice,” said the proconsul to Cyprian; “therefore consult for thy welfare.” “I am a Christian,” was the heroic reply; “and I cannot sacrifice to your gods; do therefore what you are commanded: as for me, in so just a cause, there needs no consultation.” 3. A faithful adherence to God’s prescribed worship one of our first duties. The first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me;” the second, “Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image; thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship them.” God jealous both of His worship and the manner of it. “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.” Will-worship among the things condemned in His Word. “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Colossians 2:23; Matthew 15:9). God’s glory to be esteemed “of more consequence than a thousand lives, and the gratification of a thousand senses.” 4. Christ ever present with His suffering servants. The Son of God a fourth in the fiery furnace. “Fear not, for I am with thee.” He that has power over fire present with His people in every fiery trial which is to try them. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the floods, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee” (Isaiah 43:2). Faith, laying hold of the Word, sings with the Psalmist, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me” (Psalms 23:4). 5. Believers gainers rather than losers by their sufferings. The three confessors in Babylon lost nothing in the furnace but the bonds that bound them. Believers lose nothing by their sufferings but the bonds of corruption and sin. “When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “This is all the fruit, to take away their sin.” Trouble often the method which God takes to consume our bonds and to purify our souls. “I asked the Lord that I might growIn faith and love and every grace;Might more of His salvation know,And seek more earnestly His face.’Twas thus He taught me thus to pray;And He, I think, has answered prayer;But it was done in such a wayAs almost drove me to despair.”6. God glorified by the trials of His people. The fiery furnace a platform for the display of God’s glory in Babylon. His name raised higher by the deliverance of the three martyrs than by the interpretation of the king’s dream. The trial of believers, whatever it may be here, “found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” The high privilege of Paul and of all suffering believers, to “fill up in their flesh that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the Church” (Colossians 1:24). Their patient suffering made to glorify God as truly as their active service. The blood of the martyrs the seed of the Church. 7. Something to be imitated in the conduct of Nebuchadnezzar. A prompt, humble, and decided submission yielded to the truth as revealed in God’s deliverance of His servants. The effect and fruit of it the immediate employment of his influence in honouring God and advancing His cause. The threatened penalty to be condemned, as only corresponding to the character and customs of the time and country, and the ideas of an Oriental despot. Otherwise the edict an example to all in authority, whether as magistrates, parents, or masters, to employ their influence in restraining open ungodliness and forbidding profanity on the part of those who are under them. 8. Miracles precious as God’s testimony both to His power and to His presence with His people. One of the objections made against the genuineness of the book of Daniel is its alleged “aimless profusion of miracles.” But, as Hengstenberg remarks, the object in each miracle occurring in the first six chapters is distinctly stated—the manifestation of the omnipotence of the God of Israel before the heathen kings and nations, the circumstances of the chosen people at the time being such as to render it desirable that the weakness of their faith should be assisted even by sensible means of support. Objectless, says Dr. Pusey, they can only seem to those to whom all revelation from God seems to be objectless. “On the one side was the world-monarchy, irresistible, conquering, as the heathen thought, the God of the vanquished. On the other, a handful of the worshippers of the one only God, captives, scattered, with no visible centre or unity, without organisation or power to resist save their indomitable faith, inwardly upheld by God, outwardly strengthened by the very calamities which almost ended their national existence; for they were the fulfilment of His Word in whom they believed. Thrice during the seventy years human power put itself forth against the faith; twice in edicts which, if obeyed, would have extinguished the true faith on earth; once in direct insult to God. Faith, as we know, ‘quenched the violence of fire, stopped the mouth of lions.’ In all cases the assault was signally rolled back; the faith was triumphant in the face of all the representatives of the power and intelligence of the empire; in all, the truth of the one God was proclaimed by those who had assailed it. Unbelief, while it remains such, must deny all true miracles and all superhuman prophecy. But, if honest, it dare not designate as objectless miracles which decided the cause of truth in such battlefields.” . XIV.—THE ROYAL (Chap. Daniel 4:1-3) In this chapter we have a remarkable testimony from Nebuchadneszar himself [103]. The date usually assigned to it is about ten years after the erection of the golden image, probably towards the latter end of his life [104]. The king had still to be brought down from his pride. What was not unusual in the absence of a written revelation, a dream, was employed for this purpose. See Job 33:14-17. The dream, with its interpretation and fulfilment in a lengthened and humiliating affliction, made effectual [105]. As the result, we have the noble testimony in this chapter. Calvin observes that Daniel has no other object in relating the edict than to show the fruit of conversion in Nebuchadnezzar. The testimony remarkable in itself; still more so from the quarter from which it came—a king of kings, the head of the first great universal monarchy, a king who had been all his life a heathen and a devoted worshipper of idols. The testimony given in the form of a royal epistle, proclamation, or edict, addressed to all the subjects of his extensive empire. The chapter an example of the varied contents of the Bible. Out of the mouth of heathen monarchs, as well as of “babes and sucklings,” God able to ordain strength and perfect praise. The proclamation sets forth Jehovah’s greatness, truth, and justice; His supremacy as governor of the universe; His overruling providence among the nations of the world; His sovereignty in doing all according to His own will among angels and men, that will being the most perfect justice; His remarkable dealings with the king himself; and, finally, a humble confession of his sinfulness and pride, with the humiliating chastisement which it had entailed upon him. The testimony addressed to the various peoples under his rule with a view to their conversion to the only true God, the God of Israel. The whole breathes a spirit of sincerity and humility, of gratitude to God and good-will to men. The opening salutation probably more than a mere form. A deep earnestness and warm admiration indicated in the manner in which he refers to God’s dealings with himself. “How great are His signs, and how mighty are His wonders!” (Daniel 4:2-3). The proclamation also contains a high testimony in favour of Daniel, as an inspired prophet in whom was “the spirit of the holy gods,” and as a faithful counsellor of the king. The repetition of what Daniel had said in the interpretation of a former dream, many years before, regarding the “everlasting kingdom” which God was to set up, indicative of the deep impression which the prophet’s words had left upon his mind. The three first verses of the chapter, improperly forming the concluding ones in the Hebrew Bible and Greek version, serve as the preface or preamble to the edict. Among the lessons of this part of the testimony, as well as of the testimony in general, are the following:— [103] “Nebuchadnezzar the king unto all people,” &c. Adam Clarke says: “This is a regular decree, and is one of the most ancient on record, and no doubt was copied from the state-papers of Babylon. Daniel has preserved it in the original language.” Grotius observes: “Daniel gives this wonderful history, not in his own words, but in those of the published edict itself, that there might remain no doubt about its trustworthiness.” Calvin says: “Daniel here gives the edict under the king’s name and person, afterwards relates what happened to the king, and at length returns to the king’s personal testimony; the change of the person speaking, however, not at all obscuring the sense.” This change of the speaker has been made an objection to the genuineness of the book. Hengstenberg remarks in reply: “We cannot by any means allow that this happens unwarily. With the exception of Dan 4:19, where ‘the king’ stands for ‘I,’ which calls for no remark, because the same thing is found repeatedly in the decrees of the Persian kings (compare, e.g., Ezra 7:14-15), the use of the third person commences just where the narrative of the fulfilment of the divine threat of punishment begins (Daniel 4:28), and ends where the description of the sad ailment of Nebuchadnezzar comes to a close (Daniel 4:33). His restoration he describes again in the first person. This cannot possibly be accidental; and if not, then no argument can be taken from it against the genuineness, although we cannot assign with certainty the reason of the change It may be conjectured that Daniel disposed this part in a briefer or more detailed and exact narrative than as it stood in the edict (so Calvin); and now, to be chargeable with no falsehood, used the third person.” [104] The Septuagint has introduced the words “in the eighteenth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar,” which Ewald has adopted, but arbitrarily making it “in the twenty-eighth year,”&c.—Keil. [105] Adam Clarke thinks that very probably Nebuchadnezzar was a true convert, that he relapsed no more into idolatry, and that he died in the faith of the God of Israel. Dr. Cumming remarks: “This closing epistle addressed by the King Nebuchadnezzar to his subjects breathes a quiet and a beautiful spirit, that indicates to my mind a change in his heart, a transformation of his character, a true and an actual conversion to God.” Among the older commentators, Willet thinks “the more probable and certain opinion is that Nebuchadnezzar in the end was saved.” He quotes Josephus, who Bays that all his life long alter this he acknowledged God and gave praise and glory to Him; Augustine, who remarks that, unlike Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar was humbled and so saved; and Theodoret, who contrasts the end of Nebuchadnezzar with that of Belshazzar, the one being foreseen to be amended by his correction, the other to be incorrigible. So Bullinger, Osiander, and Œcolampadius. Calvin thinks that “though in this edict Nebuchadnezzar does not describe what is required of a pious man long trained in God’s school, yet he shows how he had benefited under God’s rod, by attributing to Him the height of power, and adding the praise of justice and rectitude, while he confesses himself guilty.” Matthew Henry says, “Whether he continued in the same good mind that here he seems to have been in, we are not told, nor doth anything appear to the contrary but that he did; and if so great a blasphemer and persecutor did find mercy, he was not the last.” Dr. Taylor quotes Scott’s remark that “the beginning and conclusion of the chapter lead us at least to hope with prevailing confidence that Nebuchadnezzar was at last made a monument of the power of divine grace,” yet thinks that the conversion was still an imperfect one, as the king still speaks of the name of his god and of the spirit of the holy gods, as if, while acknowledging the supremacy of Jehovah, he still clung to the worship of inferior divinities. Hengstenberg, who seems to be of the same opinion, remarks, in reply to an objection made by Eichhorn and others against the genuineness of the edict, from the narrator making the king speak now as an orthodox Jew, and now again as an idolater: “Just this mode of representation would be expected in case the edict were genuine, and certainly affords a presumption that it is. It cannot be imagined that Nebuchadnezzar rooted out the inveterate superstition so quickly from his mind that the traces of it should not have appeared in connection with what he had learned from the instruction of Daniel. That a later Jew, bold in his fictions, would not have been satisfied with such a conversion of Nebuchadnezzar, is clear from the attempt of very many Jewish and Christian expositors to make the conversion as radical and complete as possible.” Dr. Pusey observes, “Although Nebuchadnezzar’s two first convictions of the greatness of the God of the Jews faded in time, we know of no relapse after the last. God triumphed at last, and won Nebuchadnezzar, as He does so many relapsing Christians.” Dr. Cox judiciously remarks, “How far this last return to the sentiments and expressions of religion was genuine, and whether we are to regard Nebuchadnezzar as finally converted to God, may be regarded as one of those questions which, while we are benevolently desirous of giving it the most favourable construction, must be referred to the great mass of unfathomable mysteries. The evidence we have a right to demand in general of a renewal of character must be proportioned to the nature of past delinquencies [and, may we not add, to the individual’s circumstances], and it often requires much holy skill to pilot our judgment between the Scylla and Charybdis of uncharitableness and laxity.”1. The power and efficacy of divine grace. The proclamation of the king an apparent evidence of a change of mind and heart where it might least be expected. Nebuchadnezzar apparently a case of remarkable though imperfect conversion. Among the evidences given of an inward change are—pride in a mighty monarch acknowledged and abandoned; a formerly idolatrous king now a preacher of the true God to his subjects; sin confessed, its chastisement related, and repentance declared. “How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of God!” Yet here is one who at the time was the richest on the face of the earth, apparently made to enter it as a little child. “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.” “Not many mighty, not many noble are called.” Yet, thanks to sovereign and omnipotent grace, some are. Nothing too difficult for the grace that, as we may believe, converted Nebuchadnezzar. No situation too high, as none is too mean, for its operation. “Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shall become a plain.” 2. Encouragement to pray and labour for the conversion of others. Many a prayer for the king’s conversion doubtless offered by Daniel and his three friends. These at length answered apparently in this edict. The testimony of Daniel’s life and lips at length effectual. His faithfulness to the king (Daniel 4:27) rewarded by the king’s testimony for God. The influence, though insensible, of a spiritual and consistent Christian’s life, accompanied by earnest persevering prayer, always powerful, and often efficacious in the most unlikely places and persons. “Ye are my witnesses.” Hopeful’s conversion mainly due to the spirit exhibited by Christian and Faithful in Vanity Fair. The trial of the three faithful Jews in connection with the fiery furnace now made to bear fruit. “In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand.” The privilege of believers to be the “salt of the earth,” whether in a palace or a prison. 3. Thanks and praise to be rendered to God in every situation. Thanks especially due after mercies received and deliverance experienced. God’s gracious dealings with ourselves to be made know to others for His glory and their good. “Come, hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul.” “Many shall see it and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.” “Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things God hath done for thee.” No situation too lofty for making public acknowledgment of God and His mercies. Nebuchadnezzar an example to kings and those in high places. Not ashamed to confess God before his court, his princes, servants, and subjects. A throne a meet place to acknowledge Him by whom “kings reign and princes decree justice.” “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess before my Father and the holy angels.” Confession of God a natural duty. In Nebuchadnezzar the spontaneous effusion of a grateful and childlike spirit. “Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me.” May not this heathen king, recovered from his madness, put many a professing Christian to shame? 4. God’s works to be viewed with admiration and praise. The king struck with wonder and astonishment at those works. “How great are His signs! and how mighty are His wonders!” God’s works, whether in creation or in providence, wonderful both for their goodness and greatness. He is “fearful in praises, doing wonders.” The song of the glorified,—“Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty,”—echoed back from earth: “Thou art great, and doest wondrous things; thou art God alone.” Man’s sin not to regard the operation of his hands. “He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered” (Psalms 111:4). These wonders visible in Nature, Providence, and Grace. Discoverable in each individual’s case as well as in Nebuchadnezzar’s. The greatest wonder of all, the gift, incarnation, and death of the Son of God for man’s redemption, and, as the effect of it, the restoration of ruined millions to God’s friendship, family, and likeness. Men turned from the madness and the misery of sin to a life of wisdom, holiness, and peace, like Nebuchadnezzar’s deliverance, “the doing of the Lord, and marvellous in our eyes.” . XV.—THE DREAM OF THE TREE AND ITS (Chap. Daniel 4:4-26) We come to the occasion of the royal proclamation. This was a dream and its remarkable fulfilment, the second prophetic dream vouchsafed to the king. The present one bearing more especially on the king himself. Its results, however, such as to affect his whole empire, but more particularly the Jews that were in it. The dream and its fulfilment an important step towards the release of the Jews, and at the same time towards the spread of the knowledge of the true God, and the preparation for the advent of the promised Messiah. We notice— I. The dream itself. And here observe— 1. The time and circumstances of it (Daniel 4:4). “I was at rest in mine house.” “At rest,” after his conflicts and conquests. Probably calculating on ending his days in peace and prosperity, and enjoying the fruits of all his toils and hardships. Like the rich fool in the parable, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry” (Luke 12:16-21). A godless rest one soon to be disturbed. A poor rest that which the world can give. Job’s experience: “I said, I shall die in my nest.” Yet, how soon was that nest to be rifled! “Flourishing in my palace.” Nebuchadnezzar now in the heyday of his prosperity, “flourishing like a green bay-tree.” Everywhere successful in his campaigns, and now the established head of the first universal empire. In his “palace,” not in his tent or on the battlefield. A palace, however, unable to exclude death from our thoughts or disturbing dreams from our slumbers. A prince’s palace as liable as a peasant’s cottage to the upbraidings of conscience, and to the forebodings of death and a judgment to come. 2. The contents of the dream (Daniel 4:10-17). Here we have (1.) An immense, wide-spreading, fruit-bearing tree, a tree in its appearance and extent probably something like the banyan of the East, and seen still growing [106]. A large and noble tree, such as are common in Oriental countries; a well-known symbol for a powerful monarch or a prosperous individual. So of Pharaoh and his power (Ezekiel 31:3; Ezekiel 17:22). (2.) A command from a superior being to cut it down; that being called a “watcher and a holy one” [107], having all the appearance of an angel, while “the matter” is said by him to be “from the decree [108] of the watchers, and the demand [109] by the word of the holy ones” (Daniel 4:17), as if coming forth from the celestial council. (3.) The slump to be left in the ground, and made firm by a band of iron and brass [110], forbidding attempts to uproot it. (4.) An intimation, by the same voice, that by the tree and its stump was represented a man. (5.) The command that a man’s heart should be taken from him, and that “a beast’s heart be given him instead,” indicating the privation of intellect, with the appetites and desires of a beast of the field. (6.) The continuance of this degradation to be a period here mystically termed “seven times” [111]. [106] “The tree grew and was strong.” “The perfects ψְ ?αָ ?δ (rebhah) and ϊְּ ?χִ ?ισ (teqiph) express not the condition of the tree, but its increasing greatness and growth. Ch. B. Michaelis properly remarks, that Nebuchadnezzar saw the tree gradually grow and become always the stronger.”—Keil. [107] “A watcher and a holy one.” “The decree of the watchers” (Daniel 4:13; Daniel 4:17). ςִ ?ιψ (’ir), ςεּ ?ψ (’oor), to watch, be awake. According to Gesenius, a name given to angels, as watching over the world and the affairs of men. The Sept, Greek Venetian, and the Hebrew versions have “angels;” while Aquila and Symmachus have ἐγρήγορος, and the Vulgate “vigil,” a watcher. Bertholdt compares them with the seven Amshaspands of the Persians, who are called “watchers of the world.” Keil opposes the idea that the language is formed in accordance with this Persian representation. The term “watcher” is applied by the Fathers and in the apocryphal Book of Enoch to evil angels as well as good ones. Nork thinks that Daniel here spoke the astrological language of the Babylonian Magi. More correct, however, to say that Nebuchadnezzar thus spoke. According to Calvin, a certain angel was doubtless intended, angels being so called either from their sleepless nature, or from their office as ministers of God’s wakeful providence, and as being always awake to their duty. From Daniel 4:17, Corn, a Lapide thinks the tutelary angel of Babylon is meant. The term “holy one” added to indicate a good angel, the ε vaw, “and,” being redundant, or rather denoting even, or “that is.” So Grotius and others. Hengstenberg remarks that the whole is made perfectly clear from the Babylonian religious ideas, with which of necessity the divine revelation made to Nebuchadnezzar would be mixed up in his mind. He quotes from Diodorus Siculus, who says that to the star-gods (the five planets) thirty others are subordinated, whom they call “gods of counsel,” θεοὶβουλαίοι (ςιψιο, irin), half of whom have the superintendence of the regions under the earth, while the others overlook what is going on among men and in heaven. Keil observes: “The ‘decree of the watchers’ is a conception not Biblical, but Babylonian-heathen. According to the doctrine of Scripture, the angels do not determine the fate of men, but God alone does, around whom the angels stand as ministering spirits to fulfil His commands and to make known His counsels to men.” To instruct the king that his religious conceptions of the gods, the ςιψιο (irin), “watchers,” or θεοὶβουλαίοι, were erroneous, was not necessary for the purpose of the divine message, which was to lead Nebuchadnezzar to an acknowledgment of the Most High, Daniel doing this afterwards by explaining that the decree was from the Most High Himself. [108] “This matter is by the decree of the watchers,” τִּ ?ϊְ ?βָּ ?ξָ ?ΰ (pithgama), definite form of τִּ ?ϊְ ?βַּ ?ν (pithgam), “matter” (Daniel 3:16, at which see note). Here, a message. “By the decree,” αִּ ?βְּ ?ζֵ ?ψַ ?ϊ (bigzerath), “by or in the decree;” from βְּ ?ζַ ?ψ (gezar), to “cut, mark off,” hence to “define, determine;” whence the term βָּ ?ζְ ?ψִ ?ιο (gozrin), to denote “astrologers,” as defining the fortunes of individuals from the position of the stars at the time of their birth, or as dividing the sky into various signs, like the ancient augurs. “The message consists in or rests on the decree of the watchers.” βְּ ?ζֵ ?ψָ ?δ (gezerah), the unchangeable decision, the “divine inevitable decree imposed on men and human things” (Buxtorf); the Fate in which the Chaldeans believed.—Keil. [109] “The demand,” ωְׁ ?ΰֵ ?μְ ?ϊָּ ?ΰ (sheelta), a request, inquiry, or demand, from ωְׁ ?ΰַ ?μ (sheal), “to ask.” Keil, however, thinks that the meaning, lying in the etymon, request or question, is not here suitable, but only the derivative meaning, matter, as the object of the request or inquiry. “The word (or utterance) of the holy ones (or watchers) is the matter.” Older interpreters regarded the word as indicating the petition either of angels or men. Calvin and Junius refer it to the angels who accused Nebuchadnezzar before God, and who urged him by their prayers to humble the proud and exalt himself alone. Lyranus, whom Gaussen follows, thinks of the prayers of the saints in Babylon. They prayed, says M. Gaussen, for the conversion of the king, and God answers their prayers by bringing him for a time into the deepest humiliation. Polanus and Willet apply it to the angels, as only desiring that God’s decree might be accepted, and that the sentence given in heaven by God might be executed by men upon earth. Henry remarks: “The saints on earth petitioned for it, as well as the angels in heaven, God’s suffering people crying to Him for vengeance.” [110] “A band of iron and brass.” Keil thinks the idea is not congruous to the stump of a tree, and that the words refer certainly to Nebuchadnezzar, though not to be understood, with Jerome and others, of the binding of the madman with chains, but figuratively or spiritually of the withdrawal of free self-determination through the fetter of madness (comp. Psalms 107:10; Job 36:8). The interpretation, however, refers it to the making his kingdom secure to him after his affliction (Daniel 4:26). [111] “Seven times.” The expression enigmatical and the meaning uncertain, though probably denoting seven years, the usual interpretation.—Josephus, Junius, �colampadius, &c. Grotius thinks seven years intended, according to the Chaldean mode of speaking, a year being the most common measure of time. Bullinger and others regard the term as indefinite. So Calvin, who, however, thinks it to indicate a long period, and probably seven years. Keil considers the duration of the divine punishment decreed against Nebuchadnezzar, for purposes connected with the history of redemption, uncertain whether to be understood as years, months, or weeks. So Hengstenberg, who remarks: “It must not be said that ςִ ?γַּ ?ο (’iddan), chap. Daniel 7:25, Daniel 12:7, occurs in the sense of years: it stands in both passages properly, as here, in the independent sense of time; the more strict definition is not in the word, but is only given afterwards. But even granting that a definite period was pointed out, we should not be warranted to assume seven years any more than seven other portions of time, however large or small they might be. Nor is a period of seven years at all required for the occurrence of what is related in the narrative.” Some, mentioned in Poole’s Synopsis, have supposed that the seven years were changed into seven mouths at the prayers of Daniel; while some Jewish writers, as Aben Ezra and Abarbanel, considered the time to be seven weeks. There is little doubt, however, that the period ordinarily understood, viz., seven years, is the correct one. Dr. Rule remarks that “times” for years is not unusual, and the phrase reminds one of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon use of winters for years, as in Luke 2:42; John 8:57. The term “times” is well known in prophetic Scripture, especially in the expression “time, times, and half a time,” occurring both in Daniel and the Apocalypse, and is always understood of years, whether literal or figurative. Some students of prophecy have considered the “seven times” of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness as at once symbolical and prophetical, and as related both to the “seven times” of Israel’s threatened chastisement (Leviticus 26:18; Leviticus 26:24; Leviticus 26:28), and the “time, times, and half a time,” which is simply their half. Mr. Birks, in his “Elements of Prophecy,” remarks: “The king himself represents the succession of imperial sovereignty till the kingdom of Christ should come; the ‘seven times’ that passed over him must therefore represent the whole period of debasement in the Gentile kingdom, from the times of Nebuchadnezzar till their full redemption.” “These ‘seven times’ of the Gentiles,” says Mr. Bickersteth, “began with the subjection of Israel under Shalmaneser.” Following Mr. Birks and Mr. Bickersteth, Mr. Guinness (“Approaching Time of the End”) says, “The vision of the tree is not more symbolic of Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years’ insanity, than that incident itself is typical of certain moral and chronological features of the succession of Gentile monarchies, of which Nebuchadnezzar was both head and representative.” These features, he remarks, have been ignorance of God, idolatry, and cruel persecution of the saints—Nebuchadnezzar’s own previous character. The incidents in his life too, he thinks, answer to events in the scale of nations and centuries with which history makes us familiar. So the seven years’ bestial degradation of the monarch during his insanity answer to the period of Gentile rule represented by the wild beasts of a subsequent vision.3. Its effect upon the king (Daniel 4:5). His disturbance probably from the apprehension that the dream was of a supernatural character and foreboded evil. Dreams believed at that period to be often of such a character [112]. Often productive of powerful emotions, both of pleasure and pain, though more frequently the latter. Dreams in general “from the multitude of business;” yet not always so. The mind in sleep accessible to God and to good or evil spirits. “Thou scarest me with dreams.” If a dream can so disturb, what the reality? A relief often to find that it was only a dream. Yet dreams graciously employed in the economy of divine providence (Job 33:15-18). Sometimes made to contribute both to the preserving of a life and the saving of a soul. [112] The reader of the Iliad will remember the words, expressive of the confident belief of the period, which Homer puts into the mouth of one of his heroes— Καὶγὰρτʼ ? ὄναρἐκΔιὸςἐστίν.—Iliad, A. 63. “For even a dream too is from Jove.”4. The search for its interpretation (Daniel 4:6). The king anxious to have his dream explained. Henry observes: “When God gives us general warnings of His judgments, we should be desirous to understand His mind in them.” The interpretation of dreams an ancient belief. Such belief founded on a reality. The evidence of a connection between the visible and invisible worlds. The interpretation of dreams a study and profession in Babylon. One of the forms of soothsaying, and carried on for private gain. Generally an imposture, and failing when most needed. Joseph’s elevation in Egypt and Daniel’s in Babylon due to the interpretation of dreams, not as a human art but a divine illumination. Four classes of pretenders to such knowledge brought before the king [113]. All obliged to acknowledge their inability. Yet possibly, as time-servers, and actuated by personal considerations, now kept back by fear, the dream being obviously one of a sinister character, with a bearing upon the king himself. No small amount of courage required to declare to an Eastern despot the meaning of such a dream even when perceived. Daniel only sent for as a last resource. Faithful ministers most valued in a time of trouble or on a dying bed, but often not applied to till then. [113] “Then came in the magicians,” &c, See note under chap. Daniel 2:2; Daniel 2:27.II. The interpretation. We notice— 1. The effect of the meaning of the dream on Daniel himself (Daniel 4:19). The truth made known to Daniel at once. That truth distressing to the prophet because foreboding disaster to his royal master. His sensibility “honourable to his humanity, his loyalty, and his religion.” The dream only such as to distress all true friends of the king [114]. Faithful ministers deeply affected themselves by the denunciations they have to deliver to impenitent hearers. Paul the subject of continual sorrow of heart for his unbelieving countrymen. Tenderness and compassion among the most necessary qualifications for a minister of the gospel. The “bowels” of the Master needed. [114] “The dream be to them that hate thee,” &c. That is, may it be fulfilled to them, or rest upon them. So Keil, who remarks: “As Daniel at once understood the interpretation of the dream, he was for a moment so astonished that he could not speak for terror at the thoughts which moved his soul. This amazement seized him because he wished well to the king, and yet he must now announce to him a weighty judgment from God.” He renders ωָׁ ?ςָ ?δ (sha’ah), an “instant” or moment, instead of an “hour.”2. The king’s appeal (Daniel 4:19). Desires Daniel to declare the interpretation, whatever evil it may forbode to himself. A good sign and a mark of sincerity when a man desires the truth to be faithfully told, however it may seem to go against him. Ahab an opposite example. “I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil” (1 Kings 22:8). Something much more hopeful in Nebuchadnezzar. 3. The interpretation itself (Daniel 4:20-26). Its details: (1.) The tree is the king himself. (2.) He was to be deprived of his reason, and thus to be driven from among men to dwell with the beasts of the field, eating grass like one of them [115]. (3.) This condition of things was to continue for a lengthened period, only, however, obscurely and enigmatically intimated as “seven times” that should pass over him; long enough for his entire aspect to become changed, although only until the end designed should be accomplished, and he should learn that not man, but the Most High, “ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:25). (4.) His kingdom however should, in the meantime, be preserved to him, so that on the return of his reason he might again possess it Doleful tidings to the king, yet mixed with mercy. A dark cloud, but with a silver lining to it. So the gospel reveals the wrath of God against sin, but points the sinner to a refuge from that wrath. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). [115] “They shall make thee to eat grass as oxen.” According to the Syriac or Chaldaic idiom, for “Thou shalt be made,” &c, the indefinite plural standing for the passive. The subject thus remains altogether indefinite, so that one has neither to think of men or angels as the instruments of the infliction. “As to the eating of grass,” says Rφsch, quoted by Keil, “there is nothing to perplex or that needs to be explained. It is a circumstance that has occurred in recent times, as, e.g., in the case of a woman in the Wόtemberg asylum for the insane.” Keil also, in a note, quotes Friedreich, who observes, that “sometimes in physical maladies the nails assume a peculiarly monstrous luxuriance with deformity;” and that “it is an actual experience that the hair, the more it is exposed to the influence of the rough weather and to the sun’s rays, the more does it grow in hardness, and thus becomes like unto the feathers of an eagle.” See further under next Section.4. The exhortation accompanying it (Daniel 4:27). Daniel yearns for the king’s welfare. Not satisfied with merely declaring the truth, adds faithful counsel and loving exhortation. An example to ministers. Warm and faithful application of a discourse a thing never to be omitted. The nail not merely to be made sharp, but driven in,—“fastened by the Master of assemblies.” Daniel’s counsel to the king is— (1.) To give up sin [116]. No favour with God nor peace to ourselves till rebellion against God is given up. No peace to the wicked. Sin the great attracting rod to God’s wrath. The king’s character and life here too plainly but faithfully indicated. (2.) To practise righteousness. Well-doing in general, and justice to his subjects in particular [117]. Not enough to cease to do evil; we must learn to do well. Duty has two sides, a positive and a negative,—“thou shalt” as well as “thou shalt not.” Not sufficient to be negatively good. The king’s character and life again hinted at. Oppression and injustice the usual accompaniments of despotism. (3.) To show mercy to the poor. Something more than mere justice. Kings as well as their subjects to be not only just, but kind and merciful In relation to men, justice and mercy the two duties which God requires of us. “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Justice and mercy the reflection of God’s own character. Mercy that in which we are especially to resemble him. “Be ye merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful.” To love and do good to our fellow-men only another form of justice. Love a debt due to each. That debt never fully paid. Every man his neighbour’s debtor. That due to every one which we would wish every one to do to us in similar circumstances. Nebuchadnezzar’s past life again alluded to. Selfishness rather than regard to the poor the likely character of a despot. The greatest works in Egypt and India accomplished through the forced labours of the poor under the terror of the lash. [116] “Break off thy sins.” τְ ?ψֻ ?χ (perooq), from τְ ?ψַ ?χ (peraq), to “break off, break in pieces,” hence to “separate, disjoin, put at a distance.” Theodotion and the Vulgate improperly render the word by one which means, to “redeem.” But, “though in the Targums, τψχ is used for βָּ ?ΰַ ?μ (gaal), and τָּ ?γָ ?δ (padhah), to loosen, to unbind, of redeeming or ransoming of the first-born, an inheritance, or any other valuable possession, yet this use of the word by no means accords with sins as the object, because sins are not goods which one redeems or ransoms so as to retain them for his own use.”—Keil. [117] “By righteousness.” Theodotion and the Vulgate commit a further error by rendering this word “alms.” The passage, says Keil, is thus made to teach the doctrine of salvation by works,—“Redeem thy sins by alms.” In this rendering they are followed by many Church Fathers and Rabbis; the later Jews holding the doctrine of the merit of works, while, as Keil observes in a footnote, the Catholic Church regards this passage as a locus classicus for the doctrine of the merit of works, against which the Apologia Conf. August, first set forth the right exposition.” The same expositor remarks: “φְ ?γָ ?χָ ?δ (tsedhaqah, ‘righteousness’) nowhere in the Old Testament’ means good-doing or alms. This meaning the self-righteous Rabbis first gave to the word in their writings. Daniel recommends the king to practise righteousness as the chief virtue of a ruler, in contrast to the unrighteousness of the despots, as Hgstb., Hδv., Hofm., and Klief. have justly observed.” It may be noticed here that the term “righteousness” (δικαιοσὑνη) appears from the New Testament to have come to be used by the Jews in the time of the Saviour, and subsequently by Jewish Christians and others, in the sense of alms. In Matthew 6:1, while our version has “do not thine alms,” some ancient Greek copies have “do not thy righteousness.” The translators of the Bible, therefore, placed “righteousness” in the margin, while the Revisers of the New Testament have inserted it in the text as the preferable reading. The first verse, however, is the only place in the context where the word is used; in all the rest, Daniel 4:2-4, the word is “alms” (ἐλεημοσύνη). Righteousness is not to be confounded with alms. Calvin, however, thinks “righteousness” here means the same as grace or pity; the word pity or “mercy” being added by way of explanation, “righteousness” embracing all the duties of charity. “Righteousness,” indeed, as meaning almsgiving, may have been adopted from Psalms 112:9, which the apostle seems to have understood and quoted in that sense, 2 Corinthians 9:9.5. The encouragement (Daniel 4:27). “If it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity;” marg. “a healing of thine error” [118]. Hope ever held out to the penitent. “Let the wicked forsake his way,” &c. (Isaiah 55:7). The threatened doom might not only be delayed, but possibly averted. So in the case of Nineveh. “Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him?” (Joe 2:14). “God, even when grievously offended, not inexorable.” Hezekiah’s prayer added fifteen years to his life. So might Nebuchadnezzar’s repentance. Or if the doom must come, the days might be shortened. The specified time of its continuance indefinite. “Seven times” might be seven years or seven months. Or a happy future might be made to succeed. A probationary period of twelve months afforded. Mercy Jehovah’s darling attribute. “He delighteth in mercy.” “Afflicteth not willingly, neither doth grieve the children of men.” “Ready to forgive.” The father runs to receive with the kiss of forgiveness the returning prodigal. [118] “A lengthening of thy tranquillity;” marg. “a healing of thine error.” The Greek translator improperly has “perhaps God will be long-suffering to thee;” and the Vulgate, “perhaps He will pardon thy faults.” ΰַ ?ψְ ?λָּ ?ΰ (area), says Keil, means continuance or length of time, as Daniel 7:12; and ωְׁ ?μֵ ?εָ ?ΰ (sheleva), rest, safety, as the Hebrew ωַׁ ?μְ ?εָ ?δ (shalvah), here the peaceful prosperity of life; hence the proper rendering, “If there may be a continuance of prosperity of life,” of which the condition placed before the king is reformation of life, the giving up of injustice and cruelty to the poor, and the practice of righteousness and mercy. Calvin prefers the rendering that stands in the margin: “As if he had said, This is the proper and genuine medicine;” adding that the more received sense is, “This medicine may be suitable to the error.” Calvin and Polanus thought the calamity might be alleviated, though the punishment might be inflicted. Willet observes that Daniel sustains the double character of a prophet and a faithful counsellor; knowing that if the king humbled himself in time, it would not be unprofitable for him, he counsels him, “if so it stood with God’s good pleasure.” Daniel, says Keil, knew nothing of a heathen Fatum, but he knew that the judgments of God were directed against men according to their conduct, and that punishment threatened could only be averted by repentance. . XVI.—’S MADNESS (Chap. Daniel 4:28-37) “Riches are not for ever; and doth the crown endure to all generations?” History presents us with many and great contrasts occurring in the experience of individuals, even in the course of a single day. The monarch who in the morning has swayed the sceptre over millions of his fellow-men, in the evening has been a solitary exile or a dishonoured corpse. Herod Agrippa, in the height of his prosperity, receives in the morning the idolatrous acclamations of thousands, and in the evening is the pitiable subject of a loathsome and incurable disease (Acts 12:21-23). But perhaps the most remarkable of such contrasts is that presented in this chapter. The most exalted of earthly monarchs in the morning, is in the evening eating grass with the beasts of the field. The section before us contains the fulfilment of the king’s dream and its interpretation. That fulfilment took place in the infliction of a species of madness, of which other instances are known, though happily of rare occurrence [119]. [119] The madness of Nebuchadnezzar, and so the genuineness of the whole chapter, denied by some from the absence of any mention of the occurrence in any other book of the Old Testament, and in any ancient heathen author. But mention in the former is unlikely; and the Greek historians are regarded as entirely worthless in respect to the older history of Asia; these writers, even Herodotus himself, saying nothing about Nebuchadnezzar at all. The object of the Chaldean historians, Berosus and Manetho, was to exalt their own nation, who were, therefore, not likely to mention the circumstance. Yet Berosus says that Nebuchadnezzar, after completing the threefold circumvallation around Babylon, “fell into a feeble state of health and died, having reigned forty-three years.” Abydenus, though in a confused manner, confirms the Scripture account, and says: “After this, as the Chaldeans relate, on ascending to the roof of his palace, he became inspired by some god [madness generally considered by the ancients as an inspiration], and delivered himself thus: ‘Babylonians, I, Nebuchadnezzar, foretell you a calamity that is to happen, which neither my ancestor Bel nor Queen Beltis can persuade the fates to avert. There shall come a Persian mule [one having parents of different countries], having your own gods in alliance with him, and he shall impose servitude upon you with the aid of a Mede, the boast of the Assyrians. Rather than this, would that some Charybdis or sea had engulfed him in utter destruction, or that he had been forced some other way through the desert, where there are no cities, and no path trodden by man, but where wild beasts feed and birds roam, where he must have wandered among rocks and precipices; and that I had found a happier end before becoming acquainted with such a disaster.’ Having thus said, he expired.” Even Bert-holdt is obliged to confess that “this rare legend is in its chief points identical with our account.”—Hengstenberg. A still more remarkable confirmation, however, has been discovered in a portion of the great Standard Inscription among the cuneiform monuments of the Babylonian empire brought to light by Rawlinson. Nebuchadnezzar there appears to say, after describing the construction of the most important of his great works: “For four years the seat of my kingdom did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions 1 did not build a high place of power: the precious treasures of my kingdom I did not lay up. In Babylon, buildings for myself and the honour of my kingdom I did not lay out. In the worship of Merodach, my lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon, the seat of his sovereignty, and the seat of my empire, I did not sing his praises; I did not furnish his altars with victims. Nor did I clear out the canals.”—Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, quoted by Dr. Taylor.I. The time and place of the infliction. The time, twelvemonths after the dream—a sufficient period allowed for repentance. The opportunity, however, not improved. Sickbed resolutions often soon forgotten. Mere natural impressions evanescent. The time of the stroke was during the day, that it might be the more conspicuous as from the hand of God. The place was Babylon and the king’s own palace (Daniel 4:29). A palace, however gorgeous and well defended, not impervious to the stroke of affliction or the shaft of death. II. The king’s employment at the time. “He walked in (or upon) the palace of the kingdom of Babylon” (Daniel 4:29). Perhaps walking on the roof and enjoying the prospect of the beautiful city on which he looked down, or promenading with his queen and courtiers in the celebrated hanging gardens of the palace. We have also the thoughts he was indulging and the language to which he was giving utterance. The king spake and said, “Is not this great Babylon [120], that I have built [121] for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). ‘The king was indulging in self-gratulation and glorying in the works of his own hands. Babylon was indeed at that time a glorious city, and Nebuchadnezzar was the person who had enlarged and beautified it [122]. But, like Herod Agrippa at Cæsarea, he gave not God the glory. In raising Babylon to the pitch of grandeur which it had attained, he had done it only to himself. He was now worshipping the idol of his own hands, and himself as its creator. God was not in all his thoughts. To forget God the great sin that characterises prince and peasant in an unregenerate state. The sin for which the nations shall in justice be “turned into hell,” as robbing God of His glory (Psalms 9:17; Psalms 50:22). [120] “Great Babylon.” The whole city, we are told, formed a perfect square, each side of which was 15 miles long, making a circuit of 60 miles, and an area of 360 square miles. Its walls were perhaps the most stupendous that ever existed. Constructed of brick, cemented together with bitumen, which grows hard by being exposed to the air, they rose to the height of 350 feet, and were 87 feet thick! Twenty-five magnificent streets, running in parallel lines, 150 feet wide and 15 miles long, traversed the city from north to south, being intersected by 25 others of similar dimensions from west to east; these streets being terminated by a hundred brazen gates, and forming by their intersections 626 large squares with a circumference of 600 feet. What was most admired, however, was the temple of the god Bel and the two royal palaces; these last occupying a space of nearly three square miles, containing the celebrated hanging gardens, formed on vaulted terraces 4000 feet square, rising one above the other to the height of the walls; the topmost platform having a spacious basin filled with water from the Euphrates, forced up by a powerful hydraulic engine.—Gaussen. [121] “Which I have built.” áְּ ?ðָ ?ä (benah), “he built,” designates here not the building or founding of a city; for the founding of Babylon took place in the earliest times after the Flood (Genesis 11.), being dedicated to the god Belus, or the mythic Semiramis, in prehistoric times; but the building up, the enlargement, the adorning of the city “for the house of the kingdom,” or a royal residence.—Keil. [122] In the Standard Inscription the king says of Babylon, “The city which is the delight of my eyes, which I have glorified.” It is known that after Nebuchadnezzar had finished his military career, he set himself to improve his territory and beautify his capital. According to Herodotus, the city was built on both sides of the Euphrates, the extent of the outer wall being about 56 miles, though Ctesias makes it only 42; the area being thus five or six times that of London. The houses were frequently three or four storeys high. In each of the two divisions of the city was a fortress or stronghold, the one being the royal palace, the other the temple of Bel. The two portions of the city were united by a bridge, at each extremity of which was a royal palace. The city was not only renovated throughout by Nebuchadnezzar, but surrounded with several lines of fortifications, and increased by the addition of a new quarter. Having finished its walls and adorned its gates, he constructed a new palace, in the grounds of which, in order to gratify the taste of the queen, he formed the celebrated hanging gardens. Rawlinson, in his Appendix to Herodotus, quoted by Dr. Rule, says, “The more northern mound, now called the Mujellibeh, and crowned with the building called the Kasr, is undoubtedly a construction of Nebuchadnezzar, and may be almost certainly identified with the new palace, adjoining his father’s (Nabopolassar’s), which is ascribed to him. The size of this mound, about 700 yards each way, shows the area covered by the palace mentioned in our text. The buildings here are of superior material; and the sculptures and bas-reliefs found in them give evidence of superior magnificence. Solid masses of masonry, consisting of pale yellow bricks of excellent quality, each one, with very rare exceptions, stamped with the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar, give attestation to the truth of his recorded exclamation, ‘Is not this great Babylon which I have built?’ ”III. The infliction itself (Daniel 4:31-33). The king was struck with a species of madness, in which the sufferer imagines himself a beast and acts as such [123]. The stroke was— (1.) Sudden. The words of vainglory were still in his mouth when there fell a voice from heaven, heard by Nebuchadnezzar if by no other, “O king Nebuchadnezzar! to thee it is spoken, The kingdom is departed from thee, &c. The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar” (Daniel 4:31-33). God’s strokes often slow, but sudden when they come “While they say, Peace and safety! then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). (2.) Terrible. Reason was dethroned. The king suddenly imagines himself a beast, and begins to exhibit the instincts, cravings, and actions of such. As a madman, he is obliged to be removed from human society. “He was driven from men and did eat grass as oxen.” He was probably confined in a field, whither perhaps his changed instinct now led him, and where, as if bound with iron fetters, he indulges a bovine appetite with the beasts among which he herds. “Nebuchadnezzar,” says Matthew Henry, “would be more than a man, and God justly makes him less. God puts on a level with the beasts the man that sets up for a rival with his Maker.” The kingdom, as a matter of course, is for the time taken from him and administered by his nobles. His nails and the hair of his head and beard are allowed to grow, until the one looks like birds claws, and the other like eagles’ feathers. Alas, poor king! how changed from the glorious monarch surveying his city from the luxurious hanging gardens! And yet only a picture of the much sadder change that takes place with the sinner that is “driven away in his wickedness” by death. “The rich man died and was buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment.” (3.) Irremediable. Physicians might not be wanting, but physicians were in vain. Means might be employed to remove the madness, but means were utterly powerless. The science and skill of the wise men could effect nothing. The magicians, sorcerers, and Chaldeans tried their arts to no purpose. The case was hopeless in respect to any aid from man. It was not hopeless, indeed, in regard to God; but till the “seven times “were fulfilled, and it pleased God to remove the affliction, all the powers of earth and hell would be ineffectual. That time would mercifully come; but till then, no created might could break those “bands of iron and brass.” Resemblance and contrast to the case of the finally impenitent. No remedy to the burning tongue and still more burning conscience. Whoever enters the doleful regions of the lost leaves hope behind. As in Nebuchadnezzar’s case, there is hope from God for the sinner while on earth; but, at the bourne that separates the visible from the invisible world, the law is, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still” (Revelation 22:11; Hebrews 9:27). [123] In the view of Hengstenberg, the case was this: There is often in madness a violent desire after a free, solitary, wild life. In Nebuchadnezzar’s case, they humoured this propensity so far as it was feasible; only they had him watched that he might fall into no danger, and bound him with fetters that he might do himself no mischief. Probably they took care also that he should haunt those places only where he would not be exposed to the gaze of his subjects. Others, however, as Grotius, understand the binding with a band of iron and brass as referring to his kingdom, which was to be secured to him, rather than to his person. Probably both are intended. Keil observes that the malady of Nebuchadnezzar was that which is called insania zoanthropica, or, in the case of those who think themselves wolves, lycanthropia,—a malady in which men regard themselves as beasts, and imitate their manner of life. Dr. Pusey, who also considers the king’s madness a case of lycanthropy, quotes Dr. Brown, Commissioner of the Board of Lunacy for Scotland, who agrees in the same view, and says that the king probably “retained a perfect consciousness that he was Nebuchadnezzar during the whole course of his degradation.”IV. Its continuance. “Seven times “were to pass over Nebuchadnezzar, and doubtless did so. “At the end of the days,” says the king himself in his relation of the case, “I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and my understanding returned unto me” (Daniel 4:34). The time, whatever it was—most probably seven years, as in chap. Daniel 11:13, margin, (see note [124] under the preceding section)—at length came to an end. What man could not effect, God then in His mercy did. The removal apparently connected with a humble acknowledgment, perhaps with an act of penitence and prayer. “I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven” [125]. Power in a single look that has submission, penitence, and prayer in it. “Look unto me and be ye saved.” “They looked unto Him and were lightened.” With such a look to heaven, in a mercifully granted gleam of consciousness, the king’s deliverance came. “And mine understanding returned unto me.” The seven dark and dismal years came to an end. [124] “And I was established in my kingdom.” The supposed unlikeliness of this has been made an objection to the genuineness of the book. But, as Hengstenberg remarks, “several causes surely concurred to prevent the nobles from thinking of a change of rulers. Nebuchadnezzar was the pride of the nation; from his successor, Evil-Merodach, only mischief could be looked for; the highest officers in the realm must expect under him a deposition from their rank, as is so frequently the case in the East on a change of rulers. The general and the individual interest combined, therefore, to determine them to reserve the crown as long as possible for Nebuchadnezzar, in whose name and authority they were certainly not reluctant to rule without control.” To these reasons it may be added that the time during which the malady should continue was left uncertain, and might be short; or, if certain, the regency would only be for a definite period. [125] “I lifted up mine eyes unto heaven.” Thus paraphrased by Grotius: “I prayed to the God of heaven.” By Junius: “Before, I looked prone to the earth; now I looked up to heaven.” By Calvin: “Now I regarded the hand of Him that smote me, and acknowledged God to be a just Judge and the Revenger of the proud.”V. The result (Daniel 4:34-37). The result an obvious change for the better in Nebuchadnezzar’s spiritual condition. Probably his real conversion to God. The last thing related of him by the Spirit of God is the humble public confession which he made, and the noble testimony to the true God which, for the benefit of all men, he delivered in the edict contained in this chapter. With this mental deliverance and spiritual change came also restoration to his royal rank, and to more than his former prosperity. His case strikingly similar to that of Job, whose captivity the Lord turned after his penitent humiliation and confession (Job 42:1-10). Calvin observes that Nebuchadnezzar did not raise his eyes to heaven till God drew him to Himself, and that the dream was a kind of entrance and preparation for repentance. “As seed seems to lie putrid in the earth before it brings forth its fruit, God sometimes works by gentle processes, and provides for the teaching, which seemed a long time useless, becoming both efficacious and fruitful.” From Nebuchadnezzar’s madness we may notice— 1. The danger and intoxicating effect of long-continued prosperity. Israel was guarded against the sin into which Nebuchadnezzar fell, and which entailed on him his heavy affliction. “Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, &c. Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, &c. And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God; for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:11-18). 2. The abominable nature of pride in the sight of God. This especially the sin into which Nebuchadnezzar’s prosperity led him, and of which he makes special confession. Pride both a rivalry and a robbery of God, a deifying of the creature and an ignoring and despising of the Creator. The sin of Satan and of unregenerate men in general. “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God. God is not in all his thoughts” (Psalms 9:4). 3. The ability of God to abase and punish the proud. The lesson especially learned by Nebuchadnezzar from his affliction. Mind and body both under God’s control, and dependent on Him for their healthful preservation. His sustaining hand withdrawn, reason is dethroned, and the man of genius and intellect becomes a drivelling idiot. Diseases of every kind are but His servants and do His bidding. To madness, paralysis, and pain He has but to say “Come, and it cometh” (Matthew 8:9). 4. The certainty of divine threatenings unless averted by repentance. Months had passed away since the dream that so much disturbed the king’s peace. The dream and its interpretation, with the solemn exhortation of the prophet, had in the midst of his prosperity been forgotten. But God forgets not His threatenings. Judgment, though delayed, yet slumbers not. The warning unheeded, the hour of its fulfilment comes. 5. Mercy mingled with judgment in the present world. Gracious hopes held out to the penitent. The door of repentance kept open. Hope held out even to Nebuchadnezzar that the threatened punishment might be delayed, and would not be perpetual. What was faintly held out to him is made bright and clear to us in the Gospel. The bow in the cloud. In wrath God remembers mercy. The blood of the Surety shed, Justice can sheath her sword. This gracious state of things, however, confined to the present life. “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after death the judgment.” 6. The benefit of sanctified affliction. Nebuchadnezzar’s madness his greatest mercy. His loss of reason, and with that of everything but life, a greater gain to him than all his conquests. “Children,” said Themistocles, “we should have been undone, had we not been undone.” The best medicines often bitter and bad to take. “If our charity reach so far as to hope that Nebuchadnezzar did find mercy, we must admire free grace, by which he lost his wits for a while that he might save his soul for ever.”—M. Henry. It would be correct, though a paradox, to say he never truly had his senses till he lost them. So with multitudes; it was never well with them till it was ill. 7. The following are other useful reflections from the passage:— (1.) Sin is of a hardening nature, retaining its hold in defiance of warnings and even of repeated punishments. (2.) The most exalted of human beings is but an insignificant atom in the hand of Infinite Power. (3.) God is never unmindful either of His threatenings or of His promises, which leave the impenitent nothing to hope, and the believing nothing to fear. (4.) The punishments which God inflicts upon the wicked here or hereafter have relation to their character and demerits. (5.) As the possession of reason is the highest distinction of man, so the continuance of our mental sanity, which might in one moment be deranged, either in sovereignty or in judgment, ought to inspire our most devout and daily gratitude to Him who is the author of it.—Cox. 8. The great lesson that Nebuchadnezzar was to learn from his affliction was GOD’S AND OF THE WORLD, or that “the heavens do rule” (Daniel 4:26). Two great disputes in the world, the one moral and the other intellectual. The first, whether God or man shall rule,—whether His will or mine shall be done. The second, whether an intelligent Supreme Being exercises a continual rule and providence in the world, or whether all happens according to blind fate or fixed natural laws; in other words, whether or not “the heavens do rule.” Objections against this:— (1.) All things appear to happen according to fixed law, and to follow in a natural sequence of cause and effect. (2.) The good suffer as well as the bad. (3.) The innocent often suffer with and through the guilty. (4.) The existence of sin and suffering at all in the world. (5.) Men of the worst character often the highest and most prosperous. (6.) Infants suffer and die. (7.) The best and most useful often cut off prematurely in the midst, or even at the very beginning, of their usefulness. General answer to these objections:—We only know and see a part of God’s dealing. The web of Providence unfinished. Divine plans require time for their development. Eternity will solve all mysteries. What we know not now we shall know hereafter. Here we know only in part or in a fragmentary manner. Things will probably appear hereafter in a different light from what they do here. God alone sees the end from the beginning. Apparent evil often real good. Finite minds unable to judge the divine procedure. The present state subservient and preparatory to another. Special arguments that “the heavens do rule:”— (1.) Right conduct, as a rule, brings peace and happiness. (2.) Evil often overruled for good. (3.) The wicked often signally and unexpectedly punished. (4.) Sin and wrong-doing, as a rule, followed by suffering. (5.) A sudden arrest often laid on high-handed wickedness. (6.) Great events often made to turn upon and spring out of insignificant incidents. (7.) Human life, on the whole, a state of comparative comfort, and the course of the world one of comparative regularity. (8.) The laws of Nature beneficent, and such as to make suffering a consequence of sinning. (9.) The history of nations, but more especially that of the Jewish people. (10.) The facts of Christianity, with its origin, extension, and results even at the present day. . XVII.—’S FEAST (Chap. 5.) This chapter deservedly a favourite with general readers [126]. The magnificence, excitement, and revelry of the royal feast; the profligate king, when heated with wine, calling for the sacred vessels of the Temple, and, with his princes, wives, and concubines, drinking out of them to the honour of heathen deities; the sudden appearance, in the midst of the carousal, of a weird hand, tracing distinct but unintelligible characters on the wall; the consternation of the whole party, and the sudden stop put to all the mirth; the terror of the conscience-stricken monarch, causing his very knees to smite against each other; the hasty summoning of the magicians and soothsayers to decipher the mysterious writing; the perplexity of the king and his party when these men declare their inability to read or understand it; the appearance of the queen-mother [127] on the scene, reminding the terror-stricken king of the aged servant of his father, or rather his grandfather [128], Nebuchadnezzar, whom his excesses had driven from his court, but who was doubtless able to interpret the handwriting; Daniel’s entrance at the royal summons, with his venerable mien and hoary locks, now above eighty years of age; his faithful reproof addressed to the profane and licentious king; the solemn reading and interpretation of the divine message on the wall, each word falling like a death-knell on the ear of the guilty monarch; the bestowment of the promised reward on Daniel, the golden necklace [129] put on his neck and the proclamation issued that made him third ruler in the kingdom [130]; in the midst of this the startling report that the Persians were in the city, and immediately thereafter a tumultuous noise outside, and the entrance of foreign soldiers, brandishing naked blood-stained swords, into the banquet-hall; and, finally, the promiscuous slaughter that ensues, in which the king himself is slain [131], and the great Babylonian empire comes to an end. Seldom, if ever, have so many thrilling events been brought together in so short a space. The whole scene fitted solemnly to remind us of another, of which it may be regarded as a type—that hour of doom which is to overtake a godless and guilty world, when not a mere hand on the wall, but the Son of man Himself shall appear in the clouds, striking terror into every impenitent heart. We may note— [126] Dr. A. Clarke is of opinion that this chapter is out of its proper place, and should come in after chapters 7 and 8. Chronologically this is true; but for other reasons it has been placed where it is, leaving the whole of the second part of the book prophetical. Hengstenberg observes that in this chapter the objections are less numerous and particularly feeble. An objection has been made on the ground that no king of Babylon of the name of Belshazzar is known in history; and that the name of the last king was not Belshazzar, but Nabonnedus, according to Berosus, or Labynetus, according to Herodotus, who was not slain in Babylon, but surrendered himself a prisoner to Cyrus at Borsippa, and was kindly treated by the conqueror. Strange to say, as already remarked in the Introduction, a clay cylinder, now in the British Museum, was in 1854 discovered by Sir H. Rawlinson among the ruins of Mugheir, the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, on which is an inscription stating that the building in which it was found was the work of Nabonidus; the last of the Babylonian kings, who repaired it in 555 b.c., and that Bel-shar-ezer (or Belshazzar) his eldest son, had been admitted by him to a share in the government. There were thus two kings of Babylon at the time the city was taken; the one, the father, of whom the historians speak, and who was then at a distance; the other, the son, who was in the city at the time, and who, according to both Daniel and Xenophon, was slain on the occasion. According to Josephus and Berosus, Belshazzar, called by Metasthenes and the Septuagint Baltassar, was the son of Evil-Merodach, and reigned seventeen years; the two who reigned between Evil-Merodach, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, being Neriglessar, his brother-in-law, who slew him, and reigned four years, and Laborosoarchod, his son, who reigned only nine months; whose names, as only petty kings and usurpers, would not, Dr. Cumming thinks, be acknowledged in the chronicles of Babylon or by the sacred writers. Keil, with Hoffmann, Hδvernick, and others, is inclined to regard Belshazzar as the son and successor of Nebuchadnezzar, and to identify him with Evil-Merodach, it being the rule with Eastern kings to have several names. [127] “The queen.” According to Herodotus, this was Nitocris, a prudent woman; the queen, not of Belshazzar, but of his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, the former being already at the feast among his wives and concubines. According to Polyhistor, it was Amiyt, daughter of Astyages, sister of Darius the Mede, and aunt of Cyrus. Prideaux takes her for the mother of Belshazzar and widow of Nebuchadnezzar. So Keil. Dr. Rule observes: “Perhaps she was the wife of Nabonadius, left in the city when her husband sallied forth to meet the enemy, but who had not returned. If so, she would well remember the events of the latter part of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.” According to Josephus, she was the grandmother of Belshazzar; while Origen, Ephrem Syrus, and Theodoret, make her his mother. [128] “Thy father.” It is generally admitted that ΰַ ?α (abh) frequently signifies an ancestor in general. Belshazzar was probably a son of Evil-Merodach, who only reigned two years, and so was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. [129] “A necklace.” Among the Persians it is said to have been one of the highest honours to receive a neck-chain as a present from the king. An emblem, as among the ancient Egyptians and ourselves, of magisterial authority. [130] “The third ruler in the kingdom.” This agrees with what has been noted as to Belshazzar having been associated with his father in the government, and thus made the second ruler; an undesigned coincidence, and a singular confirmation of the genuineness of the account. Jerome and others, however, understood the third ruler to be equivalent to the Greek τριστάτης, the title given to a member of a triumvirate in the government of a kingdom or empire. Dr. Rule observes that the word agrees with the term used in Ezekiel 23:15; Ezekiel 23:23, to denote Babylonian princes, ωָׁ ?μִ ?ιωִׁ ?ιν (shalishim), or “third men;” the origin being discovered in the three charioteers or soldiers who rode in the war-chariots (1 Kings 9:22), as seen in the war scenes on the slabs of the Assyrian marbles. [131] “In that night,” &c. For the account of the taking of the city, as given by Herodotus, see page 48, note (7). The night of that event is regarded by Gaussen as “a prophetic type of the last solemn judgment of the Lord; a night so great and so terrible that the Holy Spirit frequently refers to it as the emblem of that night, a thousand times more terrible, when the Lord Jesus shall be ‘revealed from heaven with His mighty angels.’ ”I. The feast (Daniel 5:1-4). It was— (1.) Large; a thousand guests besides the king’s wives and concubines [132], marking the dissipated character of Belshazzar, as the kings of Chaldea are said to have rarely invited guests to their table. (2.) Magnificent; held in the banquet-hall of the royal palace, the guests being the highest nobility [133] in the land, the king himself reclining apart on his sumptuous couch [134]. (3.) Idolatrous; celebrated with songs of praise to their gods of gold, silver, brass, and iron, wood and stone, the feast itself being possibly in honour of the tutelary deity of the city, as the supposed author of their fancied prosperity, and the successful competitor of Jehovah, to whom Nebuchadnezzar had shown so much partiality. (4.) profane; the king, not satisfied with praising the gods of his own country, must insult and defy the God of the Jews by sending for the golden vessels of the Temple, which, nearly seventy years before, Nebuchadnezzar had brought from Jerusalem; and then, with his riotous guests, drinking out of them to the honour of his gods, as if he would again triumph over Jehovah whom Bel had conquered, like the Philistines when they placed the ark in the temple of Dagon. [132] “His wives and his concubines.” The presence of women at feasts was a custom with the Babylonians, as appears from Xenophon. The Alexandrian translator (the Septuagint), following the custom of his own time, has, strange to say, everywhere passed over the women at the feast of Belshazzar; another corroborative evidence of the genuineness of the account, as showing the writer’s intimate acquaintance with the manners and usages of the country.—Hengstenberg. [133] “His lords,” “his princes,” ψַ ?αְ ?ψְ ?αָ ?πεֹ ?δִ ?ι (rabhrebhanohi), the reduplication of ψַ ?α (rabh), great; “great men,” “magnates” of the realm. An objection has been grounded on the use of this word, which is found in the Targum, but not in the older Aramaic writings; an objection, as Hengstenberg remarks, which would apply also to the pseudo-Daniel in the time of the Maccabees, and so prove too much. [134] “Before the thousand,” μָ ?δֳ ?αֵ ?μ (laqabhel), “over against.” So Dr. Pusey, who gives the paraphrase of Ephrem Syrus, “Alone he lay over against all reclined.” A Greek scholiast, quoted by Dr. Pusey, observes, “It was their custom that each should have their own table.” So Athenζus: “When the Persian king makes a drinking feast, they (the guests) do not drink the same wine as he; they sitting on the ground, he lying on a couch with golden legs.”II. The handwriting (Daniel 5:5-9). It was— (1.) Sudden; in the midst of the mirth and revelry of the feast. (2.) Mysterious; a hand seen tracing characters high up on the wall, without any one appearing to guide it. (3.) Real; the hand and the writing visible to every one on the wall over against the great chandelier [135]; hence no effect of excited imagination or of priestly imposture. (4.) Alarming; all naturally seized with fear, but more especially the king, for whom it was intended, and whose eyes it now opened at once to his guilt and danger. (5.) Perplexing; no solution of its meaning obtainable through the usual channels, in fulfilment of Isa 47:12-13; while there is felt an inward certainty that the writing must have a meaning. The handwriting on the wall a picture of the many denunciations against impenitent sinners written by the same divine finger in the Word of God; with this difference, that while that handwriting was obscure and unintelligible till Daniel interpreted it, the denunciations in the Bible are clear as written with a sunbeam, and so plain that a child may understand them. [135] “Over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall.” Keil says, “The fingers wrote on the plaster of the wall over against the candlestick which stood on the table at which the king sat, and which reflected its light perceptibly on the white wall opposite, so that the fingers writing could be distinctly seen. The feast had been prolonged into the night; and the wall of the chamber was not wainscotted, but only plastered with lime, as in the chambers found in the palaces of Nimroud and Khorsabad, covered over only with mortar.” Dr. Rule thinks there was no ink nor colouring, the visibility of the writing being only by the effect of light and shade on the sharp relief of the characters made on the lime or cement of the wall, such as is actually found remaining on those ruins where the walls are not lined with slabs.III. The reproof (Daniel 5:10-24). Daniel, sent for by the king at the queen’s suggestion, before interpreting the writing, addresses to the king a solemn reproof. That reproof an example of uncompromising faithfulness, (1.) Reminds him of an admonitory fact in the history of his great ancestor, Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 5:20-21). (2.) Points him to his own sin in disregarding that solemn monition (Daniel 5:22). (3.) Charges him directly with pride, impious defiance of the God of heaven, sacrilegious profanity, and honouring with his praise dumb idols, instead of the God in whose hand his breath was, and whose were all his ways (Daniel 5:24). (4.) After thus faithfully convicting him of his misdeeds “in the presence of all the wealth, rank, beauty, and power of his kingdom,” he declares that the writing on the wall proclaims to him the righteous judgment of God which now overtook him, and of which it was sent as a solemn precursor, announcing at once his guilt and his impending doom. IV. The interpretation (Daniel 5:25-28). Daniel, who had been appointed by Nebuchadnezzar head of all the Magi in Babylon, and had already been distinguished as a prophet of the Most High God, now again is enabled to make good his title. Sent for in the hour of distress, after having been probably banished from the court for at least seventeen years as a drivelling fanatic, he proceeds, with the confidence and calm solemnity of an inspired man, to decipher the writing. He first reads the mystic words: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, [136]. He then slowly gives the interpretation of each. MENE—repeated for emphasis, and to indicate the completeness and certainty of the fact—“numbered, numbered;” “God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it,”—the days of thy reign, thy dynasty, and the empire of which thou hast been the guilty head, are numbered, and now come to an end. TEKEL, “weighed;” “Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting,”—the cause of the approaching doom. PERES—the singular form of the verb of which is the plural with the conjunction u (and) prefixed—“divided;” “Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians”—the very words seeming to indicate those to whom the empire was now to pass. [136] “Mene, mene,” &c. “According to the account, it was only by supernatural illumination that Daniel was able to read and explain the writing, and only because the king believed him to possess it that he was called in for the purpose. The characters must therefore have been quite uncommon, so as not to be deciphered without divine illumination.”—Hengstensberg, who also remarks that the existence of a mystic writing in Babylon is supposed in the entire narration. He supposes the “magicians,” ηַ ?ψֻ ?ξְ ?ξִּ ?ιο (khartummin), of whom Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel the master, and who are included in the wise men of chap. Daniel 2:48, were probably men skilled in such writing, such persons being found among the Egyptians, whose religious system stands in the closest relation to the Babylonians. Dr. Cumming remarks that these persons were not “magicians,” but philosophers, who held converse with God’s outer world, not with evil spirits, like the sorcerers and diviners of old. He thinks that the writing was in the pure Hebrew character, which we call Samaritan, and that it was simply from the strangeness of the character that the wise men were unable to understand it. Some of the old interpreters, as Polanus, Calvin, and Willet, ascribe their inability, not so much to the strange and unknown characters, as to the fact that they were blinded and astonished by the power of God. Dr. Rule thinks that the difficulty may have arisen from the characters or the language, or from both; and that the charracters were most probably cuneiform, no other being used in that age in Assyria and Babylonia, while there were many languages or dialects. All the ancient versions except the Syriac have, instead of four words, only three, Mene, Tekel, Phares, exactly as explained in the verses which follow. The words are differently rendered, according to the supposed form of the verbs, whether as perfect, participle, or imperative. Some think the first word is doubled for emphasis; others, as Calvin, for confirmation, and to show that the numbering was now completed. Maldonatus thinks that the reduplication, according to a Hebraism, indicates “he hath diligently numbered” alluding to the seventy years of the Jewish captivity, or the existence of the Babylonian empire. Calvin and Polanus, after R. Saadias, favour the idea of exactness. Dr. Rule observes that ξπΰ (mene), whether in Chaldee or Hebrew, signifies to “number, count out, allot,” and is employed here in the sense it bears in Isaiah 65:12. In connection with the last word, τψρ or ετψριο (peres or upharsin), Dr. Rule observes that the division or distribution indicated in the first word is unfolded in the distinct announcement of the prophet that the Medes and Persians, now employing their united forces in the siege, shall have the kingdom divided between them; the Medes, according to Herodotus, being Aryans, and the Persians of Aryan descent. Darius the Mede had precedence in the attack over Cyrus the Persian because of seniority, and held the sceptre till his death, when Cyrus took it; Darius, according to one account, having called him out of Persia to assist him in the war by taking the command of the army. Willet remarks that upharsin, the plural, refers to the Medes and Persians as the instruments, while peres, the singular, points to God as the author of the division. He thinks the writing gives both the thing predicted,—the division of the empire,—and the parties between whom it was to be divided, the Medes and Persians, Darius having Babylon, and Cyrus Assyria. Calvin, however, properly remarks, that the city was truly taken by the valour and industry of Cyrus, but that Cyrus admitted his father-in-law to the great honour of allowing him to partake of the royal authority, and that the Medes and Persians are said to have divided the kingdom, although there was properly no division of the empire. Gaussen remarks that each of the words appears to have a double signification, one in Hebrew and another in Chaldee, so that they became equivalent to six terrible sentences.V. The end (Daniel 5:29-31). Daniel’s interpretation soon tragically verified. The cup of Belshazzar’a iniquity now full. The hour of Babylon’s doom and his own had struck. The prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah were now to receive their fulfilment. The Medes and Persians already prepared by Jehovah to fulfil His purposes against Babylon (Isaiah 21:2). While Daniel was speaking, the Lord was admitting Cyrus and his Persians into the city by the two-leaved gates of brass (Isaiah 45:1-2), which opened on the river, and had that night been strangely left unshut [137]. “One post runs to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end. I will dry up her sea. The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight; they have remained in their holds; their might hath failed; they became as women. In their fear I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 51:28-39). Belshazzar falls among the slain in the same night, and Darius the Mede, otherwise called Cyaxares [138], takes by courtesy the kingdom which Cyrus his nephew had conquered. [137] Xenophon says this was done by Gadates and Gobryas, who had gone over from the Babylonians to Cyrus. Herodotus relates that in Babylon there prevailed such recklessness that no inquiry was made as to what was doing among the enemy, and so nothing was perceived of all those operations by which Cyrus had been preparing for the conquest of the city. [138] “Darius the Mede.” Some have thought that this was Darius Hystaspes. So Porphyry, Tertullian, and Cyril of Jerusalem. But, as Willet observes, Darius Hystaspes reigned third after Cyrus; and Babylon was taken twice, the first time by Darius and Cyrus, and the second by Darius Hystaspes, through means of Zopyrus. Bertholdt, Bleek, and others object against the genuineness of the book, as a historical error, that he whom Xenophon calls Cyaxares II. is here called Darius, and assert that the later author of the book only gave him the name by a confusion with Darius Hystaspes; that of Cyaxares II., Herodotus and Justin say nothing, while Herodotus, Ctesias and others, state that the Median kings close with Astyages, after whom the Persian kingdom commences with Cyrus. To this Hengstenberg replies that clear reasons can be given to show that the scanty testimonies to the existence of a Median Darius are correct. Differences of names occur also in the Hebrew writings without any one thinking of charging them with error on that account. It is also generally allowed that Darius, like many other names of kings, is not a proper name, but an appellative or surname, a mere title borne by different kings, and denoting the Tamer or Subduer. The Armenian Chronicon of Eusebius confirms the credibility of Daniel by making mention of a Darius as the last of the Median kings. Dr. Pusey says, “Who Darius the Mede was is a matter not for sacred but for secular Babylonian history, whether the Cyaxares II. of Xenophon, or Astyages, or neither,” but some descendant of Cyaxares. The name Daryawash (Darius) is confessedly an appellative, and so it is consistent with his being known in secular history by some other name. The coin called Daric is said to have been so named not from Darius Hystaspes, but from an olderking. The Darius who expelled Naboned from Carmania more likely to have been a contemporary of Cyrus than one fifteen years later. Ζschylus, moreover, makes Darius Hystaspes recount his origin from Darius the Mede.Among the thoughts suggested by the narrative are the following:— 1. The short-lived nature of unhallowed pleasure. “As the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool” (Ecclesiastes 7:6). Belshazzar and his nobles had given themselves up to pleasure, heedless of warning and danger. Their godless revelry had reached its height when king and princes are summoned to their account. 2. The certainty of divine retribution. Belshazzar’s life one of licentiousness and immorality. Despising the lesson taught by the case of his grandfather, and trusting in his fortifications, lofty walls, and brazen gates, he expected to sin on with impunity. But the judgment of hardened offenders “lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not” (2 Peter 2:3). 3. The suddenness with which punishment often overtakes the wicked. Here it was in the midst of festivity and mirth. The sacred vessels of the Temple were still in their hands, and the God defying praises of Bel on their lips, when judgment falls upon the profane rioters. The king, his princes, and his people, thought themselves secure, and laughed at the besiegers, when destruction burst upon the doomed city. “When they shall say, Peace and safety! then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and so that day come upon you unawares” (1 Thessalonians 5:2; Luke 21:34). 4. The terror of a guilty conscience. It was Belshazzar’s guilty conscience that blanched his cheeks and made his knees smite against each other as he beheld the writing on the wall. “Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all.” “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.” A heathen poet could write, “A righteous man will be found fearless, though the heavens should fall and crush him” [139]. [139] “Whiles he tasted the wine,” αִּ ?θְ ?ςֵ ?νηַ ?ξְ ?ψָ ?ΰ (bit’em khamra). Keil understands the expression to mean when the wine was relished by him, as Hitzig says, “In the wanton madness of one excited by wine.” The Vulgate has “temulentus,” tipsy. Vatablus and Calvin: heated and excited by the wine. Grotius: while drinking, the wine became more and more pleasant to him. M. Henry: when he had tasted how rich and fine the wine was, he, with a profane jest, thought it a pity not to have the best vessels to drink it in. A. Clarke: he relished it, got heated by it, and when wine got fully in, wit went wholly out. Belshazzar is usually represented as addicted to the lowest vices of self-indulgence. Wintle, however, thinks that the expression in the text may simply refer to the libation to the gods made at the beginning of the feast, and quotes the words of Virgil,’ “Primaque libato summo tenus attigit ore.”5. The aggravated guilt of unheeded warnings. Belshazzar’s special guilt that he lived a life of sin, with the case of Nebuchadnezzar before his eyes. “Thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this.” “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be cut off, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Unheeded warnings and neglected calls both hasten the stroke of judgment and make it heavier when it comes. 6. The sin of not glorifying God. The sin charged upon Belshazzar, as the sum and essence of his-guilt, that the God in whose hand his breath was and whose were all his ways, he had not glorified. The sin that robs God of His right and proclaims man a rebel against his Maker. “The Lord hath made all things for Himself.” All creatures to glorify God according to their several natures and capacities, because He has created all things, and for His “pleasure they are and were created.” The universal sin. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God.” The sin especially marked by God. Herod Agrippa eaten up of worms because he “gave not God the glory.” Yet few consider it a sin at all. 7. The stupidity of the human heart. Belshazzar’s riotous feast at the very time when the city and country were in imminent peril. With such an enemy as Cyrus at his gates and in possession of great part of the country, a fast would have been more becoming than a feast. Men often most heedless when in greatest danger. “In that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth; and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:12-13). 8. The destiny of men and nations in the hand of God. The days of Babylon and Babylon’s king were numbered. So the days of each State and of each individual in that State. “The number of his months is with Thee.” The hairs of our head are numbered, much more the days of your life. Yet man, as a free agent and a rational creature, generally responsible for the preservation of his own life and the life of others. The effect of sin to shorten the existence both of States and individuals. “The bloody and deceitful man shall not live out half his days.” On the other hand, prayer added fifteen years to Hezekiah’s life, and repentance saved Nineveh from an impending and threatened destruction. 9. The beneficial influence of woman. A woman’s presence and voice powerful amid the terror and consternation of Belshazzar’s banquet-hall. The aged queen the only one able to give counsel to the terrified and bewildered king. Presence of mind and perception of what is needed in times of perplexity and peril often found in woman. “The adaptation of woman to promote the comfort of life is a gracious provision of God; and the disposition to soothe anxiety, to alleviate suffering, to shield or aid in danger, is alike certain to operate and honourable to display.”—Cox. 10. The crime of wantonly profaning sacred things. This the acme of Belshazzar’s guilt. Men not unfrequently tempted, especially amid festivity and mirth, to commit this sin. God’s Word and ordinances sometimes profanely made to contribute to that mirth. “When the facts and the expressions of the Bible, its sublime, its pure, and its holy truths, are used, as they not uufrequently are, to point a pun, add edge to a jest or keenness to a sarcasm, to excite a laugh or to provoke a sneer, you have God’s vessels desecrated to an unhallowed and profane end. Never try to construct jests from the Bible.”—Cumming. 11. The danger of indulging in intoxicating drink. It was while drinking wine [140], perhaps not deeply, that Belshazzar, in his impious madness, called for the sacred vessels of the Temple to drink still more. The king, wicked and profane to begin with, made more so by the excitement of strong drink. Herod the Tetrarch a similar example. Wine given by a beneficent Creator for man’s refreshment and strength. But the same authority which states that wine “gladdeneth man’s heart,” says also, “Wine is a mocker, and strong drink is raging; and he that is deceived thereby is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1). The foulest crimes often, as at Belshazzar’s feast, the result of strong drink. “All those sanguinary conspiracies which issued in such a frightful effusion of Protestant blood in France were concocted at Blois, Bayonne, Paris, and Orleans, amid the festivities of the table, and in the society of the Salomes and other immoral women who constantly attended Catherine de Medici, the Herodias of the French.”—Gaussen. [140] “Whiles he tasted the wine,” αִּ ?θְ ?ςֵ ?νηַ ?ξְ ?ψָ ?ΰ (bit’em khamra). Keil understands the expression to mean when the wine was relished by him, as Hitzig says, “In the wanton madness of one excited by wine.” The Vulgate has “temulentus,” tipsy. Vatablus and Calvin: heated and excited by the wine. Grotius: while drinking, the wine became more and more pleasant to him. M. Henry: when he had tasted how rich and fine the wine was, he, with a profane jest, thought it a pity not to have the best vessels to drink it in. A. Clarke: he relished it, got heated by it, and when wine got fully in, wit went wholly out. Belshazzar is usually represented as addicted to the lowest vices of self-indulgence. Wintle, however, thinks that the expression in the text may simply refer to the libation to the gods made at the beginning of the feast, and quotes the words of Virgil,’ “Primaque libato summo tenus attigit ore.”12. The condition of unconverted men in general. That condition exhibited in the case of Belshazzar, as described in the writing on the wall,— WEIGHED IN THE AND FOUND WANTING (Daniel 5:27) 1. Weighed in the balances. The figure taken from the practice of weighing the precious metals to test their purity. The balances those of the sanctuary, of Him who is the Judge of quick and dead [141]. Held by One who is omniscient, and whose knowledge no action, word, thought, feeling, wish, or secret motive can elude; who “searcheth the heart and trieth the reins;” who is impartial and no respecter of persons; and, finally, who is spotlessly just, judging of each act, word, thought, and feeling according to its real character and circumstances, and awarding accordingly. His balances just ones, such as He loves and requires of men. The weights in the balance to weigh these actions, &c., are His own law, which is just, and holy, and good, and adapted to man’s moral nature; a law which he was created capable of fulfilling, and in the obedience of which he finds his happiness; a transcript of God’s own character, which is love, and therefore requiring only love—supreme love—to our Maker, the sum and source of all excellence, and the fountain of all blessings to His creatures, with disinterested, universal, and impartial love to our neighbour; a law that is spiritual, taking cognisance of the inward thoughts, feelings, and motives, as well as outward acts and words, and requiring love as the character and mainspring of them all; a law as broad as man’s moral nature and capabilities, requiring him to glorify God with his body and his spirit, whether he eat or drink or whatever he does, and to desire and seek the welfare of his neighbour as his own in respect to his whole being as an immortal creature, possessing body, soul, and spirit; a law that admits of no sin or the least disobedience, all such being rebellion against God; a law the penalty of which, for even the least transgression, is, as it ought to be, death, or the separation of the sinning and polluted soul from God, who is life and purity itself. Against such a law, written in men’s consciences and revealed in God’s Word, men are weighed. “The Lord weigheth the spirits.” “By Him actions are weighed.” Job gets here his desire: “Oh, that I were weighed in an even balance.” Men weighed now as they are at each moment; every action, word, thought, and feeling as it passes. The great day of public weighing hereafter, when God shall “judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has appointed,”—shall “judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” [141] “Weighed in the balances.” The ancient Egyptians represented in a symbolical manner this weighing of individuals and their actions, as taking place after death, on one of the mummy cases in the British Museum. The soul is represented as “weighed in the balances,” and answered for by the embalmer of the dead. The soul was believed, by the Egyptians at least, to repose in the tomb till its gradual increase in virtue and size demanded its translation to heaven. It is seen, on the case, after being weighed, larger and larger still, and at last, when fully grown, rising up to heaven on the spread wings of the attendant scarabζus, its cherubic emblem. The idea, however, of God as our observer and judge, weighing men and their actions as moral agents, was already a Biblical one. See Job 31:6; Psalms 62:9; 1 Samuel 2:3; Proverbs 16:2; Isaiah 26:7.2. Found wanting. Universally true ever since man fell. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” A fact universally admitted, even by the heathen. That man is a sinner as true as that he is mortal, and the latter simply because he is the former. Man not merely a sinful creature but a fallen one. “God made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions.” Man’s fall from a state of innocence a universal tradition. His character, when left to himself, notoriously not love but selfishness. “Mind number one” man’s rule of action; not “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” which is the law of God. Instead of loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, He is not in all our thoughts, and we do not desire to have Him there. The language of the natural heart, “Depart from us; we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” Dislike to a just and holy God, disregard of His will, and independence of His authority, the characteristics of fallen man in respect to his Maker. His nature corrupt, and no more the transcript of his Creator. Sin the character of his inner and outer life. His whole life oue continued shortcoming. Found wanting at every moment. The same true of every action, word, thought, and feeling, so far as they are the product of his own unrenewed nature. Even when the will may be to do what is right, the performance is wanting. Found wanting in all the relations of life, as parent and child, master and servant, ruler and ruled. A continuance in all the requirements of the law, day and night, all life through, in thought, word, and action, necessary to make him weight. Yet he continues in none, not even for an hour or a minute of his life. Hence the penalty of death incurred daily and hourly. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” “The wages of sin—all and any sin—is death.”. “Guilty before God,” the charge against every child of man; “guilty of death,” his sentence. 3. Our only hope. Hope of acceptance with God from ourselves or any works of our own impossible. Every such attempt to gain acceptance only a further shortcoming. No action, word, thought, feeling, put into the scale, but is itself short weight. No more hope from our neighbour than from ourselves. Each in the same predicament. Every man must bear his own burden. Yet man’s case not hopeless. Hope not found in himself but in another. That other is Jesus Christ, “our hope.” The hope provided by the Creator Himself. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy help found.” “He hath laid help on one that is mighty.” He who was the “hope of Israel “is the hope of a guilty world. The glad tidings from heaven—“There is born unto you a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” “This is the name by which He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness.” God in our nature, the Eternal Word made flesh, He is provided as our surety and substitute, the just one taking the place of the unjust. God’s “Righteous Servant,” fulfilling all righteousness, that, accepting and trusting in Him, His righteousness might be reckoned to us, and we might be accepted in Him. “He hath made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). To those who accept of Him, and so are in him, He is of God made righteousness as well as sanctification and redemption. Made one with Him, through acceptance of Him and trust in Him, His perfect obedience is ours, and is thrown into the scale as our own. “As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many are made righteous.” Christ’s works, not our own, make us full weight; His, and at the same time ours by virtue of union with Him. His righteousness, not our own, the garment for the marriage feast. The sin and ruin of the Jews that they rejected this robe of righteousness. “They being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3). Reader, what have you to weigh against God’s law? Christ’s works or your own? If the former, as evinced by a new heart and life, you are accepted; if the latter, still “found wanting.” Lose no time in accepting Christ as your righteousness. You may even yet have His works put into the empty scale as your own. But soon it will be too late. Accept in time, or you are undone. . XVIII.—THE PLOT (Chap. Daniel 6:1-9) Another of the deeply interesting chapters of Daniel. A former one exhibited faith “quenching the violence of fire;” this presents the same faith “stopping the mouths of lions.” The events recorded took place in the reign of a Persian monarch named Darius, generally understood to be the Darius mentioned in the conclusion of the previous chapter, and the same who is called by a Greek historian Cyaxares the Younger or Cyaxares II., the son of Astyages and uncle of Cyrus [142]. We have— [142] “Darius.” Keil observes that Hitzig confesses that the identity of this Darius of Daniel with the Cyaxares of Xenophon is placed beyond a doubt. How long his reign in Babylon lasted is not stated in this book, or learned from any other direct source; but it is correctly supposed that he reigned two years, his reign giving place to that of Cyrus, by whom the writing on the wall was fully accomplished. The character of Darius fundamentally different from that of Nebuchadnezzar, the latter being distinguished by energy and activity, while Darius was a weak prince, wanting in energy, and allowing himself to be guided and governed by his officers of state. Some, as Mr. Bosanquet, still think that the Darius, under whom Daniel lived and wrote his later prophecies, was Darius Hystaspes, who is mentioned in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah and in the Book of Ezra (Haggai 1:1; Zechariah 1:1; Ezra 4:24; Ezra 5:6; Ezra 6:1). Dr. Pusey observes that the identification of Cyaxares II. with “Darius the Mede “is only a probable historical conjecture, with which Daniel is in no way concerned.I. Daniel’s elevation (Daniel 6:1-3). The Medes and Persians were now in possession of Babylon. The first of the four great monarchies had passed away, and the second, indicated by the silver breast and arms of the great image, had succeeded it. Darius, the first ruler of the new empire, had, probably at the suggestion of Cyrus, divided the kingdom into a hundred and twenty provinces or satrapies [143], afterwards increased under Xerxes or Ahasuerus to a hundred and twenty-seven (Esther 1:1). Over each of these provinces was a prince or satrap, and over the whole of the princes were placed three presidents, of whom Daniel was the chief [144], Darius having probably only confirmed him in the office to which he had already been promoted by Belshazzar. Indeed, for the excellent spirit that the king found to be in him, he even thought to place him over the whole empire as his viceroy or khedive, giving him all the power over the several departments of the state “that would have enabled him to enforce obedience and punish dereliction.” [145][143] “An hundred and twenty princes.” Keil remarks that when Daniel mentions so large a number of satrapies, it is no argument against the credibility of the narrative, as if, according to Hitzig, the kingdom was too small for so many satrapies in the Persian sense, so that they must be understood rather as Grecian ones. The division of the kingdom, however, by Xerxes (Esther 1:1) into 127 provinces shows that it might have been previously divided by Darius the Mede into 120. The Median Darius might be led to appoint one satrap or prince, i.e., a prefect clothed with military power, over each district, since the kingdom was but newly conquered, that he might be able to suppress every attempt at insurrection among the nations coming under his dominion. Dr. Cox remarks that Xenophon informs us that Cyrus devised the plan of government with regard to conquered nations, which is here ascribed to Darius; and that Archbishop Ussher therefore supposes, with great probability, that it was first devised by Cyrus, and at his suggestion pursued by Darius. Dr. Rule observes that the presidents of the 120 princes, viceroys or satraps, received and administered the revenue, Daniel being First Lord of the Treasury. [144] “Of whom Daniel was first.” M. Gaussen remarks: “What profound wisdom, vast capacity, and extensive knowledge must he have possessed! But also what decision, integrity, and equanimity, for the princes of the Medes and Persians to think of putting at the head of so powerful an empire a man, a stranger, a Jew, a captive, a servant of their enemies, and, moreover, an old man, now eighty-five years of age at least!” [145] “Save thee, O king.” The Persian kings were regarded as incarnations of the deity. Gaussen observes that Nebuchadnezzar claimed divine honours. Alexander the Great pretended to be a god, and the son of a god. The Roman emperors required themselves and their images to be worshipped. And in our own day the Pope lays claim to religious homage, being at his consecration fumed with incense and placed on the altar of God, while the people kiss his feet, and all the cardinals cry, Venite adoremus, “Come let us adore him!”Darius had seen and heard enough of Daniel to convince him that his own interest lay in employing him in the most responsible office in the realm. Wisdom, prudence, disinterestedness, conscientiousness, and fidelity, so combined in his character as to mark him out as the man on whom above all others the king could depend. The resemblance in this, as in some other respects, between Daniel in Persia and Joseph in Egypt, is obvious and striking. “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings, and shall not stand before mean men?” “Them that honour me I will honour.” II. The conspiracy (Daniel 6:4-5). Promotion to honour often the precursor of trouble. The presidents and princes could not see Daniel, a foreigner, a captive, a Jew, a man of an entirely different religion from their own, without the worst feelings of our fallen humanity coming into play. “Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous; but who can stand before envy?” (Proverbs 27:4). Daniel, too, was a man of uprightness and principle, which the presidents and princes were not. The former, were to receive and examine the revenue accounts of the latter, that the royal exchequer might not be defrauded. But the presidents might be corrupt as well as the princes. Will Daniel connive at their peculation? Daniel was faithful to his sovereign, because faithful to his God. Duty to God secures the faithful discharge of our duty to man. Daniel made his master’s interest his own; and hence kept a strict look-out on both presidents and princes. He aimed, according to his office, not only at doing his own duty to the king, but at keeping others at theirs also. Hence his troubles. In a corrupt world, “he that departeth from evil” too often “maketh himself a prey.” Daniel’s colleagues became his enemies. Like Joseph’s brethren in Egypt, they hated him, and must have him out of the way. The question was how? Accusation against his moral or official conduct they could find none. “Every attempt to find a flaw, to prove a weakness, or to justify a suspicion, either of disloyalty or maladministration, failed.” The only way to entrap him must be in connection with his religion, in which they knew him to be as strict and conscientious as he was in his official duties. A clever and diabolical scheme was concocted that promised complete success. This was by placing his obedience to God in antagonism with his obedience to the king. III. The decree (Daniel 6:6-9). The scheme was this. Daniel was known to be a man of prayer, and to repair to his chamber at stated times in the day for that purpose. Get the king to sign a decree forbidding any one to present a petition to either God or man for a whole month on pain of being cast in a den of lions. The king will be flattered by the proposal, and Daniel will be caught. They will watch him, whether he will observe the decree and save his life, or go to his knees as usual. In the latter and most likely case, the decree once signed by the king, the representative of the unchanging deity, being irrevocable, Daniel is a lost man, and they are rid of their rival. The decree being accordingly drawn up, was presented to the king for signature. The weak monarch, not perceiving the object of the princes, perhaps flattered with the appearance of their loyalty and devotion, and pleased at the idea of being thus for a time superior to both gods and men, readily complied with the proposal and signed the decree. “Oh, purblind race of miserable men!How many among us at this very hourDo forge a lifelong trouble for ourselvesBy taking true for false, or false for true!”But for divine interference, this would now have been realised in Darius. The presidents and princes, having obtained their desire, returned home triumphant. Daniel’s doom was sealed. Observe from the passage— 1. Godliness no hindrance to greatness, and prayer no obstacle to promotion. Daniel in Babylon and Joseph in Egypt notable examples. In many respects natural. But for prevailing sin in the world, and the influence of him who is its prince and the enemy of all goodness, godliness would be the surest way to greatness, and prayer the certain path to preferment. Godliness and prayer secure the necessary requisites for positions of trust—wisdom, uprightness, and fidelity. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, and it shall be given him.” Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States, was pre-eminently a man of prayer. General Havelock, though burdened with the care of the army during the terrible mutiny in India, managed to keep sacred for prayer a considerable time in the morning of every day. Sir Thomas Browne wrote in his journal as an admonition to himself, to be sure to let no day pass without calling upon God in a solemn manner seven times in the course of it. 2. The excellence of true religion. “The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour.” Seen even by a heathen monarch in the case of Daniel. Hence his elevation. His enemies unable to find a flaw in him. His steadfastness in religion the only ground for accusation against him. A godly man firm and fearless in the discharge of his duty. His religion not put on or off to suit the season. Daniel known to prefer fidelity to life, and death to deviation from duty. The part of a truly godly man to act not from expediency but from principle. His inquiry, not what will be most advantageous, but what is right. His concern not to appear, but to be just and good. His aim to please God in the first place, and man in the second. True godliness, symmetrical and all-embracing; extends to principles and practice, to the temper and the tongue, to private and to public conduct, to our duty to God and our duty to man in every relation of life. 3. The depth of human depravity. Seen in the conduct of Daniel’s enemies. Hates the good because they are good, and because their goodness rebukes our evil, and stands in the way of our sinful courses. Contrives their overthrow, and even plots their death. Commits murder in the heart, and then, when it can be done safely, in the act. Practises hypocrisy in order to conceal our wickedness and make others accomplices of our crimes. Steels the heart against pity, and finds pleasure in the torture of the innocent. The character and conduct of Daniel’s enemies shows what man is by nature since the first sin robbed him of his Maker’s image. Left to himself, man exhibits the image of his tempter. It was the testimony of Him who was at once Truth and Love, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” The witness true of unrenewed men, whether Persian princes or pharisaic Jews. History as well as daily observation and experience prove that the Bible picture of man’s depravity is not overdrawn,—“Foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another;” “full of envy, murder, deceit, malignity” (Titus 3:3; Romans 1:29). Verily man needed a Saviour, and, thanks to divine mercy, a Saviour has been found. “Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). 4. The certain exposure of the godly to persecution. Moral excellence no shelter from the shafts of malice, but rather their natural butt. Socrates and Aristides examples among the heathen. A natural and necessary antagonism between light and darkness, good and evil. “The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it that the deeds thereof are evil.” “If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” The natural consequence, so long as the world is what it is, “lying in wickedness,” or under the power of the wicked one. Its hatred, opposition, and persecution, in one form and at one time or another, the necessary accompaniment of fidelity to God and conformity to Christ. “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you.” “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you.” “All they that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” To possess Daniel’s character, we must be prepared, sooner or later, more or less, to share Daniel’s experience. The experience of Daniel only that of Daniel’s Lord. “The disciple not greater than his Master.” 5. The responsibility of men in power. Darius made the tool of wicked designing men, and virtually the author of a cruel murder. Forgetting the claims of justice, truth, and mercy, and blinded by a foolish ambition, he heedlessly consigned to a dreadful death the best and most faithful subject in his realm. Rulers in a condition either to further or defeat the designs of the wicked. Princes too often allow themselves to be the tool of priests in carrying out their persecuting projects, and so made participators in the death of God’s saints. To this source much of the persecutions of Papal Europe to be ascribed. Men responsible for the evil they might prevent, as well as for the good they might accomplish. . XIX.—DANIEL A MAN OF PRAYER (Chap. Daniel 6:10-11) Daniel’s enemies had so far gained their object. The royal decree that was to remove him out of the way was already signed. It only remained to be put into execution. How was Daniel employed in the meantime? Just as usual. Fidelity to God forbade him to yield obedience to the decree; faith in God led him as usual to his closet. With his window open towards Jerusalem, reminding him of the promises of God to His praying people (1 Kings 8:40-49), he kneeled down and prayed with thanksgiving three times a day, “as he did aforetime.” A fine exhibition of the man of God here presented. “When Daniel knew that the writing was signed.” “He knew too that it was aimed at him, and that it was a compound of malignity and absurdity; but he uttered no reproach, and made no remonstrance either with his persecutors for their injustice, or against them in appeal to the misguided sovereign. ‘He went into his house.’ And for what purpose? Not to devise a counterplot; not to indulge in bitter lamentations over his hard lot, or secret repinings at the conduct of Providence; but to pray. This was his habit ‘three times a day,’ and he continues the practice as before. The Holy City with its Temple was now desolate, but he prayed with his window ‘open in his chamber toward Jerusalem;’ the Temple being regarded by the pious Jews as a type of Christ, while the circumstances of its dedication filled their minds with sentiments of the profoundest awe and solemnity. ‘He gave thanks before his God;’ a devout heart finding reasons for gratitude when others can perceive nothing but occasions of lamentation.”—Cox. Daniel as a man of prayer was— 1. Constant. He prayed as he was wont. Prayer had been his habit, and that habit was not likely to be suspended now when it was most needed, though its exercise might cost him his life. A truly godly man prays at all seasons, in the gloom of adversity as well as in the sunshine of prosperity. Daniel had prayed in the midst of public business under Nebuchadnezzar, as one of his councillors of state; he had prayed in the quiet retirement of private life under Belshazzar, when his godliness removed him from the court; he had prayed again under Darius, as ruler over a third part of the empire and First Lord of the Treasury. He prays now in the prospect of a horrible death which he knows his prayers will cost him. “Will he always call upon God?” is asked by Job as the test that distinguishes a true servant of God from a hypocrite. Daniel known in Babylon and at court as the man that served God “continually” (Daniel 6:16; Daniel 6:20). 2. Regular. Daniel, like the Psalmist, had his regular seasons for prayer, three times a day. “Evening, morning, and at noon will I pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice” (Psalms 55:17). The rule not suspended even now when his enemies were watching to find him in the act. Prayer with Daniel, as with every truly godly man, more than his necessary food. Morning saw him on his knees giving thanks for the mercies of the night, and craving guidance, help, protection, and blessing during the day. Noon saw him returning to the exercise, seeking refreshment in communion with his God, and a mind kept above earthly things. Evening found him again in his closet, giving thanks for the mercies of the day, and seeking pardon for shortcomings, a blessing on his labours, and the divine presence and protection during the night. Daniel prayed without ceasing, carrying ever with him a prayerful spirit, and, like Nebemiah, lifting up his heart to God repeatedly during the day as occasion suggested. But he felt the need of meeting with God more freely and fully at stated times. “Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer it easily slips from our memory; and therefore, although Daniel was constant in pouring forth prayers, yet he enjoined upon himself the customary rite of prostrating himself before God three times a day.”—Calvin. How much may be lost by omitting the prayer “at noon!” 3. Believing. “His windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem.” Expressive of his belief in the promise made by God at the dedication of the Temple, in regard to those who should in any place pray towards that house (1 Kings 8.) So David lifted up his hands towards God’s “holy oracle” and worshipped “toward His holy Temple” (Psalms 5:7; Psalms 28:2). Thus Daniel prayed, believing the promise. “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Believing prayer that which is made in God’s own way and in dependence on His promise. The eye to be now directed in prayer, not to Jerusalem, but to Jesus at God’s right hand, the true Temple with its ark and mercy-seat. The promise is now, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you” (John 15:16; John 16:23). “Seeing that we have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we many obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16). Our Propitiation or mercy-seat, for whose sake God can be propitious, pardon our sins, and hear our prayers, is “Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:2-3). “What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering” (Mark 11:24; James 1:6). 4. Fearless. Daniel went to his chamber—the upper chamber, chosen for quietness and freedom from interruption, like the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 1:13-14; Acts 2:1-2). The window of lattice-work open, as usual on such occasions, toward Jerusalem. This now done by Daniel at the peril of his life. Carnal prudence might have suggested a different course for the present. This, however, would have appeared only cowardice and deceit. Daniel acted in the spirit of Nehemiah, who, when tempted by his enemies to shut himself up in the Temple to save his life, said, “Should such a man as I flee?” (Nehemiah 6:11). So Jesus, when some of the Pharisees tempted Him to flee for His life,—“Get thee out and depart hence, for Herod will kill thee,”—said, “Go ye and tell that fox, Behold I cast out devils, I do cures to-day and to-morrow.” The fear of God raises us above the fear of man. True faith makes men heroes. “Fear not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” The lions’ den could be but a shorter way to paradise. The fearlessness of faith not to be confounded with foolhardiness. One thing to put oneself in the way of danger, and another not to go out of the way of duty. Prayer to God as usual was Daniel’s duty, though the passage to his chamber was the passage to the lions’ den. “It was necessary to testify before men his perseverance in the worship of God; to have altered his habit at all would have been a partial abjuration, and proof of perfidious defection. God not only requires faith in the heart and the inward affections, but also the witness and confession of our piety.”—Calvin. 5. Cheerful. Daniel not only prayed but “gave thanks” to God. Thanksgiving naturally a cheerful thing. “I will praise the name of the Lord with a song; I will magnify Him with thanksgiving” (Psalms 69:30). Daniel went to his chamber not only to pray but to give thanks. Went, therefore, with a cheerful, not a downcast countenance. Realised how much he had to give God thanks for. That he had been made to know Him, and to know Him as his God and Father, and the Hearer of prayer; that He had been his help and deliverer hitherto; and that even now he was honoured to confess Him before men, and perhaps to suffer for His sake. All these sufficient causes for thankfulness, and therefore for cheerfulness. Daniel solemn in the prospect of death, but not sad. Stephen’s face, in similar circumstances, like the face of an angel. Thanksgiving accompanying prayer makes prayer cheerful and joyous. Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” Remembrance of God’s mercies gives brightness, not only to the past, but to the present and the future. “Because Thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice.” With the Lord for his God and Saviour, why should Daniel not give thanks and rejoice? “Though the fig-tree shall not blossom, &c., yet will I rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation.” Prayer, resting on the promise, cannot but be cheerful; prayer, accompanied with thanksgiving, must be still more so. Hence thanksgiving always to accompany prayer. “Pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks.” “By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God” (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18; Philippians 4:6). Grace enabled Daniel to give thanks and rejoice in the prospect of a painful death. Faith sings a joyous pæan where Nature offers only a doleful dirge. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” So Paul and Silas not only prayed but sang praises to God in the prison. Daniel gave thanks “to his God.” That God was “his God” in itself a sufficient ground for thankfulness, whether in life or in death. The expression indicative of the holy joy with which this aged saint poured out his heart before God, even now in the prospect of a lion’s den. 6. Earnest. Daniel not only prayed, but “made supplication” (Daniel 6:11). Supplication is prayer intensified, a beseeching or pleading for special and needed mercies; entreaty. Prayer always to take this form, or to have supplication connected with it. Hence the two generally conjoined. “With prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God.” “Praying always, with all prayer and supplication.” “So Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). The Holy Spirit a “Spirit of grace and supplication;” and makes intercession for us “with groanings that cannot be uttered.” The more there is of the spirit of prayer and of felt need, the more there will be of supplication in our prayers. The fervent prayer the effectual one. “Elias prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it rained not,” &c. So Daniel employed entreaty in his prayer. That entreaty not necessarily merely for himself. The cause of God, of his brethren, and of his fellow-men, probably more on Daniel’s heart at that hour than his own. His prayer that of a burdened spirit, but burdened more for others than himself (chap. 9.) Daniel’s prayer always with supplication, but probably now more than usual. “Shall not God avenge His own elect, who cry day and night unto Him continually?” For himself he now needed special strength to endure the fiery trial that was to try him; grace to be faithful unto death, and to glorify God in the fire by patience and serenity; the comfort of the Divine presence, if called to suffer the threatened penalty, according to the promise, “When thou walkest through the fire thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee;” “Fear not, for I am with thee” (Isaiah 43:2; Isaiah 43:5). \rtf\cf0\i0\b0\ulnone\nosupersub . XXI.—THE IN BABYLON (Chap. Daniel 6:24-28) The deliverance of Daniel was a signal display of the power of Jehovah and His presence with His people. Even the king, who seemed to have some idea that God might possibly interpose on His servant’s behalf, was probably taken by surprise; like the believers in Mary’s house when Peter, released in answer to their prayer, stood before the door. No sooner was Daniel taken up out of the den than judgment began on his enemies. “The righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead.” Sooner or later “judgment taketh hold of the wicked.” Conspicuous reward also awaited God’s faithful servant. The whole scene exhibits one of judgment, and affords a picture of another on a larger scale yet to come. We notice separately— I. The judgment on Daniel’s enemies (Daniel 6:24). That judgment was not long in following Daniel’s deliverance. According to the king’s command, they are immediately taken and cast into the den from which Daniel had been taken. Digging a pit for their friend, they fall into it themselves. Virtually guilty of murder, they suffer the murderer’s doom. Though hand joined in hand, they were not allowed to escape. Their rank and their number no screen from justice. Showing no mercy themselves, they receive none. Haman must be hung on his own gallows. The extension of the punishment to the wives and children, who were innocent, according to the custom of the time and people [148]. Great crimes sometimes made, by special command of God, to involve a man’s house and family as well as himself, even among the early Israelites (Numbers 16:27-33; Joshua 7:24-25). Forbidden, however, by the law of Moses that children should suffer for the sins of fathers (Deuteronomy 24:16; 2 Kings 14:6). Tradition relates, what is probable enough in itself, that these princes would not believe that any miracle had been wrought in Daniel’s favour, the lions having been abundantly fed before he was thrown in. To convince them of the contrary, “the lions brake all their bones before even they reached the bottom of the den.” Infidelity will believe in nothing supernatural till it finds itself in the hands of Him who says, “Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver” (Psalms 50:22). [148] “Them, their children, and their wives.” Keil observes: By the accusers, we are not (with Hitzig) to think of the 120 satraps, together with the two chief presidents, but only of a small number of the special enemies of Daniel, who had concerned themselves with the matter. The condemning to death of the wives and children along with the men was in accordance with Persian custom, as is testified by Herodotus, 3:119, Amm. Marcell. 23:6, 81, and also with the custom of the Macedonians in the case of treason (Curtius, Daniel 6:2), but was forbidden in the law of Moses (cf. Deuteronomy 24:16).II. The royal decree (Daniel 6:25-27). The deliverance of Daniel was followed by a decree similar to that of Nebuchadnezzar on the return of his reason. The decree was in honour of the true God, who had delivered Daniel from the power of the lions. He is declared to be the living God and steadfast for ever, the Ruler of a kingdom that shall not be destroyed, and the possessor of an everlasting dominion; a God that rescueth and delivereth, and who worketh signs and wonders in heaven and earth. Men were to tremble and fear before Him in every part of his realm, which at least implied that they were to treat His name, worship, and religion with reverence and respect. This exaltation of Jehovah one of the objects of this as well as the other miracles recorded in the book, tending, at the same time, to the welfare of the people in general, and to that of the Jews in particular, as well in providing full toleration for their religion during their dispersion, as in preparing the way for their restoration to their own land. The great object of all God’s dealings in providence that men may fear Him, that fear being at once their excellence and their happiness. Such the final issue of the judgments yet to be displayed. “Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for Thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are made manifest” (Revelation 15:4). The deliverance of Daniel as a faithful servant of Jehovah proclaimed in the decree, as a testimony at once to His power and faithfulness, and an encouragement to all to make Him their trust in like manner, as the God that delivers and rescues those who serve and trust in Him. Thus Daniel himself was honoured through all the widely-extended realm of Persia. “Them that honour me I will honour.” So at last in reference to those who fear the Lord and think upon His name in a God-forgetting age. “They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not” (Malachi 3:17-18). III. Daniel’s prosperity and extended life (Daniel 6:28). Externally Daniel had seen the last of his trials. He lived to see the end of the short reign of Darius—how much is uncertain—and a portion, at least, of the longer reign of Cyrus, his successor [149]. During the whole of that last period of his life he prospered. He continued probably in his high office as chief of the three great presidents of the empire. At the accession of Cyrus, his influence at court was such that Cyrus, doubtless as the result of it, issued the decree recorded in the end of 2 Chronicles and the beginning of Ezra, giving permission to the Jews to return to their own land and rebuild their Temple at Jerusalem. It is said that the aged minister pointed the king to the passage in Isaiah, where he is mentioned by name as the conqueror of Babylon and the chosen deliverer of Jehovah’s covenant people (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1). The prosperity of Daniel to be noted in connection with the fiery trial which had tried him and the death which had threatened him. “This Daniel;” the same whom his enemies had nearly swallowed up; the same who had been faithful unto death, and had been only delivered from the mouths of the lions by a divine interposition. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” The happiness of believers to be able to say with Paul, “Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver; in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:10). Observe among the lessons of the passage— [149] “In the reign of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian.” αְּ ?ξַ ?μְ ?λּ ?εּ ?ϊ (bemalcuth), “in the reign,” the word denoting both reign and kingdom. From the repetition of the word before Cyrus, observes Keil, it does not follow that Daniel separates the Persian kingdom from the Median; for ξַ ?μְ ?λּ ?εּ ?ϊ here does not mean kingdom, but dominion, i.e., reign. The succession of the reign of Cyrus the Persian to that of Darius the Median does not show the diversity of the two kingdoms, but only that the rulers of the kingdoms were of different races. From this verse, taken in connection with the last of the preceding chapter, it appears that the Chaldean kingdom, after its overthrow by the Medes and Persians, did not immediately pass into the hands of Cyrus; but that between the last of the Chaldean kings and the reign of Cyrus, Darius, descended from a Median family, a son of Ahasuerus (Daniel 11:1), held the reins of government. This Darius and his reign are not distinctly noticed by profane historians; and hence modern critics have called in question his existence, and thence derived a supposed argument against the historical veracity of the whole narrative. The account given by Xenophon in his Cyropedia, differing somewhat from that of Herodotus, shows that this Darius the Mede is the same person whom he calls Cyaxares II. According to him, the Median king Astyages, son of Cyaxares I., gave his daughter Mandane in marriage to Cambyses, king of Persia, who was under the Median supremacy, of which marriage Cyrus was born. When Cyrus arrived at man’s estate, Astyages died and was succeeded by his son Cyaxares II., the brother of Mandane and uncle of Cyrus. When, after this, Cr�sus, king of Lydia, concluded a treaty with the king of the Assyrians (Babylonians), with a view to the overthrow of the Medes and Persians, Cyrus received the command of the Medo-Persian army; and when, after a victorious battle, Cyaxares was unwilling to proceed farther, Cyrus carried forward the war by his permission, and destroyed the host of Cr�sus and the Assyrians; at the report of which Cyaxares fell into a passion, and in a threatening letter to Cyrus, ordered the Medes to be recalled. These declaring their desire to remain with Cyrus, the latter entered on the war against Babylon independently of Cyaxares. Having driven the Babylonian king back upon his capital, he sent a message to Cyaxares, desiring him to come and decide regarding the vanquished and the continuance of the war. Cyaxares accordingly came to the camp, where Cyrus exhibited to him his power by reviewing his army before him, treated him kindly, and gave him a large share of the plunder. After this, the war against Babylon was carried on in such a way that Cyaxares, sitting on the Median throne, presided over the councils of war, while Cyrus, as general, had the conduct of it. After conquering Sardis and taking Cr�sus prisoner, Cyrus returned to Babylon, and during a nocturnal festival of the Babylonians took the city, upon which the king of Babylon was slain. After the conquest of Babylon the army regarded Cyrus as king, and he began to conduct his affairs as if he were so. He went, however, to Media to present himself before Cyaxares, brought presents to him, and showed him that there was a house and palace ready for him in Babylon, where he might reside when he went thither. Cyrus now went to Persia and arranged that his father, Cambyses, should retain the sovereignty of it so long as he lived, and that then it should fall to him. He then returned to Media and married the daughter of Cyaxares, receiving with her the whole of Media as her dowry, Cyaxares having no son. He next went to Babylon, and placed satraps over the subjugated peoples; and so arranged that he spent the winter in Babylon, the spring in Susa, and the summer in Ecbatana. “This account given by Xenophon regarding Cyaxares,” says Keil, “so fully agrees with the narrative of Daniel regarding Darius the Mede, that, as Hitzig confesses, ‘the identity of the two is beyond a doubt.’ ”1. The certainty of divine judgments. “Verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth.” Daniel’s enemies in fancied security after the king had affixed his seal to the stone over the mouth of the den. The night probably spent in pleasure and mutual congratulations. So on the slaughter of the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11:7-11). But “the triumphing of the wicked is short.” The wicked sometimes punished in this world, that men may know there is a God that judgeth; only sometimes, that they may know there is a judgment to come. 2. The godly ultimately delivered out of trouble. Daniel delivered a second time from imminent death when no human power could rescue him. “In six troubles He shall deliver thee, and in seven no evil shall befall thee.” Trouble and deliverance the common experience in the way to the kingdom. “Thou knowest what persecutions I endured; but out of them all the Lord delivered me” (2 Timothy 3:10-11). “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation) ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). The angel that redeemed Jacob from all evil, the Angel of the covenant, stands engaged to deliver the Israel of God from every evil work, and to preserve them to His heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18). 3. Events in providence made to promote the glory of God and the advancement of His kingdom. “The Lord hath made all things for Himself.” The course of the world is but the course of divine providence, and divine providence is only God’s government of the world He has made, and His conducting it to the end for which He made it. In that providence He makes the wrath of man to praise Him, while the remainder of wrath He restrains. The decree of Darius a foreshadowing of the time when the kingdoms of the world shall become “the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). All things made to tend to this ultimate consummation. This the Redeemer’s reward, as it is the result of His redeeming work. “He shall see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied.” Adequate power provided for the object. “Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power.” What was done at Pentecost at the commencement of the Christian dispensation, only an earnest and pledge of what shall be done at its close. “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.” 4. The power and preciousness of divine grace. That grace seen in Daniel to be able to preserve the godly in a course of high-toned morality and religion during the course of a long life, in the midst of diversified temptations and in the most unfavourable circumstances. Daniel an example of Psa 92:12-15. “As perseverance is the one final touchstone of man, so these scattered notices combine in a grand outline of one, an alien, a captive, of that misused class (the eunuchs) who are proverbially the intriguers, favourites, pests of Oriental courts, who revenge on man their ill treatment at the hand of man; yet himself in uniform integrity, outliving envy, jealousy, dynasties; surviving in untarnished, uncorrupting greatness; the seventy years of the captivity; honoured during the forty-three years of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign; doing the king’s business under the insolent and sensual boy Belshazzar; owned by the conquering Medo-Persians; the stay, doubtless, and human protector of his people during those long years of exile.… Such undeviating integrity beyond the ordinary life of man, a worshipper of the one God in the most dissolute and degraded of the merchant cities of old, first minister in the first of the world-monarchies, was in itself a great fulfilment of the purpose of God in converting the chastisement of His people into the riches of the Gentiles.”—Pusey. relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXII.—THE VISION OF THE FOUR BEASTS (Chap. Daniel 7:1-7) We now come to the second and principal part of the Book of Daniel, the prophetical portion, the narratives it contains being merely introductory to the visions. The present, as well as the succeeding chapter, chronologically anterior to the preceding one, this vision having been given in the first year of the reign of Belshazzar, probably twenty-three before the events narrated in the preceding chapter; the editor or arranger of the book, whether Ezra or Daniel himself, having for convenience placed the narrative before the present and following chapters, in order to preserve uninterrupted the continuity of the prophecies. The present chapter, in its matter as well as its position, the central portion of the book. It is in both respects to the Book of Daniel what the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is to that epistle. Next to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and perhaps the ninth chapter of this same book, we have here the most precious and prominent portion of the sure word of Messianic prophecy. The chapter worthy of the most careful prayer and study. Referred to directly or indirectly by Christ and His apostles perhaps more than other portions of the Old Testament of similar extent. Appears to have been regarded by the Old Testament Church, in the centuries preceding the Messiah’s first advent, as pre-eminently the “word of prophecy.” The same apparently in the New Testament Church till the Revelation of John was vouchsafed for its guidance. The Saviour’s chosen title of “the Son of Man,” as well as the declaration of His future coming “in the clouds of heaven,” obviously taken from this chapter. So Paul’s description of the “Man of Sin” in his second Epistle to the Thessalonians (chap. 2) Frequent and obvious parallels between its images and predictions and those of the Book of Revelation, more especially those connected with the ten-horned beast (Revelation 13:1-7), the Lord’s second Advent, the reign of Christ and His saints, and the final judgment. The vision not understood by Daniel, till at his own request it was explained to him by one of the angels present in it; an indication at once of our duty and privilege in relation to the study of the word of prophecy. The vision and its interpretation given for our sakes especially, “on whom the ends of the world have come.” One part of the Holy Spirit’s office to show us things to come, which have been already “noted in the Scripture of truth;” while it is our part to imitate the prophet in “searching what or what manner of time the Spirit that was in them did signify, when he showed beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11). This, as well as the prophecies that follow, delivered in Daniel’s own name, the reason being because the visions were communicated to him personally. Daniel not now a narrator of events, but a witness of what had been delivered to himself. Difference of the person used, no evidence of a difference of authorship. Authors known to employ both the first and third person in their narratives. The unity of the two parts of the book indicated by the sameness of the spirit, the style, and the interdependence of the parts upon each other. The contents of both portions, however, probably written at different times. The language employed in this chapter still the Chaldaic [150], which, however, ceases with the close of it, the remaining portion of the book being in Hebrew. The reason apparently found in the nature and object of the two parts thus differently written. The Chaldaic probably by this time as much or more the language of the Jews in Babylon than their own Hebrew, as it continued to be that of those in Palestine afterwards. This also the language of the Targums, translations or rather paraphrases of the Old Testament when the Hebrew ceased to be the spoken language of the Jews. [150] “This chapter,” says Brightman, “is written in the common tongue of the heathenish kingdom, that the common prophecy might come abroad unto all. The vision in the next chapter is in the proper tongue of the holy people; the prophet thus intimating that this in the seventh chapter is more general, that in the eighth more particular, as also those which follow to the end of the chapter.”The vision of the Four Beasts corresponds to that of the Great Image in chap. 2. This given in a dream to Daniel, as that had been to Nebuchadnezzar. The interpretation given by an angel at the same time. The whole vision committed to writing probably soon after its communication to the prophet, being intended to form a part of Sacred Scripture, as it has done since the canon of the Old Testament was completed in the days of Ezra and Malachi; thus securing accuracy, and giving permanency to the inspiration for the benefit of succeeding ages. Hence the prophets often commanded to commit their revelations to writing. See Isaiah 8:1; Isaiah 30:8; Jeremiah 30:2; Habakkuk 2:2; Revelation 1:11; Revelation 21:5. Daniel not only “wrote the dream,” but “told the sum of the matters” to his friends and countrymen about him (Daniel 7:1). The prophets in general preachers as well as writers. Their hearers called their “children” and “disciples” (Isaiah 8:16-18). Figuratively, their “threshing” and the “corn of their floor” (Isaiah 21:10). The Sabbath and the new moon the ordinary days for their public ministration (2 Kings 4:23). Daniel, however, rather a prophet by gift than by office, and his communications to others, therefore, probably more private. The effect of the vision on the prophet himself powerful and disturbing. “My cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me” (Daniel 7:28). So the corresponding vision afforded to Nebuchadnezzar “troubled his spirit” (chap. Daniel 2:1). Still stronger language used by Habakkuk, in describing the effect produced upon himself by the disclosure of the future communicated to him (Habakkuk 3:16). The present vision, in some of its leading features, a repetition of that afforded fifty years before to Nebuchadnezzar, accompanied, however, with important additions; a circumstance tending to give special weight to the vision, and to draw particular attention to it; while confirmation was thus given to both visions, and the interpretation of each rendered both more easy and more memorable [151]. The vision given to Daniel and the Church for the sake of the additions), especially that relating to the “little horn.” The former part of the vision already clearly accomplished; the latter part manifestly approaching its fulfilment. The vision affords a compendious history of the world from the time of Daniel to that of Christ’s millennial kingdom, in so far as that history stands more immediately related to the Church both of the Old and New Testament. The Saviour’s exhortation in reference to another portion of Daniel’s prophecies, eminently applicable to this: “Let him that readeth understand.” David’s, or perhaps Daniel’s own prayer, here particularly suitable and necessary: “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law” (Psalms 119:18). [151] According to Calvin, the repetition is given for greater clearness, and in token of the certainty of the prophecy. This repetition, Archdeacon Harrison remarks, is “according to the method of divine prediction, presenting at first a general sketch and outline, and afterwards a more complete and finished picture of events.” Sir Isaac Newton observes “that the prophecies of Daniel are all of them related to one another, as if they were but several parts of one general prophecy, given at several times;” and that “every following prophecy adds something new to the former.”The subject of the vision is the four great or universal monarchies, here represented under the figure of so many wild beasts, as they were in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream under that of a great and splendid image, with its four parts composed of different materials; together with another and everlasting kingdom which should succeed them all. The four beasts are said in the interpretation to be “four kings,” or, as in the Greek version, “four kingdoms, that should arise out of the earth” (Daniel 7:17). The same object—the kingdoms of this world—thus presented under very different aspects to the carnal, worldly-minded monarch, and to the godly, spiritually-minded prophet. To the carnal, unrenewed man, the world appears as a dazzling show; to the spiritual and renewed, a hateful reality of ambition, selfishness, rapacity, cruelty, and oppression, resembling so many wild beasts contending for the mastery [152]. These four beasts or kingdoms, however, are only introduced to show what was God’s purpose in reference to the establishment of His own kingdom or that of the Messiah, which, like the stone in chap. 2, should remove and succeed them all, and which should last for ever. [152] “Four great beasts.” “The image appeared with a glorious lustre in the imagination of Nebuchadnezzar, whose mind was wholly taken up with admiration of worldly pomp and splendour; whereas the same monarchies were represented to Daniel under the shape of fierce wild beasts, as being the great supporters of idolatry and tyranny in the world.”—Grotius. Auberlen points out more fully and profoundly the distinction between the two visions. “The outward political history had been shown in general features to the worldly ruler; for by his position he was peculiarly and almost exclusively fitted to receive a revelation of this kind. But the prophet obtains more minute disclosures, especially on the spiritual and religious character of the powers of the world, and such as were best adapted to his position and his receptivity. This difference of character easily explains the difference of images. While in the second chapter they are taken from the sphere of the inanimate, which has only an external side, they are chosen in the seventh chapter from the sphere of the animate. Further, as Nebuchadnezzar saw things only from without, the world-power appeared to him in its glory as a splendid human figure, and the kingdom, from its humility, as a stone: at first he beheld the world-power more glorious than the kingdom of God. Daniel, on the other hand, to whom it was given to penetrate farther into the inner essence of things, saw that the kingdoms of the world, notwithstanding their defiant power, are of a nature animal and lower than human; that their minds are estranged from and even opposed to God; that only in the kingdom of God is the true dignity of humanity revealed; and accordingly, the kingdom of God appears to him from the outset, and in the very selection of images, superior to the kingdoms of the world.… The colossal figure that Nebuchadnezzar beheld represents mankind in its own strength and greatness; but however splendid, it presents only the outward appearance of a man. But Daniel, regarding mankind in its spiritual condition, saw humanity, through its alienation from God, degraded to the level of reasonless animals, enslaved by the dark powers of nature.”It is noticeable that the three beasts here mentioned by name are those which the Lord threatened by Hosea to send against Israel for their apostasy and sins, the lion, the leopard, and the bear, while a fourth was added as simply “a wild beast,” corresponding with the fourth in the vision without a name (Hosea 13:7-8); clearly indicating the relation which these world-kingdoms bear to Israel and the Church, as, in the hand and according to the pleasure of God, instruments of chastisement for unfaithfulness. Similar figures to indicate the powers of the world not unfrequently employed by the prophets. So Jeremiah 4:7; Jeremiah 5:6; Psalms 68:30. Men in their natural condition, as fallen and without the renewing grace of God, often similarly represented under the figure of savage beasts. (See Psalms 10:9-10; Psalms 57:4; Psalms 58:4; Psalms 58:6; Psalms 59:6.) In more senses than one men rendered by sin “like the beasts that perish.” The four beasts in the vision are represented as coming up out of the great sea when thrown by opposing winds into tempestuous commotion (Daniel 7:23). Such a sea a picture of the great world of mankind in its alienation from God and consequent dispeace (Isaiah 48:22; Isaiah 57:21). The origin of the great monarchies of the world the conflicting passions and commotions among men. Nimrod “began (was the first) to be a mighty one in the earth: he was a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 10:8-9). The Mediterranean, on which Daniel had often looked when in his native country, often called “the Great Sea,” as distinguished from the smaller bodies of water in Palestine. It was on the borders or in the vicinity of that sea that the four great contending monarchies lay. The “four winds of the heaven,” by which the great sea was tossed into a tumult, probably intended to represent the external means and circumstances by which God in His holy providence operates on the nations and rulers of the world, thereby arousing them into action, while He wisely overrules and controls their own carnal passions. It is also worthy to be observed that the number of monarchies represented both in the vision of the king and the prophet is the same, namely, four; an evidence itself of the divine origin of the book, when taken in connection with the remarkable fact that there have never been more than four great universal monarchies in the world, though some, as Charlemagne and Napoleon Buonaparte, have laboured hard to establish a fifth. The four, as already seen in connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, are those of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome [153]. From this general view of the vision we may note— [153] “This opinion,” observes Keil, “which has been recently maintained by Hδvernick, Hengstenberg, Hofmann Auberlen, Zόndel, Kliefoth, C. P. Caspari, and H. L. Reichel, alone accords, without any force or arbitrariness, with the representation of these kingdoms in both visions, with each separately, as well as with both together.” Compare Comm, on chap. Daniel 2:36-45, section ix. page 41.1. The importance of the word of prophecy. The repetition of the prophecy regarding the four great monarchies and the divine kingdom that was to succeed them, itself significant. Given first in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar and then in a vision vouchsafed to Daniel himself, the repeated revelation of the same things, under different forms, seems a clear intimation how important for the Church this communication appeared to the Spirit of God, whose it is to “show us things to come.” What God has thus so carefully given it can neither be safe nor right for His people to neglect. Especially is this the case with a prophecy which we know to apply to the times in which we live, and which has been given for our comfort and guidance in these last days. The words forming the preface to the Book of Revelation applicable here also. “Blessed are they that read, and they that hear the prophecy of this book, and that keep the things that are written therein; for the time is at hand” (Revelation 1:2). 2. All history within the foreknowledge and under the control of God. This vision exhibits the great leading events of the world’s history from the time of Daniel, projected in the word of prophecy as on a map. Hence not only foreknown, but so overruled as infallibly to come to pass. This without the slightest prejudice to or interference with the freedom of man’s will, and so without any diminution of his responsibility. God’s foreknowledge and man’s freedom—God’s purposes and man’s responsibility—solemnly and mysteriously compatible with each other. Both alike realities, however unable we may be in our present state to reconcile them. Now we know only in part. The Jews, not knowing their own Scriptures, fulfilled the same by crucifying their King and Saviour, to their deep and dire condemnation, under which, alas! they still lie. “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). The hands still wicked hands though fulfilling the secret counsel and foreknowledge of God. The same thing true in regard to the events of general history and individual life. The providence that appoints the establishment or overthrow of an empire presides over the fall of a sparrow, fixes the bounds of our habitation, and numbers the hairs of our head. 3. The true character of the kingdoms of this world. To Daniel these appear not as dazzling image, but as savage and irrational beasts, the symbols of selfishness, cruelty, rapacity, and strife, obeying the impulses of appetite and passion instead of the dictates of reason and conscience. History makes good the picture. The universal admission that sin has reduced men to the level of beasts. Paul’s description of fallen men apart from divine grace, as given in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, verified by the testimony of the heathen themselves. “Full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity” (Romans 1:29). The divine verdict—“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked”—realised by universal observation and experience. Time given fully to develop man’s need of a Saviour from sin before that Saviour came. Four thousand years only proved the divine testimony given at the time of the Flood to be true: “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21; Genesis 6:5). Man was shown to be sick unto death—desperately, and, to all human effort, incurably wicked; and the Healer came. “He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). . XXIII.—THE FOUR GREAT EMPIRES (Chap. Daniel 7:3-7; Daniel 7:17-24) “These great beasts, which are four,” said the interpreting angel, “are four kings which shall arise out of the earth” (Daniel 7:17). By the four kings we are to understand not four separate individuals, but, as the Greek version has it, four kingdoms or empires, succeeding each other, as in the vision of the Great Image (chap. 2) These, as already remarked, are almost universally understood to be the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek or Macedonian, and the Roman. We now notice these empires separately as here described, leaving the description of the Little Horn for another section. I. The first or Babylonian Empire. The first of the four beasts which Daniel beheld rising up out of the earth was a lion with eagle’s wings (Daniel 7:4). This figure common among the sculptures of Nineveh and the ruins of Persepolis [154]. A winged lion a fit symbol of the first or Babylonian Empire [155]; a lion being expressive of its superiority, and its wings of the rapidity of its conquests. Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar, as its representative in its best days, described by the prophets as the instrument of God’s chastisement of His people under the figure of a lion. See Jeremiah 4:7; Jeremiah 5:6; Jeremiah 49:19; Jeremiah 50:17. In the Great Image the same monarchy is represented by the head of gold, gold being among metals what the lion is among beasts. The figure of an eagle, the king of birds, also employed by the prophets to represent Nebuchadnezzar and his conquests. See Jeremiah 48:40; Jeremiah 49:22; Ezekiel 27:2; Habakkuk 1:6. The rapidity of those conquests seen in the fact that while, at the period of his father’s death, the empire comprehended Chaldea, Assyria, Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, Nebuchadnezzar greatly augmented it after his accession to the throne, adding to his tributary dominions both Egypt and Tyre. Ancient historians agree in considering him by far the greatest monarch of the East. The prophet, however, as he gazed upon the symbol, observed a change to pass upon it. “I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth (marg., by which it was lifted up, &c.), and made to stand upon its feet as a man; and a man’s heart was given to it” (Daniel 7:4). An arrest was to be laid upon those conquests, and a state of humiliation and timidity to succeed them. Babylon’s monarchs were to be no longer lions, but as private men, deprived of power and strength. Possibly also an allusion is made to the humiliation connected with Nebuchadnezzar’s madness, and his ultimate deliverance from it. Succeeding reigns only brought disaster to the Babylonian Empire; and Belshazzar, its last king, was so far from being “lion-hearted,” that he was afraid to engage in open battle with the Persians, or to accept the challenge of Cyrus to single combat. He trembled and his knees smote each other at the sight of the writing on the wall. According to Jeremiah’s prophecy, he and his nobles “became as women” (Jeremiah 51:30). The lion of Babylon was to be “put in fear” that he might “know himself to be but a man” (Psalms 9:20) [156]. [154] “Like a lion, and had eagle’s wings” (Daniel 7:4). Herder, Mόnther, &c., have pointed out the peculiarly Babylonian character which the animal symbolism in Daniel bears; and the recent excavations among the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh contain so many confirmations of the book being written after the captivity, as they show shapes of animals by which we are involuntarily reminded of those occurring here, and which suggest the thought that an acquaintance with sculptures of this kind may have proved a psychological preparation for the visions in the seventh and eighth chapters.—Hengstenberg. At the entrance to a temple at Birs Nimroud, says Keil, there has been found (Layard, (Babylon and Nineveh) such a symbolical figure, viz., a winged eagle with the head of a man. But the representation of nations and kingdoms by the images of beasts is much more widely spread, and affords the prophetic symbolism the necessary analogues and substrata for the vision. The Assyrian King Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, says in the inscription of one of his cylinders, in reference to Elam or Persia: “I broke the winged lions and bulls watching over the temple, all there were. I removed the winged bulls attending to the gates of the temples of Elam.” [155] “The first” (Daniel 7:4). Dr. Rule observes that as the fourth or Roman beast was to be the fourth upon earth, so the first or Babylonian must not only be the first of the kingdoms in this prophetical series, but also the first upon earth: which is historically true. About two thousand years before Daniel, the young population of the post-diluvian world, being then “of one language and of one speech,” journeyed from the east, found a plain in the laud of Shinar, dwelt there, began to build a city and a tower, and on their speech being confounded, were scattered abroad on the face of the earth. But the city remained with a sufficient population settled in it, the first built after the Deluge, and retaining the name Babel to mark the confusion of language which there took place. That city was the first central seat of power; and though the royal residence was for some time in Nineveh, and Babylonia was included within the empire of Assyria, Babylon recovered its primeval majesty, and was again the seat of empire from Nabopolassar to Belshazzar, and so rightly counted the first kingdom upon earth. Callisthenes, a friend of Alexander the Great, and his companion at Babylon, b.c. 331, sent thence to Aristotle a series of observations on eclipses made in that city, which reached back 1903 years, i.e., from 2234 b.c. The face of the sky had thus been read and recorded on that spot for near two thousand years. [156] “A man’s heart was given to it” (Daniel 7:4). Keil thinks that this, as well as the preceding expression, “lifted up,” when lying prostrate on the ground, to the right attitude of a human being, denotes that the beast nature was transformed to that of a man; and that in this description of the change that occurred to the lion there is, without doubt, a reference to what is said of Nebuchadnezzar in chap. 4. Although the words may not, however, as Hofmann and others think, refer directly to Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity, as here it is not the king but the kingdom that is the subject, yet Nebuchadnezzar’s madness was for his kingdom the plucking off of its wings. The completeness of the decay of Babylon under the second empire appears in the fact related by Strabo, that when Alexander completed the conquest of that empire about 331 b.c., he found the great temple of Belus in so ruined a condition, that it would have required the labour of ten thousand men for two months to clear away the rubbish with which it was encumbered.II. The second or Medo-Persian Empire. This is represented by a bear raising itself upon one side, with three ribs in its month (Daniel 7:5). The great universal monarchy that succeeded the Babylonian, already, in chap. 2, seen to be the Persian or Medo-Persian. Its symbol, portrayed upon its standard, from the known character of its princes and people [157], one of the most bloodthirsty of animals. Compare Isaiah 13:18. The bear at the same time a less courageous as well as a less noble and magnanimous animal than the lion, though exceedingly strong and voracious [158]. Hence, “Arise and devour,” &c. Corresponds to the breast and arms of the image, which were of silver, as being inferior to the Babylonian Empire, the head of gold. The bear raising itself upon one side [159], apparently expressive of the fact, that while this second empire was at first under the confederate kings of Media and Persia, the former had first the pre-eminence in the person of Darius, but after his death the Persians under Cyrus rose to the sole dominion. The two powers of Media and Persia or Elam, as united in the overthrow of Babylon, pointed to nearly two centuries before by the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 13:17; Isaiah 21:2). These separate powers represented in the Great Image by the two arms, and their coalescence under Cyrus by the breast. The three ribs in the bear’s mouth, and the command to “arise and devour much flesh,” indicative of the rapacity and conquests of the Medo-Persian Empire. The three ribs have been supposed by Sir Isaac Newton and others to indicate Lydia with its capital Sardis—the country of Cr�sus, Babylon, and Egypt, which Cyrus added to his conquests, without their properly belonging, however, to the body of his empire [160]; while others, as Calvin, have considered them to be Media, Assyria, and Babylonia. The inferiority of the second empire to the first, indicated as well in the symbol of the image as that of the beasts, apparent under the successors of Cyrus, who are known to have sadly degenerated, giving attention to pomp and show rather than to real strength and valour [161]. It lasted also a shorter time, having only continued 206, or at most 230 years from Darius, its first monarch, who ascended the throne B.C. 538, till its overthrow by Alexander the Great in 332. [157] “A second like to a bear” (Daniel 7:5). Bishop Newton says: Cambyses, Ochus, and others of their princes, were indeed more like bears than men. Instances of their cruelty abound in almost all the historians who have written of their affairs, from Herodotus down to Ammianus Marcellinus, who describes them as proud, cruel, exercising the power of life and death over slaves and obscure plebeians. “They pull off the skin (says he) from men alive, in pieces or altogether.” The cruelty of their modes of punishment indicative of the cruelty of their character. Rollin relates that one of the royal judges, condemned to death for receiving a bribe, was to have his skin taken off and fastened on the seat where he used to sit and give judgment, to be a warning to his son, who was to occupy it after him. Witness also the lions’ den. [158] “Arise, devour much flesh” (Daniel 7:5). Next to the lion, the bear is the strongest among animals; and, on account of its voracity, it was called by Aristotle ζῶονπαμφάγον, “an all-devouring animal.”—Keil. [159] “Raised up itself on one side.” The margin reads: “raised up one kingdom,” after R. Nathan, who has, “and it established a dominion,” with which Kranichfeld agrees. Keil objects to this as irreconcilable with the line of thought, and also because ηַ ?γ (khadh) is not the indefinite article, but the numeral; and the thought that the beast established one dominion, or a united dominion, is in the highest degree strange; for the character of a united or compact dominion belongs to the second world-kingdom no more than to the first, while it cannot belong to a beast or kingdom to establish a kingdom at all. ωְׁ ?θַ ?ψ (shetar), or rather, as in Syriac and the Targums, ωְׂ ?θַ ?ψ = ρְ ?θַ ?ψ (setar), is rendered by the Sept. and other old translators, as well as by Saadias, “a side.” According to Calvin, who translates, “stood on one side,” the expression refers to the Persians having previously been without fame or reputation, as well as without wealth. Gesenius thinks it an image of the kingdom of the Medes being ordered by God, after having long lain, as it were, in ambush, to rise and attack Babylon. Keil, with Hofmann, Delitzsch, and Kliefoth, regards the figure as indicating, according to chaps. 2 and 8, the double-sidedness of this empire—the one side, the Median, being at rest after the efforts made for the erection of the world-kingdom; while the other, the Persian side, raises itself up, and then becomes higher than the first and prepared for new rapine. [160] “Three ribs.” According to Xenophon, Cyrus, after the conquest of Babylon and Lydia, undertook an expedition in which he subdued all those nations which lie from the entrance into Syria as far as the Red Sea; while his next expedition was to Egypt, which he also subdued. Keil, with Hofmann, Ebrard, Zόndel, and Kliefoth, understanding the bear as the Medo-Persian, and not merely the Median kingdom, considers the three ribs to denote the three kingdoms of Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt, conquered by the Medo-Persians. [161] Xenophon relates that immediately upon the death of Cyrus his sons fell into dissension; cities and nations revolted, and everything tended to ruin. He adds the reflection, that the Persians and their allies have evidently less piety towards the gods, less dutiful regard to their relatives, less justice and equity in their dealings with others, and at the same time are more effeminate and less fitted for war than they were at their commencement as a nation.III. The third or Grecian Empire. This represented by a leopard with four heads and four wings, and corresponding to the belly and thighs of brass in the Great Image. The Persian empire having gradually decayed under the successors of Cyrus, it at length entirely succumbed to the power of Greece under Alexander the Great. The eager and fiery nature of this renowned conqueror symbolised by the leopard, an animal remarkable for its swiftness and the eagerness with which it springs upon its prey. Rollin observes that after the siege of Tyre, the character of Alexander degenerated into debauchery and cruelty. When Gaza, after a protracted resistance, was at length taken, Alexander manifested the cruelty of his character by ordering a thousand of its inhabitants to be put to death, and its governor to be dragged round the walls by ropes passed through his heels till he died. The spots of the leopard supposed to indicate the variety of the nations that constituted the Grecian empire, as the four wings plainly pointed to the rapidity of the Grecian conquests [162]. The four heads the prophetic symbol of the well-known division of the Grecian Empire into four parts soon after Alexander’s death. After a series of intrigues and murders, with a view to the succession, in which his mother, his wife Roxana, his brother, and his son, all perished by a violent death, the empire fell into the hands of the four principal generals, who divided it between them—Cassander holding Macedon and Greece; Lysimachus, Thrace and Asia Minor; Ptolemy, Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia Petrζa; and Seleucus, Syria and the remainder, including Upper Asia or the Eastern Empire. The two last, especially in relation to the Jewish people, the most prominent and important. The fourfold division of the Greek Empire distinctly exhibited in the vision of the Ram and He-goat in chap. Daniel 8:21-22. [162] “Four wings of a fowl” (Daniel 7:6). The victories and triumphs of the Greeks in the Persian war are well known to the reader of history: how in the time of Darius Hystaspes, b.c. 490, an army of 300,000 Persians was defeated by 11,000 Greeks at Marathon; and how Xerxes, his successor, lost nearly the whole of his fleet at Salamis only ten years after, while the remainder of his troops, left to prosecute the war in Greece, were nearly all cut in pieces in the following year at the battle of Platζa, his fleet being defeated on the same day at Mycale. The decisive blow to the power of Persia, however, was not given till about a hundred and fifty years after by Alexander the Great, who, born at Pella, in Macedonia, b.c. 356, succeeded his father, Philip, as king of Macedon, when only twenty years of age. Appointed generalissimo of the Greeks, he undertook an expedition against the Persians, while Darius Codomannus, the last king of Persia, was on the throne; defeated with 35,000 men an army of 100,000 Persians on the banks of the Granicus, and gained a similar victory in the following year at Issus in Cilicia. The fall of all Asia Minor followed; and soon after that of insular or new Tyre, which Alexander took, according to the word of prophecy, by connecting the island with the mainland by means of a causeway formed out of the materials of old Tyre. The final blow was given to Persia at the battle of Arbela, in Assyria, b.c. 331, when the Persians were twenty times the number of the Greeks. “When you next address me,” said Alexander, in reply to an offer of capitulation by Darius, “call me not only king, but your king.” The conquests of the winged leopard did not, however, stop till, having subdued the Medes, Parthians, Hyrcanians, Bactrians, and Sogdians, he crossed the Indus with the intention of penetrating into India, and was only obliged to turn back by the unwillingness of his army to proceed any farther. As further illustrative of the truth of the image, it is said that his movements were so rapid that his enemies were usually taken by surprise, and that he was able to pursue them on horseback for days and nights together, like a panther after his prey. “Can Alexander, who can do all things, fly also? And has nature on a sudden given him wings?” asked the confident defender of a rocky height of the messenger sent by Alexander. The height, however, was taken. “You see,” said the conquerors, “Alexander’s soldiers have wings.”IV. The fourth or Roman Empire. The fourth empire is represented by a beast without a name, as if no existing animal could be found sufficient for the symbol [163]. It is described “as diverse from all the rest; dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly, having great iron teeth; devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping the residue with its feet” (Daniel 7:7). The corresponding part of the Great Image is the legs and feet, which were of iron, with a mixture of clay in the feet and toes; like the fourth beast, bruising and breaking to pieces. The identity of the empire symbolised in both cases obvious from the fact that the fourth beast is particularly represented as having ten horns, plainly corresponding with the ten toes of the image. According to the all but unanimous belief of both Jews and Christians, the empire indicated is that of Rome, which, as is well known, succeeded that of Greece. The iron in both the symbols indicative of the sternness of the people, and of the strength, duration, and destructiveness of the empire. The ten horns which characterised the fourth beast, like the ten toes of the image, symbolical of ten kingdoms which should be formed out of the empire in its state of weakness and decay [164]. Compare what is said in reference to the toes of the Great Image. It may only farther be noticed here in regard to the ten horns, that this circumstance connected with the fourth beast appears plainly to identify that beast with another mentioned in Revelation 12:1; Revelation 18:3; Revelation 18:12, whose ten horns are also said to be “ten kings,” but which had “received no kingdom as yet” (Revelation 17:12), that is, at the time the vision was given to the apostle; which makes it further manifest that the fourth beast or empire could be no other than the Roman. A new feature, and one of the most remarkable, being that for which more especially this second vision of the four great empires was given, is the rise of another or eleventh horn, called the “little horn,” but which in its character, pretensions, and actual doings was the most formidable of all, and with which more than all the rest the Church of God was to have to do. As this will be considered in a section by itself, we may only notice the following thoughts as suggested by the prophecy of the four beasts. [163] “A fourth beast, diverse from all the others” (Daniel 7:7; Daniel 7:19). Thought by some of the Jews to be the wild boar, according to Psalms 80:13. Not named, says Theodoret, from the changeable form of its government, kings, generals, tribunes, &c. According to Jerome, from its supereminent cruelty. Its diverseness from the others, Calvin ascribes to the composite character of the Roman people, the senatorial, equestrian, and plebeian ranks. That the Roman empire is intended the all but universal opinion. Some Jews, as Aben Ezra and R. Saadias, wish to make it the Turkish empire, including the Roman in the third, in order to avoid the conclusion that the Messiah has already appeared. Pfaff thinks that both the tyranny of the Turks and of the Popes is included under this fourth beast. Calvin thinks only of the Roman empire up to the first Advent of Christ. Willet, after Polychronius, Junius, Polanus, and others, interprets it of the kingdom of Syria, in which ten kings succeeded each other, the last of whom they suppose was Antiochus Epiphanes, the little horn; though typically of the Roman empire foreshadowed under it, John’s vision of the beast (Revelation 13:1), or the Roman empire, having reference to this of Daniel. [164] “And in had ten horns.” Some have understood the number ten as indefinite, indicating, as Augustine thinks, the whole of the kings in the Roman empire up to the coming of Antichrist; or, as Calvin, the several provinces or kingdoms of that empire; or as others, the kingdoms into which the Roman empire was divided and dissolved on its first partition into the Eastern and Western empires. Most, however, consider it to be a certain number. Some think of the kings who in the end should divide the empire between them. Thus Jerome says, “Let us say, what all ecclesiastical writers have handed down, that in the consummation of the world, when the kingdom of the Romans is about to be destroyed, there will be ten kings who shall divide the Roman world among them.” Irenζus had said in the second century, “Daniel, looking to the end of the last kingdom, that is, the ten kings among whom shall be divided the empire of those upon whom the Son of Perdition shall come, saith that ten horns did grow upon the beast. And more manifestly still hath John, the disciple of our Lord, signified concerning the last time and the ten kings which are in it, among whom shall be divided the kingdom which now reigns, explaining in the Apocalypse what were the ten horns which were seen by Daniel;” thus showing, as Archdeacon Harrison remarks, “how the earliest Christian expositors identified with the imagery before us that which reappears in the visions of the Apocalypse.” Most understand the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire was divided in consequence of the invasion of the Northern nations. J. D. Michaelis remarks that “the number of the kingdoms in the great community of Europe moves, so to speak, fluctuatingly about this round number (ten), being sometimes more and sometimes less.” Hengstenberg thinks, however, that probably, at the time of the final fulfilment, the number ten will be a definite one. Auberlen observes that the reference in the Revelation to this fourth beast of Daniel “overthrows the whole modern view of the fourth beast (being the Greek kingdom), and of the four beasts in general; it overthrows hereby, secondly, the theory that the prophecies of Daniel are limited to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; and it consequently overthrows, thirdly, the chief argument brought forward against the genuineness of our book.” “Rationalism,” observes Dr. Pusey, “has come round to the same view.” “I agree,” says Bleek, “with Auberlen, that the ten horns of the fourth beast cannot be meant of ten successive Syrian kings (as Bertholdt, V. Lengerke, Maurer, Hitzig, and Delitzsch think); nor of ten kings, some Syrian and some Egyptian (as Rosenmόller, &c., and Porphyry of old); but rather of the single portions into which the kingdom was divided.” In like manner Rosenmόller and some other Germans endeavoured to make this beast to be the Greek empire in Asia after Alexander’s death. But Bleek, who is one of them, admits, “We are induced by Daniel 7:8, where it is said of the little horn that it would rise up between the ten horns, to think of ten contemporaneous kings, or rather kingdoms, existing along with each other, which rise out of the fourth kingdom.” Therefore he will “not deny that the reference to the successors of Alexander is rendered obscure by the fact that chap. 8. speaks of four monarchies which arise out of that of Alexander after his death.” In opposition to the view that the parts of Alexander’s kingdom which became independent kingdoms might be numbered in different ways, and the number ten be made out from the number of the generals who retained the chief provinces, Zόndel justly observes: “These kingdoms could only have significance if this number, instead of being a selection from the whole, had been itself the whole. But this is not the case. For at that time the kingdom, according to Justin, was divided into more than thirty parts.” According to Dr. Todd and the Futurists, the power indicated is one yet to be developed, as the precursor of the final Antichrist. Sir Isaac Newton observes that the Romans conquered the kingdom of Macedon, Illyricum, and Epirus in the eighth year of Antiochus Epiphanes, b.c. 167; that of Pergamos thirty-five years afterwards; Syria sixty-four years later, and Egypt after other thirty-nine years; and that by these and other conquests the fourth beast became greater and more terrible than any of the three preceding ones. Dionysius Halicarnassus, after enumerating the earlier empires of the world, the Assyrian or Babylonian, the Persian, and the Grecian, says, “The empire of the Romans pervades all regions of the earth which are not inaccessible, but are inhabited by mankind; it reigns also over the whole sea, and is the first and only one that has made the east and west its boundaries; and that there is no people that does not recognise Rome as the universal mistress, or that refuses to submit to its dominion.” Professor Bush says, “As the fourth beast of Daniel lives and acts through the space of 1260 years (the ‘time, times, and dividing, or half of a time,’ Daniel 7:25), and as the seven-headed and ten-horned beast of John prevails through the same period, I am driven to the conclusion that they adumbrate precisely the same thing—that they are merely different aspects of the same reality; and this I have no question is the Roman empire.” Keil observes, after an elaborate proof of his premises: “Since, then, neither the division of the Medo-Persian kingdom into the Median and the Persian is allowable, nor the identification of the fourth kingdom (chaps. 2. and 7.) with the Javanic (the Greek or Macedonian) world-kingdom in chap. 8., we may regard as correct the traditional Church view that the four world-kingdoms are the Chaldean (or Babylonian), the Medo-Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman.”1. The fulfilment of this prophecy an unquestionable fact, and as such, an evidence of the reality of prophecy in the sense of prediction, and of the divinity of at least this part of the Old Testament Scripture The fulfilment of prophecy employed by God Himself as an evidence of His deity (Isaiah 41:22-23; Isaiah 41:26; Isaiah 45:21; Isaiah 46:9-10). Declared to be the criterion of a divine messenger, except when the object is to lead away from God’s worship and revealed truth (Deuteronomy 18:21-22; Deuteronomy 13:1; Deuteronomy 13:3; Isaiah 8:20). The fulfilment of the prophecy before us undeniable, notwithstanding all attempts to set it aside. This and other predictions of Daniel acknowledged even by enemies to be true up to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the Syrian kings in the third or Grecian empire, but denied to have been written before that period, and therefore maintained to be mere history and not prophecy. But the prophecy as truly fulfilled after that period as before it, and receiving its fulfilment at the present time. The fourth empire and the predicted facts connected with it more remarkable than any of its three predecessors, and to human foresight impossible to have been calculated upon. Yet that empire and those facts a reality which is before our eyes at the present day. An empire of iron crushing strength succeeding a third, acknowledged to be that of Greece, and in its latter period becoming weak by foreign admixture, and divided into ten kingdoms, with one rising up among them or after them of a description totally different from all the rest. These are simple facts, and found in a prediction delivered twenty-four centuries ago. With the convinced magicians of Egypt we may well exclaim, “This is the finger of God.” “I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass ye might know that I am He” (John 13:29). 2. The certainty of predicted events that have not yet taken place. Past fulfilment only makes the word of prophecy “more sure” or confirmed, that we may “take heed” to it, as to a “light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19). While much of the present chapter, as well as of other prophecy, has been fulfilled, much of it still awaits its fulfilment. The destruction of the fourth beast with its “little horn” has not yet taken place, nor has its body yet been “given to the burning flame;” the Son of Man has not yet come “with the clouds of heaven;” nor has the kingdom been “given to the saints of the Most High.” Yet, as certainly as one part of the vision has been fulfilled, so certainly shall the other. Eighteen centuries ago, Jesus, after He had ascended with the clouds into heaven, said, “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every man as his work shall be.” As surely as the fourth predicted beast with its iron teeth came into existence and devoured and brake in pieces, so surely shall it be destroyed and its body given to the burning flame, and Jesus Christ come again with the clouds of heaven and take the kingdom, and the kingdom be given to the saints of the Most High, who shall reign with Christ for ever and ever (Daniel 7:11; Daniel 7:13-14; Daniel 7:18; Revelation 5:10; Revelation 11:15). 3. Matter for thanksgiving and rejoicing that the kingdoms of this world are to be succeeded by one of a very different character. The kingdoms of the world are those of the four beasts, wherever they may have their place. These kingdoms naturally characterised by sin and suffering. Such the experience of the world up to the present time. The history of these kingdoms written in tears and blood; but they are not to be for ever. Three of the four have, as predicted long ago, come to their end. The fourth, which in its divided form is now going on, is not to be everlasting. The everlasting one is yet to come. Its foundations have already long ago been laid, but as yet it is far from being the mountain that is to fill the whole earth. But the time of this consummation hastens apace. The kingdom that is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” will ere long constitute the monarchy of the Man Christ Jesus, the King of the Jews, which shall fill the earth and last for ever. Men shall yet everywhere be blessed in Christ, and all nations call Him blessed. The sure word of prophecy gladdens the Church with the hope of good times coming—glory to God in the highest, with peace on earth, under the reign of Him who is the Prince of Peace. . XXIV.—THE LITTLE HORN (Chap. Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:19-25) We now come to that part of Daniel’s vision which especially distinguishes it from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The king only saw the feet of the image divided into ten toes: Daniel not only sees ten horns proceeding from the head of the fourth beast, corresponding with these ten toes, but another horn additional to these, which, though appearing as a “little horn,” engaged the special attention of the prophet, and constitutes the leading object in the vision. The character of the kingdoms of the world was to be concentrated in that horn or the power represented by it, and it was from it that the Church of God was mainly to suffer [165]. As a “horn,” it was to be a power like the rest; that term, expressive of the powerful weapon of many animals, being figuratively employed in the Scripture to denote power or strength, and so a kingdom or a sovereignty. See Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalms 18:2; Luke 1:69. In relation to the “little horn” we have to notice— [165] “It is in the fearful shape of the last beast that the world-power will fully manifest that its whole nature is opposed to God. But as the interest which attaches to the four monarchies is led rapidly over the first three to centre in the last, so, for the same reason, in considering the last we are led to the final shape.… The description introduces these horns merely to show how an eleventh has sprung up in their midst, a king in whom the full haughty hatred and rebellion against God, His people, and His service, finds its representative.… The essential nature of the kingdoms of the world appears concentrated in the fourth kingdom; the nature of the fourth kingdom, in like manner, in its last worldly ruler. Thus it is only at the end that the peculiar character of the world-power, “the mystery of iniquity,” is unveiled, and we recognise in the eleventh horn no other than he whom Paul calls “the Man of Sin” and “the Son of Perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2.) Here, for the first time in the development of revelation, the idea of Antichrist is clearly unfolded; because here, for the first time, the entire course of the development of the godless and God-opposing world is clearly surveyed down to the very end.”—Auberlen. So Dr. Pusey, who also sees in the Little Horn mainly an Antichrist yet to come.” “Why should there not be under the fourth empire an antagonism to the true God, concentrated in and directed by one individual, as it was in and by Antiochus in the third? Human nature repeats itself. What man has done, man will do. We Christians look for an Antichrist yet to come. Our Lord forewarned of him and his deceivableness. St. Paul describes such an one as Daniel speaks of.” We must not, however, overlook the Antichrist of the past and the present, while even as Protestants we may also acknowledge an Antichrist yet to come.I. Its rise. It is said to rise among the other ten horns, and so to be contemporaneous with them; and also after or behind them, and so in the time of its appearance posterior to the rest, as well as gradual in its growth and for a time unobserved. Before it, three of the ten were “plucked up by the roots and fell,” or, as it is interpreted by the angel, it subdued three out of the ten kings or kingdoms, and so made room for itself by occupying their place (Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:10; Daniel 7:24). The other horns obtained their place as kingdoms out of the body of the fourth beast or Roman empire; this one was to obtain its place out of that beast only indirectly, by gaining it out of the others. II. Its character and description. (1.) A “little” horn; small in comparison with the rest, especially in its commencement, and humble, perhaps, in its profession. (2.) “Diverse from the rest;” its diversity consisting in this, that it had “eyes” in it, like the eyes of a “man,” and a “mouth speaking great things,”—the eyes and the mouth sufficiently indicating a human being as represented by it [166], and a power of a peculiar character; the eyes of a man, not of a god; lamb-like, though speaking as a dragon (Revelation 13:11.) (3.) The mouth uttered “great words against the Most High;” hence proud, arrogant, and blasphemous; while from the eyes was a “look more stout than his fellows,” also indicative of pride and haughtiness above that of the other powers, and an overbearing demeanour in respect to them. (4.) He was to “make war with the saints of the Most High, to wear them out, and prevail against them;” a persecuting power, and one whose persecutions should be persevering and successful, against such as adhered to a holy life and the worship of God according to His Word. (5.) He was to “think to change times and laws;” lofty in his pretensions, as superior to laws both human and divine, and affecting a power which is the prerogative of God (chap. Daniel 2:21). 5. The saints were to be “given into his hand” for a definite period, prophetically and enigmatically described as a “a time, times, and the dividing of a time;” his power over the saints or true worshippers of God to be absolute for a time, but that time a limited one. “To form a well-grounded judgment regarding the appearance of this last enemy,” observes Keil, “we must compare the description given of him here with the apocalyptic description of the same enemy under the image of the beast out of the sea or out of the abyss” (Revelation 13:1-8; Revelation 17:7-13); and we may add, with the description of the “Man of Sin” given by the apostle (2 Thessalonians 2:4, &c.), with an obvious allusion to the passage before us. [166] “Eyes like the eyes of man.” “Eyes and seeing with eyes are the symbols of insight, circumspection, and prudence. The eyes of a man, not merely to indicate that the horn signified a man, which was already distinctly enough shown by the fact of eyes, &c., being attributed to it, nor yet to distinguish it from a beast; but in opposition to a higher celestial being, for whom it might, from the terribleness of its rule and government, be mistaken.”—Keil. Others have viewed the expression as indicative of the assumed blandness that accompanied papal arrogance, and the sharp look-out kept by the popes on their own and their families’ interests, as well as those of the Church.III. Its identification. This power intended to be identified as truly as the four beasts themselves. The minute and varied description obviously given with this view. This description, including both its rise and character, ought apparently to leave no room for doubt as to what is intended by it, and no difficulty in identifying it when the power indicated should appear. The question is, has such a power already appeared, or are we still to look for it? The latter unlikely, as the fourth beast, from which it springs, has confessedly appeared two thousand years ago, and the ten kingdoms, among and behind which it was to rise, have probably been in existence about fourteen centuries. Has, then, any power appeared during that period to which the description is at all applicable, and to which it has been applied? There is a well-known power to which the description has appeared so applicable, that for more than three hundred years the description has been actually and unhesitatingly applied to it by almost all who have studied this passage, with the exception, of course, of those who are in any way connected with the power itself; although it is probable that the horn may not even yet have fully developed itself [167]. That power is the Papacy, with the Bishop of Rome as its head and representative [168]; for nearly thirteen centuries a temporal power, like the other horns, though now no longer such [169]; but so diverse from them as to be at the same time a spiritual power, while the rest were only secular ones. The identity has appeared— [167] Jerome and the fathers, as well as De Lyra, Hugo, and Roman Catholic writers generally, interpret the little horn of the Antichrist, who should come in the end of the world, after the Roman empire is destroyed. Some of the Reformers, as Melanchthon and Osiander, understood it of the Turkish empire. Calvin thinks that historically this prophecy of the Little Horn was fulfilled before the coming of the Messiah into the world, in the person of Julius Cζsar, Augustus, and the other emperors; but that it may, by analogy, be applied, as it was by some, to the Pope or to the Turks; “and these applications,” he says, “by way of analogy I mislike not.” �colampadius understood it of the Pope in the West, and the Turkish empire in the East. Bullinger, and the Reformers in general, applied the prophecy entirely to the Papacy. Junius, Polanus, and Willet understood it historically of Antiochus Epiphanes, but typically of Antichrist. Dr. Lee, of Cambridge, applies it to heathen Rome and the persecuting emperors from Nero to Constantine. The Futurists, with Roman Catholic writers, understand it of an Antichrist yet to come. [168] Dr. Rule observes that the description given of the Little Horn exactly answers to the Papacy, and regards the assumption of absolute sovereignty over the city and territory of Rome by Pope Innocent III. as the uprising of it, a sovereign pontiff over a temporal dominion, armed also with military powers. “Here,” says Muratori, in relating this event, “expired the last breath of the Augusti in Rome; and henceforth the prefects of Rome, the Senate, and the other magistrates, swore fealty to the Roman Pontiff only.” Professor Bush says, “This Little Horn is unquestionably the ecclesiastical power of the Papacy. This horn did not come till after the empire received its deadly wound by the hands of the Goths.” [169] That the Bishop of Rome became a temporal ruler, receiving his place and rank as such among and soon after the other rulers of the kingdoms formed out of the dismembered Roman empire, every one knows. One of the most remarkable events of recent years was the entire cessation of this temporal sovereignty of the Pope, when in 1870, after the French Emperor had withdrawn his troops from Rome, Victor Emmanuel, as king of Italy, at the voice of the people, assumed the entire government of the country, leaving Pius IX. only the Vatican and its precincts for his residence; the Pope exclaiming against the act as one of wicked sacrilege and spoliation, and endeavouring to rouse all Catholic Europe to aid him in recovering the lost “patrimony of St. Peter.” The Times of the period said, “In the same year the Papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years.”1. In the rise of the Papacy. The Little Horn rose among, and at the same time after or behind, the other ten; while three of these were plucked up and fell before it, so that their place was occupied by it, or, as interpreted by the angel, three kingdoms, states, or powers were subdued by it [170]. It is known that it was while the Northern nations were establishing for themselves kingdoms out of the decaying Roman empire that the Bishops of Rome also became temporal rulers, and that they did so after occasioning the fall of some of those rulers, probably those of Lombardy, Ravenna, and Rome, whose territories then became their own under the name of the States of the Church [171]. A writer on prophecy remarks: “The Little Horn came up among the ten horns, of which three fell before it. This determines the appearance of the Little Horn to be not before the appearance of the ten, of which not one came into being till after the year 487 of the Christian era, until which time the Roman empire continued under its emperors, undivided into any of those ten kingdoms which arose afterwards. At that time Augustulus, the last Emperor of the West, was forced to resign; and for three hundred years the empire remained without even a nominal head.” It is in remarkable agreement with this fact that Paul speaks of the “Man of Sin” as being hindered at that time from revealing himself by something which he does not name, but which would one day be taken out of the way; that hindrance being doubtless the Roman imperial power, which for obvious reasons Paul did not think it expedient to name. The circumstance of the three horns or states being rooted up to make way for the temporal power of the Papacy seems openly declared in the “triple crown” which the Pope still continues to wear. [170] “Before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.” “He shall subdue three kings” (Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:24). ιְ ?δַ ?ωְׁ ?τִּ ?ιμ (yehashpil), “shall overthrow, deprive of sovereignty.”—Keil. Some have understood the number three as indefinite. So Calvin and �colampadius, but understanding it as denoting much or many. Most have viewed it as a definite number. Jerome and others after him understood the three horns to be Egypt, Africa, and Ethiopia, which were to be subdued by Antichrist. Melanchthon thought of Egypt, Syria, and Cilicia, to be taken by the Turks; while Osiander and Pfaff understood them to be Asia, Greece, and Egypt. Bullinger, applying the prophecy to the Papacy, regarded the three horns as the Emperor Leo, or the Exarchate of Ravenna, taken by Gregory II.; Childeric, king of France, deposed by Pope Zachary; and the Lombards with the government they obtained from Leo III. Dr. Rule considers them to be the Roman Senate and people, with the so-called patrimony of St. Peter, gained a.d. 498; Apulia, otherwise called Naples, and Sicily, obtained in 1266. He observes that, simultaneously with these acquisitions, the work of persecution, foretold in the next verses, rapidly advanced. According to Mr. Birks, the three horns were the kingdom of the Heruli under Odoacer, that of the Ostrogoths under Theodoric, who at the instigation of the Pope overthrew the former, and took possession of that part of Italy forming the Exarchate of Ravenna, which again, at the Pope’s instance, was overthrown by Belisarius and Narses, lieutenants of the Emperor Justinian; the third power overthrown being that of the Lombards under Alboin and Aistulph. To obtain freedom from the threatened yoke of the Lombards, and to secure still farther the possession of a temporal dominion, the Pope made his appeal to Pepin, son of Charles Martel, as well as to Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman, the three kings of the Franks. “Pepin and Charlemagne willingly undertook the task of uprooting the Lombard kingdom, the last enemy that stood in the way of the ambitious See.” After the surrender of Pavia, “the last obstacle was now removed, and the popes rose at length to temporal dominion, and obtained a firm and settled place among the powers and kingdoms of the Western Empire. ‘The Church’s ancient patrimony of farms and houses,’ says Gibbon, ‘was transformed by the bounty of the Carlovingians into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the victories of Pepin.’ The ample province of the Exarchate, granted to the Papacy by the usurper Pepin, might comprise all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the Emperor and his vicegerent; but its strict and proper limits were included in the territory of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara, and its inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis.” [171] The following are extracts from Clement’s letter, written towards the end of the first century, to allay some disturbances in the Church at Corinth in regard to the pastorate. “These things, beloved, we write not only to admonish you of your duty, but to admonish ourselves, for we are in the same race and conflict. Wherefore, let us abandon vain and empty cares, and advance to the glorious and venerable rule of our calling. Let us look to what is beautiful, and pleasing, and acceptable in the eyes of our Creator. Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ, and consider how precious to God is that blood, which, having been shed for our salvation, has offered the grace of repentance to all the world.… Christ belongs to those who conduct themselves humbly, not those who exalt themselves over His flock with pride and arrogance.… Let us attach ourselves to those to whom grace has been given by God. Let us put on concord with moderation of mind, endued with the gift of self-control. Temerity, arrogance, and audacity belong to those who are accursed of God; moderation, humility, and meekness to those who are blessed of Him.… The apostles, preaching the Word through regions and cities, proving their first-fruits in the Spirit, appointed bishops and deacons of those who believed. The apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that contentions would arise about the name of the episcopate, and on that account, being endowed with perfect foreknowledge, they appointed persons previously indicated, and left successions of ministers and officers afterwards described, that other approved men might succeed to their place and discharge their offices. Look diligently into the Scriptures. Take into your hands the epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul. Consider what he wrote to you near the very beginning of his preaching the gospel. Being certainly divinely inspired, he reminded you in an epistle concerning himself, Cephas, and Apollos, that even then there were seditions and party feelings among you.… Whosoever is zealous, pitiful, and full of love among you, let him say, ‘If any sedition, contention, or division, has arisen through me, I will depart; I will go away whithersoever you wish; I will do whatever is commanded by the people; that only the flock of Christ may live in peace with the elders (or presbyters) that have been appointed over them.’ ” “The tempter,” says Gavazzi, “came over the Alps in the Gallic Pepin; he showed from a pinnacle of earthly power and aggrandisement the kingdoms of this world, and pledged himself to secure their homage, if, falling prostrate before God’s adversary, ‘Christ’s Vicar’ should adore him. The sacrilegious bargain was struck; the ark of the Lord was placed in the temple of Dagon; the bishops of Rome, who over and over again suffered death rather than offer incense to Pagan idols, fell into the palpable snare of Satan; and the hand that bore on its finger the brightest of sacerdotal gems in the ‘ring of the fisherman’ was outstretched, with scandalous avidity, to burn a fatal frankincense on the altar of secular ambition. A visible change fell on the Papacy. The gory crown of martyrdom was exchanged for the glittering tiara.” Mr. Mede supposed the three “uprooted” or “depressed” horns to be, first, the Greeks, that is, the entire kingdom of Italy, which in 554 was ended by the Exarchate or dependent government of the Greek emperor, which continued for fifteen years; second, the Lombards, who possessed the country for about 200 years; and, third, the Franks, who stretched their authority into the immediate vicinity of Rome.2. In the character of the Papacy. (1.) The horn was a “little” one. The territory of the Papacy has always been small in comparison with that of the other powers, never exceeding the extent of an Italian province. The Pope properly and originally a humble minister of Jesus Christ, on a level with the other bishops or presiding ministers of the Churches, and possessing no territory or temporal jurisdiction whatever; so “little” that the apostle does not even salute or mention him in his Epistle to the Church at Rome. The Epistle of Clement, one of the first Bishops of Rome, if not the very first, written to the Church of Corinth, breathes the very spirit of humility [172], a humility which is affected by his successors, while each calls himself the “servant of servants” and a successor of “the fisherman.” [172] The following are extracts from Clement’s letter, written towards the end of the first century, to allay some disturbances in the Church at Corinth in regard to the pastorate. “These things, beloved, we write not only to admonish you of your duty, but to admonish ourselves, for we are in the same race and conflict. Wherefore, let us abandon vain and empty cares, and advance to the glorious and venerable rule of our calling. Let us look to what is beautiful, and pleasing, and acceptable in the eyes of our Creator. Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ, and consider how precious to God is that blood, which, having been shed for our salvation, has offered the grace of repentance to all the world.… Christ belongs to those who conduct themselves humbly, not those who exalt themselves over His flock with pride and arrogance.… Let us attach ourselves to those to whom grace has been given by God. Let us put on concord with moderation of mind, endued with the gift of self-control. Temerity, arrogance, and audacity belong to those who are accursed of God; moderation, humility, and meekness to those who are blessed of Him.… The apostles, preaching the Word through regions and cities, proving their first-fruits in the Spirit, appointed bishops and deacons of those who believed. The apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that contentions would arise about the name of the episcopate, and on that account, being endowed with perfect foreknowledge, they appointed persons previously indicated, and left successions of ministers and officers afterwards described, that other approved men might succeed to their place and discharge their offices. Look diligently into the Scriptures. Take into your hands the epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul. Consider what he wrote to you near the very beginning of his preaching the gospel. Being certainly divinely inspired, he reminded you in an epistle concerning himself, Cephas, and Apollos, that even then there were seditions and party feelings among you.… Whosoever is zealous, pitiful, and full of love among you, let him say, ‘If any sedition, contention, or division, has arisen through me, I will depart; I will go away whithersoever you wish; I will do whatever is commanded by the people; that only the flock of Christ may live in peace with the elders (or presbyters) that have been appointed over them.’ ”(2.) It was “diverse from the first” (Daniel 7:24), having the eyes and mouth of a man. The difference of the Papacy from the other powers, as already noticed, conspicuous in this, that it was at the same time both a temporal and a spiritual power, the Pope being both a secular prince and a spiritual teacher, or, as Gibbon expresses it, “a Christian bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince.” The Pope claimed both swords, the civil and the ecclesiastical; a combination perhaps indicated in the Revelation by the two separate beasts, the one rising out of the sea and the other out of the earth (Revelation 13:1-11), or in the fact that the latter had two horns like a lamb, while it spake like a dragon (Daniel 7:11). “His look was more stout than his fellows” (Daniel 7:20). It is well known what anathemas were fulminated by the Popes against all who refused to acknowledge their supremacy or submit to their authority; how kings were deposed and their kingdoms placed under interdicts which deprived them of religious ordinances, their subjects released from their allegiance, and their crown given to another. This “stout look,” and the claim of making and unmaking kings at pleasure, conspicuous in the person of Gregory VII. (A.D. 1073). “I have received,” said he, “from God the power of binding and of loosing in heaven and in earth; and by this power I forbid Henry (the Fourth, Emperor of Germany) the government of the whole realm of Germany and Italy. I also loose all Christians from the oaths they have taken to him; and I decree that no man shall obey him as king” [173]. Among the “stout words” of the Papacy are the following, spoken by the same Gregory: “The Roman Pontiff alone can be called universal. He alone has a right to use imperial ornaments. Princes are bound to kiss his feet, and his feet only. He has a right to depose emperors. No book can be called canonical without his authority. His sentence can be annulled by none, but he may annul the decrees of all.” It is also to be remembered that the popes claim infallibility. [173] These were not empty words. Henry, driven to despair, in a winter of unusual severity, crossed the Alps with the determination of seeking the Pope’s forgiveness and reconciliation. Gregory was at Canossa, a fortress near Reggio. The Emperor was admitted without hit guards into an outer courtof the castle, where he was kept standing for three successive days, from morning to evening, in a woollen shirt, and with bare feet, while Gregory, shut up with the Countess, refused to admit him into his presence. On the fourth day he obtained absolution, but only on condition that he appeared on a certain day to receive the Pope’s decision as to whether or not he should be restored to his kingdom, till which time he was not to assume the insignia of royalty. It was this same Pope who endeavoured to compel William the Conqueror to do homage for the crown of England, and who menaced Philip I. of France with deposition. The language and bearing of Adrian IV., in 1155, to the Emperor Frederick was of a similar character. The Pope insisted on the Emperor becoming his equerry and holding his stirrup while he mounted. “To place your name before ours,” said he to the Emperor, “is arrogance, is insolence; and to cause bishops to render homage to you, those whom the Scripture calls gods, sons of the Most High, is to want that faith which you have sworn to St. Peter and to us. Hasten then to amend, lest that, in taking to yourself what does not belong to you, you lose the crown with which we have gratified you.”(4.) “It had eyes like the eyes of man” (Daniel 7:8). The very title of bishop, which is simply “overseer,” as in Acts 20:28 and 1 Peter 5:3, is in perfect agreement with this mark of the horn. The popes, as bishops or overseers, being spiritual teachers, are supposed to be endowed with wisdom and knowledge to qualify them for their office, of which the eyes of a man are a well-known symbol [174]. [174] See note (2).(5.) The horn had also “a mouth speaking great things,” even “great words against the Most High.” The first of these expressions indicates pride and arrogance, the latter blasphemy. The Papal bulls leave little room for doubt as to the applicability of the former to the Papacy. “The tribunals of kings,” say they, “are subject to the sacerdotal power.” “Since the Holy Roman Church, over which Christ has willed that we preside, is set for a mirror and example, whatever it has decreed, whatever it now ordains, must be perpetually and irrefragably observed by all men.” The words spoken against or (as the word is also rendered) as the Most High [175] are such as tend to set God aside. These have not been wanting in the lips of the Papacy. “The Roman Pontiff,” says Pope Stephen, “is to judge all men, and to be judged by no man.” “The Pope is styled God,” says Pope Nicholas, “by the pious prince; and it is manifest that God cannot be judged by man.” This mark may be truly regarded as made good, as Bishop Newton observes, by the popes “setting up themselves against all laws human and divine, arrogating to themselves godlike attributes and titles, and exacting obedience to their ordinances and decrees.” A bull of Pope Boniface declares that “all the faithful of Christ are, by necessity of salvation, subject to the Roman Pontiff, who has both swords, and judges all men, but is judged by none” [176]. Again we have to remember the claim to infallibility by the Pope, that infallibility having been recently made an article of faith in the Romish Church. [175] “Against the Most High.” μְ ?φַ ?γ (le-tsadh), “at the side of.” Keil observes that this term properly means against or at the side of, and is more expressive than ςַ ?μ (‘al); denoting that he would use language by which he would set God aside, and would regard and give himself out as God. Compare 2 Thessalonians 2:4. [176] It is this Pope of whom Gavazzi, in the oration already quoted from, says, “Swelling with the pride and pomp of Satanic inflation, Boniface VIII., having fouliy dethroned his still living predecessor, Celestine V., burst on the world with his blasphemous bull, Unam Sanctam, and laid his monstrous mandate on mankind, involving the human race in sacerdotal serfdom. By one fell swoop he abrogated the authority of kings within their dominions, of magistrates within the circle of their attributions, of fathers within the sacred precincts of their households. Popes became arbiters of universal sovereignty, bishops bearded monarchs, and priests lorded it over the domestic hearth.… Every human right, claim, property, franchise, or feeling at variance with the predominance of the Popedom was, ipso facto, inimical to Heaven and the God of eternal justice.”(6.) “He shall think to change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25) [177]. The presence of this mark in the Papacy already apparent. Everything was to be entirely in accordance with Papal decree. The observance of saints’ days established; the marriage vow, in the case of the clergy, cancelled and marriage itself forbidden [178]; subjects, as, for example, the English in relation to Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, released from their allegiance to their sovereigns; the cup in the Lord’s Supper forbidden to the laity [179]; and the making and worshipping of images sanctioned [180]. Bishop Newton mentions also as instances of this mark of the Little Horn, the Pope’s “appointing fasts and feasts; canonising saints; granting pardons and indulgences for sins; instituting new modes of worship; imposing new articles of faith [as recently the Immaculate Conception]; enjoining new rules of practice; and reversing at pleasure the laws both of God and man.” The traditions of the Fathers and decrees of Councils are made to supersede and set aside the Word of God. “The holy and inspired fathers and teachers,” says Gregory III., “and the six Councils in Christ, these are our scriptures and our light to salvation.” [177] “To change times and laws.” Keil observes that to “change times” belongs to the all-perfect power of God (cf. Daniel 2:21), the creator and ordainer of times (Genesis 1:14); and that there is no ground for supposing that ζξπιζ (zimnin), “times,” is to be specially understood of “festivals or sacred times,” since the word, like the corresponding Hebrew one, ξεςֲ ?γִ ?ιν (mo’adhim), does not throughout signify merely festival times (cf. Genesis 1:14; Genesis 17:21; Genesis 18:14, &c.) The sin is that he does not in his ordinances regard the fundamental conditions given by God, but so changes the laws of human life that he puts his own pleasure in the place of the divine arrangements, γַּ ?ϊ (dath), a law, rite, custom, or constitution. Calvin, applying the passage to the Roman emperors, says they perverted all laws, human and divine. Dr. Pusey, on the other hand, translates “essaying to change worship and law;” and has in a footnote,ζִ ?ξְ ?πִ ?ιο (zimnin) “set times,” that is, probably, the times of the set feasts (as we speak of sacred “seasons”), and so the worship of those times. He observes that in Onkelos ζִ ?ξְ ?πִ ?ιο (zimnin) stands for ξεֹ ?ςֲ ?γִ ?ιν (mo’adh im), Genesis 1:14; and Jonathan puts ζξπιξεςγ (zimne mo’ed) for ξεςγ (mo’ed), Zephaniah 3:18. Pseudo-Jonathan uses the word ζξο (zeman) in paraphrasing ξεֹ ?ςֲ ?γιֵ ?ιְ ?δֹ ?εָ ?δ (mo’adhe Jehovah), “the feasts of the Lord.” Elsewhere ζξο is used of the place of the sacred assembly (Numbers 1:1; Isaiah 33:20), but ξεςγ of the festival (Lamentations 1:4; Hosea 9:5). [178] A decretal of Callixtus II. says, “We entirely interdict priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and monks from contracting marriages; we decide also that, according to the sacred canons, the marriages contracted by persons of this kind be dissolved, and the persons brought to penance.” This Pope, as well as Pope Agatho, writes that the decretal epistles of the Roman Pontiff are to be received among the Scriptures, though they are not embodied in the code of canons, just as the Old and New Testaments are so received, “because a judgment of holy Pope Innocent seems to be published” for doing so. [179] In regard to the use of the cup, Pope Gregory VII. thus wrote to Wratislaus, king of Bohemia, “What your people ignorantly require can in no wise be conceded to them; and we now forbid it by the power of God and His holy Apostle Peter.” [180] Gregory III. convened an assembly of 93 bishops in 732, and with their assent published a general excommunication against all who were opposed to the worship of images. The same Pope wrote to the Emperor Leo, “Do you cease to persecute images and all will be quiet.”(7.) He was to “make war with the saints and prevail against them,” and “wear them out” (Daniel 7:21; Daniel 7:25). It is well known that one of the most prominent features of the Papacy in past centuries was the persecution of the saints under the name of heretics, that is, of those who refused, in matters of doctrine and practice, to submit to the authority of the Pope instead of the Word of God, and who said, with Peter and the other apostles, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; Acts 4:19) [181]. “If any one,” said Pope Nicolas in a Council at Rome, “shall presume to dispute the dogmas, commands, interdicts, sanctions, or decrees wholesomely published by the head of the Apostolic See, let him be accursed.” “It is permitted neither to think nor to speak differently from the Roman Church.” Such were to be handed over to the secular power, to be punished with the loss of goods, imprisonment, and even death. The burning of heretics, according to the bull De Comburendo, is too well known in England. The term “Crusades” was given to those military enterprises undertaken to extirpate the Waldenses and Albigenses; and the same Papal indulgences were promised to those who fell in such undertakings as were bestowed on those who died in the wars against the infidels [182]. The “wearing out of the saints” may be seen in the decree of Pope Pelagius, that those guilty of schism or separation from the Roman See were to be “crushed by the secular power, and restrained not only by exile, but by proscription of their goods, and by severe imprisonment.” How far the Papacy “prevailed” against the saints, or so-called heretics, appears from the fact that in a Council of the Lateran, held in May 1514, about three years and a half before the breaking out of the Reformation under Luther, the Hussites were summoned to appear; and when no appearance was made, the doctor of the Council uttered the remarkable words, “There is an end to resistance to the Papal rule and religion; there is none to oppose; the whole body of Christendom is now subject to its head.” [181] “Make war with the saints” (Daniel 7:21). In our own country, in the short reign of Queen Mary, three hundred persons are said to have been cruelly put to death for no other reason than because they refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. This is written within little more than a stone’s throw of the monument that commemorates the martyrdom of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, and the cross in front of Balliol College, Oxford, that marks the spot on which they suffered death. It is computed that in the South of France, between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries inclusive, about a million of those called Waldenses and Albigenses suffered death as heretics, especially by armies sent against them for that purpose, after receiving the papal blessing. Nearly a million suffered on the same account after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. In the Netherlands, it was the boast of the Duke of Alva that 36,000 heretics had been put to death by the common executioner within a few years. In Ireland, 150,000 are said to have been massacred in one province in virtue of a papal edict dated May 25, 1643, in which the Pope granted a full and plenary indulgence and absolute remission of all their sins “to all the Christians in the kingdom of Ireland, so long as they should war against the heretics and other enemies of the Catholic faith.” In the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, thirty thousand at least, in Paris and throughout France, are said to have been horribly butchered within thirty days, for which the Pope ordered public thanks to be given, and a medal to be struck in commemoration of the event. This feature of the Little Horn is acknowledged and justified in the Rhemish New Testament, where it is said in a note at Revelation 17:6, that the blood of the heretics is not to be considered as the blood of the saints, but is “no more than the blood of thieves, mankillers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which, by order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer.” So Pope Urban II., encouraging the shedding of such blood, states, “We do not count them murderers who, burning with zeal for their Catholic mother against the excommunicate, may happen to have slain some of them.” Sismondi, himself a Roman Catholic, intimates what was the crime of those whose blood was thus to be shed: “Many sects,” he says, “existed in Provence, and this was the necessary consequence of the freedom of inquiry which was the essence of their doctrine. With one accord they considered that the Romish Church had changed the nature of Christianity, and that she was the object described in the Apocalypse as the woman of Babylon.” He adds: “To maintain unity of faith, the Church had recourse to the expedient of burning all those who separated themselves from her.” [182] “Let the Catholics,” said Innocent III. in the Lateral) Council, “who, after taking the sign of the cross, devote themselves to the extermination of heretics, enjoy the same indulgence, and be protected with the same privilege, which is granted to those who go to the succour of the Holy Land.”(8.) The saints were to be “given into the hand” of the Little Horn for a limited period, here called “a time, times, and the dividing of a time.” This enigmatical period, found also in chap. 12, as well as in the Book of Revelation, is generally understood to be equivalent to three years and a half, or, as it is expressed in the Apocalypse, 1260 days, 360 being reckoned to a year, and also forty and two months (Revelation 12:14; Revelation 12:16; Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 13:5 [183], the half of the “seven times” already mentioned in connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity. The period in the text for the dominion of the Little Horn over the saints is also that of the “scattering or crushing of the power of the holy people” (chap. Daniel 12:7); of the woman’s abode in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14); of the treading of the holy city under foot by the Gentiles (Revelation 12:2); of the prophesying of the two witnesses in sackcloth (Revelation 12:3); and of the effective continuance of the beast out of the sea (Revelation 13:5). Probably the same period, and the same experience of humiliation and suffering on the part of the saints under the same power, intended under these various symbolical representations. The three years and a half, however, might be understood either literally or figuratively; either as ordinary years, or, as they are called, prophetical ones, each day being reckoned a year. The latter is generally understood, though there may be also a fulfilment of the prophecy on the smaller as well as on the larger scale. It is remarkable that from the time that the Bishop of Rome became a temporal prince, namely, in the early part of the seventh century (A.D. 606), till the cessation of his temporal power in 1870, is just 1264 years, the period in the text on the larger or year-day scale, with perhaps four years more [184]. It is also remarkable that from the time in which all Christendom was declared to be subject to the Roman Pontiff, May 1514, to the breaking out of the Reformation under Luther, that effected the deliverance of so large a portion from his spiritual sway, was just three years and a half on the shorter or literal day scale. Twelve centuries ago, more or less, the saints, or those who chose to obey the Word of God rather than the edicts and decrees of man, seemed to be given into the hand of the Roman Pontiff. There seems little reason to doubt that happily that period of subjection has come to an end. The Papacy can no longer persecute the so-called heretics as before. The Scriptures are openly sold and the Gospel is freely preached even in Rome itself. The Inquisition is at an end. Dr. Achilli and the two Madiai were among its last prisoners, the latter having been given up at the demand of Protestant Europe. The French Revolution in 1792–3, exactly 1260 years after the edict of Justinian seemed formally to give the Church into the hands of the Roman bishop, was doubtless the commencement of his fall [185]; one of the most marked results of that event being the freedom of religious worship among the nations of Europe, which during the last ten years may be said to have been all but complete. This circumstance might seem to leave no doubt as to the identification of the Little Horn with the Papacy, and to establish the opinion that has largely prevailed for centuries [186]. [183] “A time and times and the dividing of a time” (Daniel 7:26). Some have understood by this only an indefinite though lengthened period. So Calvin, who applied the prophecy to the persecutions under Nero and other Roman emperors. By the “dividing” or half of a time he understood the shortening of the period for the elect’s sakes. Bullinger viewed it as a definite time fixed by God, but known only to Himself. �colampadius understood half a week or three days and a half, God thus shortening the time. Osiander regarded it as three and a half prophetic years or 1278 solar years, during which the rule of Mahometanism, commencing in the year 613, should continue. Jerome, and Roman Catholic writers after him, understand it of three and a half literal years, the period for the tyranny of Antichrist before the end of the world. Similarly other Futurists. Junius and a few others applied it historically to the time during which Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews. Joseph Mede was “the well-known reviver of the year-day theory. Before his time it was a vague assertion; he first gave it shape and form, and plausible consistency. Since his day it has been adopted by many intelligent critics, among whom are Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Frere, Keith, and Birks.”—Translator’s Preface to Calvin on Daniel. Professor Lee refers the expression to “the latter half (mystically speaking) of the seventieth week of our prophet” (ch. 9); that week of seven days being equivalent here to Ezekiel’s period of seven years. Professor Bush says, “The grand principle into which the usage of a day for a year is to be resolved is that of miniature symbolisation.” Mr. Brooks (Elements of Prophetic Interpretation) says, “The literal meaning of a ‘time’ is a year; and the expression in Daniel 7:23 may signify, mystically, if calculated by lunar time, a period of 1260 years.” Mr. Bickersteth (Practical Guide to the Prophecies) says, “The time, times, and half a time, the forty and two months and 1260 days, are the same interval; the time, times, and half a time of Daniel and the Revelation are the same period; a prophetic day is a natural year, as three and a half times are the half of seven times, the whole season of Gentile power, and the same with the ‘latter times’ of St. Paul” He thinks the three and a half times began with Justinian’s Code in 532–533. “By this edict (of Justinian),” says Mr. Irving, “ecclesiastical power over the faith of the West and against the saints who dwelt there was given to the Bishop of Rome, which imperial edicts being seconded by the imperial arms, brought to nothing the heretical powers who might have opposed his entering into possession. In twenty years from that date he ordered heretics to be burned by the temporal powers—the first indication of that mixture and combination of powers, civil and ecclesiastical, which is the proper character of the whole period. Then, also, mass was introduced. In sixty years he had made such great strides towards absolute supremacy, that in the reign of Gregory the Great, who resisted the Bishop of Constantinople’s supremacy, were introduced purgatory, invocation of saints, expiations by masses, lustrations of the Blessed Virgin, and the celibacy of the clergy was attempted. In seventy years he obtained from the emperor the sole title of Universal Bishop. In little more than a century the service was performed in Latin, and the ignorance of the people sealed. In two centuries the Pope had obtained the pride and power to excommunicate the Emperor of the East for prohibiting image-worship.” Dr. Cox thinks that “the computation must be made from the period when the Little Horn or ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome should arise;” and that “that application of the prophecy is most probable which fixes on the time when, by the decree of Phocas, the Roman Pontiff was constituted Universal Bishop and supreme head of the Church.” This was in the year of our Lord 606. Some students of prophecy see in the term “times,” &c, the half of the period of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation and insanity, symbolical of the time (2520 years) during which the covenant people should be under the dominion of the Gentile monarchies as the chastisement of their unfaithfulness, this period having different crises as stages of commencement. Of these, Mr. Guinness (Approaching End of the Age) mentions four, from the invasion of Pul, king of Assyria, in 770 b.c., to the final fall of the throne of David and full captivity of Judah under Nebuchadnezzar in 602. These stages of commencement have corresponding terminations, the first being in 1750, the period of Voltaire, and the last in 1918, yet to come. It was during the latter half of these mystical “seven times” that the Little Horn was to have power over the saints, the case of Israel being bound up with that of the Christian Church, which was to be under captivity by the same power that was to tyrannise over Israel, namely, the last of the four beasts. See farther the note under chap. Daniel 12:7. [184] The spiritual power of the Papacy may, of course, have a different period for its termination, and outlive the temporal, which constituted it the Little Horn. Mr. Bosanquet remarks: “We see no room left for doubt that these 1260 years mark the duration of the Papal power. The temporal power of the Papacy seems to be vanishing before our eyes, if indeed it has not already ceased to exist [it has apparently done so, namely, in 1870], but how long the spiritual power shall be allowed to linger on in the ancient seat of its dominion, is a question to be solved by time. Wherever we may be disposed to fix the date of its commencement, it is clear that the time of expiration cannot be very far remote.” Some, however, date from the eighth century. “From the time,” says Bishop Newton, “of Pepin’s grant of Aistulph’s dominions in 755, the popes, having now become temporal princes, did no longer date their epistles and bulls by the year of the Emperor’s reign, but by the year of their own advancement to the Papal chair. Charles the Great, son and successor of Pepin, confirmed the grant, adding other territories, and giving the Pope to hold under himself the duchy of Rome, over which he gradually obtained the absolute authority, being about the same time declared superior to all human jurisdiction, while Charles in return was chosen Emperor of the West. Lewis the Pious, son and successor to Charles the Great, confirmed the donations of his father and grandfather, including Rome and its duchy, the popes to hold them in their own right, principality, and dominion to the end of the world.” “It should seem,” adds the Bishop, “that the ‘time, times,’ &c., are to be computed from this full establishment of the power of the Pope in the eighth century.” Gibbon speaks of Gregory I., who wrote so defiantly against the Emperor Leo about images in the eighth century, as the founder of the Papal monarchy; and Milner says, “From this time I look on the Pope of Rome as Antichrist.” [185] One of the effects of the Revolution in 1792–3 was the destruction of the established religion in France, the chief support of the Papacy. As the edict of Justinian in 533 might be said to be the beginning of the Little Horn as a temporal power, and the giving of the saints into his hand, though its full growth was not for some time after, so the commencement of his fall as such, and the deliverance of the saints from his hand, might be dated from the French Revolution, though not to be completed till several years afterwards. The Convention, which met on the 20th September 1792, first decreed the eternal abolition of monarchy, and on the seventh day of its sitting, it was proposed by M. Manuel that, as royalty was abolished, the order of priests and all religious establishments should be abolished with it. This, however, was only done on the 31st of May in the following year, when the success of the Jacobin conspirators completed the destruction of the civil establishment of religion in France. On the 17th of June the report of Camille Jourdan on the freedom of religious worship was ordered to be printed by the unanimous vote of the Council of Five Hundred. [186] It was the belief of the Early Church that the little horn of Daniel and the “Man of Sin” spoken of by Paul (2 Thessalonians 2.) was the same Antichrist, who was even expected shortly to appear. Justin Martyr says, “He being at hand who was to speak blasphemous words against the Most High, whom the prophet Daniel foretold was to continue for a time, times, &c.” Tertullian, referring to 2 Thessalonians 2., says, “Who can this be but the Roman State, the division of which into ten kingdoms will bring on Antichrist, and then the Wicked One shall be revealed?” Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, about the year 360, referring to the same passage, says, “Thus the predicted Antichrist will come when the times of the Roman empire shall be fulfilled, and the consummation of the world shall approach. Ten kings of the Romans shall rise together, in different places indeed, but they shall reign at the same time. Among them the eleventh is Antichrist, who by magical and wicked artifices shall seize the Roman power.” Cyril believed that the apostasy or falling away which was to precede the appearance of the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, had already taken place in his day. “Formerly,” he says, “the heretics were manifest, but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and have itching ears. Is it a plausible theory? All listen to it gladly. Is it a word of correction? All turn away from it. Most have departed from right words, and rather choose the evil than desire the good. This therefore is the falling away, and the Enemy (Antichrist) is soon to be looked for.” As yet probably they had no idea that the Bishop of Rome was to be he; for his coming was to be a “mystery of iniquity,” and “mystery” was to be the name of the system of which he was the head, as the word is said to be actually found on the Papal mitre. But a few centuries awoke the suspicion. In the Middle Ages it was believed by many that the Antichrist had already appeared in the person of the Popes. In the tenth century Arnulph, Bishop of Orleans, addressing a Council at Rheims, said: “O deplorable Rome, who in the days of our forefathers produced so many burning and shining lights! thou hast brought forth in our times only dismal darkness worthy of the detestation of posterity.… What think you, reverend fathers, of this man, the Pope, placed on a lofty throne, shining with purple and gold? Whom do you account him? If destitute of love and puffed up with pride of knowledge only, he is Antichrist sitting in the temple of God.” It is said in a work published in 1120, “The great Antichrist is already come; in vain is he yet expected; already by the permission of God is he advanced in years.” Roman Catholic writers, of course, refuse to believe that the Papacy is “the Little Horn or Antichrist;” and some few Protestants agree with them in thinking that that power is still future; while others, as the German Rationalists, would see in it only Antiochus Epiphanes. In reference to this last opinion, it is enough to say, with Auberlen, that the Little Horn is found among the ten kingdoms of the fourth beast or Roman Empire, while Antiochus Epiphanes belonged to the third or Grecian, which, according to chap. 8, is well known to have been divided, not into ten, but into four kingdoms. That the Roman Empire was broken up into about ten different kingdoms many centuries ago, and that the Papacy, as a temporal power, sprung up among them, are facts not to be disputed.From the prophecy regarding the Little Horn we may notice— 1. The providence of God as ruling both in the world and in the Church. “He putteth down one and setteth up another.” Even the Little Horn, which was to prove such a scourge to the Church and to the world, was entirely under His control, and employed as His instrument in accomplishing the purposes of His infinite wisdom. The saints were to be “given” into His hand, as Judah and its king were given into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (chap. Daniel 1:2). The same Providence limited the continuance of the subjection in both cases. What is done wickedly by man is permitted and controlled wisely and holily by God. 2. The comfort of God’s people to know that their sufferings are meted out, both in intensity and duration, by a Father’s hand. It was a fiery trial that was to try the saints when they were to be given into the hand of the Little Horn, who was to make war upon them, and prevail against them, and wear them out. But it was to continue only for a time, a long time indeed, as indicated in the expression “a time, times, and the dividing of a time;” but still it was to come to an end. “Thou shalt have tribulation ten days,”—not more. “In measure when it shooteth forth, Thou wilt debate with it: He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east wind” (Isaiah 27:8). The “time to favour Zion, even the set time,” comes. 3. The preciousness and power of divine grace in sustaining the people of God under protracted persecutions and afflictions. No small affliction to the saints who held fast the Word of God to have war made upon them by a mighty and prevailing power, and to be worn out by exile, imprisonment, and loss of goods, year after year, the same thing being continued century after century. No small amount of grace needed to sustain them in the conflict, so as to be faithful unto death. But the promise is sure. “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.” “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Though appointed as sheep to the slaughter, we are made more than conquerors through Him that loved us. “They overcame through the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” 4. The divine, and therefore indestructible, nature of the Church and religion of Jesus Christ, which has held out under centuries of cruel persecution. To exhibit this, probably one reason why such a state of things is permitted to take place. The bush burns, but is not consumed, because the Lord Himself is in it. The gates and power of hell unable to prevail against the Church of Christ, because founded on the Rock of Ages. The Church outlives the furnace, because One like the Son of God—the Son of God Himself—is with it there. “If this counsel or work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.” “Although,” says Sismondi, himself a Roman Catholic, “for two hundred years the fires were never quenched, still every day saw Catholics abjuring the faith of their fathers, and embracing the religion which often guided them to the stake. In vain Gregory IX., in 1231, put to death every heretic whom he found concealed in Rome.” 5. Cause for joy and thanksgiving that the wearing out of the saints by the Little Horn is at or near its close. There may yet be possibly a period of intense suffering from that same Little Horn under a changed aspect; but if so, it will be but of short continuance; perhaps the “time, times, and dividing of a time,” on the shorter literal day scale. But we may well rejoice and give thanks that the long-protracted period of “wearing out” is at an end. The fires of Smithfield and the tortures of the Inquisition, we may believe, are over. Even in Rome men may read the Bible and worship God according to it without being afraid. Let us thank God for liberty of conscience in Europe. 6. The prediction regarding the Little Horn, with its manifest fulfilment, another remarkable evidence of divine inspiration. That horn, as rising out of the fourth beast, and among the other ten, acknowledged not to be Antiochus Epiphanes, and must therefore be found long after the time when the prophecy was written. The prediction minute and detailed; and its fulfilment, in a power that for twelve centuries has been the most prominent and conspicuous one in Europe, singularly exact. The fulfilment of such prediction, though perfectly natural, yet partaking of the nature of a miracle, as being beyond any mere human power to foresee it, and as such an evidence of the divine origin of the prediction. . XXV.—THE OF THE BEAST AND THE LITTLE HORN (Chap. Daniel 7:9-12; Daniel 7:26) Hitherto we have not met with much difficulty in the way of interpretation. Little room has been left either for doubt or hesitation. The case is somewhat different now. We approach the region of unfulfilled prophecy, naturally more difficult of interpretation, and leaving more room for mistake and difference of opinion. The field is interesting and inviting, but demands caution in its investigation. The word of prophecy is given for our guidance and comfort, as a light shining in a dark place. But we need the Spirit to interpret His own Word. “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.” “In Thy light we shall see light.” “The Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God,” and revealeth them unto us. “He knoweth what is in darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.” It is His to reveal the “deep and secret things,” and to show us, as He has done in His Word, “things to come.” We have before us a passage of overwhelming grandeur and sublimity; the description of a scene of awful solemnity. The passage exhibits the judgment-seat of God, with myriads of attendant angels, and the infliction of pronounced doom on a large portion of the human race. The judgment is not indeed, like that in Revelation 20, the general judgment, terminating the reign of Christ and His saints on earth, and resembling in some of its features the present one. It is rather the judgment on the fourth beast, or Roman Empire, with its ten horns or kingdoms, and more especially the “Little Horn,” whose pride, persecution, and blasphemy are the special occasion of it. I. The occasion of the judgment. This is distinctly said to be “the voice of the great words which the horn spake” (Daniel 7:11). So in the interpretation by the angel it is said, “He shall speak great words against the Most High,” &c. “But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his kingdom” (Daniel 7:25-26). He was to wear out the saints of the Most High, who were to be “given into his hand for a time, times, and the dividing of a time.” That allotted period was to terminate, and then the long-delayed judgment was to commence. That monstrous reign of blasphemy against God and cruelty to His saints was to be allowed no longer. “These things thou hast done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow; for the wickedness is great” (Psalms 50:21; Joe 3:13). The occasion of the judgment is the sayings and doings of the Little Horn, [187] whose kingdom is therefore to be taken away; and the beast, to whom it belonged, of whose wickedness it was the concentration, and who had given to it its power, aided and abetted its doings, and so had identified itself with it, is, with its ten horns, to be slain, and its body “destroyed and given to the burning flame.” [187] “Because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake.” The connection between the depriving the Papacy of its temporal dominions in 1870 and its “great words “or blasphemous pretensions was remarkable. “In the same year,” said the Times of the period, “the Papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years.” The exaltation referred to was the decree of a General Council in Rome that the Popes were infallible in matters of doctrine. The circumstances attending the act were also remarkable. Arrangements had been made in the chamber where the Council sat, that, by means of mirrors suitably disposed, a glory expressive of divinity should appear to encircle the Pope’s head when the decree was passed. Strange to say, however, as if to rebuke the blasphemy and proclaim that the hour of doom had struck, the sun did not shine out that day: a violent storm burst over Rome; the sky was darkened by tempest, and the voices of the Council were lost in the roll of thunder. Within a day or two after, the Franco-German war was declared, which led to the immediate withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, and the consequent fall of the Pope’s temporal power, which for several years they had served alone to support. Jerome, and Roman Catholic writers after him, understanding the Little Horn to be the Antichrist that should appear immediately before the end of the world, view the judgment in the text as taking place at that time in his destruction. So Bullinger, �colampadius, and Osiander, who regard the fourth beast as either the Roman or Turkish Empire; while Willet, understanding the fourth beast of the Greek kingdom of the Seleucidζ, applies the passage to the first coming of Christ, but typically also to the final judgment, the judgment beginning with the first and ending with the second coming of Christ Calvin also refers it to the latter period.II. The circumstances of the judgment. “The thrones were cast (rather, set or planted) down,” &c. [188] (Daniel 7:9). We have— [188] “The thrones were east down,” ψְ ?ξִ ?ιεּ (remioo), “were set up.” Wintle: “were pitched.” So the Septuagint, Vulgate, and all the ancient versions, as well as Morus, Castalio, Piscator, and Calvin. The rendering also of Gesenius. The word used by the Targums in Jeremiah 1:15 for “they set.” Keil has “they were thrown,” i.e., they were placed in order quickly or with a noise. This idea of haste or noise, however, does not seem necessarily included. Dr. Rule prefers the rendering of the English version, “were cut down,” but understands not the thrones of assessors, but of the ten kings formerly mentioned, which is unlikely. Keil, with most interpreters, understands them as seats for the assembly sitting in judgment with God; that assembly, in his view, consisting neither of the elders of Israel, as the Rabbins think, nor of glorified men, as Hengstenberg (on Revelation 4:4) supposes; but of angels, according to Psalms 89:8, “who are to be distinguished from the thousands and tens of thousands mentioned in Daniel 7:10; for these do not sit upon thrones, but stand before God as servants to fulfil His commands and execute His judgments.” Hengstenberg’s view, however, will probably appear to most the more correct one. Lightfoot quotes from De Lyra: “He saith ‘thrones,’ because not only Christ shall judge, but the apostles and perfect men shall assist.” He adds, “So the saints shall at the day of judgment sit with Christ, and approve or applaud His judgment.”1. The judge. “The Ancient (or permanent) of days did sit.” The expression indicative of the Godhead, the I am, the everlasting and unchanging Jehovah, who was, and is, and is to come. In Daniel 7:13, the Father, or first person in the Godhead, appears to be meant; here probably the Son, or second person, who in virtue of His becoming the Son of Man has all judgment committed to Him [189]. “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, and hath given Him power to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.” “God shall judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained.” “God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” “He (Jesus Christ) shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.” Judgment, however, is the attribute and prerogative of Godhead. “God is Judge Himself” (Psalms 50:3-6). No other is capable of being so. Jesus occupies the judgment-seat as Supreme Judge because He is God, the Ancient of days. This character claimed by Jesus Himself. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). Hence His appearance at the same time identical with that here given: “His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were as a flame of fire.” Stupendous contrast with His appearance before Pilate’s bar. Now the judge and the prisoner change places. [189] “The Ancient of Days,” ιεֹ ?ξִ ?ιοςַ ?ϊִּ ?ιχ (’attiq yomin). Professor Bush, after Cocceius and Michaelis, translates, “permanent or enduring of days.” Keil has, “one advanced in days, very old,” and says this “is not the Eternal, for although God is meant, yet Daniel does not see the everlasting God, but an old man or a man of grey hairs, in whose majestic form God makes Himself visible (cf. Ezekiel 1:26). Mr. Irving understood God the Father, coming in His unstained holiness to judge the arch-enemy of His Son and destroyer of His people, and to prepare the way for the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven.” So Dr. Rule. �colampadius understood it of Christ, the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world.” So Dr. Cumming. Wintle understands the term ςַ ?ϊִּ ?ιχ (’attiq) actively—“he that maketh the days old,” and applies it to Deity.2. The throne. This was a “fiery flame,” and its “wheels,” on which it appeared to rest, or rather to move, [190] as “burning fire;” emblematic of searching investigation, fiery indignation, swift judgment. An object of supreme terribleness like the representation in Ezekiel 1:26-28. The throne corresponding with the character of the judge. “Our God is a consuming fire.” “His eyes were as a flame of fire.” “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?” Expressive also of the object of the judgment, the infliction of punishment or burning wrath. It is “the great day of His wrath,” the “wrath of the Lamb.” “The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged” (Revelation 6:16-17; Revelation 11:18). “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God,” &c. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). “A fire goeth before Him and burneth up His enemies round about.” It is the time of “judgment and fiery indignation, that shall devour the adversaries” (Psalms 97:3; Hebrews 10:27). [190] “His wheels as burning fire.” Grotius remarks that the ancient thrones and curule chairs had wheels. Those in the text, being like “burning fire,” Dr. Cox observes, “prognosticate at once the majesty of the Judge, piercing, penetrating, awful, and the rapid progress of those providential visitations which would bespeak the indignation of a sin-avenging Deity.” The fire-scattering wheels, says Keil, “show the omnipresence of the divine throne of judgment,—the going of the judgment of God over the whole earth.” He further observes: “Fire and the shining of fire are the constant phenomena of the manifestation of God in the world. The fire which engirds his throne with flame pours itself forth as a stream from God into the world, consuming all that is sinful and hostile to Him, and rendering His people and kingdom glorious.”3. The attendants. “Thrones.” Not one throne, but many thrones. The scene in accordance with earthly tribunals, where the judge has his assessors [191]. Apostles, saints, and martyrs elsewhere represented as sitting on thrones, with judgment given to them (Revelation 20:4). The saints shall judge the world as assessors with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:2). “When the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Innumerable angels also about the throne as the ministers of His justice. “Thousand thousands ministered to Him.” Angels employed as the executioners of His justice. “He will say to His angels, Gather the tares into bundles to burn them.” He will come “with His mighty angels, taking vengeance.” “The Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him” (Matthew 25:31). His angels to be employed in gathering “out of His kingdom all things that offend (all the stumbling-blocks), and them which do iniquity” (Matthew 13:41). His ministers in inflicting judgments on the Little Horn and the apostate nations of Christendom (Revelation 16:1). Hence their appearance here about the throne. [191] “Thrones.” From this representation of the judgment Rationalists have raised an objection to the genuineness of the book, as if it were borrowed from the circumstances and customs of the Persian court, while the prophecy purports to be given in the age of the last Chaldean king. To this objection Hengstenberg replies, that every feature of the picture can be pointed out in earlier writings of Scripture, as in Job 1, 2; 1 Kings 22:19-22. So in Isaiah 6 the principal angels are represented as standing round the throne of God. Dr. Cox thinks that the sitting of the judgment, as thus prepared, has a clear reference to the solemnities and general construction of the Jewish Sanhedrim or Great Council. This, however, probably an institution of later times.4. The accompaniments. “A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him” (Daniel 7:10). A further indication of the character and object of the judgment—fiery indignation. “It shall be very tempestuous round about Him” (Psalms 50:3). This probably indicative of and connected with the judgment to be inflicted on the Beast,—“his body given to the burning flame;” the earth, or as much of it as shall be involved in the judgment, to be “burned up;” the elements to “melt with fervent heat;” the earth “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7; 2 Peter 3:10). III. The judgment itself. “The books were opened” (Daniel 7:10). The significance and object of this indicated in the description given in the Apocalypse of the general judgment, “The dead were judged out of the things that were written in the books” (Revelation 20:12). Reference to earthly courts and their judicial proceedings, the names of the acccused, with the crimes laid to their charge, being registered for examination [192]. Indicates the strict and impartial character of the judgment. A constant observation exercised in regard to the doings of the enemies of God and His people, and a full and accurate account preserved of them. All the sayings and doings of the Little Horn recorded in the book; all the great and blasphemous words spoken against the Most High; all the cruelties exercised by him and the nations that submitted to his authority or were inspired by his spirit; every blasphemous bull and persecuting edict that ever issued from the Vatican; every secret murder committed in the cells of the Inquisition; every deed of darkness and of blood perpetrated under the cloak and in the name of Christ’s religion, all registered in those awful but truth-telling books. Words as well as deeds preserved there for judgment. “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” So Enoch testified before the Flood. “Behold the Lord cometh to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 1:14-15). Contrast with these records of ungodly words and deeds another book,—the book of life. “A book of remembrance was written before Him of them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name;” of those who chose, with Moses, “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” and rather to go to the stake or lay down their heads on the block than prove unfaithful to God and His truth. [192] “The books were opened.” Hengstenberg derives the figure from the papers of the judge, in which the names of the criminals and their deeds are registered. Keil considers the books those in which the actions of men are recorded. Jerome, Willet, and others understand them of every one’s conscience; opened by God to each, says �colampadius, to see and confess His justice. Bede strangely regarded them as the Scriptures; and Calvin in like manner understands by them the manifestation of the knowledge of God to the world at the coming of Christ by the preaching of the Gospel.IV. The consequences of the judgment. “The beast was slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame.” “They shall take away his (the Little Horn’s) dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end” (Daniel 7:11; Daniel 7:26). In the vision itself it is the beast or fourth empire on which the judgment is represented as taking effect; in the interpretation of the vision it is the Little Horn [193]. That horn thus identified with the beast, of which it was properly only a part. The judgment falls on the beast for the words of the Little Horn, so entirely were they one. The horn was only the concentration of the beast. The kingdoms of the beast, or Roman Empire, are represented in the Book of Revelation as giving their power to the beast (Revelation 17:16-17), and we know, as a matter of fact, that that power was long exercised in obedience to the will of the Little Horn and in carrying out his persecuting edicts. When the Papacy delivered the heretic over to the civil power, that power was obedient, and put him to death. Thus also armies were raised for their extirpation. Justinian, in his celebrated edict, distinctly permitted the Roman pontiff to “use the powers of the empire against whomsoever he deemed heretical.” The spirit of the Little Horn is the spirit of the kingdoms of the beast, in so far as their subjects are not renewed by the Spirit of God. It is the spirit of pride, vainglory, worldliness, and enmity against God, and so of enmity against His saints. The judgment on the beast expressed either literally or figuratively, or both [194]. A literal destruction by fire not unlikely. Rome, the metropolis of the fourth beast, and seat of the Papacy or Little Horn, repeatedly represented in the Book of Revelation as awaiting this judgment (Revelation 17:16-17; Revelation 18:8). That a wide-spread conflagration will form at least one part of the judgment to be inflicted on the Papal kingdoms and those animated by the same spirit of unbelief and rebellion against God, seems indicated in such places as 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12. According to Peter, the day of the Lord, in which this judgment shall be executed, is accompanied with a fire by which “the earth and the works therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). This may possibly commence with Rome and Italy, and extend to the other nations. It is well known that already beneath the sulphurous soil of Italy are subterranean fires ready to break out at the bidding of their Creator, who keeps them in store for His own purpose, like the fountains of the great deep, stored and then broken up for the destruction of the old world, when its wickedness made it ripe for judgment [195]. Possibly the destruction may be indicated in Daniel 7:12 as extending to those countries that constituted the three preceding empires, Babylon, Persia, and Greece, whose dominion was taken away, though “their lives were prolonged for a season and a time” [196]. Of the Little Horn it is simply said that its dominion is “taken away, to consume and destroy it unto the end.” The Papacy was to cease to be a temporal power apparently by slow degrees. So also the Apostle seems to speak of the destruction of the Man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:8). This destruction doubtless includes alike the temporal and spiritual power of the Papacy, whatever form it may assume. The total loss of the temporal power in 1870 may, perhaps, be viewed as the completion of what began in 1793 in the French Convention, and was further advanced in 1798, when, in the Campo Vaccino, the ancient Roman Forum, the Pontifical Government was pronounced, in the midst of a large concourse of people, to be at an end; while on the following day fourteen cardinals, in the Pope’s absence, met in the Vatican, and signed the absolute renunciation of the temporal power [197]. This taking away of the temporal dominion of the Little Horn seemed to be completed on the 20th of September 1870, when Rome was declared the capital of Italy, and made the seat of government by Victor Emmanuel as its chosen king [198]. As a spiritual power, however, the Papacy has still many millions in Europe and elsewhere subject to its sway. This, though it may continue for some time longer to exercise its baleful influence in the souls of men, must also ultimately perish. [193] Jerome and expositors in general, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, think the destruction of Antichrist and his members here meant. Calvin understood the passage of the Roman Empire when it began to decay after Trajan; but says that the slaying of the fourth beast and the giving of the kingdom and authority to the people of the saints does not seem to have been accomplished yet, and that all Christian interpreters agree in treating the prophecy as relating to the final day of Christ’s Advent. Bullinger applies the destruction of the fourth beast to the ruin of the Papal kingdoms; while Osiander and �colampadius understand the decay of the Turkish and Roman empires together. Junius thinks only of Antiochus Epiphanes, and Willet of the whole kingdom of the Seleucidζ. Irving thinks that not only the Little Horn or the Papacy is intended in the destruction, but all its supporters, “Yea, the whole beast of seven heads and ten horns, which had listened to the great words which it spake.” Dr. Rule observes that the prophet’s beholding “until the beast was slain,” &c., appears to intimate that the slaughter and the destruction will be gradual, perhaps very slow. [194] “Given to the burning flame.” “The supposition that the burning is only the figure of destruction, as, for example, in Isaiah 9:4, is decidedly opposed by the parallel passages, Isaiah 66:14, which Daniel had in view, and Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10, where this prophecy is again taken up, and the judgment is expressed by a being cast into a lake of fire with everlasting torments.”—Keil. [195] “The burning flame.” “Thus much being allowed from Scripture, let us now return to nature again, to seek out that part of the Christian world that from its own constitution is most subject to burning, by the sulphureousness of its soil and its fiery mountains and caverns. This we easily find to be the Roman territory or the country of Italy, which, by all accounts, ancient and modern, is a storehouse of fire; as if it was condemned to that fate by God and nature, and to be an incendiary, as it were, to the rest of the world. And seeing mystical Babylon, the seat of Antichrist, is the same Rome and its territory, as it is understood by most interpreters of former and later ages, you see both our lines meet in this point, and that there is fairness on both hands to conclude that at the glorious appearance of our Saviour the conflagration will begin at the city of Rome and the Roman territory. Nature hath saved us the pains of kindling fire in those parts of the earth; for since the memory of man there have always been subterraneous files.”—Burnet’s “Sacred Theory of the Earth.” Dr. M‘Cosh remarks in an article in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January 1881, that an old fisherman, more than 1800 years ago, anticipated the doctrine of modern science that the earth shall be burned up. The following communication from Vienna, dated April 12, 1881, appeared in the newspapers: “A rather severe shock of earthquake took place at the naval port of Pola and the surrounding district this morning at a quarter to ten o’clock. The earthquakes at Agram and the more terrible calamities at Cassamicciola (Ischia) and Chio, together with the increasing reports of shocks in Switzerland, Italy, and Central and South-Western Europe generally, are facts which are attracting much attention from Continental geologists.” [196] “The rest of the beasts.” Bishop Newton observes regarding these: “They are all still alive, though the dominion of the first three is taken away. The nations of Chaldea and Assyria are still the first beast; those of Media and Persia are still the second beast; those of Macedonia, Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt are still the third beast; and those of Europe on this side of Greece are still the fourth.” Mr. Miles (Lectures on Daniel) remarks: “They must all perish together; the three await the execution of marked vengeance upon the fourth. When the power of Rome shall be extinguished by the glorious manifestation of the Redeemer, every secular kingdom shall disappear.” Dr. Cox thinks the meaning to be that although these three monarchs were dispossessed of empire, “yet their influence and impious principles still continued to operate, notwithstanding their temporal demolition.” Keil observes that “the death or disappearance of the first three beasts is not expressly remarked, but is here first indicated. These had their dominion taken away one after another, each at its appointed time, and their end is connected with that of the last, as denoting that in that hour, not merely the fourth kingdom, but also the first three, the whole world-power, is brought to an end by the last judgment; the unfolding of the world-power in its diverse phases is exhausted, and the kingdom of God is raised to everlasting supremacy.” Dr. Rule, however, says: “The sentence—‘And concerning the rest of the beasts, &c.’—seems most naturally to relate to them after the destruction of the fourth empire; for it continues the description. It does not appear to be simply an account of what God had done aforetime to those former empires, viz., that when He took away their world-rule, He left them in being as nations; but of something which shall be after the destruction of the fourth. This, however, will be made clear when the time comes.” [197] The history is thus related by M. De la Bιdolliθre (Le Domaine de Saint Pierre): “The possessions that remained to the Pope (in 1792) had for their limits in the north, Venice and the Gulf of Venice; in the east, the kingdom of Naples; in the south, the Tuscan Sea; in the west, the duchies of Tuscany, Modena, Mirandola, and Mentone. They were divided into twelve Legations or provinces: the Compagna of Rome, the Sabine country, the patrimony of St. Peter properly so called, the duchy of Castro, the province of Orvieto, the province of Perouse, the duchy of Spoleto, the duchy of Urbino, the march of Ancona, Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara. The duchy of Benvenuto and the principality of Ponte Corvo were fiefs of the Church. Of the populations of these countries, some inclined to the principles of the Revolution in 1789, others were animated with a fanatical hatred against France and its doctrines.” When, in the month of March 1796, General Buonaparte took the command of the army of Italy, his prompt conquests in the north “were easy, for the majority of the population was favourable to the French. The reigning Pope, Pius VI., frightened at the progress of the French army, solicited an armistice. This was granted him on hard conditions, which, however, he ratified on the 23d of June 1796. He gave up to France the Legations of Bologna and Ferrara, the citadel of Ancona, which he was to deliver up, and all the coasts of the Adriatic Gulf from the mouths of the Po to that citadel, &c. The Pope having broken the armistice, the French troops immediately invaded the domain of St. Peter, and took Faenza, Forli, and Ravenna; after which the Pope, in consternation, wrote to Buonaparte begging a treaty, which was concluded at Tollentino on the 19th of February, the Pope yielding in perpetuity to the French Republic all his rights over the Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, on condition that it should be without any damage to the Catholic religion, and handing over to the treasurer of the French army ten millions of livres in specie, and five millions in diamonds and other valuables. In consequence of an emeute in Rome on the 28th December 1797, in which the French General Duphot was killed, Alexander Berthier, general-in-chief of the French army in Italy, received orders to take possession of Rome, which was done without striking a blow. On the 6th of February 1798, the chiefs of the revolutionary movement pronounced, in the name of a large concourse of people assembled in the Campo Vaccino (the ancient Forum), the fall of the Pontifical Government, and proclaimed the Republic. The Pope during these events kept himself concealed; but the cardinals, having met in the Vatican, had signed their absolute renunciation of the temporal power; and on the 7th of February fourteen among them attended at a solemn Te Deum, sung in the Church of St. Peter, with all the pomp of Catholicism, to celebrate the revolution which took away the throne from the head of the Catholic Church.” [198] The French Catholic paper L’Univers, commenting on the debate on Rome in the French Assembly (July 1871), says: “All our hopes have been disappointed; in the only nation on which the Papacy could count the last support fails it. Humanly speaking, all is over.” The Roman correspondent of the Daily News says about the same time: “The Pope is twitting the more Ultramontane of the venerable members of the Sacred College, those who have been urging him to pursue reactionary courses, after the following fashion:—‘You see what it has all come to—just as I told you, just as I never ceased to predict. You insisted on my abjuring my early liberal policy, and now you see the result. It is by you that such calamities have been brought on the Church and on the world.’ ” On June 26 the Pope held a consistory, in which he said, “We are, my very dear brothers, in the hands of Divine Providence; we have nothing to expect from human aid, for man has abandoned us. Why should we dissemble? It is better I should tell you, that kings and governments, forgetting their promises, leave us to our fate.… We can hope for no help from any quarter. We have done all that was in our power, but our efforts have failed. All is over. Only a miracle can save us.” The republican Government of France, the country that formerly was the great support of the Papacy, in the latter end of 1880 passed and executed a decree which not only banished the Jesuits from the country, but closed the convents of most of the religious orders in France, in all twenty-nine, with about three thousand six hundred members, in addition to the two thousand four hundred and sixty Jesuits who were expelled.V. The time of the judgment. As already observed, this is not the general judgment at the termination of Christ’s reign on earth, or, as the phrase is commonly understood, the end of the world. It appears rather to be an invisible judgment carried on within the veil and revealed by its effects and the execution of its sentence [199]. As occasioned by the “great words” of the Little Horn, and followed by the taking away of his dominion, it might seem to have already sat. As, however, the sentence is not yet by any means fully executed, it may be sitting now. The deeds of the Little Horn may not yet be finished, though the temporal power of the Papacy has apparently ceased. A new and more terrible form may possibly yet be assumed before its final and complete destruction shall take place by the brightness of the Lord’s appearing (2 Thessalonians 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:8) [200]. The words of warning addressed by the Saviour have their application at the present time: “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares: for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” “Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame” (Luke 21:34-36; Revelation 16:15). [199] “These passages (Revelation 4:2; Revelation 4:4; Revelation 5:11; Revelation 11:15-17), and others like them,” says Archdeacon Harrison, “show how, in the visions of prophecy, the throne of judgment of the everlasting King is in some sense ever at hand, ready to be revealed, and its unseen processes of judgment ever going on; though at certain times—and more awfully, we may believe, as the ‘mystery of iniquity ‘in its varied forms unfolds itself and the end of the world draws near—the spirit of prophecy, or the hand of Providence, draws back the veil, and exhibits the awful scene which Daniel saw in vision.” [200] Materials seldom long wanting for such a development. It was believed by many that the first Napoleon was to perform the rτle of the final or infidel Antichrist. The same thing was anticipated by some regarding his nephew, the late Emperor, who professed to possess the spirit of his uncle, and to have a peculiar destiny to fulfil. The anticipations have not been fulfilled in either case. Such a development, however, can soon be made to appear if the word of prophecy and the purpose of God require it. The following lately appeared in the Weekly Review: “Whether you talk to Parisians or to Frenchmen in the provinces about the political prospects, nine times out of ten there will be the shrug of the shoulders and the remark that history repeats itself; and the last decades of the nineteenth century, like the last decades of the eighteenth, will be a period of anarchy and revolution.… The Republic itself shows signs of weakness, and moderate men of all parties are anxious. It is said that the execution of the decrees against the religious orders has done some harm to the Republic.… After the way in which M. Victor Hugo has lauded Voltaire, it would, perhaps, have been discreet to have tolerated even the Jesuits for a time, rather than to have given the Anti-Republicans the pretext for asserting that the Republic is antagonistic to religion. But the changes of ministry is the most menacing feature.… It is incontestable that M. Gambetta has made and unmade Ministries. He has power without official responsibility, and that is always perilous.… Unfortunately moderate men are becoming distrustful, and M. Gambetta may be compelled to rely upon the extreme section, the Reds, if he is to be the chief of a Republic. If M. Gambetta wins by the sole or main support of the Reds, his tenure of the highest position is not likely to be long or beneficial to France.”As suggested by the passage, we may notice— 1. It is our comfort to know that there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Men not worn out by tyranny, oppression, and persecution, without an eye being kept upon their wrongs and the perpetrators of them. Flesh and sense ready at times to say, “My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over by my God.” A sore trial for faith when the oppressor and persecutor prosper, and the cause of truth and righteousness seems well-nigh crushed. But God only appears to take no notice. Christ is in the ship, and though apparently asleep in the storm, He will awake at the right time, at the cry of His people, rebuke the oppressor’s wrath, and change the storm into a calm. Patience is to have her perfect work, that when we have done and suffered the will of God, we may inherit the promises. “He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” The hour of deliverance shall arrive. The judgment will sit—is now indeed sitting. He who is “higher than the highest” takes not His eye from the haughty oppressor and persecutor of His people, and will, when the proper time arrives, “awake to the judgment which He has commanded.” 2. The infinite majesty of God and the awful consequences of His displeasure. The Lord is a God of judgment. His eyes, which are as a flame of fire, behold, and His eyelids try, the children of men. A fiery stream issues and goes forth from before Him. Who can stand when once He is angry? Our God is a consuming fire. How terrible to meet Him as an adversary! Yet sin makes Him our adversary. Prepare, then, to meet thy God. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with Him. There is one, and only one, way of doing so. The Jews, to be reconciled to their offended king, made Blastus, his chamberlain, their friend. God has given His own Son as a sacrifice and Mediator, that we may make Him our friend, accept of Him, and put our trust in Him, and so be reconciled to God. This is God’s own way for meeting Him. Blessed are all they that put their trust in that provided Mediator. Such can see the fiery stream that issues from before Him, ready to devour the adversaries, without alarm. They can go forward to meet it singing, with the Apostle, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” Or, with Count Zinzendorf in the well-known hymn— “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousnessMy beauty are, my glorious dress.Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,With joy shall I lift up my head.Bold shall I stand in that great day;For who aught to my charge shall lay?Fully absolved through these I am,From sin and guilt, from fear and shame.”3. The wisdom of preparing for a judgment to come. Whatever may be the case in regard to the judgment we have been considering, and whatever share we may or may not have in it, it is certain that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to the things done in the body, whether good or bad. “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.” Each must then give account of himself to God. For all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Are our works those of the flesh or of the Spirit? Are they wrought in God or out of Him? Am I renewed or still unrenewed? Am I pardoned and accepted now in the Surety, the Lord our Righteousness? A place in the New Jerusalem or the Gehenna of fire depends on the question. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to enter in through the gates into the city;” or, as the Revised Version reads, “Blessed are they that wash their robes.” This is the beginning of doing His commandments. “Come now, let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as wool; though they be red as crimson, they shall be white as snow.” Reader, the fountain for sin and uncleanness is still open; if not already washed, wash now, and prepare for the judgment. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Trust in that blood and be clean. relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXVI.—THE KINGDOM OF THE SON OF MAN (Chap. Daniel 7:13-14) We come now to what is perhaps the most glorious part of the visions of Daniel, or even of the prophetic Word in general. We have here the plain and full announcement of that which constitutes the burden of the prophets from the beginning—the kingdom of God upon earth, the establishing of which in the place of the kingdom which God’s adversary had introduced into the world was the great object of the incarnation of the Son of God. In another part of his prophecies Daniel speaks of “the sufferings of Christ” (chap. 9); here it is “the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11). It is “the mystery of God according to the good tidings which He declared to His servants the prophets,” which the trumpet of the seventh angel was to introduce (Revelation 10:7, R.V.) It is “the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord,” and of “the restoration of all things, whereof God spake by the month of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began” (Acts 3:19; Acts 3:21, R.V.) It is the consummation which John heard rapturously celebrated by the great voices in heaven when the seventh angel sounded, “The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15, R.V.) We have in these and the following verses the detailed account of the kingdom of the Son of Man, in its character, extent, and duration, as succeeding to and taking the place of the kingdoms of this world, including the dominion exercised by the Little Horn or Papal power. “The coming of Christ in His kingdom and glory,” says Archdeacon Harrison, “is in truth that great and final consummation for which the whole course of God’s moral government hath been ordered from the very beginning of the world’s history; and every successive stage in the fall of earthly power is, in its degree, a fuller manifestation of the glory with which the Almighty would invest His incarnate Son, exalted in His human nature as the Son of Man to supreme dominion.” In the sublime and magnificent passage before us we have— I. The establishment of the kingdom and the installation of the Son of Man as its King (Daniel 7:13). “One like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him before Him: and there was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom.” The kingdom is the donation of the Ancient of Days, here doubtless indicating the Father. “I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me” (Luke 22:29). Christ’s words to His Father at the close of His earthly ministry were, “Thou hast given Him power over all flesh; “and to His disciples before His ascension into heaven He said, “All power is given unto me in heaven and on earth” (John 17:2; Matthew 28:18). God “hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,” &c. (Philippians 2:10). This donation of the kingdom is represented in Scripture as made to the Son of Man, or to the Son of God as the Son of Man, in virtue of His having become such in obedience to the will of God the Father, for the redemption of a lost world, and as the reward for the completion of that redeeming work given Him by the Father to do (John 17:4-5; John 5:27; John 6:38; John 10:17-18; Philippians 2:7-10; Psalms 40:6-8; Isaiah 53:10-12). The text exhibits the solemn installation of the Son of Man or the Messiah into His kingdom, in the presence of assembled angels who attend Him as He comes forward to receive the kingdom at the hands of His Father. The passage has its parallel in Psalms 68:17-18, “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels,” &c. The Son of Man is represented as coming to the Ancient of Days “with the clouds of heaven” [201]. This passage recalls the ascension of Jesus; angels attended Him as He went up to heaven, while a cloud received Him out of His disciples’ sight (Acts 1:9-10). To that event also the psalm just quoted appears to refer, “Thou hast ascended up on high.” The text might indeed be regarded as descriptive of the time when the Lord Jesus, having finished the work given Him to do, went up to receive His reward at the hands of His well-pleased Father, and has by some been referred to that event. Doubtless such a public, solemn donation and installation in the presence of the angels of God then took place, “Angels and authorities and powers being then made subject to Him” (1 Peter 3:22). The exaltation and the gift of the supreme name with universal dominion is also represented by the Apostle as past (Philippians 2:10). The nobleman in the parable (Christ Himself) was to go into the far country to receive for Himself a kingdom and then to return (Luke 19:12). The text, however, has been applied by Christ Himself not to His going up to heaven, but to His coming down from heaven, visibly and in glory: “Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). [202] The reference to the words of Daniel is obvious; and no less so the reference to His own second and glorious Advent. The text evidently so understood by the apostles. Hence the words of the Apocalypse, “Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also that pierced Him” (Revelation 1:7). The prophecy might indeed include both. Both were connected by the two angel-messengers on the Mount of Olives: “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who is taken from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go up into heaven” (Acts 1:11). He went up with clouds; He will come again with clouds. He went to receive the promised kingdom; He will come again to set up that kingdom in its glorious manifestation; for the time when He shall come to “judge the quick and the dead” is “at His appearing and His kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:1). It is true that in the text He is said to come not from heaven to earth, but to the Ancient of Days; but as the passage was obviously understood by the Saviour and His apostles to point to His glorious return, we have only to suppose that He comes to His Father previous and preparatory to His descent to earth. It is also to be observed that the event in the text is posterior to and in consequence of the great words of the Little Horn, and in connection with the judgment occasioned by them, and the destruction of the fourth beast which follows it. Here, as in the vision of the Great Image, the destruction of the world-kingdoms and the setting up of the kingdom of Messiah are brought together. It was when the stone smote the image, so that it was broken in pieces, and became as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor, that it became a mountain and filled the whole earth; the kingdom of Messiah taking the place of the kingdoms of this world, according to Revelation 11:15. The vision might indeed seem to intimate that the destruction of the fourth beast and its little horn was effected by the Son of Man Himself, who, for the execution of this part of His work, is conducted to His Father to receive the kingdom, in order to set it up in its glorious manifestation [203]. Thus the 2d Psalm represents the Messiah, God’s anointed King over Zion, as receiving this commission and promise from the Father, “Ask of me, and I will give Thee the heathen (the nations of the world) for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Psalms 2:8-9). The 110th Psalm represents Him as first exalted to His Father’s right hand, and then “smiting through kings in the day of His wrath,” and wounding “the heads over many countries.” Isaiah sees Him coming from Bozrah with garments dyed in the blood of His enemies (Isaiah 63:1). In the Apocalypse it is after “the battle of the great day of God Almighty,” and the destruction of His combined adversaries in Armageddon, that the thousand years’ reign of righteousness and peace under Himself and His saints is seen to commence (Revelation 19:11-21; Revelation 20:4). [201] “With the clouds of heaven.” Keil observes: “Literally, ‘with’ the clouds, i.e., in connection with them, in or on them, as the case may be; surrounded by clouds.” He refers to Revelation 1:7; Mark 13:26; Matthew 24:30; Matthew 26:64; and adds: “If He who appears as a Son of Man with the clouds of heaven, comes before the Ancient of Days, executing the judgment on the earth, it is manifest that He could only come from heaven to earth.… The clouds are the veil or the ‘chariot’ on which God comes from heaven to execute judgment against His enemies. Cf. Psalms 18:10; Psalms 97:2-4; Psalms 104:3; Isaiah 19:1; Nahum 1:3. This passage forms the foundation for the declaration of Christ regarding His future coming, which is described, after Daniel 7:13, as a coming of the Son of Man with, in, or on the clouds of heaven, Matthew 24:30; Revelation 1:7; Revelation 14:14.” Dr. Pusey observes: “Even before our Lord came, the description was recognised as relating to the Messiah. The passage was cited in the Book of Enoch when affirming the pre-existence of the Messiah before the creation of the world. ‘Anani,’ He of the clouds, continued to be a name of the Messiah; and the Jews, unable to distinguish beforehand His first and second coming, reconciled the accounts of His humiliation and His glory by the well-known solution: ‘It is written of King Messiah, And see, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man came; And it is written, Meek and sitting upon an ass.’ ” “Most Christian writers,” says Willet, “understand it of the second coming of Christ to judgment.” Willet himself applied it to the first coming of Christ, yet so that His kingdom should be finished at His second Advent. [202] “Passages,” says Auberlen, “like Matthew 24:27-31; Acts 1:11; Revelation 1:7, leave scarcely a doubt that this appearance of the Lord will be visible. Moreover, the great and visible changes, of which there can be no doubt, which are thereby produced in the whole form of the world, render it probable; while the fundamental importance of this coming of the Lord consists, according to the declaration of St. Paul (Colossians 3:3-4), in this, that Christ and His Church shall become manifest and visible, even as before they are invisible in God. The Advent of Christ has a twofold object—to judge the world-power, and to bring to the Church redemption, transfiguration, and power over the world.” Junius understood the passage of Christ’s ascension to the Father, and His coming into the world in His deity to finish the work of redemption; His “coming in the clouds” being the figure of His divine majesty. Dr. Cox says: “His ‘coming in the clouds’ implies the dignity and splendour of the manifestation, but can no more be deemed literal than the garment and the hair and the wheels of the Ancient of Days.” Professor Bush, who refers the passage to the ascension, understands by clouds “a multitude of heavenly attendants.” But why depart from the natural and literal meaning without any necessity, when it yields a sufficiently good sense? New-come remarks that any signal interposition on behalf of His Church or in the destruction of His enemies may be metaphorically called a “coming” or a parousia of Christ; which may be quite true, without setting aside the literal meaning of the texts, which speak of His second appearing. Dr. Pusey remarks that among the “later ideas” alleged by opponents as an argument against the Book of Daniel, is the doctrine of the Messiah, which, it is said, appears already much more developed than in Ezekiel; Messiah here appearing as a superhuman being, while no traces of His divine nature occur elsewhere in the prophets. This is simply untrue. See Psalms 110:1, applied by our Lord to show His divinity. So also Hebrews 1:8. Nothing strange had it been otherwise. Daniel, living nearly to the close of the former revelation, might receive doctrine, especially as to the Messiah, not revealed before. [203] “There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom” (Daniel 7:14). “The kingdom of God,” says Auberlen, “has different periods; it is come in Christ (Matthew 12:28); it spreads in the world by internal, spiritual, hidden processes (Matthew 13:33); but, as a kingdom, in the strict sense of the word, in royal glory, it shall only come with the parousia (coming or presence) of Christ (Luke 9:11-12; Luke 9:15); even as we are, according to Christ’s command, to pray even now day after day, Thy kingdom come.” Keil regards the commencement of the kingdom as at the first coming of Christ, and its continuance in the form of the Christian Church, terminating with His second visible appearing in the clouds of heaven to final judgment.II. The reality of the kingdom. It is something given to Him by the Father. That something is called “dominion, and glory, and a kingdom.” As the result of it, “peoples and nations and languages” were to “serve Him.” The gift was as truly a kingdom as any of those that preceded it; as that, for example, which God “gave” to Nebuchadnezzar. It is represented as properly a fifth universal monarchy, abolishing and taking the place of the fourth, as that did in regard to its predecessor. As a kingdom or monarchy, it has, like the rest, its Ruler, its subjects, its laws, its administration. It is a kingdom or monarchy rather than a republic; for it has one Head or Ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords; and yet it is also true that the kingdom is given to “the people of the saints of the Most High,” who shall reign along with Him (Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27). The difference between this kingdom and those that preceded it is in its origin, its character, its blessings, its objects, its extent, and its duration. III. The Head of the kingdom. This distinctly said to be the Son of Man. No question as to who this is. The title constantly appropriated by the Lord Jesus, though not given to Him by His disciples. The title given also to the Messiah in Psalms 80:17. His title in virtue of His incarnation, marking Him truly man while He is as truly God. The Son of Man and Son of God in one person. The Son of Man par excellence. Pre-eminently the Man. The new Head and representative of humanity. The second Adam, taking the place of the first root and father of the race, by whom it fell. The sovereignty over creation given to man lost in the first Adam and regained in the second (Psalms 8; Hebrews 2:8-9). Sin and death our inheritance through the first man, righteousness and life through the second, called the Son of Man (Romans 5:12; Romans 5:17; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22). As Jesus declared Himself before the high priest to be the Son of Man of whom Daniel spoke in the text, so before Pilate He declared Himself to be a King, and the King of the Jews, though His kingdom was not then of this world (John 18:36-37). The world’s blessedness is in this, that at length it shall be under the rule of the Son of Man as its King, the King of righteousness and Prince of peace, the Son of Man and yet the Mighty God, the Ruler for whom it has sighed for nearly six thousand years. IV. The time of the kingdom. This appears to be plainly indicated as immediately succeeding the destruction of the fourth beast or Roman Empire with its ten kingdoms and little horn. The kingdom of the Son of Man, although set up in its commencement in the days of the fourth or last empire (chap. Daniel 2:44), yet is obviously intended to be the successor, and to take the place of, the four great monarchies. That Christ began to exercise His regal office immediately after His ascension, and has been doing so ever since, there can be no doubt. The foundation of His visible kingdom in the world seems to have been laid on the day of Pentecost, when, after the descent of the Spirit, the apostles declared, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:33). The kingdom, however, was perhaps then, and still is, rather in its preparation than in its manifestation and glory. The nobleman is receiving the kingdom in the far country. Thus Paul connects the kingdom that is in its full development and glory with His appearing when He shall judge both quick and dead (2 Timothy 4:1). It is “in the regeneration,” or renewed state of the world, that “the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory,” and the apostles shall “sit also on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28, R.V.) During this time of preparation, the dispensation of the Gospel, those were to be gathered out who, after overcoming in the fight of faith, shall sit with Christ on His throne, and receive from Him authority over the nations to rule them, as He also has received of His Father (Revelation 2:26-27; Revelation 3:21). The times of the Gentiles are to be fulfilled, and Israel is to be brought to receive in penitence their rejected king, before the times of refreshing can come from the presence of the Lord, and God can send again Jesus, whom till then the heavens were to receive (Acts 3:19-21, R.V.) Then, according to the prophet, shall the Lord of hosts “reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously” (Isaiah 24:21-23). In this sense believers still have to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” or, in the words that have for centuries been uttered at the open grave, that the Lord would “shortly accomplish the number of His elect and hasten His kingdom.” V. The place of the kingdom. This is obviously the earth, the place of the preceding monarchies. The kingdom is said to be not in heaven, but “under the whole heaven” (Daniel 7:27). It is peoples, nations, languages, and dominions (marg., rulers) that are to serve and obey Him (Daniel 7:14; Daniel 7:27). But these only have their place and existence as such on earth. The expectation of the saints now in glory is that they shall reign with Christ on the earth (Revelation 5:10; Revelation 20:4). It is the kingdoms of the world that are to become “the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” (Revelation 11:15). The stone, when become a great mountain, was to fill the whole earth. The earth, made to be inhabited by man, but seized and held by the great usurper, to be rescued and restored by the second Adam as the special seat and sphere of His kingdom. The earth not to be annihilated at His coming, but purified and delivered “from the bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21). “We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13). God’s sending back Jesus connected with “times of refreshing” to the earth (Acts 3:19, R.V.) VI. The administration of the kingdom. While the Son of Man is the sole Head of the kingdom, it is said at the same time, more than once; to be “given to the people of the saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:14; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27). These intended to be associated with Christ, and to administer the kingdom under Him Christ’s renewed people, as made one with Him, are, as kings and priests, to reign with Him in His manifested kingdom and glory. “If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him” (1 Timothy 2:12). “He that overcometh, to him will I give authority over the nations, and he shall rule them, even as I received of my Father.” “To him will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne” (Revelation 2:26-27; Revelation 3:21). The saints shall judge the world and even angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Of the execution of future judgment the Psalmist says, “This honour have all the saints” (Psalms 49:9). The words addressed to the faithful servant in the parable in accordance with the general teaching of the Scripture, “Have thou authority over ten cities” (Luke 19:17) [204]. [204] For further consideration of the administration of the kingdom by the saints, see next section. “Of the saints’ participation in the glory and reign of Christ,” says Auberlen, “the New Testament throughout speaks often and fully. See Romans 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:12; 1 Corinthians 4:8; Romans 5:17; Luke 12:32; Luke 22:29.… After having gathered His Church, and after having taken His Bride to Himself, Christ returns with her to heaven. Earth is not as yet transfigured, and can consequently not be the locality meet for the transfigured Church. But from heaven the saints now rule the earth; whence we may conclude that one of the glories of the millennium shall consist in the much freer and more vivid communion of the heavenly and earthly Churches in particular, and the lower and higher world in general. There now commences a manifestation of God through the perfected Church; a manifestation of God to humanity then on earth, through the instrumentality of the perfected Church. By which manifestation the social life of humanity is influenced into obedience to the divine power, which is shown and realised in the perfect Church, by which the God-opposed element is prevented from exerting its power in the way of forming communions or combinations.” Hofmann, quoted by Auberlen, says: “Thus not only does the evil spiritual influence which the prince of this world exerted in humanity cease, but in place of it the transfigured (glorified) Church of God obtains a most blessed dominion over the world; and they know no higher joy than to lead their brethren to the same salvation and glory in which they themselves partake.”VII. The character of the kingdom. This gathered, first, from the fact that Christ is its King and Head, and that the saints of the Most High are associated with Him in the administration of it; and, secondly, from the fact that all peoples and nations, with their rulers, shall serve and obey Him (Daniel 7:14; Daniel 7:27). The King is at once King of righteousness and King of peace, holy, harmless, and undefiled, meek and lowly in heart. Those who reign or administer with and under Him are saints—saints of the Most High; holy, as He is holy; persons who were once sinners, but by almighty grace have been transformed into the image of the King. Such a kingdom must render earth a paradise restored, a kingdom in which love reigns instead of selfishness and hate, righteousness instead of injustice and wrong, truth instead of falsehood and deceit, humility instead of pride and vainglory, purity instead of licentiousness and lust. “Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of His times, and the strength of salvation” (Isaiah 33:6). The Canaanite no more in the house of the Lord. God’s house no more made a place of merchandise or a den of thieves. The profession of religion no more, or with rare exceptions, dissociated from its possession. “Holiness to the Lord” inscribed on the horse-bridles. Every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah holiness to the Lord of hosts. Superstition and formality gone, the incense of loving praise and the pure offering of renewed hearts everywhere presented. Social life entirely changed and purified. Christian governments such in reality, instead of being only so in name. Kings the nursing fathers and their queens the nursing mothers of the Church, instead of being, as frequently before, its persecutors and oppressors. Nations will live in peace and loving brotherhood with each other. Weapons of war will be turned into implements of husbandry, and the art of it forgotten [205]. Converted Israel will not be grudged his place as the head of the nations, [206] while Jesus still retains His title, “The King of the Jews.” Adequate means for the accomplishment of so great and glorious a change in the world provided in the Spirit that, according to the promise, shall be poured out, not only on Israel, but upon all flesh (Zechariah 12:10; Joe 2:28, &c.), of which the blessed effusion at Pentecost, with its mighty results, was but the first-fruits (Acts 2; Romans 8:23; James 1:18). All things that offend or cause to stumble gathered out of the kingdom, and Satan, the deceiver of the nations, bound for a thousand years (Matthew 13:41; Revelation 20:2). The work of conversion apparently to be aided by the judgments that shall have preceded it (Psalms 46:8-10) [207]. [205] Dr. Rule remarks that the Zendavesta, written, as is believed, by Zoroaster in the reign of Darius Hystaspes, the same reign in which the Temple was rebuilt, contains a prediction that in the last days a Man would appear and adorn the world with religion and justice; that He would revive justice among the inhabitants of the world, suppress wrongs, and restore ancient customs which had fallen into decay. He foretold, or pretended to foretell, that kings would follow and serve Him; that he would establish true religion, and that in his time peace and tranquillity would prevail, dissensions be forgotten, and trouble pass away. An expectation of the advent of such a deliverer might well have been raised by the prophecies of Daniel, and have brought the Persian Magi from the East to worship the new-born King of the Jews. [206] “The Jews were to be distinguished by their covenant as the first in the kingdom and the organs for divine communications to mankind. From the earlier to the later parables of our Lord we see the ideality of the kingdom undergo a remarkable change. At first the kingdom of heaven was to embrace all men; was to last from that time forth; was to be successful. Afterwards men refused to receive it; it was shut up; to be delayed till the Bridegroom came, or the Nobleman returned from the distant country, or the Son of Man appeared in glory.… These considerations leave us no room to doubt that the original idea in Christ’s preaching was that the kingdom was a theocratic one; the Jews were still to be the covenant people, receptacles of the successive communications of Deity; and through their means the other idea of the kingdom, namely, its spiritual one, was to come forth.… We are now living in the frustrated state of Christianity. We do not see the bright visions of the prophets because of the infidelity of the Jews. Nor will these visions ever be fulfilled until they turn to the Lord, and become again a theocratic community.… The last words of our Lord in public were a lamentation over Jerusalem for having refused to receive Him, and a warning that in consequence their house should be left to them desolate, accompanied by a prediction that He would not come again till they (the Jews) should say, ‘Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord;’ that is, He announces two events: first, the destruction of Jerusalem, because the Jews had rejected Him; and, secondly, His coming again when they should be ready to acknowledge Him.”—Johnstone’s Israel after the flesh. “The Israelitish priest-kings are upon earth in the millennium what the transfigured (glorified) priest-kings are in heaven. Then there shall be a blessed chain of giving and receiving,—God, Christ, the transfigured Bride or the Church, Israel, the world of nations.… Israel, brought back to his own land, will now be the people of God in a much higher and more internal sense than he was before; for now the power of sin is checked, the knowledge of the Lord fills the whole land, and the Lord dwells again among His people at Jerusalem. Then a new time of revelation will begin; the Spirit of God will be poured out abundantly, and a fulness of the gifts of grace (charismata) be bestowed, even as the Apostolic Church possessed it typically.… And with this sacred and glorious character of divine service shall be combined a corresponding government of the world,—a fulness of blessings and undisturbed festal joy. When Israel glorifies God and is again glorified by his God, a deep and powerful impression cannot fail to be made upon the Gentiles. Now it is no longer necessary to go after and seek the Gentiles laboriously; on the contrary, they come willingly of themselves, attracted by the rich gifts of God’s mercy and the fulness of divine manifestation which they behold. It is their delight now to serve their God and to offer to Him their noblest and best offerings. Now, in the millennium, Jews and Gentiles are united, and all humanity, united under the First-born Brother, walks in the light of God; and then the true and just life of humanity is at last realised (Romans 11:30-32).”—Auberlen. [207] Dr. Rule remarks that the establishment of the eternal kingdom lies in remote futurity, and that it is not promised until the Antichristian apostasy should be annihilated, and Antichristian kingdoms too. This, however, may not require so remote a futurity. “A short work will the Lord make upon the earth.” Dr. Rule thinks that “between that extinction of the Papacy and the universal prevalence of Christianity there is an interval marked, yet not measured; and then there will probably be some signal methods ordained for bringing round the glorious consummation.”VIII. The extent of the kingdom. Repeatedly declared to be universal. More truly so than any of its predecessors. The earth to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. Men everywhere to be blessed in Christ, and all nations to call Him blessed. Each individual not necessarily regenerated. Religion universally professed, and generally, though not universally, experienced. As the kingdom advances and spreads, the unregenerate man made an exception. “The sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed” (Isaiah 45:20). Service everywhere rendered to Christ externally, though not in all cases sincerely. A forced subjection rendered where there is not a willing one. The former, however, the exception (Psalms 18:44-45). Cases of disobedience marked and suitably visited (Zechariah 14:16-19). Converted Israel apparently the principal human instrumentality employed in extending the kingdom of Christ among the nations (Isaiah 66:19) [208]. The sphere of their activity apparently those nations who had been left unevangelised or living at a distance from Palestine: “The isles that are afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory;” probably much of Asia, Africa, and America. Israel to be the third with Egypt and with Assyria: “Even a blessing in the midst of the earth” (Isaiah 19:23-25). [208] “The majority of humanity then living and remaining after the Parousia (or coming of Christ) belong neither to the one class nor to the other (neither to apostate Christendom nor to the faithful congregation caught up with Christ to heaven). They consist of Jews and heathens.… Besides the Harlot and the Beast, their exist on earth Judaism and heathenism in their old shape, without reference to Christianity; and in this form they are comparatively innocent, because they have not yet come into close contact with the Gospel of mercy, and are therefore not guilty of rejecting and stamping it under foot.… Hence Judaism and heathenism, in the strict sense, that is, Israel and the heathen, living at the time of the Parousia, are the comparatively healthy elements which form the new soil of a new development. And this is part of the humiliation of the modern civilised nations, that nations which they despise most, Jews and uncivilised barbarians (perhaps chiefly the negroes of Africa, the Hamites, who, on account of the curse of Noah, have been so backward and neglected, Cush, Seba, &c.—Psalms 68:31; Psalms 72:10), shall succeed them, and surpass them as centres of the world’s history.… At the beginning of the millennial kingdom humanity will be in a condition similar to that in which it was at the commencement of the Church-historical time, after the ascension of the Saviour. Again, Israel and the heathen shall be the representatives of history; and distinguished from them, we see the Christian congregation wishing to christianise them. But everything now is on a higher degree of development. Not only has the preaching of the Gospel of the kingdom among Jews and heathens before the second Advent of the Lord prepared the dawn of light (Matthew 24:14), so that the nations can understand something of the wonderful events attending the coming of the Lord; but the events themselves, the coming of Christ in glory, the destruction of the Autichristian power, the transfiguration of the Church of believers, the binding of Satan, and the ceasing of Satanic influences, must necessarily produce an unspeakably deep impression on the nations. Now the veil of Moses is taken from Israel, and the face of the covering, which was cast upon all people, is broken (2 Corinthians 3:14-16; Isaiah 25:7).”—Auberlen.IX. The duration of it. This repeatedly said to be perpetual, “for ever and ever.” This kingdom never, like its predecessors, to pass away and be succeeded by another. Sin not again to turn the earth into a wilderness. The final outbreak under Satan, released for a little at the expiry of a thousand years, [209] speedily terminated by fire from heaven (Revelation 20:7-9). The subsequent state of things not clearly revealed [210]. Apparently the general judgment, with the resurrection of those who had not previously been raised. Perhaps the kingdom then delivered up to the Father, “that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Uncertain whether the last two chapters of the Revelations describe the state of things before or after the general judgment—in the millennial kingdom or after it, though generally understood to be the latter. Certain that no kingdom shall ever succeed that of Jesus Christ on this earth. The kingdom will only cease on earth if earth itself is to do so. [209] Some think no definite period is intended by the thousand years. Strange to say, some, as Willet, make it to begin after the ten heathen persecutions and with the time of Constantine, and to end with that of Wickliffe and John Huss; the resurrection being the re newing of the soul and its rising from dead works by the preaching of the Gospel. Some again, as the translators of the Geneva Bible, make it to commence with the nativity of Christ and terminate with the time of Pope Sylvester; while others, as Junius, place its commencement thirty-six years after Christ, and its termination in the time of Hildebrand or Gregory VII. One may wonder how at such a time Satan could be said to be bound so as not to deceive the nations any more. [210] “After the millennial kingdom,” says Auberlen, “after the universal judgment, when heaven and earth are renewed, and the New Jerusalem descends from heaven, then all limitation shall disappear and cease.… Not even the millennial kingdom is the final end of the development of God’s kingdom. For even during the millennium there is a separation between heaven and earth,—between humanity transfigured and humanity still living in the flesh. Hence it is possible that the apostasy should take place at the end of the millennium. The kingdom is more glorious than the Church, but it is not yet the new world. It is a time of refreshing after the times of warfare, but not yet the time of perfection in the strict sense of the word.… As the life of the God-man, so likewise the first period of the existence of divine life is one of inward, spiritual, hidden humility during the Church-historic time, in which nature and history pursue essentially their wonted unspiritual course. After this period the life of Christ becomes manifest and visible (Colossians 3:3-4); it penetrates powerfully the whole world of history in all its fundamental elements—state, art, civilisation, &c.; this is the millennial kingdom. And, finally, this life becomes also the power which transfigures the world universally,—in the time of the new heavens and the new earth.”X. The certainty of the kingdom. This is as great as the word of the living God can make it. Its establishment and blessings the constant subject of the teaching both of Jesus Christ and His apostles. The keynote of the Apocalypse. The predictions regarding the previous four monarchies exactly fulfilled; those pertaining to the fifth will not be less so. Uncertainty may exist in regard to some things connected with the kingdom, none in regard to the kingdom itself. How Christ may come to set it up in its glorious manifestation and power, and at what time He may do so, and what shall be the concomitants of its establishment; how He will exercise His kingly rule, and how long it shall continue, whether a thousand years literally or otherwise, and what state of things shall follow; these and many other things connected with the kingdom may be uncertain, but the kingdom itself, in its more glorious manifestation and universal extension, is among the certainties of the word of Him who cannot lie. It has been already and still is in the world, and has for more than eighteen centuries blessed men with its precious fruits wherever it has been made known, and unbelief has not rejected it. It has indeed been but as the grain of mustard-seed, and the enemy has sadly mixed the tares with the wheat. But the mustard-seed shall become a tree, and the tares shall be rooted up, and the mystery of iniquity, that has so disfigured and changed the appearance of the kingdom, shall be destroyed; and the kingdom, which had been only a hidden one, and without observation, with perhaps only now and then a prelusive flash bursting forth from behind the cloud, shall be manifested in glory, and embrace all nations. The Gospel, or glad tidings of this kingdom, must first be preached for a witness to all nations, and then shall the long-desired end come. Even so come, Lord Jesus! 1. It is for believers to rejoice in the prospect revealed in the text. In the anticipation of a universal and endless reign of righteousness and peace to bless this poor, sin-stricken, and curse-laden earth, we may well rejoice. The prospect of a kingdom that shall bring glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and goodwill among men, instead of the wretchedness, and crime, and tears, and blood with which sin has stained and burdened it for six thousand years, may well make glad the heart of every lover of God and of his kind. In the midst of the groans and miseries of a world that yet lies under the power of the Evil One, who is a murderer from the beginning, infallible truth calls us to rejoice in the assurance that the day is hastening on when He who has been constituted Lord of all, because He has redeemed them by His precious blood, shall “make all things new,” and establish a state of things far exceeding the anticipations of the most sanguine philanthropists. In the prospect of what it promises in connection with the kingdom of the Son of Man, inspiration calls upon us greatly to rejoice in sympathy with a renovated and rejoicing world: “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar and the fulness thereof. Let the fields be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord. For He cometh, for He Cometh to judge [to deliver and govern] the earth. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His truth” (Psalms 96:11-13; see also Psalms 97:1; Psalms 98:4-9). In the midst of prevailing darkness and confusion, and scepticism and sin, it belongs to believers to rejoice that, not merely for themselves, but for the world, it is “better on before.” 2. It is for us to make sure our place in that kingdom now. It is our privilege to be among the subjects of the Son of Man now, by accepting Him cordially as our King and our Saviour from sin. He has His kingdom now, into which He brings every penitent believing soul, or rather which He brings into such a soul. He has His kingdom of grace now, preparatory to the kingdom of glory hereafter. To be His loyal and loving subject now, secures that we shall be among His glorified subjects in the day of His appearing. It is ours to make this sure, through His Spirit’s grace, by accepting Him as our King and Saviour, and giving ourselves up entirely to Him to save and rule us. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12). 3. It is our privilege and duty to speed that kingdom by our prayers, and to prepare others as well as ourselves for a place in it. It is the King Himself who has taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come!” Offered with the heart, and not merely, as too often, with the lips, it will not be in vain. In answer to the prayer of His elect, who cry day and night to Him continually, He will hasten His kingdom. He will appear in His glory and build again Zion, “because He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer” (Psalms 102:13-16). A prayer to the same effect left us in the last words of the Bible, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” The Spirit exhorts us by Peter, not merely to “hasten unto,” but to “hasten” the coming of the day of God (2 Peter 3:12, margin). But it is ours also to seek to gather others into the kingdom, that so the number of His elect may be accomplished, and the kingdom in its glory be hastened. Peter urged the Jews to repent and be converted in order that the times of refreshing might come, and God might send again Jesus (Acts 3:19, R.V.) The Bride, whom He is to receive and bring with Him, is to be gathered out and prepared for His coming. For this the Gospel is to be preached to all nations, and the Bride, already gathered out, is to say to all others, “Come.” This loving and loved work of Jesus when on earth He has left for His saved people to do in His name and stead: “Ye shall be witnesses unto me unto the uttermost ends of the earth” (Acts 1:6-8). The kingdom of grace, or rather Jesus Himself, like Noah’s Ark, stands open as the only place of safety for sinners, and His people are with loving persuasion to “compel them to come in.” . XXVII.—THE KINGDOM OF THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH (Chap. Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27) ‘The saints shall take the kingdom.” A striking feature in the kingdom predicted in this vision of Daniel is that, while it is distinctly said to be given to the Son of Man, it is just as distinctly said, and that twice over, to be given to the saints, or to the people of the saints of the Most High, and that the saints take the kingdom. Although this circumstance has been slightly referred to under the preceding section, in connection with the administration of the kingdom of the Son of Man, yet from the prominence given to it and its threefold repetition in the vision it demands a separate consideration. We notice—the saints to whom the kingdom is given; the kingdom itself; the sense in which it is given to the saints; the suitableness of the appointment; and the beneficial results. I. The saints [211]. Saints denote holy or sanctified persons. The term is applicable both to angels and men. Here it is the latter. “Holy” means separated from sin, and separated to God and His service. The former may be called the moral, the latter the official meaning of the term. Whatever is set apart to God and His service or use may be called holy in the official sense. Men thus set apart are or ought to be holy also in the moral sense, holy in heart and life, or separate from sin. This is the sense in the text; hence they are called “saints of the Most High,” such as are both separated to His service, belonging to Him as His own, made saints by Himself, and approved by Him as such. This far removed from the profane caricature of Papal canonisation. Men are made saints by the mighty power of divine grace, renewing them in the spirit of their mind, making them spiritually alive from being dead in trespasses and sins, and rendering them “new creatures,” or a new creation in Christ Jesus. This is especially the work assigned to the Holy Ghost, and such are said to be “born of the Spirit.” Baptism with water is the sign, but not the instrument of it. Cornelius, and thousands more, were born again of the Spirit before they were baptized; while Simon the sorcerer, like millions more, though baptized with water, was never born again at all. The instrument in the new birth, in the case of any beyond infancy, is the Word of truth. “Being born again,” says Peter, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever.” “Of His own will,” says James, “begat He us by the Word of truth.” It is by the same instrument that the work of holiness or sanctification is carried on in the saints afterwards. “Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” “Now ye are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you.” “That He might sanctify and cleanse it (the Church) with the washing of water by the Word” (John 17:17; John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26). This renewing and sanctifying of the soul by the Holy Ghost is effected in union with Christ, as members of His body and branches in Him as the true Vine,—“sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The work is carried on here in the body of flesh, but is only perfected when the body is either put off at death or changed at the Lord’s coming. Hence “the spirits of just men made perfect.” Men may be truly saints here, but only perfected saints hereafter. This saintship or sanctified condition is peculiar to no nation or class. There is, however, also a federal or covenant holiness which may belong to a nation or class, and which, like official holiness, may exist without holiness in heart and life. Thus the Jews were a holy, because a covenant people, chosen by the Lord as a people for Himself. Thus baptized Christians and the children of such are federally holy, as taken outwardly into the Christian covenant, and professedly given up to God in baptism, though, alas! too often, like the Jews, far away from moral and personal holiness. The saints of the Most High are not merely federally and officially, but morally and personally holy; holy as God is holy, and pure as God is pure, partakers of the divine character, and possessing the same holiness in kind though not in degree. In the Old Testament such were chiefly found among the Jews, to whom pertained the adoption and the giving of the law, as well as the covenants and the promises. In the New Testament they are found both among Jews and Gentiles of every nation, people, and tongue. It is of such that the kingdom of the Son of Man, identical with the kingdom given to the saints, consists. Hence the commission: “Go ye and teach (disciple) all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” While He is King of the Jews, He is also “Lord of all.” There appears, therefore, no reason for limiting the term in the text, especially as the vision has obviously its fulfilment, not in Old, but in New Testament times. A more difficult question perhaps might be, Are they the glorified saints, or saints still in the body, or both? [212] If the giving of the kingdom to the saints is to be understood in the sense of reward, as in that sense it is given to the Son of Man, then it would seem that the saints here indicated are those who, like Paul, have fought the good fight, have finished their course, and have kept the faith, and so have now received the crown of righteousness from the hand of the righteous Judge at His appearing. On this supposition they are those who have overcome, and so have received power from Christ “over the nations to rule them,” and have been made to sit down with Him on His throne. It would be the fulfilment of the promise, “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed unto me” (Luke 22:28-29). Other parallel passages would be Revelation 5:9-10; Revelation 17:18; Revelation 20:4. In this case, the saints would be those who should be raised from the dead at the Lord’s appearing, according to 1 Corinthians 15:23, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16, together with those who should be alive at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:17). However, even in respect to the saints then still in the body, and constituting the renewed subjects of the millennial kingdom in general, with converted Israel in particular, it would still be true that the saints take the kingdom, all civil government being then exercised by the holy persons in subordination to Christ and His glorified Bride. [211] “Saints.” According to Keil, these are neither the Jews, who are accustomed to call themselves “saints,” in contrast with the heathen (as V. Lengerke, Maurer, Hitzig, &c., think), nor the converted Israel of the millennium (as Hofmann and others believe); but, as we argue from Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6, the true members of the covenant nation, the New Testament Israel of God, i.e., the congregation of the new covenant, consisting of Israel and the faithful of all nations. Auberlen, like Hofmann, understands the Jews still on earth to be the saints meant in this vision of Daniel. “By ‘the people of the saints of the Most High,’ to whom dominion is given, Daniel evidently could only understand the people of Israel, as distinguished from the heathen nations and kingdoms, which were to rule till then. In this point Roos, Preiswerk, Hofmann, agree with Hitzig, Bertholdt, and others. The prophet’s words refer to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel, concerning which the disciples asked immediately before the ascension.” Œcolampadius and others understood the faithful reigning with Christ in the celestial kingdom. Willet, however, justly observes that the kingdom is not said to be in heaven, but under heaven, and therefore on earth. Some, as Pellican and Bullinger, thought the Church of Christ is indicated, commencing while the other monarchies were still standing, and propagated over all the world in the time of the fourth beast or Roman Empire. Willet thinks the kingdom is the spiritual dominion of the Church, commencing when the other monarchies are extinguished; beginning in this world, but perfected at the Lord’s second Advent, the saints reigning in grace here and in glory hereafter. [212] “Among the saints who are called to reign with Christ,” says Auberlen on Revelation 20:4, “the martyrs of ancient and modern times are mentioned first; they become most like to the Lord Jesus in their suffering and death, and are therefore nearest Him in His life and reign.… And the Saviour teaches expressly that at His second coming as King of the kingdom, He shall place one servant over ten cities and another over five, according to the measure of faithfulness they showed during His absence (Luke 19:11). Next to the martyrs are mentioned all who had not worshipped the beast, be it in more remote times or in the last days, which are referred to by the image and the mark upon their forehead, as will appear from a comparison with Revelation 13:14-17. Worshippers of the beast are all they that take the powers of this world as a reality and serve it, instead of looking to things invisible and future (2 Corinthians 4:17).… Hence our passage refers to the whole congregation of believers who are born of God, to God’s Church gathered out of Israel and the Gentiles (Romans 8:17).… Immediately connected with the resurrection of the dead is the transfiguration of those who will be then living on the earth; and the living thus changed, freed from the weight of the earthly and corruptible, and transported into the essential liberty of spirit, can now, even as the transfigured Saviour ascended up on high, be caught up into the clouds to meet the returning Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). The New Testament tells us that instead of the devil, the transfigured Church of Christ shall rule the world; while the Old Testament informs us that instead of the heathen beast, the holy people of Israel shall do so. Both agree in what is of central importance, that it is Christ, the Son of Man, who now rules humanity by His transfigured Church in heaven and by His people Israel on earth.” Calvin observes that in consequence of the intimate union between Christ and His Church, what belongs to the Head is transferred to the body; that the supreme power is constantly promised by the prophets to the Church, especially by Jesus Christ, who often predicts its complete supremacy; and that while the Church reigns by itself, Christ, its only supreme Head, obtains dominion therein.II. The kingdom itself. This appears to be the same as that of which the interpreting angel had already spoken as the kingdom given by the Ancient of Days to the Son of Man—the kingdom of which Christ is the Head and King, and which was to take the place of the kingdoms of this world, or of the four monarchies, which shall have disappeared as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor (chap. 2) The same dominion, rule, and kingdom that is given to Christ is given to the saints as Christ’s members, who are to reign and be glorified with Him, and to sit with Him on His throne; to whom He Himself was to give authority over the nations, to rule them along with Him, and whom He was to appoint a kingdom as His Father had appointed to Himself. The kingdom is given by the Ancient of Days to Christ, and by Christ is given to His Church or Bride, to possess it along with Him, and be associated with Him in its government. The kingdom is heavenly in its origin and character, but has its place not in heaven but on earth, over and among the nations and peoples inhabiting it. While having its earthly visible and material side, like its predecessors, it will be spiritual and holy in its character, consisting not in meats and drinks, but in righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; the kingdom that has been so long prayed for, when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. From heaven, wherever that may be, the saints will rule the earth with Christ, while the saints on earth shall rule subordinately with them. The “kingdom of the world” shall become “the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” or His anointed members (Revelation 11:15, R.V.) III. The sense in which the saints shall take the kingdom. This appears to be the same as that in which Christ Himself takes it. The angel indicates no difference; only that Christ receives it directly from the Ancient of Days, which the saints are not said to do, they receiving it mediately from or virtually in Christ, whose members and whose Bride they are, forming with Him one body and one Christ (Revelation 11:15; 1 Corinthians 12:12). Christ the Head receives the kingdom from the Father as His reward for the accomplishment of His mediatorial work given Him by the Father to do as His Righteous Servant (Philippians 2:6-10). His members receive it also as a reward from Christ, whose servants they were, and to whom they were enabled to be faithful even unto death. “If any man will serve me, let him follow me; and where I am there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him will my Father honour.” “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” “He that overcometh, and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.” “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed me” (John 12:26; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:21; Luke 22:28-29). The saints take the kingdom as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. One with Christ, they share with Him in His glory and reign, as they shared with Him before in His humiliation and suffering. They possess the kingdom, and exercise kingly rule and authority with and under Him, as the priest-kings whom He made such by His grace after redeeming them by His blood (Revelation 1:5-6; Revelation 5:9-10). With the members as with the Head, it is first humiliation and then glory: “Out of prison he cometh to reign” (Ecclesiastes 4:13). They take the kingdom, not as the kings of the world, as a matter of earthly ambition, or through carnal relationship, or by skilful management, intrigue, and violence, or as conquerors with garments rolled in blood. They take it as a gift of grace from their loving Husband and King, whom it was given them by the same grace lovingly to follow and obey even unto death. They take and possess the kingdom, not for the gratification of personal ambition, or selfish desires, or carnal pleasures, from which, as saints, they are for ever separated; but for the glory of Him who created all things for Himself, and of His Son who redeemed them by His blood, as well as for the happiness of a regenerated world and wide-extended universe. For the same high and holy ends will the saints then still in the flesh, and Israel more especially, exercise in a subordinate capacity the rule which the King Himself in His wisdom shall assign to them. [213][213] “Take the kingdom.” Calvin refers the taking of the kingdom by the saints to the time when, after the promulgation of the Gospel, the kingdom of God and of the saints obtained some fame and celebrity in the world. In another place, however, he remarks that the slaying of the fourth beast and the giving the kingdom and authority to the people of the saints does not seem to have taken place yet; whence all Christian interpreters agree in treating this prophecy as relating to the final day of Christ’s Advent He himself thinks the saints began to reign under the whole heaven when Christ ushered in His kingdom by the promulgation of it; and that though Daniel does not here predict occurrences connected with the Advent of Christ as Judge of the World, but with the first preaching of the Gospel, yet he notwithstanding draws a magnificent picture of Christ’s reign, embracing its final completion. The taking of the kingdom was in like manner interpreted by the early Fathers as referring to the general spread of Christianity after the first Advent of Christ. So Dr. Lee and Professor Bush.IV. The suitableness of the appointment. There is something suitable in the thrice-repeated declaration that the saints of the Most High, or truly holy persons, shall take the kingdom. In the preceding empires, and ever since Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” began to be “a mighty one on the earth,” the “vilest of men” have often been “exalted” to kingly power, and, as a consequence, the “wicked have walked on every side” (Psalms 12:8). For wise and holy reasons, God, in His mysterious providence, often sets over kingdoms the “basest of men,” when, as a natural result, the land is filled with misery and crime (Daniel 4:17). Selfish and godless rulers have constituted a part of the present state of earthly things. Natural, so long as “the whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:19, R.V.) Evil rulers a part of the evil entailed by the Fall, and often the chastisement of the sins of the people. What the world wants and longs for, but seldom obtains, is wise, upright, disinterested rulers, ruling in the fear of God and for the best interests of their subjects. Such is the state of things predicted in the text. Something suitable and becoming when holy men, separated from sin and selfishness, bearing the image and character of the God whose name and nature is love, and who is “righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works,” shall take, and, by divine gift, possess the kingdom. Such have learned to rule by being first taught how to obey, and have been trained to reign with Christ hereafter by suffering with Him here. Such fitted to rule by imbibing the spirit and walking in the steps of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, and who pleased not Himself, but went about doing good. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:5). V. Its beneficial results. The happiness of subjects greatly bound up with the character and government of their rulers. “The king by judgment establisheth the land.” “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn” (Proverbs 29:2; Proverbs 29:4). Seen in a measure in the rule of David, as compared with that of many who succeeded him. Limited examples also in our own Alfred, and in her who now sits upon his throne. The best of rulers, however, in the present state of things, able only to produce partial results, both from their own imperfect spiritual condition and that of their ministers and coadjutors in the government, their short continuance in power, the evil state of things already existing, and the hostile influences, visible and invisible, which oppose them. From these impediments the reign of the saints of the Most High in the millennial kingdom of the Son of Man will be greatly exempt, so that their rule will be naturally one of the highest beneficence, and attended with the happiest results to humanity [214]. The state of things in the world, under a government in which a King (Messiah) shall reign in righteousness, and princes (the saints associated with Him) shall rule in judgment, represented by the prophets under such imagery as the following: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth” (Isaiah 11:6-9; Isaiah 65:25; Psalms 72:6; Psalms 72:16). Without any figure, “Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” (Psalms 67:6-7). The subject suggests— [214] “Not only,” says Auberlen, “does the evil spiritual influence which the prince of this world exerted on humanity in the preceding ages cease, but, in place of it, the transfigured Church of God obtain a most blessed dominion over the world. Christianity will pervade the world and all relations of life in spirit and in truth.… It is upon this present earth that it must be shown and proved that the devil, who pretended to be its rightful lord, was only a usurper; man, who was created to ‘have dominion over the earth,’ is to rejoice over his world with full, unmixed, holy joy. Every legitimate and true ideal will then become a reality.”1. Cause of rejoicing in the prospect presented by the text. It was as a ground of comfort and a matter of rejoicing that it was three times announced to Daniel that the saints should take and possess the kingdom. It was intimated as good tidings not only for the saints themselves, who, instead of being given into the hands of oppressors and persecutors, despised and down-trodden, and often counted as sheep for the slaughter, should have the rule and government of the nations committed to them, but for the world who should reap the benefit of such a state of things. Whether it be the saints that have finished their course of suffering and service on earth, and now are glorified according to the promise, or whether it be the saints still living in the flesh, be it Jews or Gentiles, or both, it is for every lover of his kind to rejoice that a day is coming when truly holy persons, and only such, shall hold the reins of government, and administer a righteous and beneficent rule over the nations, in loyal and loving subordination and obedience to the Prince of Peace. That saints, renewed and sanctified in Christ, transformed into His image, and breathing His spirit of meekness, humility, and love, and at the same time guided by a wisdom that is from above, pure, peaceable, and gentle, full of mercy and of good fruits, instead of the wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and devilish—that such shall be the only rulers that the earth shall know, and that their rule shall be at the same time the rule of the Son of Man, with all power in heaven and earth, is surely a consummation devoutly to be wished, and a prospect greatly to be rejoiced in. 2. The blessed consequence of a faithful adherence to the Saviour. The saints shall take the kingdom. Believers are made kings and priests already. They are princes even now, but in disguise. They travel to their inheritance incognito. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we do know that a crown of glory awaits every faithful follower of Jesus, however poor his condition may be now. If we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with Him. Suffering with Him now, we shall be also glorified with Him hereafter. When He who is our life shall be manifested, we shall also “with Him be manifested in glory” (Colossians 3:4, R.V.) The humblest follower of Jesus, faithful unto death, shall receive a crown of life, and shall sit down with Christ in His throne, sharing with Him in His kingly glory, and in the government of a renewed world. They shall reign with Christ. “The saints shall judge the world. Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). It matters not how the saints shall reign or exercise the kingly authority that shall be committed to them. What we know not now we shall know hereafter. Enough that the thing is true. If we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. Let this be our comfort under the burden and heat of the day, and let it animate us to use unfaltering perseverance in a cause of faithful self-denying service, till the Master shall please to call us from the field. 3. The character of the future blessedness of the saints. They shall possess the kingdom. They shall thus have noble work to do, honourable and dignified service to employ them. His servants shall still serve Him, and they shall serve Him in the highest form of service. They shall find abundant scope for the sanctified faculties which they shall possess, and have ample field for the exercise of the Christ-like disposition which shall animate them. Renewed in the image of the universal Ruler, they shall have the employment restored to them which was originally bestowed upon man at his creation, but was lost through the Fall. Their blessedness will not be mere rest, but rest from trouble, sin, and bondage, with a holy and happy employment which shall become their position as sons of God and brethren of the King of kings, and in which they shall with Him still contribute to the glory of the Creator and the happiness of His creatures. They will thus not only be made to resemble their Lord and Husband, but be kept in closest sympathy and fellowship with Him, as sharing in the government that shall be upon His shoulders. What was their chief happiness on earth will thus be perfected in glory. Their kingly and princely office they will also be enabled to discharge without fatigue, and without the grief of being continually opposed and thwarted in their benevolent endeavours by the wily and watchful enmity of him who was the great adversary of God and man, but who shall then be under a divine restraint, so as no more to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:4). 4. The privilege of believers to be employed now in a way that shall be both an anticipation of their future blessedness and their preparation for it. This is that of seeking, according to our gifts and opportunities, to promote the objects aimed at by Christ Himself and the saints that shall reign with Him over the earth—the glory of the Creator and the happiness of men, as experienced in His favour and service. To promote this twofold object is the work given to believers to do now, more especially by communicating the knowledge of the Saviour, and persuading men to be reconciled through Him to God. The Saviour’s parting commission to His Church, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” “Shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life.” “Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” For this blessed though now often trying and self-denying service He has promised and bestowed abundant qualification in the gift of His Holy Spirit: “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” (Acts 1:7-8). Such employment here, in whatever way and in whatever circumstances, a blessed anticipation of and preparation for our future employment when the saints shall take the kingdom. It was the faithful servant to whom it was said, “Have thou authority over ten cities.” Nor will the painful trials and deep sorrow which we may be called to experience in connection with a faithful endeavour to serve Christ and our fellow-men in the present state, be the least part of our preparation for the higher service that awaits us when all tears shall be wiped away. 5. Our interest to make sure our place now among the saints who shall possess the kingdom. Regard to one’s own interest makes this the first object we should be concerned to secure. The day is hastening when to have neglected this will appear the height of madness. To throw a fortune, a dukedom, a kingdom away, will one day soon appear to be reason and sense compared with the throwing away the opportunity of obtaining a place among those who shall in a few short years possess a kingdom that shall never pass away. That place is to be secured simply by a sincere and cordial acceptance of the Saviour whom God in His love has provided for a lost and guilty world, that Son of Man who came to seek and to save that which is lost. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” That Son of Man who shall come one day in His glory and all His saints with Him, comes now in His Gospel to each man and woman who hears it, and offers him freely Himself, and along with Himself a place among His saints who shall hereafter with Himself possess the kingdom. Reader, have you cordially accepted Him? Is He yours? Are you among His redeemed people? If not, accept Him now, and take no rest till by His grace you are enabled joyfully to say, “My Lord and my God!” . XXIV.—THE LITTLE HORN (Chap. Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:19-25) We now come to that part of Daniel’s vision which especially distinguishes it from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The king only saw the feet of the image divided into ten toes: Daniel not only sees ten horns proceeding from the head of the fourth beast, corresponding with these ten toes, but another horn additional to these, which, though appearing as a “little horn,” engaged the special attention of the prophet, and constitutes the leading object in the vision. The character of the kingdoms of the world was to be concentrated in that horn or the power represented by it, and it was from it that the Church of God was mainly to suffer [165]. As a “horn,” it was to be a power like the rest; that term, expressive of the powerful weapon of many animals, being figuratively employed in the Scripture to denote power or strength, and so a kingdom or a sovereignty. See Deuteronomy 33:17; Psalms 18:2; Luke 1:69. In relation to the “little horn” we have to notice— [165] “It is in the fearful shape of the last beast that the world-power will fully manifest that its whole nature is opposed to God. But as the interest which attaches to the four monarchies is led rapidly over the first three to centre in the last, so, for the same reason, in considering the last we are led to the final shape.… The description introduces these horns merely to show how an eleventh has sprung up in their midst, a king in whom the full haughty hatred and rebellion against God, His people, and His service, finds its representative.… The essential nature of the kingdoms of the world appears concentrated in the fourth kingdom; the nature of the fourth kingdom, in like manner, in its last worldly ruler. Thus it is only at the end that the peculiar character of the world-power, “the mystery of iniquity,” is unveiled, and we recognise in the eleventh horn no other than he whom Paul calls “the Man of Sin” and “the Son of Perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2.) Here, for the first time in the development of revelation, the idea of Antichrist is clearly unfolded; because here, for the first time, the entire course of the development of the godless and God-opposing world is clearly surveyed down to the very end.”—Auberlen. So Dr. Pusey, who also sees in the Little Horn mainly an Antichrist yet to come.” “Why should there not be under the fourth empire an antagonism to the true God, concentrated in and directed by one individual, as it was in and by Antiochus in the third? Human nature repeats itself. What man has done, man will do. We Christians look for an Antichrist yet to come. Our Lord forewarned of him and his deceivableness. St. Paul describes such an one as Daniel speaks of.” We must not, however, overlook the Antichrist of the past and the present, while even as Protestants we may also acknowledge an Antichrist yet to come.I. Its rise. It is said to rise among the other ten horns, and so to be contemporaneous with them; and also after or behind them, and so in the time of its appearance posterior to the rest, as well as gradual in its growth and for a time unobserved. Before it, three of the ten were “plucked up by the roots and fell,” or, as it is interpreted by the angel, it subdued three out of the ten kings or kingdoms, and so made room for itself by occupying their place (Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:10; Daniel 7:24). The other horns obtained their place as kingdoms out of the body of the fourth beast or Roman empire; this one was to obtain its place out of that beast only indirectly, by gaining it out of the others. II. Its character and description. (1.) A “little” horn; small in comparison with the rest, especially in its commencement, and humble, perhaps, in its profession. (2.) “Diverse from the rest;” its diversity consisting in this, that it had “eyes” in it, like the eyes of a “man,” and a “mouth speaking great things,”—the eyes and the mouth sufficiently indicating a human being as represented by it [166], and a power of a peculiar character; the eyes of a man, not of a god; lamb-like, though speaking as a dragon (Revelation 13:11.) (3.) The mouth uttered “great words against the Most High;” hence proud, arrogant, and blasphemous; while from the eyes was a “look more stout than his fellows,” also indicative of pride and haughtiness above that of the other powers, and an overbearing demeanour in respect to them. (4.) He was to “make war with the saints of the Most High, to wear them out, and prevail against them;” a persecuting power, and one whose persecutions should be persevering and successful, against such as adhered to a holy life and the worship of God according to His Word. (5.) He was to “think to change times and laws;” lofty in his pretensions, as superior to laws both human and divine, and affecting a power which is the prerogative of God (chap. Daniel 2:21). 5. The saints were to be “given into his hand” for a definite period, prophetically and enigmatically described as a “a time, times, and the dividing of a time;” his power over the saints or true worshippers of God to be absolute for a time, but that time a limited one. “To form a well-grounded judgment regarding the appearance of this last enemy,” observes Keil, “we must compare the description given of him here with the apocalyptic description of the same enemy under the image of the beast out of the sea or out of the abyss” (Revelation 13:1-8; Revelation 17:7-13); and we may add, with the description of the “Man of Sin” given by the apostle (2 Thessalonians 2:4, &c.), with an obvious allusion to the passage before us. [166] “Eyes like the eyes of man.” “Eyes and seeing with eyes are the symbols of insight, circumspection, and prudence. The eyes of a man, not merely to indicate that the horn signified a man, which was already distinctly enough shown by the fact of eyes, &c., being attributed to it, nor yet to distinguish it from a beast; but in opposition to a higher celestial being, for whom it might, from the terribleness of its rule and government, be mistaken.”—Keil. Others have viewed the expression as indicative of the assumed blandness that accompanied papal arrogance, and the sharp look-out kept by the popes on their own and their families’ interests, as well as those of the Church.III. Its identification. This power intended to be identified as truly as the four beasts themselves. The minute and varied description obviously given with this view. This description, including both its rise and character, ought apparently to leave no room for doubt as to what is intended by it, and no difficulty in identifying it when the power indicated should appear. The question is, has such a power already appeared, or are we still to look for it? The latter unlikely, as the fourth beast, from which it springs, has confessedly appeared two thousand years ago, and the ten kingdoms, among and behind which it was to rise, have probably been in existence about fourteen centuries. Has, then, any power appeared during that period to which the description is at all applicable, and to which it has been applied? There is a well-known power to which the description has appeared so applicable, that for more than three hundred years the description has been actually and unhesitatingly applied to it by almost all who have studied this passage, with the exception, of course, of those who are in any way connected with the power itself; although it is probable that the horn may not even yet have fully developed itself [167]. That power is the Papacy, with the Bishop of Rome as its head and representative [168]; for nearly thirteen centuries a temporal power, like the other horns, though now no longer such [169]; but so diverse from them as to be at the same time a spiritual power, while the rest were only secular ones. The identity has appeared— [167] Jerome and the fathers, as well as De Lyra, Hugo, and Roman Catholic writers generally, interpret the little horn of the Antichrist, who should come in the end of the world, after the Roman empire is destroyed. Some of the Reformers, as Melanchthon and Osiander, understood it of the Turkish empire. Calvin thinks that historically this prophecy of the Little Horn was fulfilled before the coming of the Messiah into the world, in the person of Julius Cζsar, Augustus, and the other emperors; but that it may, by analogy, be applied, as it was by some, to the Pope or to the Turks; “and these applications,” he says, “by way of analogy I mislike not.” �colampadius understood it of the Pope in the West, and the Turkish empire in the East. Bullinger, and the Reformers in general, applied the prophecy entirely to the Papacy. Junius, Polanus, and Willet understood it historically of Antiochus Epiphanes, but typically of Antichrist. Dr. Lee, of Cambridge, applies it to heathen Rome and the persecuting emperors from Nero to Constantine. The Futurists, with Roman Catholic writers, understand it of an Antichrist yet to come. [168] Dr. Rule observes that the description given of the Little Horn exactly answers to the Papacy, and regards the assumption of absolute sovereignty over the city and territory of Rome by Pope Innocent III. as the uprising of it, a sovereign pontiff over a temporal dominion, armed also with military powers. “Here,” says Muratori, in relating this event, “expired the last breath of the Augusti in Rome; and henceforth the prefects of Rome, the Senate, and the other magistrates, swore fealty to the Roman Pontiff only.” Professor Bush says, “This Little Horn is unquestionably the ecclesiastical power of the Papacy. This horn did not come till after the empire received its deadly wound by the hands of the Goths.” [169] That the Bishop of Rome became a temporal ruler, receiving his place and rank as such among and soon after the other rulers of the kingdoms formed out of the dismembered Roman empire, every one knows. One of the most remarkable events of recent years was the entire cessation of this temporal sovereignty of the Pope, when in 1870, after the French Emperor had withdrawn his troops from Rome, Victor Emmanuel, as king of Italy, at the voice of the people, assumed the entire government of the country, leaving Pius IX. only the Vatican and its precincts for his residence; the Pope exclaiming against the act as one of wicked sacrilege and spoliation, and endeavouring to rouse all Catholic Europe to aid him in recovering the lost “patrimony of St. Peter.” The Times of the period said, “In the same year the Papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years.”1. In the rise of the Papacy. The Little Horn rose among, and at the same time after or behind, the other ten; while three of these were plucked up and fell before it, so that their place was occupied by it, or, as interpreted by the angel, three kingdoms, states, or powers were subdued by it [170]. It is known that it was while the Northern nations were establishing for themselves kingdoms out of the decaying Roman empire that the Bishops of Rome also became temporal rulers, and that they did so after occasioning the fall of some of those rulers, probably those of Lombardy, Ravenna, and Rome, whose territories then became their own under the name of the States of the Church [171]. A writer on prophecy remarks: “The Little Horn came up among the ten horns, of which three fell before it. This determines the appearance of the Little Horn to be not before the appearance of the ten, of which not one came into being till after the year 487 of the Christian era, until which time the Roman empire continued under its emperors, undivided into any of those ten kingdoms which arose afterwards. At that time Augustulus, the last Emperor of the West, was forced to resign; and for three hundred years the empire remained without even a nominal head.” It is in remarkable agreement with this fact that Paul speaks of the “Man of Sin” as being hindered at that time from revealing himself by something which he does not name, but which would one day be taken out of the way; that hindrance being doubtless the Roman imperial power, which for obvious reasons Paul did not think it expedient to name. The circumstance of the three horns or states being rooted up to make way for the temporal power of the Papacy seems openly declared in the “triple crown” which the Pope still continues to wear. [170] “Before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.” “He shall subdue three kings” (Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:24). ιְ ?δַ ?ωְׁ ?τִּ ?ιμ (yehashpil), “shall overthrow, deprive of sovereignty.”—Keil. Some have understood the number three as indefinite. So Calvin and �colampadius, but understanding it as denoting much or many. Most have viewed it as a definite number. Jerome and others after him understood the three horns to be Egypt, Africa, and Ethiopia, which were to be subdued by Antichrist. Melanchthon thought of Egypt, Syria, and Cilicia, to be taken by the Turks; while Osiander and Pfaff understood them to be Asia, Greece, and Egypt. Bullinger, applying the prophecy to the Papacy, regarded the three horns as the Emperor Leo, or the Exarchate of Ravenna, taken by Gregory II.; Childeric, king of France, deposed by Pope Zachary; and the Lombards with the government they obtained from Leo III. Dr. Rule considers them to be the Roman Senate and people, with the so-called patrimony of St. Peter, gained a.d. 498; Apulia, otherwise called Naples, and Sicily, obtained in 1266. He observes that, simultaneously with these acquisitions, the work of persecution, foretold in the next verses, rapidly advanced. According to Mr. Birks, the three horns were the kingdom of the Heruli under Odoacer, that of the Ostrogoths under Theodoric, who at the instigation of the Pope overthrew the former, and took possession of that part of Italy forming the Exarchate of Ravenna, which again, at the Pope’s instance, was overthrown by Belisarius and Narses, lieutenants of the Emperor Justinian; the third power overthrown being that of the Lombards under Alboin and Aistulph. To obtain freedom from the threatened yoke of the Lombards, and to secure still farther the possession of a temporal dominion, the Pope made his appeal to Pepin, son of Charles Martel, as well as to Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman, the three kings of the Franks. “Pepin and Charlemagne willingly undertook the task of uprooting the Lombard kingdom, the last enemy that stood in the way of the ambitious See.” After the surrender of Pavia, “the last obstacle was now removed, and the popes rose at length to temporal dominion, and obtained a firm and settled place among the powers and kingdoms of the Western Empire. ‘The Church’s ancient patrimony of farms and houses,’ says Gibbon, ‘was transformed by the bounty of the Carlovingians into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the victories of Pepin.’ The ample province of the Exarchate, granted to the Papacy by the usurper Pepin, might comprise all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the Emperor and his vicegerent; but its strict and proper limits were included in the territory of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara, and its inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis.” [171] The following are extracts from Clement’s letter, written towards the end of the first century, to allay some disturbances in the Church at Corinth in regard to the pastorate. “These things, beloved, we write not only to admonish you of your duty, but to admonish ourselves, for we are in the same race and conflict. Wherefore, let us abandon vain and empty cares, and advance to the glorious and venerable rule of our calling. Let us look to what is beautiful, and pleasing, and acceptable in the eyes of our Creator. Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ, and consider how precious to God is that blood, which, having been shed for our salvation, has offered the grace of repentance to all the world.… Christ belongs to those who conduct themselves humbly, not those who exalt themselves over His flock with pride and arrogance.… Let us attach ourselves to those to whom grace has been given by God. Let us put on concord with moderation of mind, endued with the gift of self-control. Temerity, arrogance, and audacity belong to those who are accursed of God; moderation, humility, and meekness to those who are blessed of Him.… The apostles, preaching the Word through regions and cities, proving their first-fruits in the Spirit, appointed bishops and deacons of those who believed. The apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that contentions would arise about the name of the episcopate, and on that account, being endowed with perfect foreknowledge, they appointed persons previously indicated, and left successions of ministers and officers afterwards described, that other approved men might succeed to their place and discharge their offices. Look diligently into the Scriptures. Take into your hands the epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul. Consider what he wrote to you near the very beginning of his preaching the gospel. Being certainly divinely inspired, he reminded you in an epistle concerning himself, Cephas, and Apollos, that even then there were seditions and party feelings among you.… Whosoever is zealous, pitiful, and full of love among you, let him say, ‘If any sedition, contention, or division, has arisen through me, I will depart; I will go away whithersoever you wish; I will do whatever is commanded by the people; that only the flock of Christ may live in peace with the elders (or presbyters) that have been appointed over them.’ ” “The tempter,” says Gavazzi, “came over the Alps in the Gallic Pepin; he showed from a pinnacle of earthly power and aggrandisement the kingdoms of this world, and pledged himself to secure their homage, if, falling prostrate before God’s adversary, ‘Christ’s Vicar’ should adore him. The sacrilegious bargain was struck; the ark of the Lord was placed in the temple of Dagon; the bishops of Rome, who over and over again suffered death rather than offer incense to Pagan idols, fell into the palpable snare of Satan; and the hand that bore on its finger the brightest of sacerdotal gems in the ‘ring of the fisherman’ was outstretched, with scandalous avidity, to burn a fatal frankincense on the altar of secular ambition. A visible change fell on the Papacy. The gory crown of martyrdom was exchanged for the glittering tiara.” Mr. Mede supposed the three “uprooted” or “depressed” horns to be, first, the Greeks, that is, the entire kingdom of Italy, which in 554 was ended by the Exarchate or dependent government of the Greek emperor, which continued for fifteen years; second, the Lombards, who possessed the country for about 200 years; and, third, the Franks, who stretched their authority into the immediate vicinity of Rome.2. In the character of the Papacy. (1.) The horn was a “little” one. The territory of the Papacy has always been small in comparison with that of the other powers, never exceeding the extent of an Italian province. The Pope properly and originally a humble minister of Jesus Christ, on a level with the other bishops or presiding ministers of the Churches, and possessing no territory or temporal jurisdiction whatever; so “little” that the apostle does not even salute or mention him in his Epistle to the Church at Rome. The Epistle of Clement, one of the first Bishops of Rome, if not the very first, written to the Church of Corinth, breathes the very spirit of humility [172], a humility which is affected by his successors, while each calls himself the “servant of servants” and a successor of “the fisherman.” [172] The following are extracts from Clement’s letter, written towards the end of the first century, to allay some disturbances in the Church at Corinth in regard to the pastorate. “These things, beloved, we write not only to admonish you of your duty, but to admonish ourselves, for we are in the same race and conflict. Wherefore, let us abandon vain and empty cares, and advance to the glorious and venerable rule of our calling. Let us look to what is beautiful, and pleasing, and acceptable in the eyes of our Creator. Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ, and consider how precious to God is that blood, which, having been shed for our salvation, has offered the grace of repentance to all the world.… Christ belongs to those who conduct themselves humbly, not those who exalt themselves over His flock with pride and arrogance.… Let us attach ourselves to those to whom grace has been given by God. Let us put on concord with moderation of mind, endued with the gift of self-control. Temerity, arrogance, and audacity belong to those who are accursed of God; moderation, humility, and meekness to those who are blessed of Him.… The apostles, preaching the Word through regions and cities, proving their first-fruits in the Spirit, appointed bishops and deacons of those who believed. The apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that contentions would arise about the name of the episcopate, and on that account, being endowed with perfect foreknowledge, they appointed persons previously indicated, and left successions of ministers and officers afterwards described, that other approved men might succeed to their place and discharge their offices. Look diligently into the Scriptures. Take into your hands the epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul. Consider what he wrote to you near the very beginning of his preaching the gospel. Being certainly divinely inspired, he reminded you in an epistle concerning himself, Cephas, and Apollos, that even then there were seditions and party feelings among you.… Whosoever is zealous, pitiful, and full of love among you, let him say, ‘If any sedition, contention, or division, has arisen through me, I will depart; I will go away whithersoever you wish; I will do whatever is commanded by the people; that only the flock of Christ may live in peace with the elders (or presbyters) that have been appointed over them.’ ”(2.) It was “diverse from the first” (Daniel 7:24), having the eyes and mouth of a man. The difference of the Papacy from the other powers, as already noticed, conspicuous in this, that it was at the same time both a temporal and a spiritual power, the Pope being both a secular prince and a spiritual teacher, or, as Gibbon expresses it, “a Christian bishop invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince.” The Pope claimed both swords, the civil and the ecclesiastical; a combination perhaps indicated in the Revelation by the two separate beasts, the one rising out of the sea and the other out of the earth (Revelation 13:1-11), or in the fact that the latter had two horns like a lamb, while it spake like a dragon (Daniel 7:11). “His look was more stout than his fellows” (Daniel 7:20). It is well known what anathemas were fulminated by the Popes against all who refused to acknowledge their supremacy or submit to their authority; how kings were deposed and their kingdoms placed under interdicts which deprived them of religious ordinances, their subjects released from their allegiance, and their crown given to another. This “stout look,” and the claim of making and unmaking kings at pleasure, conspicuous in the person of Gregory VII. (A.D. 1073). “I have received,” said he, “from God the power of binding and of loosing in heaven and in earth; and by this power I forbid Henry (the Fourth, Emperor of Germany) the government of the whole realm of Germany and Italy. I also loose all Christians from the oaths they have taken to him; and I decree that no man shall obey him as king” [173]. Among the “stout words” of the Papacy are the following, spoken by the same Gregory: “The Roman Pontiff alone can be called universal. He alone has a right to use imperial ornaments. Princes are bound to kiss his feet, and his feet only. He has a right to depose emperors. No book can be called canonical without his authority. His sentence can be annulled by none, but he may annul the decrees of all.” It is also to be remembered that the popes claim infallibility. [173] These were not empty words. Henry, driven to despair, in a winter of unusual severity, crossed the Alps with the determination of seeking the Pope’s forgiveness and reconciliation. Gregory was at Canossa, a fortress near Reggio. The Emperor was admitted without hit guards into an outer courtof the castle, where he was kept standing for three successive days, from morning to evening, in a woollen shirt, and with bare feet, while Gregory, shut up with the Countess, refused to admit him into his presence. On the fourth day he obtained absolution, but only on condition that he appeared on a certain day to receive the Pope’s decision as to whether or not he should be restored to his kingdom, till which time he was not to assume the insignia of royalty. It was this same Pope who endeavoured to compel William the Conqueror to do homage for the crown of England, and who menaced Philip I. of France with deposition. The language and bearing of Adrian IV., in 1155, to the Emperor Frederick was of a similar character. The Pope insisted on the Emperor becoming his equerry and holding his stirrup while he mounted. “To place your name before ours,” said he to the Emperor, “is arrogance, is insolence; and to cause bishops to render homage to you, those whom the Scripture calls gods, sons of the Most High, is to want that faith which you have sworn to St. Peter and to us. Hasten then to amend, lest that, in taking to yourself what does not belong to you, you lose the crown with which we have gratified you.”(4.) “It had eyes like the eyes of man” (Daniel 7:8). The very title of bishop, which is simply “overseer,” as in Acts 20:28 and 1 Peter 5:3, is in perfect agreement with this mark of the horn. The popes, as bishops or overseers, being spiritual teachers, are supposed to be endowed with wisdom and knowledge to qualify them for their office, of which the eyes of a man are a well-known symbol [174]. [174] See note (2).(5.) The horn had also “a mouth speaking great things,” even “great words against the Most High.” The first of these expressions indicates pride and arrogance, the latter blasphemy. The Papal bulls leave little room for doubt as to the applicability of the former to the Papacy. “The tribunals of kings,” say they, “are subject to the sacerdotal power.” “Since the Holy Roman Church, over which Christ has willed that we preside, is set for a mirror and example, whatever it has decreed, whatever it now ordains, must be perpetually and irrefragably observed by all men.” The words spoken against or (as the word is also rendered) as the Most High [175] are such as tend to set God aside. These have not been wanting in the lips of the Papacy. “The Roman Pontiff,” says Pope Stephen, “is to judge all men, and to be judged by no man.” “The Pope is styled God,” says Pope Nicholas, “by the pious prince; and it is manifest that God cannot be judged by man.” This mark may be truly regarded as made good, as Bishop Newton observes, by the popes “setting up themselves against all laws human and divine, arrogating to themselves godlike attributes and titles, and exacting obedience to their ordinances and decrees.” A bull of Pope Boniface declares that “all the faithful of Christ are, by necessity of salvation, subject to the Roman Pontiff, who has both swords, and judges all men, but is judged by none” [176]. Again we have to remember the claim to infallibility by the Pope, that infallibility having been recently made an article of faith in the Romish Church. [175] “Against the Most High.” μְ ?φַ ?γ (le-tsadh), “at the side of.” Keil observes that this term properly means against or at the side of, and is more expressive than ςַ ?μ (‘al); denoting that he would use language by which he would set God aside, and would regard and give himself out as God. Compare 2 Thessalonians 2:4. [176] It is this Pope of whom Gavazzi, in the oration already quoted from, says, “Swelling with the pride and pomp of Satanic inflation, Boniface VIII., having fouliy dethroned his still living predecessor, Celestine V., burst on the world with his blasphemous bull, Unam Sanctam, and laid his monstrous mandate on mankind, involving the human race in sacerdotal serfdom. By one fell swoop he abrogated the authority of kings within their dominions, of magistrates within the circle of their attributions, of fathers within the sacred precincts of their households. Popes became arbiters of universal sovereignty, bishops bearded monarchs, and priests lorded it over the domestic hearth.… Every human right, claim, property, franchise, or feeling at variance with the predominance of the Popedom was, ipso facto, inimical to Heaven and the God of eternal justice.”(6.) “He shall think to change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25) [177]. The presence of this mark in the Papacy already apparent. Everything was to be entirely in accordance with Papal decree. The observance of saints’ days established; the marriage vow, in the case of the clergy, cancelled and marriage itself forbidden [178]; subjects, as, for example, the English in relation to Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, released from their allegiance to their sovereigns; the cup in the Lord’s Supper forbidden to the laity [179]; and the making and worshipping of images sanctioned [180]. Bishop Newton mentions also as instances of this mark of the Little Horn, the Pope’s “appointing fasts and feasts; canonising saints; granting pardons and indulgences for sins; instituting new modes of worship; imposing new articles of faith [as recently the Immaculate Conception]; enjoining new rules of practice; and reversing at pleasure the laws both of God and man.” The traditions of the Fathers and decrees of Councils are made to supersede and set aside the Word of God. “The holy and inspired fathers and teachers,” says Gregory III., “and the six Councils in Christ, these are our scriptures and our light to salvation.” [177] “To change times and laws.” Keil observes that to “change times” belongs to the all-perfect power of God (cf. Daniel 2:21), the creator and ordainer of times (Genesis 1:14); and that there is no ground for supposing that ζξπιζ (zimnin), “times,” is to be specially understood of “festivals or sacred times,” since the word, like the corresponding Hebrew one, ξεςֲ ?γִ ?ιν (mo’adhim), does not throughout signify merely festival times (cf. Genesis 1:14; Genesis 17:21; Genesis 18:14, &c.) The sin is that he does not in his ordinances regard the fundamental conditions given by God, but so changes the laws of human life that he puts his own pleasure in the place of the divine arrangements, γַּ ?ϊ (dath), a law, rite, custom, or constitution. Calvin, applying the passage to the Roman emperors, says they perverted all laws, human and divine. Dr. Pusey, on the other hand, translates “essaying to change worship and law;” and has in a footnote,ζִ ?ξְ ?πִ ?ιο (zimnin) “set times,” that is, probably, the times of the set feasts (as we speak of sacred “seasons”), and so the worship of those times. He observes that in Onkelos ζִ ?ξְ ?πִ ?ιο (zimnin) stands for ξεֹ ?ςֲ ?γִ ?ιν (mo’adh im), Genesis 1:14; and Jonathan puts ζξπιξεςγ (zimne mo’ed) for ξεςγ (mo’ed), Zephaniah 3:18. Pseudo-Jonathan uses the word ζξο (zeman) in paraphrasing ξεֹ ?ςֲ ?γιֵ ?ιְ ?δֹ ?εָ ?δ (mo’adhe Jehovah), “the feasts of the Lord.” Elsewhere ζξο is used of the place of the sacred assembly (Numbers 1:1; Isaiah 33:20), but ξεςγ of the festival (Lamentations 1:4; Hosea 9:5). [178] A decretal of Callixtus II. says, “We entirely interdict priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and monks from contracting marriages; we decide also that, according to the sacred canons, the marriages contracted by persons of this kind be dissolved, and the persons brought to penance.” This Pope, as well as Pope Agatho, writes that the decretal epistles of the Roman Pontiff are to be received among the Scriptures, though they are not embodied in the code of canons, just as the Old and New Testaments are so received, “because a judgment of holy Pope Innocent seems to be published” for doing so. [179] In regard to the use of the cup, Pope Gregory VII. thus wrote to Wratislaus, king of Bohemia, “What your people ignorantly require can in no wise be conceded to them; and we now forbid it by the power of God and His holy Apostle Peter.” [180] Gregory III. convened an assembly of 93 bishops in 732, and with their assent published a general excommunication against all who were opposed to the worship of images. The same Pope wrote to the Emperor Leo, “Do you cease to persecute images and all will be quiet.”(7.) He was to “make war with the saints and prevail against them,” and “wear them out” (Daniel 7:21; Daniel 7:25). It is well known that one of the most prominent features of the Papacy in past centuries was the persecution of the saints under the name of heretics, that is, of those who refused, in matters of doctrine and practice, to submit to the authority of the Pope instead of the Word of God, and who said, with Peter and the other apostles, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29; Acts 4:19) [181]. “If any one,” said Pope Nicolas in a Council at Rome, “shall presume to dispute the dogmas, commands, interdicts, sanctions, or decrees wholesomely published by the head of the Apostolic See, let him be accursed.” “It is permitted neither to think nor to speak differently from the Roman Church.” Such were to be handed over to the secular power, to be punished with the loss of goods, imprisonment, and even death. The burning of heretics, according to the bull De Comburendo, is too well known in England. The term “Crusades” was given to those military enterprises undertaken to extirpate the Waldenses and Albigenses; and the same Papal indulgences were promised to those who fell in such undertakings as were bestowed on those who died in the wars against the infidels [182]. The “wearing out of the saints” may be seen in the decree of Pope Pelagius, that those guilty of schism or separation from the Roman See were to be “crushed by the secular power, and restrained not only by exile, but by proscription of their goods, and by severe imprisonment.” How far the Papacy “prevailed” against the saints, or so-called heretics, appears from the fact that in a Council of the Lateran, held in May 1514, about three years and a half before the breaking out of the Reformation under Luther, the Hussites were summoned to appear; and when no appearance was made, the doctor of the Council uttered the remarkable words, “There is an end to resistance to the Papal rule and religion; there is none to oppose; the whole body of Christendom is now subject to its head.” [181] “Make war with the saints” (Daniel 7:21). In our own country, in the short reign of Queen Mary, three hundred persons are said to have been cruelly put to death for no other reason than because they refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. This is written within little more than a stone’s throw of the monument that commemorates the martyrdom of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, and the cross in front of Balliol College, Oxford, that marks the spot on which they suffered death. It is computed that in the South of France, between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries inclusive, about a million of those called Waldenses and Albigenses suffered death as heretics, especially by armies sent against them for that purpose, after receiving the papal blessing. Nearly a million suffered on the same account after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. In the Netherlands, it was the boast of the Duke of Alva that 36,000 heretics had been put to death by the common executioner within a few years. In Ireland, 150,000 are said to have been massacred in one province in virtue of a papal edict dated May 25, 1643, in which the Pope granted a full and plenary indulgence and absolute remission of all their sins “to all the Christians in the kingdom of Ireland, so long as they should war against the heretics and other enemies of the Catholic faith.” In the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, thirty thousand at least, in Paris and throughout France, are said to have been horribly butchered within thirty days, for which the Pope ordered public thanks to be given, and a medal to be struck in commemoration of the event. This feature of the Little Horn is acknowledged and justified in the Rhemish New Testament, where it is said in a note at Revelation 17:6, that the blood of the heretics is not to be considered as the blood of the saints, but is “no more than the blood of thieves, mankillers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which, by order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer.” So Pope Urban II., encouraging the shedding of such blood, states, “We do not count them murderers who, burning with zeal for their Catholic mother against the excommunicate, may happen to have slain some of them.” Sismondi, himself a Roman Catholic, intimates what was the crime of those whose blood was thus to be shed: “Many sects,” he says, “existed in Provence, and this was the necessary consequence of the freedom of inquiry which was the essence of their doctrine. With one accord they considered that the Romish Church had changed the nature of Christianity, and that she was the object described in the Apocalypse as the woman of Babylon.” He adds: “To maintain unity of faith, the Church had recourse to the expedient of burning all those who separated themselves from her.” [182] “Let the Catholics,” said Innocent III. in the Lateral) Council, “who, after taking the sign of the cross, devote themselves to the extermination of heretics, enjoy the same indulgence, and be protected with the same privilege, which is granted to those who go to the succour of the Holy Land.”(8.) The saints were to be “given into the hand” of the Little Horn for a limited period, here called “a time, times, and the dividing of a time.” This enigmatical period, found also in chap. 12, as well as in the Book of Revelation, is generally understood to be equivalent to three years and a half, or, as it is expressed in the Apocalypse, 1260 days, 360 being reckoned to a year, and also forty and two months (Revelation 12:14; Revelation 12:16; Revelation 11:2-3; Revelation 13:5 [183], the half of the “seven times” already mentioned in connection with Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity. The period in the text for the dominion of the Little Horn over the saints is also that of the “scattering or crushing of the power of the holy people” (chap. Daniel 12:7); of the woman’s abode in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14); of the treading of the holy city under foot by the Gentiles (Revelation 12:2); of the prophesying of the two witnesses in sackcloth (Revelation 12:3); and of the effective continuance of the beast out of the sea (Revelation 13:5). Probably the same period, and the same experience of humiliation and suffering on the part of the saints under the same power, intended under these various symbolical representations. The three years and a half, however, might be understood either literally or figuratively; either as ordinary years, or, as they are called, prophetical ones, each day being reckoned a year. The latter is generally understood, though there may be also a fulfilment of the prophecy on the smaller as well as on the larger scale. It is remarkable that from the time that the Bishop of Rome became a temporal prince, namely, in the early part of the seventh century (A.D. 606), till the cessation of his temporal power in 1870, is just 1264 years, the period in the text on the larger or year-day scale, with perhaps four years more [184]. It is also remarkable that from the time in which all Christendom was declared to be subject to the Roman Pontiff, May 1514, to the breaking out of the Reformation under Luther, that effected the deliverance of so large a portion from his spiritual sway, was just three years and a half on the shorter or literal day scale. Twelve centuries ago, more or less, the saints, or those who chose to obey the Word of God rather than the edicts and decrees of man, seemed to be given into the hand of the Roman Pontiff. There seems little reason to doubt that happily that period of subjection has come to an end. The Papacy can no longer persecute the so-called heretics as before. The Scriptures are openly sold and the Gospel is freely preached even in Rome itself. The Inquisition is at an end. Dr. Achilli and the two Madiai were among its last prisoners, the latter having been given up at the demand of Protestant Europe. The French Revolution in 1792–3, exactly 1260 years after the edict of Justinian seemed formally to give the Church into the hands of the Roman bishop, was doubtless the commencement of his fall [185]; one of the most marked results of that event being the freedom of religious worship among the nations of Europe, which during the last ten years may be said to have been all but complete. This circumstance might seem to leave no doubt as to the identification of the Little Horn with the Papacy, and to establish the opinion that has largely prevailed for centuries [186]. [183] “A time and times and the dividing of a time” (Daniel 7:26). Some have understood by this only an indefinite though lengthened period. So Calvin, who applied the prophecy to the persecutions under Nero and other Roman emperors. By the “dividing” or half of a time he understood the shortening of the period for the elect’s sakes. Bullinger viewed it as a definite time fixed by God, but known only to Himself. �colampadius understood half a week or three days and a half, God thus shortening the time. Osiander regarded it as three and a half prophetic years or 1278 solar years, during which the rule of Mahometanism, commencing in the year 613, should continue. Jerome, and Roman Catholic writers after him, understand it of three and a half literal years, the period for the tyranny of Antichrist before the end of the world. Similarly other Futurists. Junius and a few others applied it historically to the time during which Antiochus Epiphanes persecuted the Jews. Joseph Mede was “the well-known reviver of the year-day theory. Before his time it was a vague assertion; he first gave it shape and form, and plausible consistency. Since his day it has been adopted by many intelligent critics, among whom are Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Newton, Faber, Frere, Keith, and Birks.”—Translator’s Preface to Calvin on Daniel. Professor Lee refers the expression to “the latter half (mystically speaking) of the seventieth week of our prophet” (ch. 9); that week of seven days being equivalent here to Ezekiel’s period of seven years. Professor Bush says, “The grand principle into which the usage of a day for a year is to be resolved is that of miniature symbolisation.” Mr. Brooks (Elements of Prophetic Interpretation) says, “The literal meaning of a ‘time’ is a year; and the expression in Daniel 7:23 may signify, mystically, if calculated by lunar time, a period of 1260 years.” Mr. Bickersteth (Practical Guide to the Prophecies) says, “The time, times, and half a time, the forty and two months and 1260 days, are the same interval; the time, times, and half a time of Daniel and the Revelation are the same period; a prophetic day is a natural year, as three and a half times are the half of seven times, the whole season of Gentile power, and the same with the ‘latter times’ of St. Paul” He thinks the three and a half times began with Justinian’s Code in 532–533. “By this edict (of Justinian),” says Mr. Irving, “ecclesiastical power over the faith of the West and against the saints who dwelt there was given to the Bishop of Rome, which imperial edicts being seconded by the imperial arms, brought to nothing the heretical powers who might have opposed his entering into possession. In twenty years from that date he ordered heretics to be burned by the temporal powers—the first indication of that mixture and combination of powers, civil and ecclesiastical, which is the proper character of the whole period. Then, also, mass was introduced. In sixty years he had made such great strides towards absolute supremacy, that in the reign of Gregory the Great, who resisted the Bishop of Constantinople’s supremacy, were introduced purgatory, invocation of saints, expiations by masses, lustrations of the Blessed Virgin, and the celibacy of the clergy was attempted. In seventy years he obtained from the emperor the sole title of Universal Bishop. In little more than a century the service was performed in Latin, and the ignorance of the people sealed. In two centuries the Pope had obtained the pride and power to excommunicate the Emperor of the East for prohibiting image-worship.” Dr. Cox thinks that “the computation must be made from the period when the Little Horn or ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome should arise;” and that “that application of the prophecy is most probable which fixes on the time when, by the decree of Phocas, the Roman Pontiff was constituted Universal Bishop and supreme head of the Church.” This was in the year of our Lord 606. Some students of prophecy see in the term “times,” &c, the half of the period of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation and insanity, symbolical of the time (2520 years) during which the covenant people should be under the dominion of the Gentile monarchies as the chastisement of their unfaithfulness, this period having different crises as stages of commencement. Of these, Mr. Guinness (Approaching End of the Age) mentions four, from the invasion of Pul, king of Assyria, in 770 b.c., to the final fall of the throne of David and full captivity of Judah under Nebuchadnezzar in 602. These stages of commencement have corresponding terminations, the first being in 1750, the period of Voltaire, and the last in 1918, yet to come. It was during the latter half of these mystical “seven times” that the Little Horn was to have power over the saints, the case of Israel being bound up with that of the Christian Church, which was to be under captivity by the same power that was to tyrannise over Israel, namely, the last of the four beasts. See farther the note under chap. Daniel 12:7. [184] The spiritual power of the Papacy may, of course, have a different period for its termination, and outlive the temporal, which constituted it the Little Horn. Mr. Bosanquet remarks: “We see no room left for doubt that these 1260 years mark the duration of the Papal power. The temporal power of the Papacy seems to be vanishing before our eyes, if indeed it has not already ceased to exist [it has apparently done so, namely, in 1870], but how long the spiritual power shall be allowed to linger on in the ancient seat of its dominion, is a question to be solved by time. Wherever we may be disposed to fix the date of its commencement, it is clear that the time of expiration cannot be very far remote.” Some, however, date from the eighth century. “From the time,” says Bishop Newton, “of Pepin’s grant of Aistulph’s dominions in 755, the popes, having now become temporal princes, did no longer date their epistles and bulls by the year of the Emperor’s reign, but by the year of their own advancement to the Papal chair. Charles the Great, son and successor of Pepin, confirmed the grant, adding other territories, and giving the Pope to hold under himself the duchy of Rome, over which he gradually obtained the absolute authority, being about the same time declared superior to all human jurisdiction, while Charles in return was chosen Emperor of the West. Lewis the Pious, son and successor to Charles the Great, confirmed the donations of his father and grandfather, including Rome and its duchy, the popes to hold them in their own right, principality, and dominion to the end of the world.” “It should seem,” adds the Bishop, “that the ‘time, times,’ &c., are to be computed from this full establishment of the power of the Pope in the eighth century.” Gibbon speaks of Gregory I., who wrote so defiantly against the Emperor Leo about images in the eighth century, as the founder of the Papal monarchy; and Milner says, “From this time I look on the Pope of Rome as Antichrist.” [185] One of the effects of the Revolution in 1792–3 was the destruction of the established religion in France, the chief support of the Papacy. As the edict of Justinian in 533 might be said to be the beginning of the Little Horn as a temporal power, and the giving of the saints into his hand, though its full growth was not for some time after, so the commencement of his fall as such, and the deliverance of the saints from his hand, might be dated from the French Revolution, though not to be completed till several years afterwards. The Convention, which met on the 20th September 1792, first decreed the eternal abolition of monarchy, and on the seventh day of its sitting, it was proposed by M. Manuel that, as royalty was abolished, the order of priests and all religious establishments should be abolished with it. This, however, was only done on the 31st of May in the following year, when the success of the Jacobin conspirators completed the destruction of the civil establishment of religion in France. On the 17th of June the report of Camille Jourdan on the freedom of religious worship was ordered to be printed by the unanimous vote of the Council of Five Hundred. [186] It was the belief of the Early Church that the little horn of Daniel and the “Man of Sin” spoken of by Paul (2 Thessalonians 2.) was the same Antichrist, who was even expected shortly to appear. Justin Martyr says, “He being at hand who was to speak blasphemous words against the Most High, whom the prophet Daniel foretold was to continue for a time, times, &c.” Tertullian, referring to 2 Thessalonians 2., says, “Who can this be but the Roman State, the division of which into ten kingdoms will bring on Antichrist, and then the Wicked One shall be revealed?” Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, about the year 360, referring to the same passage, says, “Thus the predicted Antichrist will come when the times of the Roman empire shall be fulfilled, and the consummation of the world shall approach. Ten kings of the Romans shall rise together, in different places indeed, but they shall reign at the same time. Among them the eleventh is Antichrist, who by magical and wicked artifices shall seize the Roman power.” Cyril believed that the apostasy or falling away which was to precede the appearance of the Man of Sin, or Antichrist, had already taken place in his day. “Formerly,” he says, “the heretics were manifest, but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise. For men have fallen away from the truth, and have itching ears. Is it a plausible theory? All listen to it gladly. Is it a word of correction? All turn away from it. Most have departed from right words, and rather choose the evil than desire the good. This therefore is the falling away, and the Enemy (Antichrist) is soon to be looked for.” As yet probably they had no idea that the Bishop of Rome was to be he; for his coming was to be a “mystery of iniquity,” and “mystery” was to be the name of the system of which he was the head, as the word is said to be actually found on the Papal mitre. But a few centuries awoke the suspicion. In the Middle Ages it was believed by many that the Antichrist had already appeared in the person of the Popes. In the tenth century Arnulph, Bishop of Orleans, addressing a Council at Rheims, said: “O deplorable Rome, who in the days of our forefathers produced so many burning and shining lights! thou hast brought forth in our times only dismal darkness worthy of the detestation of posterity.… What think you, reverend fathers, of this man, the Pope, placed on a lofty throne, shining with purple and gold? Whom do you account him? If destitute of love and puffed up with pride of knowledge only, he is Antichrist sitting in the temple of God.” It is said in a work published in 1120, “The great Antichrist is already come; in vain is he yet expected; already by the permission of God is he advanced in years.” Roman Catholic writers, of course, refuse to believe that the Papacy is “the Little Horn or Antichrist;” and some few Protestants agree with them in thinking that that power is still future; while others, as the German Rationalists, would see in it only Antiochus Epiphanes. In reference to this last opinion, it is enough to say, with Auberlen, that the Little Horn is found among the ten kingdoms of the fourth beast or Roman Empire, while Antiochus Epiphanes belonged to the third or Grecian, which, according to chap. 8, is well known to have been divided, not into ten, but into four kingdoms. That the Roman Empire was broken up into about ten different kingdoms many centuries ago, and that the Papacy, as a temporal power, sprung up among them, are facts not to be disputed.From the prophecy regarding the Little Horn we may notice— 1. The providence of God as ruling both in the world and in the Church. “He putteth down one and setteth up another.” Even the Little Horn, which was to prove such a scourge to the Church and to the world, was entirely under His control, and employed as His instrument in accomplishing the purposes of His infinite wisdom. The saints were to be “given” into His hand, as Judah and its king were given into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar (chap. Daniel 1:2). The same Providence limited the continuance of the subjection in both cases. What is done wickedly by man is permitted and controlled wisely and holily by God. 2. The comfort of God’s people to know that their sufferings are meted out, both in intensity and duration, by a Father’s hand. It was a fiery trial that was to try the saints when they were to be given into the hand of the Little Horn, who was to make war upon them, and prevail against them, and wear them out. But it was to continue only for a time, a long time indeed, as indicated in the expression “a time, times, and the dividing of a time;” but still it was to come to an end. “Thou shalt have tribulation ten days,”—not more. “In measure when it shooteth forth, Thou wilt debate with it: He stayeth His rough wind in the day of His east wind” (Isaiah 27:8). The “time to favour Zion, even the set time,” comes. 3. The preciousness and power of divine grace in sustaining the people of God under protracted persecutions and afflictions. No small affliction to the saints who held fast the Word of God to have war made upon them by a mighty and prevailing power, and to be worn out by exile, imprisonment, and loss of goods, year after year, the same thing being continued century after century. No small amount of grace needed to sustain them in the conflict, so as to be faithful unto death. But the promise is sure. “My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.” “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Though appointed as sheep to the slaughter, we are made more than conquerors through Him that loved us. “They overcame through the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.” 4. The divine, and therefore indestructible, nature of the Church and religion of Jesus Christ, which has held out under centuries of cruel persecution. To exhibit this, probably one reason why such a state of things is permitted to take place. The bush burns, but is not consumed, because the Lord Himself is in it. The gates and power of hell unable to prevail against the Church of Christ, because founded on the Rock of Ages. The Church outlives the furnace, because One like the Son of God—the Son of God Himself—is with it there. “If this counsel or work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.” “Although,” says Sismondi, himself a Roman Catholic, “for two hundred years the fires were never quenched, still every day saw Catholics abjuring the faith of their fathers, and embracing the religion which often guided them to the stake. In vain Gregory IX., in 1231, put to death every heretic whom he found concealed in Rome.” 5. Cause for joy and thanksgiving that the wearing out of the saints by the Little Horn is at or near its close. There may yet be possibly a period of intense suffering from that same Little Horn under a changed aspect; but if so, it will be but of short continuance; perhaps the “time, times, and dividing of a time,” on the shorter literal day scale. But we may well rejoice and give thanks that the long-protracted period of “wearing out” is at an end. The fires of Smithfield and the tortures of the Inquisition, we may believe, are over. Even in Rome men may read the Bible and worship God according to it without being afraid. Let us thank God for liberty of conscience in Europe. 6. The prediction regarding the Little Horn, with its manifest fulfilment, another remarkable evidence of divine inspiration. That horn, as rising out of the fourth beast, and among the other ten, acknowledged not to be Antiochus Epiphanes, and must therefore be found long after the time when the prophecy was written. The prediction minute and detailed; and its fulfilment, in a power that for twelve centuries has been the most prominent and conspicuous one in Europe, singularly exact. The fulfilment of such prediction, though perfectly natural, yet partaking of the nature of a miracle, as being beyond any mere human power to foresee it, and as such an evidence of the divine origin of the prediction. . XXVII.—THE KINGDOM OF THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH (Chap. Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27) ‘The saints shall take the kingdom.” A striking feature in the kingdom predicted in this vision of Daniel is that, while it is distinctly said to be given to the Son of Man, it is just as distinctly said, and that twice over, to be given to the saints, or to the people of the saints of the Most High, and that the saints take the kingdom. Although this circumstance has been slightly referred to under the preceding section, in connection with the administration of the kingdom of the Son of Man, yet from the prominence given to it and its threefold repetition in the vision it demands a separate consideration. We notice—the saints to whom the kingdom is given; the kingdom itself; the sense in which it is given to the saints; the suitableness of the appointment; and the beneficial results. I. The saints [211]. Saints denote holy or sanctified persons. The term is applicable both to angels and men. Here it is the latter. “Holy” means separated from sin, and separated to God and His service. The former may be called the moral, the latter the official meaning of the term. Whatever is set apart to God and His service or use may be called holy in the official sense. Men thus set apart are or ought to be holy also in the moral sense, holy in heart and life, or separate from sin. This is the sense in the text; hence they are called “saints of the Most High,” such as are both separated to His service, belonging to Him as His own, made saints by Himself, and approved by Him as such. This far removed from the profane caricature of Papal canonisation. Men are made saints by the mighty power of divine grace, renewing them in the spirit of their mind, making them spiritually alive from being dead in trespasses and sins, and rendering them “new creatures,” or a new creation in Christ Jesus. This is especially the work assigned to the Holy Ghost, and such are said to be “born of the Spirit.” Baptism with water is the sign, but not the instrument of it. Cornelius, and thousands more, were born again of the Spirit before they were baptized; while Simon the sorcerer, like millions more, though baptized with water, was never born again at all. The instrument in the new birth, in the case of any beyond infancy, is the Word of truth. “Being born again,” says Peter, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever.” “Of His own will,” says James, “begat He us by the Word of truth.” It is by the same instrument that the work of holiness or sanctification is carried on in the saints afterwards. “Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” “Now ye are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you.” “That He might sanctify and cleanse it (the Church) with the washing of water by the Word” (John 17:17; John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26). This renewing and sanctifying of the soul by the Holy Ghost is effected in union with Christ, as members of His body and branches in Him as the true Vine,—“sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The work is carried on here in the body of flesh, but is only perfected when the body is either put off at death or changed at the Lord’s coming. Hence “the spirits of just men made perfect.” Men may be truly saints here, but only perfected saints hereafter. This saintship or sanctified condition is peculiar to no nation or class. There is, however, also a federal or covenant holiness which may belong to a nation or class, and which, like official holiness, may exist without holiness in heart and life. Thus the Jews were a holy, because a covenant people, chosen by the Lord as a people for Himself. Thus baptized Christians and the children of such are federally holy, as taken outwardly into the Christian covenant, and professedly given up to God in baptism, though, alas! too often, like the Jews, far away from moral and personal holiness. The saints of the Most High are not merely federally and officially, but morally and personally holy; holy as God is holy, and pure as God is pure, partakers of the divine character, and possessing the same holiness in kind though not in degree. In the Old Testament such were chiefly found among the Jews, to whom pertained the adoption and the giving of the law, as well as the covenants and the promises. In the New Testament they are found both among Jews and Gentiles of every nation, people, and tongue. It is of such that the kingdom of the Son of Man, identical with the kingdom given to the saints, consists. Hence the commission: “Go ye and teach (disciple) all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” While He is King of the Jews, He is also “Lord of all.” There appears, therefore, no reason for limiting the term in the text, especially as the vision has obviously its fulfilment, not in Old, but in New Testament times. A more difficult question perhaps might be, Are they the glorified saints, or saints still in the body, or both? [212] If the giving of the kingdom to the saints is to be understood in the sense of reward, as in that sense it is given to the Son of Man, then it would seem that the saints here indicated are those who, like Paul, have fought the good fight, have finished their course, and have kept the faith, and so have now received the crown of righteousness from the hand of the righteous Judge at His appearing. On this supposition they are those who have overcome, and so have received power from Christ “over the nations to rule them,” and have been made to sit down with Him on His throne. It would be the fulfilment of the promise, “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed unto me” (Luke 22:28-29). Other parallel passages would be Revelation 5:9-10; Revelation 17:18; Revelation 20:4. In this case, the saints would be those who should be raised from the dead at the Lord’s appearing, according to 1 Corinthians 15:23, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16, together with those who should be alive at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:17). However, even in respect to the saints then still in the body, and constituting the renewed subjects of the millennial kingdom in general, with converted Israel in particular, it would still be true that the saints take the kingdom, all civil government being then exercised by the holy persons in subordination to Christ and His glorified Bride. [211] “Saints.” According to Keil, these are neither the Jews, who are accustomed to call themselves “saints,” in contrast with the heathen (as V. Lengerke, Maurer, Hitzig, &c., think), nor the converted Israel of the millennium (as Hofmann and others believe); but, as we argue from Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6, the true members of the covenant nation, the New Testament Israel of God, i.e., the congregation of the new covenant, consisting of Israel and the faithful of all nations. Auberlen, like Hofmann, understands the Jews still on earth to be the saints meant in this vision of Daniel. “By ‘the people of the saints of the Most High,’ to whom dominion is given, Daniel evidently could only understand the people of Israel, as distinguished from the heathen nations and kingdoms, which were to rule till then. In this point Roos, Preiswerk, Hofmann, agree with Hitzig, Bertholdt, and others. The prophet’s words refer to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel, concerning which the disciples asked immediately before the ascension.” Œcolampadius and others understood the faithful reigning with Christ in the celestial kingdom. Willet, however, justly observes that the kingdom is not said to be in heaven, but under heaven, and therefore on earth. Some, as Pellican and Bullinger, thought the Church of Christ is indicated, commencing while the other monarchies were still standing, and propagated over all the world in the time of the fourth beast or Roman Empire. Willet thinks the kingdom is the spiritual dominion of the Church, commencing when the other monarchies are extinguished; beginning in this world, but perfected at the Lord’s second Advent, the saints reigning in grace here and in glory hereafter. [212] “Among the saints who are called to reign with Christ,” says Auberlen on Revelation 20:4, “the martyrs of ancient and modern times are mentioned first; they become most like to the Lord Jesus in their suffering and death, and are therefore nearest Him in His life and reign.… And the Saviour teaches expressly that at His second coming as King of the kingdom, He shall place one servant over ten cities and another over five, according to the measure of faithfulness they showed during His absence (Luke 19:11). Next to the martyrs are mentioned all who had not worshipped the beast, be it in more remote times or in the last days, which are referred to by the image and the mark upon their forehead, as will appear from a comparison with Revelation 13:14-17. Worshippers of the beast are all they that take the powers of this world as a reality and serve it, instead of looking to things invisible and future (2 Corinthians 4:17).… Hence our passage refers to the whole congregation of believers who are born of God, to God’s Church gathered out of Israel and the Gentiles (Romans 8:17).… Immediately connected with the resurrection of the dead is the transfiguration of those who will be then living on the earth; and the living thus changed, freed from the weight of the earthly and corruptible, and transported into the essential liberty of spirit, can now, even as the transfigured Saviour ascended up on high, be caught up into the clouds to meet the returning Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). The New Testament tells us that instead of the devil, the transfigured Church of Christ shall rule the world; while the Old Testament informs us that instead of the heathen beast, the holy people of Israel shall do so. Both agree in what is of central importance, that it is Christ, the Son of Man, who now rules humanity by His transfigured Church in heaven and by His people Israel on earth.” Calvin observes that in consequence of the intimate union between Christ and His Church, what belongs to the Head is transferred to the body; that the supreme power is constantly promised by the prophets to the Church, especially by Jesus Christ, who often predicts its complete supremacy; and that while the Church reigns by itself, Christ, its only supreme Head, obtains dominion therein.II. The kingdom itself. This appears to be the same as that of which the interpreting angel had already spoken as the kingdom given by the Ancient of Days to the Son of Man—the kingdom of which Christ is the Head and King, and which was to take the place of the kingdoms of this world, or of the four monarchies, which shall have disappeared as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor (chap. 2) The same dominion, rule, and kingdom that is given to Christ is given to the saints as Christ’s members, who are to reign and be glorified with Him, and to sit with Him on His throne; to whom He Himself was to give authority over the nations, to rule them along with Him, and whom He was to appoint a kingdom as His Father had appointed to Himself. The kingdom is given by the Ancient of Days to Christ, and by Christ is given to His Church or Bride, to possess it along with Him, and be associated with Him in its government. The kingdom is heavenly in its origin and character, but has its place not in heaven but on earth, over and among the nations and peoples inhabiting it. While having its earthly visible and material side, like its predecessors, it will be spiritual and holy in its character, consisting not in meats and drinks, but in righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; the kingdom that has been so long prayed for, when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. From heaven, wherever that may be, the saints will rule the earth with Christ, while the saints on earth shall rule subordinately with them. The “kingdom of the world” shall become “the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” or His anointed members (Revelation 11:15, R.V.) III. The sense in which the saints shall take the kingdom. This appears to be the same as that in which Christ Himself takes it. The angel indicates no difference; only that Christ receives it directly from the Ancient of Days, which the saints are not said to do, they receiving it mediately from or virtually in Christ, whose members and whose Bride they are, forming with Him one body and one Christ (Revelation 11:15; 1 Corinthians 12:12). Christ the Head receives the kingdom from the Father as His reward for the accomplishment of His mediatorial work given Him by the Father to do as His Righteous Servant (Philippians 2:6-10). His members receive it also as a reward from Christ, whose servants they were, and to whom they were enabled to be faithful even unto death. “If any man will serve me, let him follow me; and where I am there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him will my Father honour.” “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” “He that overcometh, and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.” “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed me” (John 12:26; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:21; Luke 22:28-29). The saints take the kingdom as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. One with Christ, they share with Him in His glory and reign, as they shared with Him before in His humiliation and suffering. They possess the kingdom, and exercise kingly rule and authority with and under Him, as the priest-kings whom He made such by His grace after redeeming them by His blood (Revelation 1:5-6; Revelation 5:9-10). With the members as with the Head, it is first humiliation and then glory: “Out of prison he cometh to reign” (Ecclesiastes 4:13). They take the kingdom, not as the kings of the world, as a matter of earthly ambition, or through carnal relationship, or by skilful management, intrigue, and violence, or as conquerors with garments rolled in blood. They take it as a gift of grace from their loving Husband and King, whom it was given them by the same grace lovingly to follow and obey even unto death. They take and possess the kingdom, not for the gratification of personal ambition, or selfish desires, or carnal pleasures, from which, as saints, they are for ever separated; but for the glory of Him who created all things for Himself, and of His Son who redeemed them by His blood, as well as for the happiness of a regenerated world and wide-extended universe. For the same high and holy ends will the saints then still in the flesh, and Israel more especially, exercise in a subordinate capacity the rule which the King Himself in His wisdom shall assign to them. [213][213] “Take the kingdom.” Calvin refers the taking of the kingdom by the saints to the time when, after the promulgation of the Gospel, the kingdom of God and of the saints obtained some fame and celebrity in the world. In another place, however, he remarks that the slaying of the fourth beast and the giving the kingdom and authority to the people of the saints does not seem to have taken place yet; whence all Christian interpreters agree in treating this prophecy as relating to the final day of Christ’s Advent He himself thinks the saints began to reign under the whole heaven when Christ ushered in His kingdom by the promulgation of it; and that though Daniel does not here predict occurrences connected with the Advent of Christ as Judge of the World, but with the first preaching of the Gospel, yet he notwithstanding draws a magnificent picture of Christ’s reign, embracing its final completion. The taking of the kingdom was in like manner interpreted by the early Fathers as referring to the general spread of Christianity after the first Advent of Christ. So Dr. Lee and Professor Bush.IV. The suitableness of the appointment. There is something suitable in the thrice-repeated declaration that the saints of the Most High, or truly holy persons, shall take the kingdom. In the preceding empires, and ever since Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” began to be “a mighty one on the earth,” the “vilest of men” have often been “exalted” to kingly power, and, as a consequence, the “wicked have walked on every side” (Psalms 12:8). For wise and holy reasons, God, in His mysterious providence, often sets over kingdoms the “basest of men,” when, as a natural result, the land is filled with misery and crime (Daniel 4:17). Selfish and godless rulers have constituted a part of the present state of earthly things. Natural, so long as “the whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:19, R.V.) Evil rulers a part of the evil entailed by the Fall, and often the chastisement of the sins of the people. What the world wants and longs for, but seldom obtains, is wise, upright, disinterested rulers, ruling in the fear of God and for the best interests of their subjects. Such is the state of things predicted in the text. Something suitable and becoming when holy men, separated from sin and selfishness, bearing the image and character of the God whose name and nature is love, and who is “righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works,” shall take, and, by divine gift, possess the kingdom. Such have learned to rule by being first taught how to obey, and have been trained to reign with Christ hereafter by suffering with Him here. Such fitted to rule by imbibing the spirit and walking in the steps of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, and who pleased not Himself, but went about doing good. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:5). V. Its beneficial results. The happiness of subjects greatly bound up with the character and government of their rulers. “The king by judgment establisheth the land.” “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn” (Proverbs 29:2; Proverbs 29:4). Seen in a measure in the rule of David, as compared with that of many who succeeded him. Limited examples also in our own Alfred, and in her who now sits upon his throne. The best of rulers, however, in the present state of things, able only to produce partial results, both from their own imperfect spiritual condition and that of their ministers and coadjutors in the government, their short continuance in power, the evil state of things already existing, and the hostile influences, visible and invisible, which oppose them. From these impediments the reign of the saints of the Most High in the millennial kingdom of the Son of Man will be greatly exempt, so that their rule will be naturally one of the highest beneficence, and attended with the happiest results to humanity [214]. The state of things in the world, under a government in which a King (Messiah) shall reign in righteousness, and princes (the saints associated with Him) shall rule in judgment, represented by the prophets under such imagery as the following: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth” (Isaiah 11:6-9; Isaiah 65:25; Psalms 72:6; Psalms 72:16). Without any figure, “Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” (Psalms 67:6-7). The subject suggests— [214] “Not only,” says Auberlen, “does the evil spiritual influence which the prince of this world exerted on humanity in the preceding ages cease, but, in place of it, the transfigured Church of God obtain a most blessed dominion over the world. Christianity will pervade the world and all relations of life in spirit and in truth.… It is upon this present earth that it must be shown and proved that the devil, who pretended to be its rightful lord, was only a usurper; man, who was created to ‘have dominion over the earth,’ is to rejoice over his world with full, unmixed, holy joy. Every legitimate and true ideal will then become a reality.”1. Cause of rejoicing in the prospect presented by the text. It was as a ground of comfort and a matter of rejoicing that it was three times announced to Daniel that the saints should take and possess the kingdom. It was intimated as good tidings not only for the saints themselves, who, instead of being given into the hands of oppressors and persecutors, despised and down-trodden, and often counted as sheep for the slaughter, should have the rule and government of the nations committed to them, but for the world who should reap the benefit of such a state of things. Whether it be the saints that have finished their course of suffering and service on earth, and now are glorified according to the promise, or whether it be the saints still living in the flesh, be it Jews or Gentiles, or both, it is for every lover of his kind to rejoice that a day is coming when truly holy persons, and only such, shall hold the reins of government, and administer a righteous and beneficent rule over the nations, in loyal and loving subordination and obedience to the Prince of Peace. That saints, renewed and sanctified in Christ, transformed into His image, and breathing His spirit of meekness, humility, and love, and at the same time guided by a wisdom that is from above, pure, peaceable, and gentle, full of mercy and of good fruits, instead of the wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and devilish—that such shall be the only rulers that the earth shall know, and that their rule shall be at the same time the rule of the Son of Man, with all power in heaven and earth, is surely a consummation devoutly to be wished, and a prospect greatly to be rejoiced in. 2. The blessed consequence of a faithful adherence to the Saviour. The saints shall take the kingdom. Believers are made kings and priests already. They are princes even now, but in disguise. They travel to their inheritance incognito. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we do know that a crown of glory awaits every faithful follower of Jesus, however poor his condition may be now. If we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with Him. Suffering with Him now, we shall be also glorified with Him hereafter. When He who is our life shall be manifested, we shall also “with Him be manifested in glory” (Colossians 3:4, R.V.) The humblest follower of Jesus, faithful unto death, shall receive a crown of life, and shall sit down with Christ in His throne, sharing with Him in His kingly glory, and in the government of a renewed world. They shall reign with Christ. “The saints shall judge the world. Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). It matters not how the saints shall reign or exercise the kingly authority that shall be committed to them. What we know not now we shall know hereafter. Enough that the thing is true. If we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. Let this be our comfort under the burden and heat of the day, and let it animate us to use unfaltering perseverance in a cause of faithful self-denying service, till the Master shall please to call us from the field. 3. The character of the future blessedness of the saints. They shall possess the kingdom. They shall thus have noble work to do, honourable and dignified service to employ them. His servants shall still serve Him, and they shall serve Him in the highest form of service. They shall find abundant scope for the sanctified faculties which they shall possess, and have ample field for the exercise of the Christ-like disposition which shall animate them. Renewed in the image of the universal Ruler, they shall have the employment restored to them which was originally bestowed upon man at his creation, but was lost through the Fall. Their blessedness will not be mere rest, but rest from trouble, sin, and bondage, with a holy and happy employment which shall become their position as sons of God and brethren of the King of kings, and in which they shall with Him still contribute to the glory of the Creator and the happiness of His creatures. They will thus not only be made to resemble their Lord and Husband, but be kept in closest sympathy and fellowship with Him, as sharing in the government that shall be upon His shoulders. What was their chief happiness on earth will thus be perfected in glory. Their kingly and princely office they will also be enabled to discharge without fatigue, and without the grief of being continually opposed and thwarted in their benevolent endeavours by the wily and watchful enmity of him who was the great adversary of God and man, but who shall then be under a divine restraint, so as no more to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:4). 4. The privilege of believers to be employed now in a way that shall be both an anticipation of their future blessedness and their preparation for it. This is that of seeking, according to our gifts and opportunities, to promote the objects aimed at by Christ Himself and the saints that shall reign with Him over the earth—the glory of the Creator and the happiness of men, as experienced in His favour and service. To promote this twofold object is the work given to believers to do now, more especially by communicating the knowledge of the Saviour, and persuading men to be reconciled through Him to God. The Saviour’s parting commission to His Church, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” “Shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life.” “Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” For this blessed though now often trying and self-denying service He has promised and bestowed abundant qualification in the gift of His Holy Spirit: “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” (Acts 1:7-8). Such employment here, in whatever way and in whatever circumstances, a blessed anticipation of and preparation for our future employment when the saints shall take the kingdom. It was the faithful servant to whom it was said, “Have thou authority over ten cities.” Nor will the painful trials and deep sorrow which we may be called to experience in connection with a faithful endeavour to serve Christ and our fellow-men in the present state, be the least part of our preparation for the higher service that awaits us when all tears shall be wiped away. 5. Our interest to make sure our place now among the saints who shall possess the kingdom. Regard to one’s own interest makes this the first object we should be concerned to secure. The day is hastening when to have neglected this will appear the height of madness. To throw a fortune, a dukedom, a kingdom away, will one day soon appear to be reason and sense compared with the throwing away the opportunity of obtaining a place among those who shall in a few short years possess a kingdom that shall never pass away. That place is to be secured simply by a sincere and cordial acceptance of the Saviour whom God in His love has provided for a lost and guilty world, that Son of Man who came to seek and to save that which is lost. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” That Son of Man who shall come one day in His glory and all His saints with Him, comes now in His Gospel to each man and woman who hears it, and offers him freely Himself, and along with Himself a place among His saints who shall hereafter with Himself possess the kingdom. Reader, have you cordially accepted Him? Is He yours? Are you among His redeemed people? If not, accept Him now, and take no rest till by His grace you are enabled joyfully to say, “My Lord and my God!” . XXV.—THE OF THE BEAST AND THE LITTLE HORN (Chap. Daniel 7:9-12; Daniel 7:26) Hitherto we have not met with much difficulty in the way of interpretation. Little room has been left either for doubt or hesitation. The case is somewhat different now. We approach the region of unfulfilled prophecy, naturally more difficult of interpretation, and leaving more room for mistake and difference of opinion. The field is interesting and inviting, but demands caution in its investigation. The word of prophecy is given for our guidance and comfort, as a light shining in a dark place. But we need the Spirit to interpret His own Word. “Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.” “In Thy light we shall see light.” “The Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God,” and revealeth them unto us. “He knoweth what is in darkness, and the light dwelleth with Him.” It is His to reveal the “deep and secret things,” and to show us, as He has done in His Word, “things to come.” We have before us a passage of overwhelming grandeur and sublimity; the description of a scene of awful solemnity. The passage exhibits the judgment-seat of God, with myriads of attendant angels, and the infliction of pronounced doom on a large portion of the human race. The judgment is not indeed, like that in Revelation 20, the general judgment, terminating the reign of Christ and His saints on earth, and resembling in some of its features the present one. It is rather the judgment on the fourth beast, or Roman Empire, with its ten horns or kingdoms, and more especially the “Little Horn,” whose pride, persecution, and blasphemy are the special occasion of it. I. The occasion of the judgment. This is distinctly said to be “the voice of the great words which the horn spake” (Daniel 7:11). So in the interpretation by the angel it is said, “He shall speak great words against the Most High,” &c. “But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his kingdom” (Daniel 7:25-26). He was to wear out the saints of the Most High, who were to be “given into his hand for a time, times, and the dividing of a time.” That allotted period was to terminate, and then the long-delayed judgment was to commence. That monstrous reign of blasphemy against God and cruelty to His saints was to be allowed no longer. “These things thou hast done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself. But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow; for the wickedness is great” (Psalms 50:21; Joe 3:13). The occasion of the judgment is the sayings and doings of the Little Horn, [187] whose kingdom is therefore to be taken away; and the beast, to whom it belonged, of whose wickedness it was the concentration, and who had given to it its power, aided and abetted its doings, and so had identified itself with it, is, with its ten horns, to be slain, and its body “destroyed and given to the burning flame.” [187] “Because of the voice of the great words which the horn spake.” The connection between the depriving the Papacy of its temporal dominions in 1870 and its “great words “or blasphemous pretensions was remarkable. “In the same year,” said the Times of the period, “the Papacy has assumed the highest spiritual exaltation to which it could aspire, and lost the temporal sovereignty which it had held for a thousand years.” The exaltation referred to was the decree of a General Council in Rome that the Popes were infallible in matters of doctrine. The circumstances attending the act were also remarkable. Arrangements had been made in the chamber where the Council sat, that, by means of mirrors suitably disposed, a glory expressive of divinity should appear to encircle the Pope’s head when the decree was passed. Strange to say, however, as if to rebuke the blasphemy and proclaim that the hour of doom had struck, the sun did not shine out that day: a violent storm burst over Rome; the sky was darkened by tempest, and the voices of the Council were lost in the roll of thunder. Within a day or two after, the Franco-German war was declared, which led to the immediate withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, and the consequent fall of the Pope’s temporal power, which for several years they had served alone to support. Jerome, and Roman Catholic writers after him, understanding the Little Horn to be the Antichrist that should appear immediately before the end of the world, view the judgment in the text as taking place at that time in his destruction. So Bullinger, �colampadius, and Osiander, who regard the fourth beast as either the Roman or Turkish Empire; while Willet, understanding the fourth beast of the Greek kingdom of the Seleucidζ, applies the passage to the first coming of Christ, but typically also to the final judgment, the judgment beginning with the first and ending with the second coming of Christ Calvin also refers it to the latter period.II. The circumstances of the judgment. “The thrones were cast (rather, set or planted) down,” &c. [188] (Daniel 7:9). We have— [188] “The thrones were east down,” ψְ ?ξִ ?ιεּ (remioo), “were set up.” Wintle: “were pitched.” So the Septuagint, Vulgate, and all the ancient versions, as well as Morus, Castalio, Piscator, and Calvin. The rendering also of Gesenius. The word used by the Targums in Jeremiah 1:15 for “they set.” Keil has “they were thrown,” i.e., they were placed in order quickly or with a noise. This idea of haste or noise, however, does not seem necessarily included. Dr. Rule prefers the rendering of the English version, “were cut down,” but understands not the thrones of assessors, but of the ten kings formerly mentioned, which is unlikely. Keil, with most interpreters, understands them as seats for the assembly sitting in judgment with God; that assembly, in his view, consisting neither of the elders of Israel, as the Rabbins think, nor of glorified men, as Hengstenberg (on Revelation 4:4) supposes; but of angels, according to Psalms 89:8, “who are to be distinguished from the thousands and tens of thousands mentioned in Daniel 7:10; for these do not sit upon thrones, but stand before God as servants to fulfil His commands and execute His judgments.” Hengstenberg’s view, however, will probably appear to most the more correct one. Lightfoot quotes from De Lyra: “He saith ‘thrones,’ because not only Christ shall judge, but the apostles and perfect men shall assist.” He adds, “So the saints shall at the day of judgment sit with Christ, and approve or applaud His judgment.”1. The judge. “The Ancient (or permanent) of days did sit.” The expression indicative of the Godhead, the I am, the everlasting and unchanging Jehovah, who was, and is, and is to come. In Daniel 7:13, the Father, or first person in the Godhead, appears to be meant; here probably the Son, or second person, who in virtue of His becoming the Son of Man has all judgment committed to Him [189]. “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son, and hath given Him power to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.” “God shall judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He hath ordained.” “God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.” “He (Jesus Christ) shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.” Judgment, however, is the attribute and prerogative of Godhead. “God is Judge Himself” (Psalms 50:3-6). No other is capable of being so. Jesus occupies the judgment-seat as Supreme Judge because He is God, the Ancient of days. This character claimed by Jesus Himself. “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8). Hence His appearance at the same time identical with that here given: “His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes were as a flame of fire.” Stupendous contrast with His appearance before Pilate’s bar. Now the judge and the prisoner change places. [189] “The Ancient of Days,” ιεֹ ?ξִ ?ιοςַ ?ϊִּ ?ιχ (’attiq yomin). Professor Bush, after Cocceius and Michaelis, translates, “permanent or enduring of days.” Keil has, “one advanced in days, very old,” and says this “is not the Eternal, for although God is meant, yet Daniel does not see the everlasting God, but an old man or a man of grey hairs, in whose majestic form God makes Himself visible (cf. Ezekiel 1:26). Mr. Irving understood God the Father, coming in His unstained holiness to judge the arch-enemy of His Son and destroyer of His people, and to prepare the way for the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven.” So Dr. Rule. �colampadius understood it of Christ, the Lamb “slain from the foundation of the world.” So Dr. Cumming. Wintle understands the term ςַ ?ϊִּ ?ιχ (’attiq) actively—“he that maketh the days old,” and applies it to Deity.2. The throne. This was a “fiery flame,” and its “wheels,” on which it appeared to rest, or rather to move, [190] as “burning fire;” emblematic of searching investigation, fiery indignation, swift judgment. An object of supreme terribleness like the representation in Ezekiel 1:26-28. The throne corresponding with the character of the judge. “Our God is a consuming fire.” “His eyes were as a flame of fire.” “Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire?” Expressive also of the object of the judgment, the infliction of punishment or burning wrath. It is “the great day of His wrath,” the “wrath of the Lamb.” “The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged” (Revelation 6:16-17; Revelation 11:18). “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God,” &c. (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). “A fire goeth before Him and burneth up His enemies round about.” It is the time of “judgment and fiery indignation, that shall devour the adversaries” (Psalms 97:3; Hebrews 10:27). [190] “His wheels as burning fire.” Grotius remarks that the ancient thrones and curule chairs had wheels. Those in the text, being like “burning fire,” Dr. Cox observes, “prognosticate at once the majesty of the Judge, piercing, penetrating, awful, and the rapid progress of those providential visitations which would bespeak the indignation of a sin-avenging Deity.” The fire-scattering wheels, says Keil, “show the omnipresence of the divine throne of judgment,—the going of the judgment of God over the whole earth.” He further observes: “Fire and the shining of fire are the constant phenomena of the manifestation of God in the world. The fire which engirds his throne with flame pours itself forth as a stream from God into the world, consuming all that is sinful and hostile to Him, and rendering His people and kingdom glorious.”3. The attendants. “Thrones.” Not one throne, but many thrones. The scene in accordance with earthly tribunals, where the judge has his assessors [191]. Apostles, saints, and martyrs elsewhere represented as sitting on thrones, with judgment given to them (Revelation 20:4). The saints shall judge the world as assessors with Christ (1 Corinthians 6:2). “When the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Innumerable angels also about the throne as the ministers of His justice. “Thousand thousands ministered to Him.” Angels employed as the executioners of His justice. “He will say to His angels, Gather the tares into bundles to burn them.” He will come “with His mighty angels, taking vengeance.” “The Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him” (Matthew 25:31). His angels to be employed in gathering “out of His kingdom all things that offend (all the stumbling-blocks), and them which do iniquity” (Matthew 13:41). His ministers in inflicting judgments on the Little Horn and the apostate nations of Christendom (Revelation 16:1). Hence their appearance here about the throne. [191] “Thrones.” From this representation of the judgment Rationalists have raised an objection to the genuineness of the book, as if it were borrowed from the circumstances and customs of the Persian court, while the prophecy purports to be given in the age of the last Chaldean king. To this objection Hengstenberg replies, that every feature of the picture can be pointed out in earlier writings of Scripture, as in Job 1, 2; 1 Kings 22:19-22. So in Isaiah 6 the principal angels are represented as standing round the throne of God. Dr. Cox thinks that the sitting of the judgment, as thus prepared, has a clear reference to the solemnities and general construction of the Jewish Sanhedrim or Great Council. This, however, probably an institution of later times.4. The accompaniments. “A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him” (Daniel 7:10). A further indication of the character and object of the judgment—fiery indignation. “It shall be very tempestuous round about Him” (Psalms 50:3). This probably indicative of and connected with the judgment to be inflicted on the Beast,—“his body given to the burning flame;” the earth, or as much of it as shall be involved in the judgment, to be “burned up;” the elements to “melt with fervent heat;” the earth “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:7; 2 Peter 3:10). III. The judgment itself. “The books were opened” (Daniel 7:10). The significance and object of this indicated in the description given in the Apocalypse of the general judgment, “The dead were judged out of the things that were written in the books” (Revelation 20:12). Reference to earthly courts and their judicial proceedings, the names of the acccused, with the crimes laid to their charge, being registered for examination [192]. Indicates the strict and impartial character of the judgment. A constant observation exercised in regard to the doings of the enemies of God and His people, and a full and accurate account preserved of them. All the sayings and doings of the Little Horn recorded in the book; all the great and blasphemous words spoken against the Most High; all the cruelties exercised by him and the nations that submitted to his authority or were inspired by his spirit; every blasphemous bull and persecuting edict that ever issued from the Vatican; every secret murder committed in the cells of the Inquisition; every deed of darkness and of blood perpetrated under the cloak and in the name of Christ’s religion, all registered in those awful but truth-telling books. Words as well as deeds preserved there for judgment. “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” So Enoch testified before the Flood. “Behold the Lord cometh to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him” (Jude 1:14-15). Contrast with these records of ungodly words and deeds another book,—the book of life. “A book of remembrance was written before Him of them that feared the Lord and that thought upon His name;” of those who chose, with Moses, “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” and rather to go to the stake or lay down their heads on the block than prove unfaithful to God and His truth. [192] “The books were opened.” Hengstenberg derives the figure from the papers of the judge, in which the names of the criminals and their deeds are registered. Keil considers the books those in which the actions of men are recorded. Jerome, Willet, and others understand them of every one’s conscience; opened by God to each, says �colampadius, to see and confess His justice. Bede strangely regarded them as the Scriptures; and Calvin in like manner understands by them the manifestation of the knowledge of God to the world at the coming of Christ by the preaching of the Gospel.IV. The consequences of the judgment. “The beast was slain, and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame.” “They shall take away his (the Little Horn’s) dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end” (Daniel 7:11; Daniel 7:26). In the vision itself it is the beast or fourth empire on which the judgment is represented as taking effect; in the interpretation of the vision it is the Little Horn [193]. That horn thus identified with the beast, of which it was properly only a part. The judgment falls on the beast for the words of the Little Horn, so entirely were they one. The horn was only the concentration of the beast. The kingdoms of the beast, or Roman Empire, are represented in the Book of Revelation as giving their power to the beast (Revelation 17:16-17), and we know, as a matter of fact, that that power was long exercised in obedience to the will of the Little Horn and in carrying out his persecuting edicts. When the Papacy delivered the heretic over to the civil power, that power was obedient, and put him to death. Thus also armies were raised for their extirpation. Justinian, in his celebrated edict, distinctly permitted the Roman pontiff to “use the powers of the empire against whomsoever he deemed heretical.” The spirit of the Little Horn is the spirit of the kingdoms of the beast, in so far as their subjects are not renewed by the Spirit of God. It is the spirit of pride, vainglory, worldliness, and enmity against God, and so of enmity against His saints. The judgment on the beast expressed either literally or figuratively, or both [194]. A literal destruction by fire not unlikely. Rome, the metropolis of the fourth beast, and seat of the Papacy or Little Horn, repeatedly represented in the Book of Revelation as awaiting this judgment (Revelation 17:16-17; Revelation 18:8). That a wide-spread conflagration will form at least one part of the judgment to be inflicted on the Papal kingdoms and those animated by the same spirit of unbelief and rebellion against God, seems indicated in such places as 2 Thessalonians 1:8 and 2 Thessalonians 2:8-12. According to Peter, the day of the Lord, in which this judgment shall be executed, is accompanied with a fire by which “the earth and the works therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). This may possibly commence with Rome and Italy, and extend to the other nations. It is well known that already beneath the sulphurous soil of Italy are subterranean fires ready to break out at the bidding of their Creator, who keeps them in store for His own purpose, like the fountains of the great deep, stored and then broken up for the destruction of the old world, when its wickedness made it ripe for judgment [195]. Possibly the destruction may be indicated in Daniel 7:12 as extending to those countries that constituted the three preceding empires, Babylon, Persia, and Greece, whose dominion was taken away, though “their lives were prolonged for a season and a time” [196]. Of the Little Horn it is simply said that its dominion is “taken away, to consume and destroy it unto the end.” The Papacy was to cease to be a temporal power apparently by slow degrees. So also the Apostle seems to speak of the destruction of the Man of sin (2 Thessalonians 2:8). This destruction doubtless includes alike the temporal and spiritual power of the Papacy, whatever form it may assume. The total loss of the temporal power in 1870 may, perhaps, be viewed as the completion of what began in 1793 in the French Convention, and was further advanced in 1798, when, in the Campo Vaccino, the ancient Roman Forum, the Pontifical Government was pronounced, in the midst of a large concourse of people, to be at an end; while on the following day fourteen cardinals, in the Pope’s absence, met in the Vatican, and signed the absolute renunciation of the temporal power [197]. This taking away of the temporal dominion of the Little Horn seemed to be completed on the 20th of September 1870, when Rome was declared the capital of Italy, and made the seat of government by Victor Emmanuel as its chosen king [198]. As a spiritual power, however, the Papacy has still many millions in Europe and elsewhere subject to its sway. This, though it may continue for some time longer to exercise its baleful influence in the souls of men, must also ultimately perish. [193] Jerome and expositors in general, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, think the destruction of Antichrist and his members here meant. Calvin understood the passage of the Roman Empire when it began to decay after Trajan; but says that the slaying of the fourth beast and the giving of the kingdom and authority to the people of the saints does not seem to have been accomplished yet, and that all Christian interpreters agree in treating the prophecy as relating to the final day of Christ’s Advent. Bullinger applies the destruction of the fourth beast to the ruin of the Papal kingdoms; while Osiander and �colampadius understand the decay of the Turkish and Roman empires together. Junius thinks only of Antiochus Epiphanes, and Willet of the whole kingdom of the Seleucidζ. Irving thinks that not only the Little Horn or the Papacy is intended in the destruction, but all its supporters, “Yea, the whole beast of seven heads and ten horns, which had listened to the great words which it spake.” Dr. Rule observes that the prophet’s beholding “until the beast was slain,” &c., appears to intimate that the slaughter and the destruction will be gradual, perhaps very slow. [194] “Given to the burning flame.” “The supposition that the burning is only the figure of destruction, as, for example, in Isaiah 9:4, is decidedly opposed by the parallel passages, Isaiah 66:14, which Daniel had in view, and Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10, where this prophecy is again taken up, and the judgment is expressed by a being cast into a lake of fire with everlasting torments.”—Keil. [195] “The burning flame.” “Thus much being allowed from Scripture, let us now return to nature again, to seek out that part of the Christian world that from its own constitution is most subject to burning, by the sulphureousness of its soil and its fiery mountains and caverns. This we easily find to be the Roman territory or the country of Italy, which, by all accounts, ancient and modern, is a storehouse of fire; as if it was condemned to that fate by God and nature, and to be an incendiary, as it were, to the rest of the world. And seeing mystical Babylon, the seat of Antichrist, is the same Rome and its territory, as it is understood by most interpreters of former and later ages, you see both our lines meet in this point, and that there is fairness on both hands to conclude that at the glorious appearance of our Saviour the conflagration will begin at the city of Rome and the Roman territory. Nature hath saved us the pains of kindling fire in those parts of the earth; for since the memory of man there have always been subterraneous files.”—Burnet’s “Sacred Theory of the Earth.” Dr. M‘Cosh remarks in an article in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January 1881, that an old fisherman, more than 1800 years ago, anticipated the doctrine of modern science that the earth shall be burned up. The following communication from Vienna, dated April 12, 1881, appeared in the newspapers: “A rather severe shock of earthquake took place at the naval port of Pola and the surrounding district this morning at a quarter to ten o’clock. The earthquakes at Agram and the more terrible calamities at Cassamicciola (Ischia) and Chio, together with the increasing reports of shocks in Switzerland, Italy, and Central and South-Western Europe generally, are facts which are attracting much attention from Continental geologists.” [196] “The rest of the beasts.” Bishop Newton observes regarding these: “They are all still alive, though the dominion of the first three is taken away. The nations of Chaldea and Assyria are still the first beast; those of Media and Persia are still the second beast; those of Macedonia, Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt are still the third beast; and those of Europe on this side of Greece are still the fourth.” Mr. Miles (Lectures on Daniel) remarks: “They must all perish together; the three await the execution of marked vengeance upon the fourth. When the power of Rome shall be extinguished by the glorious manifestation of the Redeemer, every secular kingdom shall disappear.” Dr. Cox thinks the meaning to be that although these three monarchs were dispossessed of empire, “yet their influence and impious principles still continued to operate, notwithstanding their temporal demolition.” Keil observes that “the death or disappearance of the first three beasts is not expressly remarked, but is here first indicated. These had their dominion taken away one after another, each at its appointed time, and their end is connected with that of the last, as denoting that in that hour, not merely the fourth kingdom, but also the first three, the whole world-power, is brought to an end by the last judgment; the unfolding of the world-power in its diverse phases is exhausted, and the kingdom of God is raised to everlasting supremacy.” Dr. Rule, however, says: “The sentence—‘And concerning the rest of the beasts, &c.’—seems most naturally to relate to them after the destruction of the fourth empire; for it continues the description. It does not appear to be simply an account of what God had done aforetime to those former empires, viz., that when He took away their world-rule, He left them in being as nations; but of something which shall be after the destruction of the fourth. This, however, will be made clear when the time comes.” [197] The history is thus related by M. De la Bιdolliθre (Le Domaine de Saint Pierre): “The possessions that remained to the Pope (in 1792) had for their limits in the north, Venice and the Gulf of Venice; in the east, the kingdom of Naples; in the south, the Tuscan Sea; in the west, the duchies of Tuscany, Modena, Mirandola, and Mentone. They were divided into twelve Legations or provinces: the Compagna of Rome, the Sabine country, the patrimony of St. Peter properly so called, the duchy of Castro, the province of Orvieto, the province of Perouse, the duchy of Spoleto, the duchy of Urbino, the march of Ancona, Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara. The duchy of Benvenuto and the principality of Ponte Corvo were fiefs of the Church. Of the populations of these countries, some inclined to the principles of the Revolution in 1789, others were animated with a fanatical hatred against France and its doctrines.” When, in the month of March 1796, General Buonaparte took the command of the army of Italy, his prompt conquests in the north “were easy, for the majority of the population was favourable to the French. The reigning Pope, Pius VI., frightened at the progress of the French army, solicited an armistice. This was granted him on hard conditions, which, however, he ratified on the 23d of June 1796. He gave up to France the Legations of Bologna and Ferrara, the citadel of Ancona, which he was to deliver up, and all the coasts of the Adriatic Gulf from the mouths of the Po to that citadel, &c. The Pope having broken the armistice, the French troops immediately invaded the domain of St. Peter, and took Faenza, Forli, and Ravenna; after which the Pope, in consternation, wrote to Buonaparte begging a treaty, which was concluded at Tollentino on the 19th of February, the Pope yielding in perpetuity to the French Republic all his rights over the Legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, on condition that it should be without any damage to the Catholic religion, and handing over to the treasurer of the French army ten millions of livres in specie, and five millions in diamonds and other valuables. In consequence of an emeute in Rome on the 28th December 1797, in which the French General Duphot was killed, Alexander Berthier, general-in-chief of the French army in Italy, received orders to take possession of Rome, which was done without striking a blow. On the 6th of February 1798, the chiefs of the revolutionary movement pronounced, in the name of a large concourse of people assembled in the Campo Vaccino (the ancient Forum), the fall of the Pontifical Government, and proclaimed the Republic. The Pope during these events kept himself concealed; but the cardinals, having met in the Vatican, had signed their absolute renunciation of the temporal power; and on the 7th of February fourteen among them attended at a solemn Te Deum, sung in the Church of St. Peter, with all the pomp of Catholicism, to celebrate the revolution which took away the throne from the head of the Catholic Church.” [198] The French Catholic paper L’Univers, commenting on the debate on Rome in the French Assembly (July 1871), says: “All our hopes have been disappointed; in the only nation on which the Papacy could count the last support fails it. Humanly speaking, all is over.” The Roman correspondent of the Daily News says about the same time: “The Pope is twitting the more Ultramontane of the venerable members of the Sacred College, those who have been urging him to pursue reactionary courses, after the following fashion:—‘You see what it has all come to—just as I told you, just as I never ceased to predict. You insisted on my abjuring my early liberal policy, and now you see the result. It is by you that such calamities have been brought on the Church and on the world.’ ” On June 26 the Pope held a consistory, in which he said, “We are, my very dear brothers, in the hands of Divine Providence; we have nothing to expect from human aid, for man has abandoned us. Why should we dissemble? It is better I should tell you, that kings and governments, forgetting their promises, leave us to our fate.… We can hope for no help from any quarter. We have done all that was in our power, but our efforts have failed. All is over. Only a miracle can save us.” The republican Government of France, the country that formerly was the great support of the Papacy, in the latter end of 1880 passed and executed a decree which not only banished the Jesuits from the country, but closed the convents of most of the religious orders in France, in all twenty-nine, with about three thousand six hundred members, in addition to the two thousand four hundred and sixty Jesuits who were expelled.V. The time of the judgment. As already observed, this is not the general judgment at the termination of Christ’s reign on earth, or, as the phrase is commonly understood, the end of the world. It appears rather to be an invisible judgment carried on within the veil and revealed by its effects and the execution of its sentence [199]. As occasioned by the “great words” of the Little Horn, and followed by the taking away of his dominion, it might seem to have already sat. As, however, the sentence is not yet by any means fully executed, it may be sitting now. The deeds of the Little Horn may not yet be finished, though the temporal power of the Papacy has apparently ceased. A new and more terrible form may possibly yet be assumed before its final and complete destruction shall take place by the brightness of the Lord’s appearing (2 Thessalonians 2:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:8) [200]. The words of warning addressed by the Saviour have their application at the present time: “Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares: for as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be counted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.” “Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame” (Luke 21:34-36; Revelation 16:15). [199] “These passages (Revelation 4:2; Revelation 4:4; Revelation 5:11; Revelation 11:15-17), and others like them,” says Archdeacon Harrison, “show how, in the visions of prophecy, the throne of judgment of the everlasting King is in some sense ever at hand, ready to be revealed, and its unseen processes of judgment ever going on; though at certain times—and more awfully, we may believe, as the ‘mystery of iniquity ‘in its varied forms unfolds itself and the end of the world draws near—the spirit of prophecy, or the hand of Providence, draws back the veil, and exhibits the awful scene which Daniel saw in vision.” [200] Materials seldom long wanting for such a development. It was believed by many that the first Napoleon was to perform the rτle of the final or infidel Antichrist. The same thing was anticipated by some regarding his nephew, the late Emperor, who professed to possess the spirit of his uncle, and to have a peculiar destiny to fulfil. The anticipations have not been fulfilled in either case. Such a development, however, can soon be made to appear if the word of prophecy and the purpose of God require it. The following lately appeared in the Weekly Review: “Whether you talk to Parisians or to Frenchmen in the provinces about the political prospects, nine times out of ten there will be the shrug of the shoulders and the remark that history repeats itself; and the last decades of the nineteenth century, like the last decades of the eighteenth, will be a period of anarchy and revolution.… The Republic itself shows signs of weakness, and moderate men of all parties are anxious. It is said that the execution of the decrees against the religious orders has done some harm to the Republic.… After the way in which M. Victor Hugo has lauded Voltaire, it would, perhaps, have been discreet to have tolerated even the Jesuits for a time, rather than to have given the Anti-Republicans the pretext for asserting that the Republic is antagonistic to religion. But the changes of ministry is the most menacing feature.… It is incontestable that M. Gambetta has made and unmade Ministries. He has power without official responsibility, and that is always perilous.… Unfortunately moderate men are becoming distrustful, and M. Gambetta may be compelled to rely upon the extreme section, the Reds, if he is to be the chief of a Republic. If M. Gambetta wins by the sole or main support of the Reds, his tenure of the highest position is not likely to be long or beneficial to France.”As suggested by the passage, we may notice— 1. It is our comfort to know that there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Men not worn out by tyranny, oppression, and persecution, without an eye being kept upon their wrongs and the perpetrators of them. Flesh and sense ready at times to say, “My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over by my God.” A sore trial for faith when the oppressor and persecutor prosper, and the cause of truth and righteousness seems well-nigh crushed. But God only appears to take no notice. Christ is in the ship, and though apparently asleep in the storm, He will awake at the right time, at the cry of His people, rebuke the oppressor’s wrath, and change the storm into a calm. Patience is to have her perfect work, that when we have done and suffered the will of God, we may inherit the promises. “He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” The hour of deliverance shall arrive. The judgment will sit—is now indeed sitting. He who is “higher than the highest” takes not His eye from the haughty oppressor and persecutor of His people, and will, when the proper time arrives, “awake to the judgment which He has commanded.” 2. The infinite majesty of God and the awful consequences of His displeasure. The Lord is a God of judgment. His eyes, which are as a flame of fire, behold, and His eyelids try, the children of men. A fiery stream issues and goes forth from before Him. Who can stand when once He is angry? Our God is a consuming fire. How terrible to meet Him as an adversary! Yet sin makes Him our adversary. Prepare, then, to meet thy God. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with Him. There is one, and only one, way of doing so. The Jews, to be reconciled to their offended king, made Blastus, his chamberlain, their friend. God has given His own Son as a sacrifice and Mediator, that we may make Him our friend, accept of Him, and put our trust in Him, and so be reconciled to God. This is God’s own way for meeting Him. Blessed are all they that put their trust in that provided Mediator. Such can see the fiery stream that issues from before Him, ready to devour the adversaries, without alarm. They can go forward to meet it singing, with the Apostle, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.” Or, with Count Zinzendorf in the well-known hymn— “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousnessMy beauty are, my glorious dress.Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,With joy shall I lift up my head.Bold shall I stand in that great day;For who aught to my charge shall lay?Fully absolved through these I am,From sin and guilt, from fear and shame.”3. The wisdom of preparing for a judgment to come. Whatever may be the case in regard to the judgment we have been considering, and whatever share we may or may not have in it, it is certain that we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to the things done in the body, whether good or bad. “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment.” Each must then give account of himself to God. For all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Are our works those of the flesh or of the Spirit? Are they wrought in God or out of Him? Am I renewed or still unrenewed? Am I pardoned and accepted now in the Surety, the Lord our Righteousness? A place in the New Jerusalem or the Gehenna of fire depends on the question. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to enter in through the gates into the city;” or, as the Revised Version reads, “Blessed are they that wash their robes.” This is the beginning of doing His commandments. “Come now, let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as wool; though they be red as crimson, they shall be white as snow.” Reader, the fountain for sin and uncleanness is still open; if not already washed, wash now, and prepare for the judgment. “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Trust in that blood and be clean. . XXVII.—THE KINGDOM OF THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH (Chap. Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:22; Daniel 7:27) ‘The saints shall take the kingdom.” A striking feature in the kingdom predicted in this vision of Daniel is that, while it is distinctly said to be given to the Son of Man, it is just as distinctly said, and that twice over, to be given to the saints, or to the people of the saints of the Most High, and that the saints take the kingdom. Although this circumstance has been slightly referred to under the preceding section, in connection with the administration of the kingdom of the Son of Man, yet from the prominence given to it and its threefold repetition in the vision it demands a separate consideration. We notice—the saints to whom the kingdom is given; the kingdom itself; the sense in which it is given to the saints; the suitableness of the appointment; and the beneficial results. I. The saints [211]. Saints denote holy or sanctified persons. The term is applicable both to angels and men. Here it is the latter. “Holy” means separated from sin, and separated to God and His service. The former may be called the moral, the latter the official meaning of the term. Whatever is set apart to God and His service or use may be called holy in the official sense. Men thus set apart are or ought to be holy also in the moral sense, holy in heart and life, or separate from sin. This is the sense in the text; hence they are called “saints of the Most High,” such as are both separated to His service, belonging to Him as His own, made saints by Himself, and approved by Him as such. This far removed from the profane caricature of Papal canonisation. Men are made saints by the mighty power of divine grace, renewing them in the spirit of their mind, making them spiritually alive from being dead in trespasses and sins, and rendering them “new creatures,” or a new creation in Christ Jesus. This is especially the work assigned to the Holy Ghost, and such are said to be “born of the Spirit.” Baptism with water is the sign, but not the instrument of it. Cornelius, and thousands more, were born again of the Spirit before they were baptized; while Simon the sorcerer, like millions more, though baptized with water, was never born again at all. The instrument in the new birth, in the case of any beyond infancy, is the Word of truth. “Being born again,” says Peter, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever.” “Of His own will,” says James, “begat He us by the Word of truth.” It is by the same instrument that the work of holiness or sanctification is carried on in the saints afterwards. “Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” “Now ye are clean through the Word that I have spoken unto you.” “That He might sanctify and cleanse it (the Church) with the washing of water by the Word” (John 17:17; John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26). This renewing and sanctifying of the soul by the Holy Ghost is effected in union with Christ, as members of His body and branches in Him as the true Vine,—“sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The work is carried on here in the body of flesh, but is only perfected when the body is either put off at death or changed at the Lord’s coming. Hence “the spirits of just men made perfect.” Men may be truly saints here, but only perfected saints hereafter. This saintship or sanctified condition is peculiar to no nation or class. There is, however, also a federal or covenant holiness which may belong to a nation or class, and which, like official holiness, may exist without holiness in heart and life. Thus the Jews were a holy, because a covenant people, chosen by the Lord as a people for Himself. Thus baptized Christians and the children of such are federally holy, as taken outwardly into the Christian covenant, and professedly given up to God in baptism, though, alas! too often, like the Jews, far away from moral and personal holiness. The saints of the Most High are not merely federally and officially, but morally and personally holy; holy as God is holy, and pure as God is pure, partakers of the divine character, and possessing the same holiness in kind though not in degree. In the Old Testament such were chiefly found among the Jews, to whom pertained the adoption and the giving of the law, as well as the covenants and the promises. In the New Testament they are found both among Jews and Gentiles of every nation, people, and tongue. It is of such that the kingdom of the Son of Man, identical with the kingdom given to the saints, consists. Hence the commission: “Go ye and teach (disciple) all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” While He is King of the Jews, He is also “Lord of all.” There appears, therefore, no reason for limiting the term in the text, especially as the vision has obviously its fulfilment, not in Old, but in New Testament times. A more difficult question perhaps might be, Are they the glorified saints, or saints still in the body, or both? [212] If the giving of the kingdom to the saints is to be understood in the sense of reward, as in that sense it is given to the Son of Man, then it would seem that the saints here indicated are those who, like Paul, have fought the good fight, have finished their course, and have kept the faith, and so have now received the crown of righteousness from the hand of the righteous Judge at His appearing. On this supposition they are those who have overcome, and so have received power from Christ “over the nations to rule them,” and have been made to sit down with Him on His throne. It would be the fulfilment of the promise, “Ye are they that have continued with me in my temptations, and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed unto me” (Luke 22:28-29). Other parallel passages would be Revelation 5:9-10; Revelation 17:18; Revelation 20:4. In this case, the saints would be those who should be raised from the dead at the Lord’s appearing, according to 1 Corinthians 15:23, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16, together with those who should be alive at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:17). However, even in respect to the saints then still in the body, and constituting the renewed subjects of the millennial kingdom in general, with converted Israel in particular, it would still be true that the saints take the kingdom, all civil government being then exercised by the holy persons in subordination to Christ and His glorified Bride. [211] “Saints.” According to Keil, these are neither the Jews, who are accustomed to call themselves “saints,” in contrast with the heathen (as V. Lengerke, Maurer, Hitzig, &c., think), nor the converted Israel of the millennium (as Hofmann and others believe); but, as we argue from Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6, the true members of the covenant nation, the New Testament Israel of God, i.e., the congregation of the new covenant, consisting of Israel and the faithful of all nations. Auberlen, like Hofmann, understands the Jews still on earth to be the saints meant in this vision of Daniel. “By ‘the people of the saints of the Most High,’ to whom dominion is given, Daniel evidently could only understand the people of Israel, as distinguished from the heathen nations and kingdoms, which were to rule till then. In this point Roos, Preiswerk, Hofmann, agree with Hitzig, Bertholdt, and others. The prophet’s words refer to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel, concerning which the disciples asked immediately before the ascension.” Œcolampadius and others understood the faithful reigning with Christ in the celestial kingdom. Willet, however, justly observes that the kingdom is not said to be in heaven, but under heaven, and therefore on earth. Some, as Pellican and Bullinger, thought the Church of Christ is indicated, commencing while the other monarchies were still standing, and propagated over all the world in the time of the fourth beast or Roman Empire. Willet thinks the kingdom is the spiritual dominion of the Church, commencing when the other monarchies are extinguished; beginning in this world, but perfected at the Lord’s second Advent, the saints reigning in grace here and in glory hereafter. [212] “Among the saints who are called to reign with Christ,” says Auberlen on Revelation 20:4, “the martyrs of ancient and modern times are mentioned first; they become most like to the Lord Jesus in their suffering and death, and are therefore nearest Him in His life and reign.… And the Saviour teaches expressly that at His second coming as King of the kingdom, He shall place one servant over ten cities and another over five, according to the measure of faithfulness they showed during His absence (Luke 19:11). Next to the martyrs are mentioned all who had not worshipped the beast, be it in more remote times or in the last days, which are referred to by the image and the mark upon their forehead, as will appear from a comparison with Revelation 13:14-17. Worshippers of the beast are all they that take the powers of this world as a reality and serve it, instead of looking to things invisible and future (2 Corinthians 4:17).… Hence our passage refers to the whole congregation of believers who are born of God, to God’s Church gathered out of Israel and the Gentiles (Romans 8:17).… Immediately connected with the resurrection of the dead is the transfiguration of those who will be then living on the earth; and the living thus changed, freed from the weight of the earthly and corruptible, and transported into the essential liberty of spirit, can now, even as the transfigured Saviour ascended up on high, be caught up into the clouds to meet the returning Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17). The New Testament tells us that instead of the devil, the transfigured Church of Christ shall rule the world; while the Old Testament informs us that instead of the heathen beast, the holy people of Israel shall do so. Both agree in what is of central importance, that it is Christ, the Son of Man, who now rules humanity by His transfigured Church in heaven and by His people Israel on earth.” Calvin observes that in consequence of the intimate union between Christ and His Church, what belongs to the Head is transferred to the body; that the supreme power is constantly promised by the prophets to the Church, especially by Jesus Christ, who often predicts its complete supremacy; and that while the Church reigns by itself, Christ, its only supreme Head, obtains dominion therein.II. The kingdom itself. This appears to be the same as that of which the interpreting angel had already spoken as the kingdom given by the Ancient of Days to the Son of Man—the kingdom of which Christ is the Head and King, and which was to take the place of the kingdoms of this world, or of the four monarchies, which shall have disappeared as the chaff of the summer threshing-floor (chap. 2) The same dominion, rule, and kingdom that is given to Christ is given to the saints as Christ’s members, who are to reign and be glorified with Him, and to sit with Him on His throne; to whom He Himself was to give authority over the nations, to rule them along with Him, and whom He was to appoint a kingdom as His Father had appointed to Himself. The kingdom is given by the Ancient of Days to Christ, and by Christ is given to His Church or Bride, to possess it along with Him, and be associated with Him in its government. The kingdom is heavenly in its origin and character, but has its place not in heaven but on earth, over and among the nations and peoples inhabiting it. While having its earthly visible and material side, like its predecessors, it will be spiritual and holy in its character, consisting not in meats and drinks, but in righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; the kingdom that has been so long prayed for, when God’s will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. From heaven, wherever that may be, the saints will rule the earth with Christ, while the saints on earth shall rule subordinately with them. The “kingdom of the world” shall become “the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,” or His anointed members (Revelation 11:15, R.V.) III. The sense in which the saints shall take the kingdom. This appears to be the same as that in which Christ Himself takes it. The angel indicates no difference; only that Christ receives it directly from the Ancient of Days, which the saints are not said to do, they receiving it mediately from or virtually in Christ, whose members and whose Bride they are, forming with Him one body and one Christ (Revelation 11:15; 1 Corinthians 12:12). Christ the Head receives the kingdom from the Father as His reward for the accomplishment of His mediatorial work given Him by the Father to do as His Righteous Servant (Philippians 2:6-10). His members receive it also as a reward from Christ, whose servants they were, and to whom they were enabled to be faithful even unto death. “If any man will serve me, let him follow me; and where I am there shall also my servant be. If any man serve me, him will my Father honour.” “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” “He that overcometh, and keepeth my words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.” “Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations; and I appoint unto you a kingdom, even as my Father hath appointed me” (John 12:26; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:21; Luke 22:28-29). The saints take the kingdom as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. One with Christ, they share with Him in His glory and reign, as they shared with Him before in His humiliation and suffering. They possess the kingdom, and exercise kingly rule and authority with and under Him, as the priest-kings whom He made such by His grace after redeeming them by His blood (Revelation 1:5-6; Revelation 5:9-10). With the members as with the Head, it is first humiliation and then glory: “Out of prison he cometh to reign” (Ecclesiastes 4:13). They take the kingdom, not as the kings of the world, as a matter of earthly ambition, or through carnal relationship, or by skilful management, intrigue, and violence, or as conquerors with garments rolled in blood. They take it as a gift of grace from their loving Husband and King, whom it was given them by the same grace lovingly to follow and obey even unto death. They take and possess the kingdom, not for the gratification of personal ambition, or selfish desires, or carnal pleasures, from which, as saints, they are for ever separated; but for the glory of Him who created all things for Himself, and of His Son who redeemed them by His blood, as well as for the happiness of a regenerated world and wide-extended universe. For the same high and holy ends will the saints then still in the flesh, and Israel more especially, exercise in a subordinate capacity the rule which the King Himself in His wisdom shall assign to them. [213][213] “Take the kingdom.” Calvin refers the taking of the kingdom by the saints to the time when, after the promulgation of the Gospel, the kingdom of God and of the saints obtained some fame and celebrity in the world. In another place, however, he remarks that the slaying of the fourth beast and the giving the kingdom and authority to the people of the saints does not seem to have taken place yet; whence all Christian interpreters agree in treating this prophecy as relating to the final day of Christ’s Advent He himself thinks the saints began to reign under the whole heaven when Christ ushered in His kingdom by the promulgation of it; and that though Daniel does not here predict occurrences connected with the Advent of Christ as Judge of the World, but with the first preaching of the Gospel, yet he notwithstanding draws a magnificent picture of Christ’s reign, embracing its final completion. The taking of the kingdom was in like manner interpreted by the early Fathers as referring to the general spread of Christianity after the first Advent of Christ. So Dr. Lee and Professor Bush.IV. The suitableness of the appointment. There is something suitable in the thrice-repeated declaration that the saints of the Most High, or truly holy persons, shall take the kingdom. In the preceding empires, and ever since Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord,” began to be “a mighty one on the earth,” the “vilest of men” have often been “exalted” to kingly power, and, as a consequence, the “wicked have walked on every side” (Psalms 12:8). For wise and holy reasons, God, in His mysterious providence, often sets over kingdoms the “basest of men,” when, as a natural result, the land is filled with misery and crime (Daniel 4:17). Selfish and godless rulers have constituted a part of the present state of earthly things. Natural, so long as “the whole world lieth in the evil one” (1 John 5:19, R.V.) Evil rulers a part of the evil entailed by the Fall, and often the chastisement of the sins of the people. What the world wants and longs for, but seldom obtains, is wise, upright, disinterested rulers, ruling in the fear of God and for the best interests of their subjects. Such is the state of things predicted in the text. Something suitable and becoming when holy men, separated from sin and selfishness, bearing the image and character of the God whose name and nature is love, and who is “righteous in all His ways and holy in all His works,” shall take, and, by divine gift, possess the kingdom. Such have learned to rule by being first taught how to obey, and have been trained to reign with Christ hereafter by suffering with Him here. Such fitted to rule by imbibing the spirit and walking in the steps of Him who was meek and lowly in heart, and who pleased not Himself, but went about doing good. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:3; Matthew 5:5). V. Its beneficial results. The happiness of subjects greatly bound up with the character and government of their rulers. “The king by judgment establisheth the land.” “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule, the people mourn” (Proverbs 29:2; Proverbs 29:4). Seen in a measure in the rule of David, as compared with that of many who succeeded him. Limited examples also in our own Alfred, and in her who now sits upon his throne. The best of rulers, however, in the present state of things, able only to produce partial results, both from their own imperfect spiritual condition and that of their ministers and coadjutors in the government, their short continuance in power, the evil state of things already existing, and the hostile influences, visible and invisible, which oppose them. From these impediments the reign of the saints of the Most High in the millennial kingdom of the Son of Man will be greatly exempt, so that their rule will be naturally one of the highest beneficence, and attended with the happiest results to humanity [214]. The state of things in the world, under a government in which a King (Messiah) shall reign in righteousness, and princes (the saints associated with Him) shall rule in judgment, represented by the prophets under such imagery as the following: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth” (Isaiah 11:6-9; Isaiah 65:25; Psalms 72:6; Psalms 72:16). Without any figure, “Then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear Him” (Psalms 67:6-7). The subject suggests— [214] “Not only,” says Auberlen, “does the evil spiritual influence which the prince of this world exerted on humanity in the preceding ages cease, but, in place of it, the transfigured Church of God obtain a most blessed dominion over the world. Christianity will pervade the world and all relations of life in spirit and in truth.… It is upon this present earth that it must be shown and proved that the devil, who pretended to be its rightful lord, was only a usurper; man, who was created to ‘have dominion over the earth,’ is to rejoice over his world with full, unmixed, holy joy. Every legitimate and true ideal will then become a reality.”1. Cause of rejoicing in the prospect presented by the text. It was as a ground of comfort and a matter of rejoicing that it was three times announced to Daniel that the saints should take and possess the kingdom. It was intimated as good tidings not only for the saints themselves, who, instead of being given into the hands of oppressors and persecutors, despised and down-trodden, and often counted as sheep for the slaughter, should have the rule and government of the nations committed to them, but for the world who should reap the benefit of such a state of things. Whether it be the saints that have finished their course of suffering and service on earth, and now are glorified according to the promise, or whether it be the saints still living in the flesh, be it Jews or Gentiles, or both, it is for every lover of his kind to rejoice that a day is coming when truly holy persons, and only such, shall hold the reins of government, and administer a righteous and beneficent rule over the nations, in loyal and loving subordination and obedience to the Prince of Peace. That saints, renewed and sanctified in Christ, transformed into His image, and breathing His spirit of meekness, humility, and love, and at the same time guided by a wisdom that is from above, pure, peaceable, and gentle, full of mercy and of good fruits, instead of the wisdom that is earthly, sensual, and devilish—that such shall be the only rulers that the earth shall know, and that their rule shall be at the same time the rule of the Son of Man, with all power in heaven and earth, is surely a consummation devoutly to be wished, and a prospect greatly to be rejoiced in. 2. The blessed consequence of a faithful adherence to the Saviour. The saints shall take the kingdom. Believers are made kings and priests already. They are princes even now, but in disguise. They travel to their inheritance incognito. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we do know that a crown of glory awaits every faithful follower of Jesus, however poor his condition may be now. If we suffer with Christ, we shall also reign with Him. Suffering with Him now, we shall be also glorified with Him hereafter. When He who is our life shall be manifested, we shall also “with Him be manifested in glory” (Colossians 3:4, R.V.) The humblest follower of Jesus, faithful unto death, shall receive a crown of life, and shall sit down with Christ in His throne, sharing with Him in His kingly glory, and in the government of a renewed world. They shall reign with Christ. “The saints shall judge the world. Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). It matters not how the saints shall reign or exercise the kingly authority that shall be committed to them. What we know not now we shall know hereafter. Enough that the thing is true. If we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him. Let this be our comfort under the burden and heat of the day, and let it animate us to use unfaltering perseverance in a cause of faithful self-denying service, till the Master shall please to call us from the field. 3. The character of the future blessedness of the saints. They shall possess the kingdom. They shall thus have noble work to do, honourable and dignified service to employ them. His servants shall still serve Him, and they shall serve Him in the highest form of service. They shall find abundant scope for the sanctified faculties which they shall possess, and have ample field for the exercise of the Christ-like disposition which shall animate them. Renewed in the image of the universal Ruler, they shall have the employment restored to them which was originally bestowed upon man at his creation, but was lost through the Fall. Their blessedness will not be mere rest, but rest from trouble, sin, and bondage, with a holy and happy employment which shall become their position as sons of God and brethren of the King of kings, and in which they shall with Him still contribute to the glory of the Creator and the happiness of His creatures. They will thus not only be made to resemble their Lord and Husband, but be kept in closest sympathy and fellowship with Him, as sharing in the government that shall be upon His shoulders. What was their chief happiness on earth will thus be perfected in glory. Their kingly and princely office they will also be enabled to discharge without fatigue, and without the grief of being continually opposed and thwarted in their benevolent endeavours by the wily and watchful enmity of him who was the great adversary of God and man, but who shall then be under a divine restraint, so as no more to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:4). 4. The privilege of believers to be employed now in a way that shall be both an anticipation of their future blessedness and their preparation for it. This is that of seeking, according to our gifts and opportunities, to promote the objects aimed at by Christ Himself and the saints that shall reign with Him over the earth—the glory of the Creator and the happiness of men, as experienced in His favour and service. To promote this twofold object is the work given to believers to do now, more especially by communicating the knowledge of the Saviour, and persuading men to be reconciled through Him to God. The Saviour’s parting commission to His Church, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” “Shine as lights in the world, holding forth the Word of life.” “Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” For this blessed though now often trying and self-denying service He has promised and bestowed abundant qualification in the gift of His Holy Spirit: “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you” (Acts 1:7-8). Such employment here, in whatever way and in whatever circumstances, a blessed anticipation of and preparation for our future employment when the saints shall take the kingdom. It was the faithful servant to whom it was said, “Have thou authority over ten cities.” Nor will the painful trials and deep sorrow which we may be called to experience in connection with a faithful endeavour to serve Christ and our fellow-men in the present state, be the least part of our preparation for the higher service that awaits us when all tears shall be wiped away. 5. Our interest to make sure our place now among the saints who shall possess the kingdom. Regard to one’s own interest makes this the first object we should be concerned to secure. The day is hastening when to have neglected this will appear the height of madness. To throw a fortune, a dukedom, a kingdom away, will one day soon appear to be reason and sense compared with the throwing away the opportunity of obtaining a place among those who shall in a few short years possess a kingdom that shall never pass away. That place is to be secured simply by a sincere and cordial acceptance of the Saviour whom God in His love has provided for a lost and guilty world, that Son of Man who came to seek and to save that which is lost. “To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” That Son of Man who shall come one day in His glory and all His saints with Him, comes now in His Gospel to each man and woman who hears it, and offers him freely Himself, and along with Himself a place among His saints who shall hereafter with Himself possess the kingdom. Reader, have you cordially accepted Him? Is He yours? Are you among His redeemed people? If not, accept Him now, and take no rest till by His grace you are enabled joyfully to say, “My Lord and my God!” relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXVIII.— , OR THE SYRIAN LITTLE HORN (Chap. Daniel 8:1-27) This chapter presents to us another vision of Daniel vouchsafed to him in the reign of Belshazzar, but two years later than the preceding one, which is here mentioned as that which appeared to him “at the first,” or at an earlier period. See chap. Daniel 9:21, note ([215] The narrative is given in Hebrew, which is now resumed, and continues to be the language of the book to its conclusion, there being no more reference made to Chaldea, and what remains being intended only for God’s covenant people. This change in the language is a confirmation of the genuineness of the book. [215] At the beginning” (Daniel 8:21). αַּ ?ϊְּ ?ημָּ ?δ (battekhil’lah), “at the first,” as in chap. Daniel 8:1; with the general signification, as Keil observes, of earlier, and synonymous with αָּ ?ψִ ?ΰωׁ ?πָ ?δ (barishonah), in the beginning, in Genesis 13:3; Genesis 41:21; Genesis 43:18; Genesis 43:20; Isaiah 1:26.The vision is represented as given when Daniel was in the province of Elam, another name for Persia, at the palace or royal residence of Shushan [216] or Susa, probably so called from the lilies that abounded in the region. He relates that at the time he was on the banks of the river Ulai [217]; but whether in the body, or, as Calvin and others, with great probability, suppose, in spirit, as Ezekiel was at Jerusalem in spirit while in body he was in Chaldea, appears uncertain. The quiet banks of this Persian stream, now long unknown, might be to Daniel what lonely Patmos was to the beloved disciple, who so much resembled him, having been chosen by him as a place of retirement for prayer and communion with God after his hours of public business in Shushan. “Arise, and get thee into the plain, and there will I talk with thee.” [216] “Shushan the palace.” Shushan or Susa, now called Sϊs or Shoosh by the Arabs, was the chief city of the province of Elam, called Elymais by the Greeks, and, until Darius, is thought to have been part of the Babylonian dominion. Keil, however, says we have no accurate information whether under Belshazzar Elam was or was not added to Babylon or the Chaldean empire. At the time of Darius Susa belonged to the province of Elam, which had been made a satrapy by the kings of Persia, with Susa for its capital. Dr. Rule observes that the “palace” of Susa, as is evident from the ruins, was a different building from the citadel, the δַ ?αִּ ?ιψָ ?δ (habbirah) of the text. This was a strongly fortified building, towering over the city for its terror or its defence; while the “palace,” as is known by inscriptions, was built by Darius Hystaspis or Gushtasp, who only began to reign b.c. 521, perhaps thirty-two years after this vision. He reads: “I was in Shushan, the citadel,” as the city itself is called, either from the citadel proper, or because of its own great strength, the palace being described in Esther 1:5-6, &c., and called “the house (or palace) of the king,” situated in a garden, and sumptuously furnished, as being intended for state or pleasure, but not like a citadel for strength. The ruins of Susa are now only a wilderness, and inhabited by lions and hyenas, on the eastern banks of the Shapur, between it and the Dizful, both flowing into the Kuran, probably the same as the Ulai, or, according to its Aryan or Persian name, the Choaspes. Three great mountains of ruins, from eighty to a hundred feet high, show the compass of the city, while smaller heaps point out its remains. [217] By the river of Ulai. Mentioned on the cylinder of Assurbanipal as the river of Shushan. “Their wives, like bows and arrows, filled the vicinity of Shushan; their corpses I caused the Ulai to receive.” Jerome, as well as the Vulgate and Theodotion, translate the words, “at the gate of Ulai,” remarking that Ulai is the name of a place or of a gate, and stating that at Shushan there is no river, but only the gate of that castle, although some make the word ΰεּ ?αַ ?μ (oobhal) equivalent to ιεּ ?αַ ?μ (yoobhal), a flood. There had been such a river. Calvin observes that the Latin writers mention a river Eul�us, and that he has no hesitation in understanding it to be intended here. Pliny says the river Eulζus divides Susiana from Elymais.This vision, like the preceding one, is related by Daniel in his own name, Daniel being now not a mere narrator of events, but a witness to what had been personally communicated to him. This also, like the other, was interpreted to Daniel, at his own request, by the Angel Gabriel [218], acting under the direction of One with the appearance of a man, probably, as Calvin thinks, the Son of God Himself, who was one day to be also the Son of Man [219]. It is called “the vision of the evening and the morning,” generally considered to be a title given to it on account of the expression in Daniel 8:14, “Unto two thousand and three hundred days,” literally, as in the margin, “evening, morning” [220]. [218] “Gabriel.” For remarks on this angelic messenger see under chap. Daniel 9:21. [219] “That certain saint” (Daniel 8:13), τַּ ?μְ ?ξεֹ ?πִ ?ι (palmoni); according to Keil, “a certain one, I know not who,” as not being more particularly definable. Left untranslated in the Greek. The margin of E.V. has “Palmoni;” but adds, “or the numberer of secrets, or the wonderful numberer.” Pfaff, Junius, and Willet: “a certain one,” like peloni almoni, “such a one” (Rth 4:1); Willet thinking the Hebrew words better joined on account of the ambiguous signification. Polanus understands it to mean “secret,” from τμΰ (pele), “wonderful,” and ςμν (’alam), “to hide.” �colampadius translates the word “an admirable or wonderful one,” from τμΰ (pele), “a wonder,” and ΰμξπι (almoni), “a certain one.” Calvin also renders it “wonderful,” and thinks it certainly points to a person the superior of the angel who speaks, and that it denotes Christ Himself. Brightman has “an excellent one;” while Wintle adopts the marginal rendering. [220] “The vision of the evening and the morning” (Daniel 8:26). ςֶ ?ψֶ ?ααֹּ ?χֶ ?ψ (’erebhboqer), like the νυχθήμερον (a night and day) of the Greeks (2 Corinthians 11:25). According to Keil, who renders the phrase “evening-morning,” we are to understand whole days, consisting of morning and evening (twenty-four hours). So Bertholdt, Hδvernick, &c., in opposition to Bleek, Ewald, Delitzsch, and others, who, understanding the reference to the morning and evening sacrifice of each day, make the number, not 2300 whole days, but 1150. Keil thinks the verbal import of the expression doubtful; but that the choice of so unusual a measure of time, derived from the two chief parts of the day, instead of the simple measure of time by days, probably originates with reference to the morning and evening sacrifice, by which the day was to be consecrated to the Lord, after Genesis 1:5; Genesis 1:8; Genesis 1:13, &c., where the days of the creation week are named and reckoned according to the succession of evening and morning.The vision now given is that of the Ram and the He-goat, representing respectively the Persian and the Grecian empires. It connects itself both with Nebuchadnezzar’s great image and Daniel’s four beasts, the ram being the silver breast and arms of the image and the bear of Daniel’s vision, while the he-goat corresponds with the brazen belly and thighs of the former and the four horned leopards of the latter. The vision thus brings up before us the second and third of the four great monarchies. The special and more immediate object of the vision was to acquaint Daniel, and through him his brethren the Jews, with calamities which should overtake them many years after their return to their own land, and the happy issue out of them at the appointed time. The vision was therefore to be sealed up, marked as true and certain, and carefully preserved for future use [221]. It is remarkable that, as in the former vision with reference to the New Testament Church, these troubles were to arise from a power called a “little horn,” but in this case proceeding not from the fourth beast or Roman Empire, but from the third or Grecian one, it being within its bounds that Judea lay. From the period mentioned for the continuance of this Little Horn and his persecution of the covenant people, two thousand three hundred days, as also from the manner in which it is again introduced (chap. Daniel 11:21, &c.), it has been supposed that it is intended to exhibit a twofold aspect, or to possess a typical character, the first and nearer power being the type of another more remote; as it is not uncommon in the prophecies of Scripture for two persons, things, or events to be predicted together in one and the same prophecy, the two standing related to each other as type and antitype, and seen together as in a kind of mental perspective [222]. By universal consent, the person mere immediately described is one of the kings of Syria, which constituted one of the four kingdoms formed out of Alexander’s Grecian or Macedonian Empire. His name was Antiochus Epiphanes, or the Illustrious, the author of one of the bitterest persecutions that ever the sins of Israel brought upon their race. We have in the vision— [221] “Shut up the vision” (Daniel 8:26). ρְ ?ϊεֹ ?ν (sethom), from ρָ ?ϊַ ?ν (satham), to stop, to conclude, to hide; but not in the sense of keeping secret, or because it would be incomprehensible for the nearest times; but in the sense of keeping, as in archives. According to Keil and Kliefoth, the meaning is simply this: Preserve the revelation, not because it is not yet to be understood, also not for the purpose of keeping it secret, but that it may remain preserved for future times. So Chrysostom: Keep and preserve it faithfully. Cardinal Hugo understands it to mean: Commit it to memory. De Lyra: Commit it to writing. Bullinger: Seal it as a thing most true and certain. Willet: Keep it from the Chaldees and from carnal men. According to Junius, it was to intimate that the vision would be long in receiving its fulfilment. Calvin understood it to mean that men were not to doubt of its fulfilment. Dr. Rule thus paraphrases: “Let nothing curiously tempt thee to break the seal, for that which God closes no creature has power to break open. Be not impatient to promulgate what thou art not able to explain; for neither is it necessary to publish what God has determined that none shall understand till the time to understand shall come. Seal it up, therefore, and let it be kept with care, every letter of it, that no rude handling obliterate the finest stroke.” [222] “It cannot be disputed that here, in prophetic perspective, the time of the end is seen together with the period of the oppression of the people of God by Antiochus, and the first appearance of the Messiah with His return in glory to the final judgment, as the latter is the case also in chap. Daniel 2:34, &c., 44, &c., and Daniel 7:13; Daniel 7:26, &c.… For in the last vision (chaps. 10–12.) which Daniel saw, not only the time of the oppression of Antiochus and that of the last enemy are contemplated together as one, but also the whole contents of this one vision are, chap. Daniel 10:14, transferred to the ‘end of the days.” ’—Keil.I. The rise of this power. It was to exhibit this that the vision of the ram and the he-goat was introduced (Daniel 8:3-9). A ram is seen by the prophet, and is explained by the angel to denote the Medo-Persian Empire [223]; its two horns, of which the higher came up last, representing the Medes and Persians, who together constituted the empire, the former, in the person of Darius the Mede, taking possession immediately on the fall of Babylon, while the latter, who succeeded in the person of Cyrus, was the more powerful. This ram is represented as pushing westward, northward, and southward [224], so that none could stand before him; Cyrus having extended his conquests to Babylon, Syria, and Asia Minor on the west, to Armenia and Scythia in the north, and to Egypt in the south. He is, however, confronted by a he-goat who comes from the west, with a great horn between his eyes, and so swift as to appear not to touch the ground, and is interpreted by Gabriel to denote the king of Grecia [225]. The goat attacks the ram in great fury, breaks his two horns, and utterly crushes them under his feet; verified in history by the victories obtained over the Persians by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, the founder of the Greek Empire [226], and here represented as “a notable horn” [227] of the goat. His conquests over Persia were made with such rapidity as to be included within the space of six years, while his whole course of victory elsewhere was completed in six more, when he was arrested by death in the thirty-third year of his age. This horn being thus broken or snapt asunder [228], “for it,”—or in its stead,—“came up four notable horns towards the four winds of heaven;” interpreted by the angel to mean that on the death of the first king, Alexander the Great, “four kingdoms should stand up out of the nation, but not in his power [229];” fulfilled in the well-known historical fact that, soon after Alexander’s death, his vast empire came to be divided among his four principal generals, who ruled with a power greatly inferior to his own. These, as already indicated under the visions of the great image and the four beasts, were Antigonus, or, after the battle of Ipsus, Cassander, who ruled Macedonia and Greece; Lysimachus, who possessed Thrace and Asia Minor; Ptolemy Lagus, who took Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia Petraea; and Seleucus, who obtained Syria, Babylonia, and the Eastern countries as far as India; thus “towards the four winds of heaven.” It was out of the last of these that there “came forth a Little Horn,” making the most conspicuous figure in the vision; waxing “exceeding great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land” (Daniel 8:9). This was Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes” [230], the son, though not immediate successor, of Antigonus the Great, and the eighth who had reigned as king of Syria. He greatly extended the dominions of his father, almost gaining possession of Egypt, and seizing “the pleasant land,” [231] or Palestine, on whose account it is that he is introduced at all. It is especially from the exact agreement between the prophecy and this person that Porphyry was led to maintain that it was history and not prophecy at all, and that it had been written after the events by some one who wished to palm off his composition as that of Daniel the prophet. For more in regard to him and his rise as the Little Horn, see the prophecy in chap. Daniel 11:21, &c. [223] “A ram which had two horns.” “The kings of Media and Persia” (Daniel 8:3; Daniel 8:20). A ram’s head of gold, says Dr. Cumming, chosen as the diadem of the Persian kings, alone sufficient to identify the symbol. The figure of a ram, the symbol of Persia, Dr. Rule tells us, has been found among the ruins of Persepolis. In the Zend book Bundehesh, the guardian spirit of the Persian kingdom is represented under the figure of a ram. Dr. Rule observes that the Medo-Persian conqueror of Shushan, a Babylonian stronghold, is here foretold; and thinks that it was perhaps as much the assurance produced in his mind in this vision as any second revelation in the night of the banquet, that enabled the prophet to declare the meaning of the writing on the wall. [224] “Pushing westward, and northward, and southward” (Daniel 8:4). Dr. Cumming observes that Lydia and Babylon were subdued by Cyrus, and Egypt by his son Cambyses. Keil remarks that the ram is to be conceived of as standing on the western bank of the river flowing on the west of Susa, from whence he pushed down with his horns all beasts before him, i.e., subdued all nations and kingdoms to his power in three regions of the earth; in the west, Babylon, Syria, and Asia Minor; in the south, Egypt; in the north, the Armenian and Scythian nations. He did not push toward the east; not because, as Hδvernick thinks, the conquests of the Persians did not stretch towards that quarter, for Cyrus and Darius subdued nations to the east of Persia even as far as to the Indus; but because, for the unfolding of the Medo-Persian monarchy as a world-power, its conquests in the east were subordinate, and therefore are not mentioned. [225] “An he-goat came from the west.” “The rough goat is the king of Grecia” (Daniel 8:5; Daniel 8:21). Dr. Taylor remarks that the symbol of a goat often appears in connection with Macedonia, and was used as an emblem of that kingdom, its origin being ascribed to the tradition that Caremus, the first king of Mace-don, was led by a flock of goats to the spot on which he decided for the capital of his kingdom. Keil observes that the goat comes from the west, as Macedonia lay west of Susa or Persia; and its coming over the earth is more definitely denoted by the expression, “he touched not the ground,” i.e., as he hastened over it in his flight,—the remark corresponding with the four wings of the leopard (chap. Daniel 7:6). [226] “The first king.” The author of the first Book of Maccabees says that Alexander “reigned in his stead (viz., that of Darius the Mede), the first over Greece.” The author of this book, which is said to have been written originally in Hebrew, “is thought to have compiled it partly from the memoirs collected by Judas Maccabζus, and partly from those of John Hyrcanus, whose leadership began at the period where this book leaves off.” Archdeacon Harrison remarks, after Mr. Forster (Mohammedanism Unveiled) that a clear reference is made by the author of that book to the prophecy regarding Antiochus Epiphanes. [227] “A notable horn.” χֶ ?ψֶ ?οδָ ?ζεּ ?ϊ (keren khazuth), a “a horn of sight,” i.e., a horn to be looked at and contemplated with admiration. The parallel expression in Daniel 8:8, “the great horn.” Keil remarks that ηָ ?ζεּ ?ϊ (khazuth) has the meaning of ξַ ?ψְ ?ΰֶ ?δ (mareh), in the keri ΰִ ?ιωξַ ?ψְ ?ΰֶ ?δ (ish mareh) of 2 Samuel 23:21, a man of countenance or sight; a horn of sight, consideration, or considerable greatness. Sept., κέραςθεορητό. “He made many wars, and won many strong-holds, and slew the kings of the earth, and went through to the ends of the earth, and took the spoils of many nations, insomuch that the earth was quiet before him; and he ruled over countries, and nations, and kings, who became tributary to him” (1Ma 1:2, &c.) [228] “The great horn was broken.” Dr. Cumming, applying the words to Alexander’s government rather than to himself, observes that the original term denotes “snapt asunder;” not gradually wasted away, nor desolated inch by inch till it disappeared. Alexander’s government was terminated with his life. The expression, however, probably refers to Alexander’s own death, which came upon him suddenly in the midst of his carousings in Babylon, the termination of his empire being the result of that event. “Here as well as at chap. Daniel 11:4 the reference of the words to the sudden death of Alexander in the prime of his days, and when in the very height of his victorious career, cannot be disputed; and by the breaking of the horn we can only understand Alexander’s death, and the breaking-up of the kingdom founded by him.”—Keil. [229] “For it came up four notable ones.” “Four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power” (Daniel 8:8; Daniel 8:22). ηָ ?ζεּ ?ϊ (khazuth), “sight,” the noun used in Daniel 8:5, here employed as an adverb, conspicuously; “there came forth four conspicuously in its place.” According to the interpretation of the angel, however, these four horns, though notable and conspicuous, have not the power of the one great horn. “They represent in themselves a considerable power, without, however, gaining the power of the one undivided kingdom.”—Keil. These four horns or kingdoms are the dynasties of the Diadochs, as they are called. Of these there were indeed five; but after the overthrow of Antigonus at the battle of Ipsus, 301 b.c., twenty-two years after the death of Alexander, for the first time they became in reality four kings, and divided the empire among themselves, as stated in the text All of them, however, says the historian Justin, “abstained from the use of the insignia of their dignity while the sons of their king survived. So great was their veneration, that although they had royal wealth and resources, they cared not for the name of kings, so long as there existed a legitimate heir to Alexander.” [230] “Out of one of them came forth a little horn” (Daniel 8:9). Literally, “Out of one of them came forth one horn out of littleness,” i.e., from small beginnings. So Keil, Maurer, and others. The expression corresponds with ζְ ?ςִ ?ιψָ ?δρִ ?μְ ?χַ ?ϊ (ze’irah silqath), “came up small,” in chap. Daniel 7:8. The horn was to grow to great power from a small beginning. It was to be one horn, not several. The one of the four horns from which the Little Horn grew up has been acknowledged by all interpreters since Josephus to be the Syrian monarchy, and the horn itself to be Antiochus Epiphanes. “There came out of them a wicked root, Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, son of Antiochus the king” (1Ma 1:10). Josephus says, “Our nation suffered these calamities under Antiochus Epiphanes, as Daniel saw and wrote many years before what things should come to pass.” [231] “The pleasant land” (Daniel 8:9) δַ ?φִּ ?αִ ?ιְ (hatstsebhi), the beauty, delight, or ornament, as in chap. Daniel 11:16; Daniel 11:41; Daniel 11:45, where it has “land” or “mountain” connected with it. The name given to the land of Canaan, and perhaps to Jerusalem, its capital, from its pleasantness and beauty, but more especially from its being chosen as the land in which Jehovah was pleased to manifest Himself; hence, in chap. Daniel 11:45, the addition of the epithet “holy.” According to Keil, “splendour, glory;” the glorious land. So Calvin. The same word used as the name of the roe, from its pleasantness and beauty. The expeditions of Antiochus referred to in the text are thus related in the first Book of Maccabees, “Now when the kingdom was established before Antiochus, he thought to reign over Egypt [in the south], that he might have the dominion of two realms. Wherefore he entered into Egypt with a great multitude, with chariots, and elephants, and horsemen, and a great navy; and made war against Ptolemy, king of Egypt, and he took the spoils thereof. And after that Antiochus had smitten Egypt, he returned again, and went up against Israel and Jerusalem with a great multitude” (1Ma 1:16-20).II. His character. The notes given of him by Gabriel are:— 1. Pride. “He magnified himself even to (or against) the prince of the host,” i.e., God Himself or the Messiah, called also the Prince of princes: “He shall magnify himself in his heart, and shall stand up against the Prince of princes” (Daniel 8:14; Daniel 8:25). The author of the second Book of Maccabees says, in like manner, that “he thought he might command the waves of the sea and weigh the high mountains in a balance; so proud was he beyond the condition of men.” The same book relates that when humbled in his last hours by the hand of God so heavily laid upon him, conscious of his past pride, he said, “It is meet to be subject unto God; and a man that is mortal should not proudly think of himself as if he were God.” Pride, and especially pride in relation to God, always a prominent feature in the description of Antichrist. 2. Fierceness. “A king of fierce countenance” (Daniel 8:23). This feature in his character sufficiently verified by his doings as related in the first Book of Maccabees. When he first came against Jerusalem, under the impression that the Jews had revolted, “removing from Egypt in a furious mind, he took the city by force of arms, and commanded his men of war not to spare such as they met, and to slay such as went up upon the houses.” Even with his last sickness upon him, he is said to have been still filled with pride, and to have breathed out fire in his rage against the Jews. This enemy was to be daring and shameless, without fear either of God or man. 3. Knowledge and penetration. “Understanding dark sentences” (Daniel 8:23). The exact meaning and application of this clause uncertain [232]. Bishop Newton thinks it denotes that the Little Horn should be “a politic and artful as well as a formidable power.” The second Book of Maccabees speaks of him as thinking in his pride to “make the land navigable and the sea passable on foot,” as if possessed of extraordinary knowledge or acquaintance with magical powers. He was to be clever, and possessing no ordinary powers of intellect. Even Satan is transformed into an angel of light. [232] “Understanding dark sentences.” Literally, “understanding mysteries;” ηִ ?ιγεֹ ?ϊ (khidhoth); but probably taken in a bad sense; concealing his purpose behind ambiguous words, using dissimulation, forming artifices. So Keil, who thinks the expression is interpreted in Daniel 8:25 by ξִ ?ψְ ?ξָ ?δ (mirmah), craft or deceit. The Sept. and Vulg. have, “understanding problems or propositions.” Luther refers the expression to his craftiness; while Calvin understands it also of his cleverness; not easy to be deceived—skilled in enigmas. So Martin (French): Of a penetrating spirit. Grotius interprets it of his knowledge of tricks, stratagems, and wiles; knowing in what way many of the Jews might be drawn away from their religion. Junius and Geier understand it as denoting his sagacity in investigating and finding out abstruse matters. Adam Clarke thinks the expression to mean—learned and skilful in all things relating to government and its intrigues, and apparently typical of Rome, whose legal learning is proverbial to the present time. R. Saadias understood it of his mastery of the “dark sentences” or enigmas of the principal kings of his time, viz., those of Greece, Rome, and Persia.4. Policy and craft. “Through his policy he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand,” and “by peace he shall destroy many” (Daniel 8:25). Much of his success against the Jews appears as the result of this feature of his character [233]. His general, Apollonius, coming to Jerusalem with an army and pretending peace, forbore from his operations until the Sabbath, when, taking advantage of the Jewish habit of resting on that sacred day, he armed his men, and, rushing on the unprepared Jews, he slew them all (2 Maccabees 5) The enemy to be characterised by great ability to deceive. Paul speaks of “all deceivableness of unrighteousness.” [233] “Through his policy he shall cause craft to prosper” (Daniel 8:25). ωֵׂ ?λֶ ?μ (sechel), sagacity; generally used in a good sense; here apparently in a bad one,—cunning. Through his cleverness his deceit should be successful. Great intelligence and cleverness to characterise both type and antitype. “All deceivableness of unrighteousness.” Satan transformed into an angel of light.III. His doings. “It waxed great even to (or against) the host of heaven;” probably the Jewish people or Church of God; [234] and it “cast down some of the host of the stars (individuals among them) to the ground, and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified himself even to (or against) the prince of the host (probably the promised Messiah or God Himself); and by Him the daily sacrifice”—the ordinary stated worship of Jehovah at Jerusalem, accompanied with and expressed by the offering of a lamb every morning and evening—“and the place of His sanctuary was cast down. And an host [235] (or a time) was given him against (or over) the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth”—the Jewish worship and religion—“to the ground, and it practised and prospered” (Daniel 8:9-12). In the interpretation of the vision it is said, “He shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people,”—the Jews, called to be to God “a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6; Exodus 19:24). The first Book of Maccabees reveals the exact fulfilment of this part of the prophecy, [236] as well as the fact, also predicted, that these outrages did not take place till the apostasy of a large number of the Jews had ripened them for the judgment: “The transgressors had come to the full” [237]. “The Lord was angry for a while for the sins of them that dwelt in the city; therefore His eye was not upon the place.” The result of Antiochus waxing great toward “the pleasant land” was that forty thousand of the Jews were slain and an equal number sold into captivity. [234] “The host of heaven.” Here, as in Jeremiah 33:22, the whole body of the stars of heaven, interpreted by the angel in Daniel 8:24 to denote the people of the saints, or the covenannt people of God, the stars who were cast to the ground being therefore individuals among the people, and not necessarily the priests or leaders. “He (the general) fell suddenly upon the city, and smote it very sore, and destroyed many people of Israel” (1Ma 1:30). [235] “An host was given him against the daily sacrifice” (Daniel 8:12). φָ ?αָ ?ΰ (tsabha), “a host.” According to Keil, it denotes only military service, or perhaps military forces; and the proper rendering of the passage is, “An host shall be given up, together with the daily sacrifice, because of transgression,” viz., the apostasy of Israel from God. So, in general, C. B. Michaelis, Hδvernick, V. Lengerke, Maurer, and Kliefoth. So also Willet, Bullinger, Junius, and Polanus; the latter, however, reading “against the daily sacrifice;” and understanding by the transgression especially the treachery of the priests’ Jason and Menelaus, through which the city and Temple were betrayed (2 Maccabees , 4.) Calvin understands the word φָ ?αָ ?ΰ (tsabha) in the sense of “an appointed time,” as in Job 7:1; and considers the meaning to be, that Antiochus could do nothing unless divinely permitted and previously limited; that God would try the patience of His Church for a certain definite time, but that Antiochus should not be able to abolish the worship of God.—ϊָּ ?ξִ ?ιγ (tamidh), “daily sacrifice;” literally, “the continual;” comprehends all that is of permanent use in the service or worship of God. So Keil, Hengstenberg, Hδvernick, &c. [236] “It cast down the truth to the ground” (Daniel 8:12). ΰֱ ?ξֶ ?ϊ (emeth), “truth,” “the truth;” here objective truth; the Word of God, so far as it is embodied in external worship; the Jewish religion and worship as appointed by God Himself. The first Book of Maccabees (1Ma 1:43, &c.) informs us how far this was “cast down “by Antiochus. “He entered proudly into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altar, and the candlestick of light, and all the vessels thereof, and the table of the shewbread, and the pouring vessels, and the bowls, and the censers of gold, and the veil, the crowns, and the golden ornaments that were before the Temple; all which he pulled off. He took also the silver and the gold and the precious vessels.… Moreover, King Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and every one should receive his laws: so all the heathen agreed according to the commandment of the king. Yea, many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols and profaned the Sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and to the cities of Judah that they should follow the strange laws of the king, and forbid burnt-offerings and sacrifices and drink-offerings in the Temple, and that they should profane the Sabbath-days and festival days, and pollute the sanctuary and holy people.” The punishment of non-compliance was death, which was rigorously inflicted. [237] “When the transgressors are come to the full” (Daniel 8:23). λְּ ?δָ ?ϊֵ ?ν (kehathem), literally, “at the making full,” or “when they have made full,” i.e., their transgression, or the measure of their sins, understood from the conception of the subject. The transgressors, δַ ?τּ ?ωְׁ ?ςִ ?ιν (happoshe’im), are the rebellious among the Jews, who apostatised and cast off the religion of Jehovah for the manners of the Greeks, as in Daniel 8:12; perhaps with special reference to the leaders in the apostasy. The author of the first Book of Maccabees thus relates: “When on the death of Seleucus, king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes came to the kingdom, Jason, the brother of Onias the high priest, laboured underhand to obtain that dignity, promising the king a large sum of money as a bribe, and at the same time another large sum if he might have licence to set him up a place for exercise, and for the training up of youth in the fashions of the heathen; which, when the king had granted, and he had gotten into his hand the rich, he forthwith brought his own nation to the Greek fashion, and putting down the governments which were according to law, he brought up new customs against the law. For he gladly built a place of exercise under the tower itself, and brought the chief young men under his subjection.… Now such was the height of Greek fashions and increase of heathenish manners, through the exceeding profanity of Jason, that ungodly wretch and no high priest, that the priests had no courage to serve any more at the altar; but, despising the Temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, … not setting by the honour of their fathers, but liking the glory of the Grecians best of all. By reason whereof sore calamities came upon them; for they had them to be their enemies and avengers whose customs they followed so eagerly, and to whom they desired to be like in all things. For it is no light thing to do wickedly against the law of God.”IV. His continuance. “He practised and prospered” (Daniel 8:12). It is not said how long; but in Daniel 8:13-14, it is related by the prophet, “Then I heard one saint (or holy one, namely, an angel) speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint (marg., “the numberer of secrets” or “the wonderful numberer,” probably the Son of God, whose name is Wonderful, Isaiah 9:6; Judges 13:18), which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice and the transgression of desolation (marg., “making desolate”), to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And He said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days (marg., “evening-morning,” or evening and morning), and then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” The sanctuary was defiled by Antiochus, and the daily sacrifice made to cease in the year 168 B.C. In that year, two years after his first coming up from Egypt against Jerusalem, he sent his chief collector to put an end to the temple-worship, and thus to lay waste the sanctuary till it was made “like a wilderness” (1Ma 1:39). It was not till about four years afterwards that he died. The sanctuary, however, had been cleansed in the preceding year by Mattathias and his sons the Maccabees, after it had been defiled between three and four years. The time mentioned in the text—“two thousand and three hundred days”—might, it has been thought, indicate the period from the first attack of Antiochus on Jerusalem, when he “entered proudly the sanctuary and took away the golden altar,” &c., till the cleansing of it between five and six years afterwards [238]. Viewed typically and reckoned on the large year-day prophetic scale, a day being counted a year, according to Numbers 14:34, Ezekiel 4:5-6, the cleansing would apparently take place, A.D. 2132. [238] “Unto two thousand and three hundred days (marg., evening morning): then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Calvin says these days fill up six years and three and a half months, while the Jews suffered under Antiochus about six years. Keil also understands the period here mentioned as two thousand three hundred days, but views it rather as symbolical, the oppression of Antiochus having continued not fully seven years. Wintle thinks the expression “evening morning” should induce us to understand those days in the first instance literally, rather than of months and years; and would thus refer them to the tyranny of Antiochus, without forgetting the reference to Antichrist, of whom Antiochus was the type. Dr. Rule, however, remarks: “The king of fierce countenance (Daniel 8:23) was to arise in the latter part of the kingdom of the successors of Alexander, which kingdom began about three hundred and seven years before Christ. The defilement of the Temple, b.c. 168, took place only one hundred and two years before the extinction of the Syrian kingdom, b.c. 66, and therefore ‘in the latter time of their kingdom,’ that is to say, the kingdom of the four kings; and must be taken to make the commencement of the two thousand three hundred years, which, on that calculation, will terminate in the year of our Lord 2132. About that year, therefore, if we correctly understand the prophecy, some state of things is likely to arise that shall answer to the cleansing of the sanctuary, the restoration of the daily sacrifice, the ending of the transgression of desolation, and the fulfilment of Daniel’s vision.”V. His end (Daniel 8:25). “He shall be broken without hand.” Neither in battle, nor by the hand of the assassin, nor any other human instrumentality, but by the secret operation and mighty power of God, was this oppressor of His people and His cause to meet with his end. Prophecy was fulfilled in his death as truly as in his life. History relates that having gone to Elymais, in Persia, in quest of gold to pay the Roman tribute, he left the place in great heaviness to return to Babylon. “There came to him,” however, says the author of 1st Maccabees, “one who brought him tidings into Persia that his armies, which went against the land of Judea, were put to flight,” and that the people “had pulled down the abomination which he had set up upon the altar in Jerusalem.” When the king heard this “he was astonished and sore moved; whereupon he laid him down upon his bed and fell sick for grief, because it had not befallen him as he had looked for; and there he continued many days, his grief always increasing, and he made account that he should die.” Then calling his friends together, he is said to have addressed them in the following terms: “I now remember the evils that I did at Jerusalem, and that I took all the vessels of gold and silver that were therein, and sent to destroy the inhabitants of Judea without a cause. I perceive, therefore, that for this cause these troubles are come upon me, and behold, I perish through great grief in a strange land” (1Ma 6:4-16). The second Book of Maccabees further relates that, fleeing from Persepolis, where he had attempted to rob the temple, and coming to Ecbatana, he received the tidings of the defeat of his generals, Nicanor and Timotheus, in Judea, and that upon this he resolved to hasten his return to Jerusalem, threatening to make it a common burying place of the Jews; but that as soon as he uttered the words, “he was smitten with an incurable and invisible plague, being seized with severe pains in his bowels,” aggravated by a sore fall from his chariot while driving violently in haste for revenge; while, “along with his extreme pain, the worms rose up out of his body, his flesh fell away, and the noisomeness of the smell that issued from him was such that no one could endure to carry him, and that he himself was unable to bear it.” From the whole chapter we may notice— 1. The reality of fulfilled prophecy. The proof of the predictions contained in this chapter being true prophecy and not history, as well as of their actual fulfilment, such as to be sufficient to convince any but those who will not believe either in prophecy or miracle on any evidence whatever. The fulfilment of the prophecy in this section so exact that writers of the Rationalistic school have employed all their ingenuity to disprove the genuineness of the book and to make it to be a forgery of later times. Our comfort to know that as God possesses the knowledge of future events, so He has given to His people a proof of His concern for their welfare by communicating to them through His servants, centuries beforehand, events that shall surely come to pass. 2. The interest taken by angelic beings in the affairs of the Church and the world. This interest exhibited here by two celestial personages, one of whom at least is a created angel. Their interest in the vision and its interpretation an example worthy of our imitation, for whose benefit both were given. If an angel inquired with concern of Him who is the revealer of secrets, “How long shall be the vision?” well may those do so who have a personal interest in the events foretold. 3. The duty of inquiring into the meaning of the word of prophecy. This taught by the example of the prophet himself. Daniel, not satisfied with receiving the vision, earnestly sought its meaning. If the prophets themselves “inquired diligently what, and what manner of time, the Spirit that was in them did signify, when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” how much more ought we to do so for whom they ministered? (1 Peter 1:10-12). 4. Jesus the Author both of the prophecies and their interpretation. Little doubt but that here and in chap. 9. He is the person who is introduced as communicating with Daniel through a created angel. So the New Testament prophecies are called “the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto Him,” and which “He sent and signified by His angel unto His servant John” (Revelation 1:1). So in chap. Revelation 22:16 : “I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches.” “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” A sufficient reason surely for studying the prophetic Word, as well as a sweet encouragement to look for divine help in understanding its meaning. The prophetic office of Jesus never to be forgotten. 5. The instrumentality of others employed by the Head of the Church in communicating knowledge. The interpretation of the vision not given to Daniel directly, but through the medium of an angel. “Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.” So Philip was sent to expound to the eunuch the prophecy he was reading: “How can I understand except some man should guide me?” (Acts 8:30-31). 6. The tendency of the heart to backslide from God. Within four centuries after the return of the Jews from Babylon, they are found to have departed so far from God, and to have adopted so much the ways of the heathen, that fresh and still greater calamities were made to overtake them, almost to their entire extinction as a people. Only too much ground for the warning, “Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” 7. The danger to true religion from the influence of the world around us, and the necessity of guarding against it. The danger to Israel after their return to their own land was that they were surrounded by the heathen and brought into close contact with them. “They were mixed with the heathen and learned their ways.” The danger from conformity to the world, the rock against which the Church of God needs constantly to be warned. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” Hence the exhortation, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:17). 8. God’s patience and long-suffering. Not till “the transgressors had come to the full” did He employ the scourge of the Syrian oppression for their correction. Sentence against an evil work not speedily executed. The long-suffering of God to be accounted salvation. God not willing that any should perish. His goodness intended to lead to repentance. Only when that fails goodness is exchanged for severity. 9. The mercy of divine chastisement. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth.” Better for Israel to have Antiochus let loose upon them than to continue to learn and practise the ways of the heathen and sink into apostasy. Better smart for sin in time than suffer for it in eternity. The case of Israel and Antiochus is given as an example of the use of persecution to discipline the Church of God and His ministers, and to prepare the way for the Saviour. 10. The wretched depravity of the human heart. In Antiochus Epiphanes, as in millions more, we have an example of the madness that is in men’s hearts while they live without God and are strangers to His grace. The tendency of the heart to increase in depravity as its desires are indulged. No height of pride or depth of wickedness to which a man may not arrive when left to himself and the enemy of souls. One prayed to be kept from that most hideous of sights, a human heart. Better the saying of the heathen philosopher, “Know thyself.” 11. Oppressors and persecutors still in God’s hand. To Antiochus, as to others, He says, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” The tyrant and oppressor employed as His scourge as long as He sees necessary, and then arrested in his madness, either in mercy or in judgment. Saul, breathing out slaughter against God’s saints, is awakened and saved; Antiochus perseveres in his cruelty till he is “broken without hand.” 12. Timely help and deliverance provided for God’s persecuted people. While Antiochus is prepared as a scourge for backsliding Israel, Mattathias and his sons are raised up as means for their deliverance. So with the Jews and Sennacherib. “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,” &c. Herod Agrippa stretches out his hand to vex certain of the Church, and he is smitten with an unseen hand and eaten up of worms. Queen Mary dies while Bernard Gilpin is on his way to a martyr’s death. Persecutors seldom allowed to be long livers, and when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him. Where Satan raises up a Pharaoh, God in His time prepares a Moses. 13. Religious privileges and ordinances not sufficient to keep the Church from backsliding from God, nor to save it from punishment when it does so. The abuse of such privileges among a nation’s greatest sins, and the cause of its sorest chastisements. The sin which brought Antiochus against the Jews and Mahomet against the Christians. The ark of God no safety to unfaithful Israel from the hand of the Philistines. “Take away her battlements, for they are not the Lord’s.” England’s greatest danger from despised mercies and abused privileges. Britain’s highest privilege the abundance of her Bibles and the freeness of her Gospel. The present a time, however, for all the lovers of their country to cry mightily to God to save her from the sin of a refused Bible and a rejected Saviour. . XXIX.—THE MOSLEM (Chap. Daniel 8:9-25) Although the vision of the Syrian or Grecian Little Horn had plainly its fulfilment in Antiochus Epiphanes, yet there have appeared reasons for believing that it looked beyond that monarch to another power, of which it might be regarded as the type [239]. This has seemed especially probable from the time during which the sanctuary was to remain uncleansed and the daily sacrifice to be abolished. The pollution of the Temple by Antiochus, strictly speaking, continued only some three years or three years and a half; which latter term would be not 2300, but 1260 days. The probability is that the term “days,” or, as it is here peculiarly expressed, “evening mornings,” as often elsewhere in prophecy, is to be understood of years; as it obviously is in chap. 12., and as the “weeks” in the next chapter are well known to be weeks not of days but of years. Another reason for regarding this Little Horn as typical of another power afterwards to arise is the fact that the Scripture elsewhere applies the same language to a power that was only to appear in connection with the fourth beast or Roman Empire, and that is usually spoken of as the Antichrist; while the evils predicted as wrought by Antiochus against the Jews were much less than those inflicted both upon Jews and Christians (the people of the new covenant) by another power in many respects resembling him. There appears reason, therefore, to regard the “Little Horn “of the third beast or Grecian Empire as typical of that other “Little Horn “of the fourth beast or Roman Empire predicted in chap. 7. It is thus that Antiochus was regarded by the early Christians as a type of Antichrist. [239] Bishop Newton observes that most of the ancient fathers and modern divines and commentators agree with Jerome in applying the prophecy to Antiochus Epiphanes, while all allow at the same time that Antiochus was a type of Antichrist, and that in this great enemy of the truth the prophecy was to obtain its full accomplishment. The Bishop, who regards the Roman Empire as the antitype, observes: “Antiochus did indeed take away the daily sacrifice, but he did not cast down the place of the sanctuary—he did not destroy the Temple. He took away the sacrifice for a few years, but the Romans for many ages; and the Romans likewise utterly destroyed the Temple, which Antiochus only spoiled and profaned.” He adds, that “Antiochus did not so mightily destroy the Jews nor prosper in his heathenish designs against them. Antiochus slew forty thousand and sold forty thousand more; the Romans, after the city was taken, slew eleven hundred thousand and sold ninety-seven thousand more. Antiochus meant to root out the whole people, but his success was not equal; the Romans put an end to the government of the Jews and entirely took away their place and nation.” Calvin remarks: “It would please me better to see any one wishing to adapt this prophecy to the present use of the Church, and to apply to Antichrist, by analogy, what is said of Antiochus. We know that whatever happened to the Church of old belongs also to us, because we have fallen upon the fulness of times.” Jerome had said: “Most Christians refer this place to Antichrist, and affirm that what was transacted in a type under Antiochus Epiphanes will be fulfilled in truth under Antichrist.” Luther says: “All former teachers have called and interpreted this Antiochus a figure of the final Antichrist, and they have hit the right mark.” Wieseler remarks that “Antiochus Epiphanes, in his self-deifying fanatical haughtiness and his enmity against God and divine worship, is very properly the type of Antichrist.” Keil says: “The circumstance that the description of the Little Horn growing up between the ten horns of the fourth beast, the speaking great and blasphemous things against the Most High, and thinking to change times and laws (chap. Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:24, &c.), harmonises in certain features with the representation of Antiochus Epiphanes, described by the Little Horn (chap, 8.), which would destroy the people of the Holy One, rise up against the Prince of princes, and be broken without hand of man, does not at all warrant the identification of these enemies of God and His people rising out of different world-kingdoms, but corresponds perfectly with this idea that Antiochus in his war against the people of God was a type of Antichrist, the great enemy arising out of the last world-kingdom.”It has, however, been believed by some, on apparently satisfactory grounds, that besides the Antichrist of the fourth beast or Roman Empire, Antiochus might typify another power that was to prove as hurtful to the Christian Church as that tyrant was to the Jewish one, and which was to arise within the bounds of the same third empire to which Antiochus himself belonged. That power was the Mohammedan or Turkish, which, with Mahomet for its head and representative, might be called the Antichrist of the East, as the Papacy, with the Roman Pontiff as its head, was of the West; and which, like the latter, appears to occupy a considerable place in the Apocalypse of the New Testament. See Revelation 9:1-19; Revelation 16:12. The pollution of the sanctuary and the “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place,” which were to characterise the future Antichrist, as it had done Antiochus, has marked the conduct no less of the Moslems than of the Romans. The latter polluted the Temple by planting an idolatrous standard, the Roman eagle, within its walls after the siege [240], while a new city, called Ζlia Capitolina, was erected on the ruins of Jerusalem, which no Jew was allowed to approach. The doings of the Moslems have been no less marked in respect to the Temple, the Holy City, and the Jewish people, while they have been especially directed against the people of the new covenant, the Christian Church in its Eastern branch, with its sanctuaries and worship [241]; and it is not a little remarkable that, as D’Aubignι observes. “At the beginning of the seventh century, while the sturdy shoulders of the children of the idolatrous North were placing on the supreme throne of Christendom a pastor on the banks of the Tiber, these events were accomplishing in the West precisely at the period when the power of Mahomet arose in the East.” It may be interesting to trace the typical analogy in the various particulars enumerated in the preceding chapter. [240] Josephus relates that after the city was taken the Romans brought their ensigns into the Temple and placed them over against the eastern gate, and sacrificed to them there. Bishop Newton remarks that the Roman army itself is fitly called “the abomination,” and “the abomination of desolation,” as it was to desolate and lay waste Jerusalem; and is said to stand in the holy place when compassing the city; Jerusalem itself and a space around it being accounted holy. [241] Dr. Cox remarks that in this chapter, according to Faber, whose interpretation appears to be, on good grounds, now universally [rather, extensively] adopted, the prophet records the history of the Mohammedan imposture. He adds that “the first efforts of the impostor were directed against the Jews, who refused to receive Mohammed’s effusions as the revelations of Heaven, and in consequence suffered the loss of their possessions and lives.” So that under the modern Antichrist the Jews suffered as well as the Christians. Gibbon says: “Mohammed, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his religion, involved the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most memorable revolutions which have impressed a new and lasting character on the nations of the globe.” E. Irving observes that the third of the four chief streams of prophecy presented in the Book of Daniel (viz., that in this 8th chapter), “connected itself with the former, at the struggle of the third kingdom with the second, in order that it may trace, within the territory of the third, the rise of another blasphemous power [the Mohammedan], which was also to prevail against the saints of God till the time of the end.” Dr. Keith says: “The ‘king of fierce countenance’ is Mohammed, who offered only submission or the sword, and ‘understanding dark sentences’ (wherewith the Koran pre eminently abounds); who stood up and became mighty, not by his own power, Mohammed possessing no hereditary dominion and rising from nothing. The ‘holy ones’ are the Christians, whose churches, ‘the host and the stars,’ he cast to the ground; prospering by ‘policy and craft’ through a faith accommodated to the passions of men; ‘magnifying himself in his heart,’ saying, ‘There is no God but one, and Mohammed is His prophet;’ ‘magnifying himself against the Prince of the host’ by calling himself a greater prophet than Christ; and destroying the land he subjugated more ‘by peace’ than others have done by war.”I. The rise of their power. The Saracen power, like Mahomet himself, arose in Arabia, while that of the Turks had its origin in Parthia, near the Oxus, both being within the territory of the he-goat or Grecian Empire, and indeed that part of it from which the Little Horn was to spring, and of which Antiochus was the ruler. Like the founder of the religion which bears his name, the Turkish Empire was “little” in its beginning, commencing with Togrul Beg, a Turcoman shepherd, the petty chief of a petty clan. Togrul, by marrying the Caliph’s daughter, from being, as Dr. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/phc/ relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXX.—DANIEL’S PRAYER (Chap. Daniel 9:1-14) We come to what, in more than one respect, is among the most remarkable portions of Scripture. The chapter before us contains one of the most precious predictions concerning the promised Saviour and the work of redemption which He was to accomplish. It has two peculiarities which place it in advance of every other: the one, that it gives the name or title by which He was to be known throughout the dispensation He was to introduce, and which was at the same time to designate that dispensation, viz., Messiah or the Christ; the other, that the time of His advent is distinctly and unmistakably marked out. This remarkable communication was given to the prophet in answer to prayer. That prayer, itself remarkable, is also recorded in this chapter,—the second circumstance that distinguishes it as a portion of Holy Scripture [247]. The prayer is peculiar, not only from its own intrinsic character, but as being the prayer of a prophet, a patriot, a statesman, holding the highest office in the second great universal empire, and an eminent saint of above fourscore, who had walked with God in Babylon for threescore years and ten. It is to this remarkable prayer we now turn our attention. We notice— [247] This prayer, observes Keil, has been judged very severely by modern critics. According to Bertholdt, V. Langerke, Hitzig, Stδhelin, and Ewald, its matter and its whole design are constructed according to older patterns; in part, according to the prayers of Nehemiah (chap. 9) and Ezra (chap. 9) But we have only to examine the parallel thoughts and words adduced in order at once to perceive that, without exception, they all have their roots in the Pentateuch, and afford not the slightest proof of the dependence of this chapter on Nehemiah 9. The whole tone and language of the prayer also is such that it seems impossible to conceive of it as a forgery under the name of Daniel.I. The time of the prayer. “In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus [248], of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans” (Daniel 9:1). This was that “Darius the Mede” who, on the death of Belshazzar and the fall of Babylon, “took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old” (chap. Daniel 5:31). As Darius reigned only two years, and as Cyrus his successor granted the Jews their liberty to return to their own land in the first year of his reign, after a captivity of seventy years, at the commencement of which Daniel was a youth of about fourteen or sixteen years of age, he must now have been something above eighty years old. Daniel, as we have seen, had been a man of prayer from his youth. Neither his engagements as a statesman and prime minister, nor the seductions of a luxurious court, had been able to turn him aside from his beloved practice. The path to the mercy-seat had become to Daniel a well-beaten one. The throne of grace was now well known to him for a refuge. He had long experienced the truth of the divine title, “Thou that hearest prayer” (Psalms 65:2). He spends his last days in the happy familiar exercise. As in the case of President Lincoln, prayer had become a confirmed habit. His constant resource amidst the difficulty and trials of life, it is his solace as he approaches the solemnities of death. As the burden of state business and the splendours of a palace, so the infirmities of old age failed to lessen his relish for the hallowed employment. [248] “Son of Ahasuerus.” This Ahasuerus was a brother of Cyrus’s grandfather, Darius being Cyrus’s uncle. Ahasuerus was a common name among the kings of Persia, its Greek form being Artaxerxes. See note at chap. Daniel 5:31. The Ahasuerus, however, who is here mentioned, is called by heathen writers Astyages, Oriental monarchs usually having several names. The first year of the reign of Darius the Mede over Babylon was probably 538 b.c. Mr. Bosanquet indeed contends that this Darius was Darius Hystaspis, and that this vision was given in the sixty-second year of his age, 592 b.c. He also thinks of this Ahasuerus as Cyaxares, of the seed of the Medes, whose son or grandson he may have been by birth, adoption, inheritance, ancestral descent in male or female line, son-in-law, or simply successor to the throne of this Median king. He thinks that it was in the second year of that Darius that the indignation against Jerusalem ceased, and the seventy weeks of mercy began (Zechariah 1:12), and that it was therefore at that period when the present prophecy was delivered. See note (4).II. The occasion of it. This was the reading and study of the Scriptures which he possessed, and more especially the prophecies of Jeremiah. “I, Daniel, understood by books [249] the number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet that He would accomplish seventy years [250] in the desolations of Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:2). From this prophet Daniel knew that the time for the termination of the captivity could not be far distant, from whatever period its commencement was to be dated. His concern was that no sin or unbelief on the part of his people might cause the promised term to be prolonged, as in the case of their fathers in the desert. Knowing well their past provocations, he sets himself to supplicate pardon and grace on their behalf, according to the divine direction given in the same prophet (Jeremiah 29:10-12). Not even a direct promise intended to supersede the duty of humiliation and prayer, but rather to stimulate to the performance of it. God free even in the fulfilment of His promises. “Ye shall know my breach of promise” (Numbers 14:33). “Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you” (Jeremiah 5:25). The fulfilment of a promise to be secured by prayer and prepared for by humiliation. So the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 1:4-5; Acts 1:14; Acts 2:1). [249] “By books.” αַּ ?ρְּ ?τָ ?ψִ ?ιν (bassepharim), “in the books,” the sacred books which he possessed, especially those of the prophets, and more particularly the writings of Jeremiah. Neither the prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, nor the histories of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and the two Books of Chronicles, were yet written. Hengstenberg observes that nothing more can be gathered from this passage than that Daniel was in possession of certain sacred writings, embracing the Pentateuch, Isaiah, Obadiah, Micah, a collection of Psalms, and the Book of Job. Equally numerous were the writings which Zechariah had before him. Hence the text affords no argument that the Book of Daniel was first composed at a time when the rest of the canon was already made up and regarded as a complete whole. Keil, with Maurer and Hitzig, renders the words, “I marked or gave heed in the Scriptures;” and adds: “δַ ?ρְּ ?τָ ?ψִ ?ιν (hassepharim), τὰβιβλία, is not synonymous with δַ ?λְּ ?ϊεּ ?αִ ?ιν (hakkethubhim), αἱγραφαὶ; but denotes only writings in the plural, without saying that these writings formed already a recognised collection; so that from this expression nothing can be concluded regarding the formation of the Old Testament canon.” Dr. Pusey remarks that the date at which the Jews in the time of Josephus believed the canon of the Scriptures to have been closed was about four centuries before the birth of our Lord. Josephus probably fixed on the reign of Artaxerxes as being the period of Nehemiah’s great work of restoration, although the actual closing of the canon probably took place during the second visit to his country, the probable date of the prophet Malachi, under the son and successor of Artaxerxes or Darius Nothus. Dr. Pusey, however, remarks that what is said here about the books, i.e., the biblia, the Scriptures, exactly expresses what we see from the writings of the prophets before the Captivity to have been the fact, that the books of the prophets were collected together. He adds: “The canon was almost completed before the return from the Captivity. Of the former prophets or historical books, the Kings at most had yet to be formally added to it. Of the latter prophets, there remained perhaps the formal reception of Ezekiel; the three last prophets only had not been sent. Of the Hagiographa, there remained the collection of some later psalms,—some in the last Book of the Psalms were not yet written. Daniel was perhaps then formally added: the historical books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, the Chronicles, were as yet unwritten.” Professor R. Smith thinks we have here the prophetic literature referred to under the name of “the books,” which he understands as equivalent to Scriptures. He remarks that the first unambiguous evidence as to the close of the canon is contained in the list of Josephus, composed towards the close of the first century; and that we can affirm, with practical certainty, that the twenty-two books of Josephus are those of our present Hebrew canon. He thinks, however, that the force of this evidence is disguised by the controversial purpose of the writer, which leads him to put his facts in a false light, viewing the close of the canon as distinctly marked by the cessation of the succession of prophets in the time of Artaxerxes, while there was clearly no regular and unbroken series of sacred annals officially kept up from the time of Moses onwards. He regards the view of Josephus as a theory, and one inconsistent with the fact that we find no complete formal catalogue of Scriptures in earlier writers like the Son of Sirach, who, enumerating the literary worthies of his nation, had every motive to give a complete list, if he had been in a position to do so; inconsistent also with the fact that questions as to the canonicity of certain books were still undecided within the lifetime of Josephus himself; referring to those of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon, about whose character, as inspired Scripture, the Mishna records some Rabbinical disputes. Mr. Smith thinks that the clearest evidence that the notion of canonicity was not fully established till long after the time of Artaxerxes is in the Septuagint, as containing some apocryphal additions; from which he concludes, that the canon of the Old Testament was of gradual formation; that some books, now accepted, had long a doubtful position, while others were for a time admitted to a measure of reputation, which made the line of demarcation between them and the canonical books uncertain and fluctuating; the canon of the Old Testament passing through much the same kind of history through which we know the New Testament canon to have passed; the position of several books being, as a matter of fact, still subject of controversy as Antilegomena in the apostolic age, and not finally determined till after the fall of the Temple and the Jewish state; the Hagiographa not forming before that date a closed collection with an undisputed list of contents, so that the general testimony of Christ and His apostles to the Old Testament Scripture cannot, in his opinion, be used as certainly including those books. [250] “Seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:2). There have been two reckonings of these seventy years: one, which is generally accepted, from the captivity in the third year of Jehoiakim, ending with the first year of Cyrus; the other, from the captivity of Zedekiah, ending nineteen years later, in the second year of Darius Hystaspis (Zechariah 1:12). The later adopted by Theodoret, Pellican, and �colampadius. The Duke of Manchester thinks there were two periods of seventy years: the one, that of the servitude in Babylon; the other, that of the desolation of Jerusalem, terminating in the first year of Darius Nothus. Dr. Pusey observes that the time of seventy years, counting from the year when captives were first taken to Babylon, the first of a long series of such removals, viz., in the third year of Jehoiakim, was fulfilled to the exact year. According to the canon of Ptolemy, Nebuchadnezzar reigned forty-three years; Evil-Merodach, two; Neriglissar, four; Nabunahit, who for a time associated his son Belshazzar in the government, seventeen; to which should probably be added a year or eighteen months preceding that part of the fourth of Jehoiakim with which Nebuchadnezzar’s accession to his father’s throne coincides, and the two years during which Darius the Mede was viceroy in Babylon after Belshazzar’s death. Prideaux thinks that it was not only exactly after seventy years that the release from the Captivity took place, but that it was in the very month, viz., November, in which, seventy years before, it had commenced; the Jews who returned being found for the first time in Jerusalem in the month Nisan (our April), after a four months’ march and one month’s preparation for it.III. The preparation for it. “I set my face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplication [251], with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes” [252] (Daniel 9:3). Daniel’s prayer was to be no ordinary one, and to be engaged in in no ordinary manner. The prayer was to be for an object of the highest importance, not so much to himself personally, as to his people, the cause of religion, and the glory of God. It was to be for the promised removal of evils long threatened and justly executed on account of the aggravated and long-continued sins of his people, and which impenitence and unbelief on their part might still retard. The prayer needed therefore to be not only made with deepest earnestness and fervour, but to be accompanied with heartfelt humiliation and confession of sin, in the name of his guilty countrymen as well as his own. All the powers of his soul must therefore be aroused to intense exercise, while he must be brought under a deep sense of the sins which he has to confess as the cause of his people’s severe and protracted calamities. He has recourse, therefore, to what were not only the ordinary outward expressions of self-abasement, humiliation, and sorrow, but natural helps to the attainment and maintenance of such a state of soul, and suitable accompaniments of it. Special prayer demands special preparation. “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” “Thou wilt prepare their heart; Thou wilt cause Thine ear to hear.” [251] “Prayer and supplication” (Daniel 9:3). Keil thinks that ϊְּ ?τִ ?μָּ ?η (tephillah), “prayer,” is prayer in general; ϊַּ ?δֲ ?πεּ ?πִ ?ιν (takhanunim), “supplications,” prayer for mercy and compassion, as also petition for something, such as the turning away of misfortune or evil. Dr. Cox observes that Daniel’s prayer divides itself into three parts—the address, the confession, and the petition. He remarks that the prayer is remarkable for the large proportion of it that is occupied with confession; the reiteration of phrases descriptive of sin, examplifying the depth of his penitential sorrow; the simplicity of the diction; the minuteness of the detail; the profound humility indicated; the vindication of God and the spirit of self-reproach; the high estimation expressed of the mercy and forgiveness of God. [252] “With fasting and sackcloth and ashes” (Daniel 9:3). Calvin remarks that Daniel, though naturally alert in prayer to God, was yet conscious of the want of sufficiency in himself; and hence he adds the use of sackcloth and ashes and fasting. He observes that every one conscious of his infirmity, ought to collect all the aids he can command for the correction of his sluggishness, and thus to stimulate himself to ardour in supplicating God.IV. The prayer itself. This prayer of Daniel, perhaps beyond any other in the Bible, contains in it all the elements of devotion. Those in Ezra 9:6, &c., and Nehemiah 9:5, &c., dictated by the same spirit, probably moulded by this of Daniel. As its constituent parts we have— 1. Adoration. Expressing— (1.) Reverence. “O Lord, the great and dreadful God” (Daniel 9:4). The Lord is great and greatly to be praised, to be held in reverence of all that are about Him. Great fear due to Him in the meeting of His saints and in all their approaches to His throne of grace. “Of all the people will I be sanctified.” Filial confidence not inconsistent with the deepest reverence. The song of the glorified on the sea of glass: “Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name for Thou only art holy” (Revelation 15:4). The tendency of such adoration to deepen our sense of sin. (2.) Faith. “Keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love Him, and to them that keep His commandments” (Daniel 9:4). Faith in God as merciful, gracious, and ready to forgive, also expressed in Daniel 9:9 : “To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, though we have rebelled against Him.” “He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). Confidence in God’s mercy to be coupled with reverence and holy fear. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” Daniel’s faith further expressed in his appropriation of the Lord as his God. Not satisfied with calling Him “our God,” he twice over invokes him as “my God.” Faith believes, accepts, and appropriates God as our covenant God in and through Christ. “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” “My Lord and my God.” “If we wish our prayers to be heard,” says Keil, “then God, to whom we pray, must become our God.” 2. Confession. “We have sinned,” &c. (Daniel 9:5-14). This confession, large and full, occupying the greatest part of the prayer. Felt by Daniel, in the circumstances, to be that which was so much called for, and so necessary to the obtaining of the object sought He confesses the sins of the whole people in both its sections, and of all classes, including his own. With the sins he acknowledges the sufferings entailed by them, and the justice that inflicted them. “Righteousness belongeth unto Thee, but unto us confusion of face” (Daniel 9:7-8). Mentions as an aggravation of their case that while the Lord was visiting them for their sin they still refused to repent and pray, and hardened themselves against His corrections. In confessing sin we are to remember and confess its peculiar aggravations. 3. Thanksgiving and praise. Daniel makes thankful acknowledgment of God’s past mercies. “O Lord God, that hast brought Thy people out of the land of Egypt,” &c. (Daniel 9:15). Thanksgiving to accompany prayer and supplication in making our requests known unto God (Philippians 4:7). Thanksgiving for past mercies a tribute due to their Author and the means of obtaining more. Gratitude both glorifying to God and a gain to ourselves. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.” What God has already done, a never-failing source of thanksgiving. 4. Petition or supplication [253]. “O Lord, according to all Thy righteousness, I beseech Thee let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned away,” &c. (Daniel 9:16-19). Supplication and petition, prayer properly so called. To pray is properly to ask or make request; supplication is earnest asking. Without this there may be devotion and communion with God, but scarcely prayer. This part of Daniel’s prayer the centre and kernel of the whole. His object in the exercise to entreat for forgiveness and favour on behalf of his people and country. In this part of the prayer we observe— (1.) Intense earnestness. “O Lord, I beseech thee.… O my God, incline Thine ear and hear.… O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for Thine own sake, O my God.” An instructive specimen of earnest pleading. This the “effectual fervent prayer” of the righteous man that “availeth much.” Jacob wrestling with the angel and refusing to let him go without bestowing a blessing. (2.) Deep humility. “We do not present our supplications before Thee for our own righteousnesses, but for Thy great mercies.” “To us belongeth confusion of face.” Humility refuges every plea for acceptance but God’s free mercy. It can indeed plead a righteousness, but not its own. The Lord Himself is its righteousness, wrought out in the person of the Son and freely made over to faith. “This is the name whereby He shall be called, The Lord our Righteousness.” “I will make mention of Thy righteousness, even of Thine only.” (3.) The prevailing plea. “For the Lord’s sake” (Daniel 9:17)(8). No doubt as to who this is. “Daniel sets before God the Mediator by whose favour he hopes to obtain his request.”—Calvin. “The Lord (Jehovah) said unto my Lord (the Anointed or the Christ, the promised Saviour), Sit Thou on my right hand,” &c. (Psalms 110:1). The same Messiah who forms the subject of the following vision, God’s anointed King of Israel on His holy hill of Zion (Psalms 2) Raising Him from the dead and placing Him on His own right hand, God declared Jesus to be “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). It was through Him that God blessed Israel and that He now blesses men. Prayer accepted and answered on His account, and therefore to be made in His name. Thus David prayed: “Behold, O God, our shield; look on the face of Thine Anointed.” “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man, whom Thou hast made strong for Thyself” (Psalms 84:9; Psalms 80:17). This divine and God-given plea made more fully known after His appearance in the flesh and the acceptance of His offered sacrifice. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” “Having a great High Priest who is passed into the heavens, let us come boldly to the throne of grace.” “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (1 John 2:2; Hebrews 4:14-16; Romans 8:32). (4.) Large-heartedness and unselfishness. Daniel’s petitions and pleadings more on behalf of others than himself. Self forgotten in his deep concern for his country and the cause of God. He pleads for Jerusalem, God’s city and sanctuary that was desolate, His holy mountain, and His people. Personally, Daniel himself was in comfort, and never expected to see again his native land and beloved city. But his people were still captives and Jerusalem was in desolation. The cause of God and of His Christ was in the dust. Hence his unselfish pleading. Grace enlarges the heart and makes the cause of others our own. The mark of the spirit of Jesus to be burdened with the sins and sorrows of others. True patriotism and benevolence learned at the feet of Him who wept over Jerusalem. “For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, till the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.” The sign of a mere nominal Christianity and a heartless religion when its professors “drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief spices, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph” (Amos 6:6). Such was not Daniel’s. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning” (Psalms 137:5). [253] Dr. Rule observes that it is evident from the utterances of both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, that after the giving of the promise of a gracious return of the captives from Babylon, the wickedness of those left behind in Jerusalem had exceedingly increased; that there was not yet any appearance of the restoration of the Jews in captivity; and that all that was royal, noble, brave, or worthy in that city had been swept away. See Ezekiel 8-11; Jeremiah 7:30; Jeremiah 32:34. The captives themselves in general apparently not much improved by their affliction. See Ezekiel 2, 3; Ezekiel 33:30-32.From the whole prayer we may learn— 1. The spirit of prayer characteristic of a child of God. Prayer in a child of God as natural as a child’s cry to its mother. God has many suffering children, but no silent ones. “We cry, Abba, Father!” 2. God’s Word the study and enjoyment of His people. Daniel not only a man of prayer but a man of study. “I understood by books.” These books the Scriptures. Other books not neglected, but these his daily food. “It is my meditation all the day.” “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he doth meditate day and night.” God’s Word the stream that nourishes the roots of godliness, the oil that makes the lamp of grace to burn. This inclusive of prophetic Scripture. Prophecy a large proportion of the Bible. Daniel moved to pray by the word of prophecy. That word to be taken heed to “as to a light shining in a dark place.” Daniel, though a prophet, himself a careful reader of the prophecies of others. 3. The Word read to be turned into prayer. Believing prayer a fruit of the study of Scripture. Daniel read and then prayed. To read little is often to pray little; and reading without praying is of little worth. That is the most profitable reading of the Scriptures that sends us to our knees. That the most lively, fervent, and successful prayer that is the child of a precept, a promise, or a prophecy. 4. Prayer to be accompanied with thanksgiving and confession of sin. God’s past mercies and our own past sins never to be forgotten at the throne of grace. He prays ill who forgets God’s favours and his own faults. 5. Believers especially to cultivate intercessory prayer. For this purpose Christ makes us priests. Our high calling to be God’s remembrancers. God’s people watchmen set on Zion’s walls to give Him no rest till He establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth. A wide field and a loud call for earnest intercessory prayer. Prayers and intercessions to be made for all men (1 Timothy 2:1). “Seek the peace of the city, and pray unto the Lord for it.” “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” “Brethren, pray for us.” “For all saints.” “Pray one for another, that ye may be healed.” Abraham’s intercession all but saved Sodom. Paul’s prayers saved the lives of all that sailed with him (Acts 27:24). . XXXI.—PRAYER (Chap. Daniel 9:20-23) The character ascribed to God by the Psalmist founded on absolute truth, and in accordance with the universal experience of the godly in all ages, “Thou that hearest prayer.” The promise, “Call on me and I will answer thee,” verified in believers both in the Old and New Testament times. Natural, if God stands to them in the relation of a father. Natural for a child to ask and a parent to bestow. The promise, “Ask, and ye shall receive,” never broken when the conditions are fulfilled. The constant experience of Daniel through his whole life in Babylon. Another distinguished instance to be added in his extreme old age. Concerning this last recorded answer to his prayers, related by himself, we notice— I. It was prompt and immediate. In his prayer Daniel had said, “Hearken and do; defer not.” Deep earnestness with difficulty brooks delay. “Haste thee to help me; make no tarrying, O my God.” “Sir, come down ere my child die.” So Daniel gives special emphasis to the fact that while he was yet speaking the answer to his prayer came. “While I was speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin, &c.; yea, whiles I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel,” &c. (Daniel 9:20-21). So literally does God in His kindness fulfil His promise in regard to His children’s prayer, “Before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). Prayer and its answer not unfrequently simultaneous. Thus with Abraham’s servant at the well (Genesis 24:12; Genesis 24:15). So Daniel is told by Gabriel [254] that at the very beginning of his supplication the command came forth from God that it should be answered, or the message given which Gabriel was to carry to him (Daniel 9:23). Nor had Gabriel delayed, although he only reached Daniel with the message at the time of the evening oblation, or three o’clock in the afternoon. He had been “caused to fly swiftly,” and comes as one who had accomplished a lengthened journey (Daniel 9:21) [255]. Angels not ubiquitous or omnipresent. Their abode, and the place of the eternal throne before which they stand, apparently far distant from earth, which is but a speck in the Great Creator’s dominions. Answers to prayer may require time. The exact time of the answer reaching Daniel, however, wisely chosen. Daniel’s prayer and confession of sin must have their full expression. Delays often only apparent, and never denials. [254] “Gabriel.” Some render the name, “God is my champion;” others, “God will prevail;” others, as Keil, the “man of God,” standing here with the adjunct δָ ?ΰִ ?ιωׁ (ha-ish), “the man,” with the definite article, as referring back to chap. Daniel 8:15, where Gabriel appeared as a man, βֶּ ?αֶ ?ψ (gebher), probably the first part of the name, “a man,” from βָּ ?αַ ?ψ (gabhar), to “be strong,” “to prevail;” hence expressive of strength, a strong one; hence also βִּ ?αּ ?εֹ ?ψ (gibbor), a mighty man, a hero (Isaiah 9:7). [255] “Being caused to fly swiftly” (Daniel 9:2). ξֻ ?ςָ ?σαִּ ?ιςָ ?σ (mu’afbi’af). Calvin observes that some take the expression to mean “flying swiftly,” implying fatigue and alacrity, as if from ςεּ ?σ (’uph), to “fly,” having its participle connected with it; others derive it from ιָ ?ςֵ ?σ (ya’eph), to “be fatigued,” explaining it metaphorically, as “flying hastily.” The Sept renders it “borne with speed” (τάχειφερόμενος); Theodotion, “flying;” Vulg., “flying swiftly;” from which, observes Keil, the Church Fathers concluded that the angels were winged. So the E.V., which is also adopted by Hδvernick, V. Lengerke, Hitzig, and some Rabbies. Keil maintains that this translation is without any foundation in the words, being probably derived by the old translators from a confounding of ιָ ?ςֵ ?σ (ya’eph) with ςεּ ?σ (’ooph); the former meaning only wearied, to become tired, to weary one’s self by exertion, in certain cases by a long journey or course, as in Jeremiah 2:24; but nowhere to run or fly. He understands ιְ ?ςָ ?σ (ye’aph), the noun, from ιָ ?ςֵ ?σ, and translates the words, “wearied in weariness,” i.e., very wearied; applying them not to the angel, but to Daniel himself, as perfectly agreeing with his condition described in chap. Daniel 8:17; Daniel 8:27; Daniel now mentioning this circumstance, because Gabriel, at his former coming to him, not only helped to strengthen him, but also gave him understanding of the vision, so that his appearing again at once awakened joyful hope. He observes that we cannot speak of an angel who is an unearthly being as being wearied, although, with Kranichfeld, one may think of the way from the dwelling-place of God, removed far from His sinful people, to this earth as very long. He thinks also that the words, from their position, belong to the relative clause, or specially to ψָ ?ΰִ ?ιϊִ ?ι (raithi), I had seen; no reason being perceivable for placing the adverbial clause before the verb.II. Given through an angelic medium (Daniel 9:21). The angel here called “the man Gabriel.” Reference to Gabriel’s former appearance (chap. Daniel 8:16). Angels generally represented under a human form. Gabriel’s name especially connected with this fact. Denotes “the man of God,” or “God’s champion “or hero. Perhaps, “God will prevail.” The name indicative of strength, in which angels generally excel (Psalms 103:20). Angels often represented as warriors. The “hosts or armies of Jehovah;” the “chariots of God.” Gabriel especially employed in errands to men. His place to stand in the presence of God to receive His commission (Luke 1:19). Had already appeared to Daniel at the beginning (chap. Daniel 8:16) [256], or at an earlier period. The name not found earlier in the Old Testament. Unknown to us to what extent angels are employed by God in answering our prayers. All of them ministering spirits sent forth to minister for the heirs of salvation (Hebrews 1:14). Ministered even to Jesus, the Elder Brother, in His humiliation as one of us (Matthew 4:11; Luke 22:43). Their ministry promised to both Head and members (Psalms 91:11-12). Hezekiah prays, and an angel destroys the host of the Assyrians. Cornelius prays, and an angel directs him to send for Peter. The Church at Jerusalem prays, and an angel opens the doors of Peter’s prison (Isaiah 37; Acts 10, 12.) Their agency no less real because invisible. At Elisha’s prayer his servant’s eyes were opened, and he saw the mountain where his master lived full of angelic chariots and horsemen (2 Kings 6:17). God in no want of agents in answering the prayers of His people. [256] “At the beginning” (Daniel 9:21). αַּ ?ϊְּ ?ημָּ ?δ (battekhil’lah), “at the first,” as in chap. Daniel 8:1; with the general signification, as Keil observes, of earlier, and synonymous with αָּ ?ψִ ?ΰωׁ ?πָ ?δ (barishonah), in the beginning, in Genesis 13:3; Genesis 41:21; Genesis 43:18; Genesis 43:20; Isaiah 1:26.III. The answer given in a different way from what Daniel probably expected. The thing asked by Daniel, that God would visit and restore Jerusalem and the Jews in mercy. The answer, a divine messenger sent to inform him of what should afterwards take place. That information included the restoration of Jerusalem, and a great deal besides. The information both doleful and delightful, enough to make Daniel weep, and yet greatly to rejoice. Prayer often answered in a way different from our expectation. Paul prayed for his way to be opened to visit Rome. God answered his prayer, and sent him there two years afterwards, but bound with a prisoner’s chain. “By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation” (Psalms 65:5). IV. The answer far beyond the request. Daniel prayed only for the restoration of “the holy mountain of his God” (Daniel 9:20). God answers by the promise that not only should Jerusalem be restored, but Messiah Himself should at no very distant period appear—a period expressly declared—with the glorious benefits that should result from his Advent (Daniel 9:24-25). Thus God, in His kindness to His children, often far exceeds their prayers in the answers He sends them. Solomon asked for wisdom, and God in addition gave him power and riches beyond those of any other monarch. He is “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think,” and in the riches of His love He often does so. V. The answer a consequence of Daniel’s character. The answer given, according to Gabriel’s statement, because Daniel was a man “greatly beloved” (Daniel 9:23) [257]. Prayer answered from God’s own kindness and love, though not without regard to the character of the asker. The person accepted before the prayer is answered. “The prayer of the wicked is abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the righteous is His delight.” “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” To receive Daniel’s answer to prayer we must possess Daniel’s character. Our prayers probably answered in proportion as we are “greatly beloved.” John, the beloved disciple, desired by Peter to ask the Lord who it was that should betray Him. The faith that brings answers to our prayers gives acceptance to our person. Faith, love, humility, and obedience the graces that make a man “greatly beloved,” and that secure answer to prayer. “Whatsoever we ask,” says the beloved disciple, the Daniel of the New Testament, as John was the Daniel of the Old, “we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.” “If ye abide in me,” said the Master, “and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (1 John 3:22; John 15:7). [257] “Greatly beloved” (Daniel 9:23). ηֲ ?ξεּ ?γεֹ ?ϊ (khamoodhoth), “desires,” equivalent to ΰִ ?ιωׁ ηֲ ?ξεּ ?γεֹ ?ϊ (ish Khamoodhoth), “a man of desires,” in chap. Daniel 10:11; Daniel 10:19; meaning “most desired” or “delighted in,” or, as in the E.V., “greatly beloved,” from ηָ ?ξַ ?γ (khamadh), to desire or delight in; from which also the title given by the prophet to Messiah, the “Desire of all nations,” ηֶ ?ξְ ?γּ ?ϊλָּ ?μΞβּ ?εֹ ?ιִ ?ν (khemdath kolgoim), Haggai 2:7. Keil observes that the expression in the text does not contain the reason for Gabriel’s coming in haste, but for the principal thought of the verse—the going forth of the commandment or word of God immediately at the commencement of Daniel’s prayer.From the whole observe— 1. The blessedness of a truly godly life. Fellowship with God a leading element in such a life. Freedom in asking and readiness in bestowing included in such fellowship. Asking and receiving the privilege of children, and constantly realised in family life. Not less so among the children of God and in the “household of faith.” 2. The encouragement to persevere in prayer. Prayer offered according to God’s Word and for things according to His will sure, sooner or later, and in one way or other, to be answered. A parent’s ear never shut to his children’s cry, be the parent otherwise ever so wicked. “And shall not God avenge His own elect, who cry day and night to Him continually, though He bear long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily” (Luke 18:7-8). Daniel one example out of millions. 3. God’s love in giving His children much more than they ask. When He answers prayer, He gives “heaped up and running over;” and when He withholds the thing asked, it is only to give something better. Moses prayed to be taken over Jordan to Canaan; God instead takes him to the country of which Canaan was but a shadow. Paul asks for the removal of the thorn in the flesh; Christ instead gives him an assurance that was to comfort and strengthen him in all the trials, sufferings, and conflicts of his future life. 4. Precious grace that makes a sinful man to be one “greatly beloved” of God. Paul’s testimony of himself and others, including Daniel, in their natural condition as the fallen children of Adam, apart from divine renewing grace, is, “Foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another;” “Children of wrath even as others” (Titus 3:3; Ephesians 2:3). How rich the love and how mighty the grace that out of such materials can form such characters as Paul, and John, and Daniel, men “greatly beloved”! “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4-5). “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes and to make them inherit the throne of glory” (1 Samuel 2:8; Psalms 113:7-8). . XXXII.—THE MAN GREATLY BELOVED (Chap. Daniel 9:23) This remarkable and precious testimony borne to Daniel by the Angel Gabriel. The same thing done twice over in the next chapter by the same person, if not by one greater than he; the difference being that in the latter cases it is used as an epithet to Daniel, “O man greatly beloved,” and “O Daniel, a man greatly beloved” (chap. Daniel 10:11; Daniel 10:19). The expression may be viewed either as the ascription of a character—worthy to be greatly beloved, or as the declaration of a fact,—actually so beloved. A “man of desires” (the literal marginal rendering of the word) is either one worthy of such desires or the actual object of them. The expression may also be viewed as indicating both what Daniel was in himself, very lovable or lovely, and what he was in relation to others, actually beloved. In the latter case, those by whom he was beloved were, in the first instance, the Divine Being Himself; then the angels, especially Gabriel, who speaks; then good men in general, including the spirits of the just made perfect, who were doubtless cognisant of Daniel’s character and worth. The testimony, in any case, expressive of Daniel’s moral excellence, as rendering him both lovely and lovable and actually beloved. It is remarkable as coming not from a man but from a celestial being, lovely and lovable himself, as a spotless and unfallen creature, and a correct judge of what is truly lovely and lovable, and well acquainted with the facts of the case as an angel of light. The text affords an occasion of gathering up and considering some of the points of Daniel’s character as brought to our view in the book before us, and as justifying the testimony borne in the text. Some of these are— 1. His early piety. Piety in youth is especially lovely and attractive. This conspicuous in Daniel. Daniel still a youth when, though a captive in a foreign land and surrounded with temptations in a heathen and luxurious court, he resolved to deny himself the luxuries of the king’s table, and to live upon beans and water, rather than do what he believed was contrary to the law of God. His amiability and sweetness of disposition were such as to gain for him the favour and attachment of the officer in the palace, under whose charge he and the other Jewish youths were placed. Daniel was still only a young man when, in a crisis of great danger to others as well as himself, he, in childlike confidence, carried the matter to the Lord, and obtained, through a divine communication vouchsafed to him, deliverance both for himself and the wise men of Babylon. Daniel’s piety in youth the foundation of his character and greatness as a man. 2. His steadfastness and perseverance in well-doing. Daniel’s piety, which began in youth, was retained to the end of a long life. Beloved while a young man by the chief of the eunuchs for his amiability and good behaviour, he receives the angelic testimony, when above fourscore, that he was still “greatly beloved.” From a youth of fourteen he had lived among idolaters and in a licentious court, yet his piety remained unshaken. More than once his religion brought him into danger of his life, but he remained the same. Neither the plots of enemies, nor the elevation of earthly greatness, nor the seductions of pleasure, nor the cares of statesmanship, were able to draw him from the paths of piety and virtue. In prosperity and adversity, in sunshine and storm, Daniel remained the same faithful servant of God and of the king, walking with his Maker and seeking the welfare of his fellow-men. 3. His consistency and symmetry of character. Daniel’s conduct was the same throughout, always in harmony with itself. Attentive to his duty to God, he was equally so in his duty to man. Faithful to his God, he is equally faithful to his king. His morality is no less conspicuous than his religion. He is fervent in spirit, but no less diligent in business. Regular and earnest in his closet, he is equally assiduous in his office. Studious in his Bible, as a man of business he is well acquainted with his books. His enemies can find no fault in him, and no ground of accusation with the king, but in the matter of his religion. He is favoured with revelations from Heaven and the visits of angels; yet no sooner are his visions withdrawn and his usual state of health recovered, than he returns to do “the king’s business.” He is endowed, even while yet young, with a wisdom and understanding superior to that of all the wise men of Babylon, yet disclaims all merit and wisdom of his own as being greater than those of other men. He is tender and gentle, while bold and uncompromising in professing the truth and reproving sin. He is distressed as being the bearer of evil tidings to Nebuchadnezzar, yet fearlessly declares to the hardened Belshazzar both his sin and his doom. 4. His conscientiousness even in the smallest matters. This exhibited in his carefulness in regard to the law respecting forbidden meats, as also in his observance of his usual practice in his devotions, although at the risk of his life, when to have done otherwise would have appeared a want of faith in God and obedience to His will. He that is faithful in the least is faithful in much. The smallest duty, because a duty and the will of God, attended to by Daniel, as well as those of apparently a much more important character. Love will be obedient and seek to please in the least as well as in the greatest matters. Such conscientiousness a feature in the man “greatly beloved,” and a considerable part of what made him such. 5. His faith and confidence in God. Seen in early life in his proposal to put the desired change of diet to the proof, assured that God would answer prayer and honour obedience to his will. The same trust in God as the hearer of prayer exhibited in the matter of the king’s dream. So afterwards Daniel went calmly to the lion’s den, believing in his God, and assured that he was safe in His keeping, whatever might be the result. Daniel enabled to walk in the steps of his father Abraham, and of that faith which gives glory to God. Nothing more pleasing to God, or likely to make a man “greatly beloved “of Him, than a simple, childlike, and unwavering trust. Jesus was pleased wherever he found faith in Himself. Daniel’s childlike faith made him, like Abraham, “the friend of God.” 6. His prayerfulness. From youth to old age Daniel characterised as a man of prayer. His whole life an example of the Apostle’s words, “In everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.” Prayer to God the natural fruit of faith in God. Prayer the element in which Daniel lived. Each life presents constant calls to prayer, and constant opportunities for it. No place where prayer is not needed, and none where it may not be made. Daniel’s prayers both regular and special. Daniel prayed in his closet, and prayed by the river-side. Had his stated prayer morning, evening, and at noon, and yet set himself to pray for a whole day with fasting and sackcloth. Prayed for himself, but with at least as much fervency for others. Had his whole days of prayer and fasting for his brethren, his country, and the cause of God. His prayerfulness well known to his heathen neighbours. This the charge brought against him, and that which all but cost him his life. Daniel prayed with a cruel death before him as its probable consequence. His prayerfulness the secret of all his other excellences, the key that unlocked to him the treasury of all spiritual blessings; brought and kept him in fellowship with the source and sum of all excellence, and so made him like Him; made him walk with God as a man with his friend, so that, like Moses, his face shone with the reflected glory. Prayer the continual source and supply of strength for every duty and every trial; not only for doing and suffering, but for doing and suffering in the right spirit. Makes Christ’s strength our own, and at all times sufficient for us. Daniel waited on the Lord, and so renewed his strength. 7. His amiableness of disposition and kindness to others. When God brought him into tender love with Ashpenaz, his superintendent in the palace at Babylon, it was doubtless by giving Daniel that which gendered such love. Daniel’s amiable spirit and loving demeanour such as to commend him to his superiors. Love in others towards us begotten by love and lovableness in ourselves. The amiableness of his disposition and tenderness of his spirit followed Daniel into mature age. Struck dumb and unable at once to declare to the king the unhappy import of his dream, he only does so when urged by his royal master, and then does it in the tenderest and most loving manner, while yet faithfully seeking the king’s best interests. Daniel seemed to care for the imperilled lives of the wise men in Babylon more than his own; and on his deliverance from the death which his heathen enemies had devised, for him, he makes not the slightest reference to their cruelty and wickedness while declaring his innocence to the king. 8. His patriotism and concern for his country’s welfare. It was concern for his country that moved him to that day of solemn prayer and fasting which the chapter before us relates, and which brought Gabriel down with an answer and the testimony in the text. To an enlightened man the cause of his country will be bound up with the cause of God and of religion, as it can be well with the former only as it is so with the latter. This was especially the case with Daniel, whose country God had made and called His own, and whose city, Jerusalem, was God’s holy mountain, the city of the great King, who had chosen it for the place of His special worship. That country was now in desolation, and Jerusalem with its Temple was in ruins. God’s worship there had been brought to an end. Sin on the part of the people had brought the desolating foe that had put a stop to their solemn feasts. Provoked to anger by their continued rebellion and apostasy, the Lord had “caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and had despised, in the indignation of His anger, the king and the priest. The Lord had cast off His altar; He had abhorred His sanctuary; He had given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces” (Lamentations 2:6-7). This was the burden that pressed upon the heart of the beloved prophet. The cause of his people, and with that the cause of God and of true religion, which was bound up with it, was his deep sorrow, and drove him to incessant prayer as the time of the promised deliverance drew nigh. He was concerned not only for his country’s peace, but for his people’s repentance, which must be at the foundation of it. It was this that led him, as a true patriot, to pour out his heart before God in the fervent prayer and deep humiliation here recorded. 9. His unselfishness. This sufficiently apparent from the last particular. In the remarkable prayer of this chapter, self is entirely forgotten in his concern for his brethren and his country. The same renunciation and forgetfulness of self conspicuous on many occasions. He associates with himself his three companions in the interpretation of the king’s dream, first asking their participation in his prayers, and then giving the interpretation as if from them all conjointly—“We will tell the king his dream.” He makes no mention of himself in relating the noble stand which his three companions made in the matter of the golden image, refraining from saying anything to account for his non-participation in their steadfast refusal to worship it, and leaving the entire honour of it to themselves. When Belshazzar holds out to him the promise of the highest reward he could bestow for the interpretation of the handwriting on the wall, his answer is, “Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards unto another; yet I will read the writing to the king, and make known to him the interpretation” (chap. Daniel 5:17). Dr. Pusey well remarks: “A self-laudatory school has spoken much of the laudation, as they call it, of Daniel, as being unnatural, on our belief that he was the author of the book. To me certainly much more striking is his reticence about himself.” At the very commencement of his remarkable course he distinctly renounces in the king’s presence all claim to any superior wisdom or merit of his own in the interpretation of his dream, and ascribes it entirely to God, who wished to acquaint the king with its meaning. In like manner, all that he is obliged to relate in regard to his gifts and attainments, his answers to prayer and divine revelations, he ascribes to the same source—the free bounty of a gracious prayer-hearing God, who does what He will with His own. “He giveth wisdom to the wise and knowledge to them that have understanding.… I thank Thee and praise Thee, O Thou God of my fathers, who hast given me wisdom and might, and hast made known unto me now what we desired of Thee” (chap. Daniel 2:22-23). In leaving the character of this man “greatly beloved,” we may remark with Dr. Cox: “It is characteristic of Scripture biography to record the censurable actions of good men as well as their virtues and graces; the entire omission of the former, therefore, in the account of Daniel, naturally leads to the conclusion that he was a person of preeminent excellence.” The same writer adds: “The estimation in which Daniel was held by successive potentates, the public honours he received, the eminent rank he held, all fade into nothingness before the testimony from Heaven, a testimony founded on no external glory, but on a character invulnerable to reproaches, and formed of all the elements of pure religion.” Nor in thinking of Daniel’s character, which entitled him to this high testimony, should we forget that he was only an Old Testament saint, living in what is called by the Apostle the “ministration of the letter that killeth,” instead of the ministration of the Spirit that succeeded it; the former, glorious as it was, “having no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth,” the glory of the dispensation of the Spirit in which it is our privilege to live (2 Corinthians 3:6-10). If that inferior dispensation which possessed comparatively so little of the Spirit that renews and sanctifies, produced a character of such excellence as to merit this angelic testimony, to what moral excellence ought New Testament believers not to be able to attain? Daniel beheld God and His sanctifying truth only with the veil of Moses on his face, and yet attained to so much of his likeness. What may, what ought we not to attain to when the veil is done away in Christ, and when we, beholding with unveiled face, and reflecting, as in a mirror, the “glory of the Lord,” enjoy the privilege of being “transformed into the same image from glory unto glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit”? (2 Corinthians 3:14; 2 Corinthians 3:18, R.V.) The character of Daniel is portrayed in this book by the Holy Ghost for our imitation, even in these last days of the ministration of the Spirit; for “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning,” that the man of God might be “perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work” (Romans 15:4; 2 Timothy 3:17). The present dispensation has produced many Daniels,—its Fletchers, its Paysons, its M‘Cheynes, its Pennyfathers, and multitudes besides, whose record is only on high. It will produce many more. It is the privilege both of the reader and the writer, by contemplating in the Word not merely the character of Daniel, but of Daniel’s Lord, to possess Daniel’s character, by possessing more and more of the character of Him from whom that eminent saint derived all his excellence; learning of the Master, who was “meek and lowly in heart,” and walking in the spirit and steps of Him who was “holy, harmless, and undefiled, and separate from sinners.” For this, however, we must become one with that Master, united to Him as a branch is to the tree by a cordial acceptance of Him, surrender to Him, and trust in Him, as the provided Saviour for poor helpless sinners. Reader, may that be your happiness and mine! . XXXIII.—THE MESSIAH (Chap. Daniel 9:24-27) We now come to that part of Daniel’s prophecies which perhaps more than any other distinguishes him as a prophet, and which was communicated to him as a man “greatly beloved.” It is the prediction regarding the promised Messiah, more full and explicit, especially in regard to the time of His appearing, than any that had hitherto been given [258]. The communication was made to the prophet in connection with the announcement as to what was to befall his people and country, in whom Daniel felt so deep an interest, and for whom he had prayed so fervently. The prediction, therefore, was twofold, having relation in the first instance to Messiah, and in the second to the Jewish people to whom He should come, and whose King He was to be. Daniel had prayed that God would graciously visit His people, now captive in Babylon, as well as the Holy City and its Temple, now lying in ruins. In the promise of the Messiah this prayer was answered. No more gracious visitation of Israel could be vouchsafed than in the Advent of Him who was to come as the consolation and glory of His people, and who had been so long promised and waited for as such (Luke 1:68-69). The mere return of the exiles to Judea, and the restoration of their polity and worship, was insignificant in itself compared with the birth of that Saviour who was to be “a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of His people Israel,” an event of which none less than angels were to be the immediate heralds (Luke 2:8-14; Luke 2:25-38). In the present section we shall confine our attention to the Messiah Himself, as here promised, with the time of His appearing, leaving for a succeeding one the blessed results that should follow His Advent. [258] This is the general view regarding the prophecy. Keil observes that the interpretations of the passage may be divided into three principal classes. 1. That of most of the Church fathers and the older orthodox interpreters, who find prophesied here—the appearance of Christ in the flesh, His death, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans; the view held also by Hδvernick, Hengstenberg, Auberlen, and Dr. Pusey. 2. That of the majority of the modern interpreters (that is, mainly, the German Rationalists), who refer the whole passage to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes; a view held also by Hofmann and Delitzsch, who, however, have united with what they consider the primary historical reference of Dan 9:25-27 to Antiochus, an eschatological reference, according to which the prophecy will be perfectly accomplished only in the appearance of Antichrist and the final completion of the kingdom of God. 3. That of some of the Church fathers, and several modern theologians, who interpret the prophecy eschatologically, as an announcement of the development of the kingdom of God from the end of the exile on to the perfecting of the kingdom by the second coming of Christ at the end of the days. This last view is that of Keil himself, as well as Kliefoth, the germs of it appearing in Hippolytus and Apollinaris of Laodicea, who refer the statement in Daniel 9:27, regarding the last week, to the end of the world, viewing the first half as the time of the return of Elijah, and the second as that of Antichrist. From the contents of Dan 9:24, Keil concludes that the termination of the seventy weeks coincides with the end of the present course of the world. Differently from most, he thinks the periods are not to be reckoned chronologically, but to be viewed symbolically, as a divinely-appointed period measured by sevens, the reckoning of their actual duration being withdrawn beyond the reach of our human research, but leaving us the strong consolation of knowing that the fortunes of God’s people are safe in His hands.I. The Messiah Himself. He is here called by two names, or, perhaps more strictly, by a name and a title, “Messiah the Prince” [259]. [259] “Messiah the Prince” (Daniel 9:25). πָ ?βִ ?ιγξָ ?ωִׁ ?ιϊַ (Mashiakh Naghidh), not, as Bertholdt thinks, are anointed prince; for ξָ ?ωִׁ ?ιηַ cannot be an adjective to πָ ?βִ ?ιγ, because in Hebrew the adjective is, with few exceptions, which are inapplicable in this case, always placed after the noun. Nor is ξָ ?ωִׁ ?ιηַ a participle, as Steudel makes it, but a noun with πָ ?βִ ?ιγ in apposition—an anointed one who is also a prince. According to Keil, it is one who is first and specially a priest, and, in addition, a prince of the people or a king, it being chiefly priests and kings who in the Old Testament were anointed to their office. He remarks that this could neither be Zerubbabel, as many old interpreters thought, nor Ezra, nor Onias III., nor Cyrus, as some Rabbis and Rationalists have supposed. The Old Testament knows only One who shall be both priest and king in one person (Psalms 110:4; Zechariah 6:13), Christ, the Messias (John 4:25); in whom the two essential requisites of the theocratic king, the anointing and the appointment to be the πָ ?βִ ?ιγ or prince of the people of God (1 Samuel 10:1; 2 Samuel 1:21), are found in the most perfect manner. Some explain the want of the article on the ground that ξָ ?ωִׁ ?ιηַ (Mashiakh) “Messiah” is used as a proper name, like φֶ ?ξַ ?η (tsemakh) the Branch, in Zechariah 3:8; Zechariah 6:12; the term having certainly been used as a proper name before it was applied to Jesus (John 1:41; John 4:25). Keil, who thinks that in this case the article would have stood before πָ ?βִ ?ιγ (naghidh) “the prince,” prefers to read—till one comet who is anointed and at the same time prince; because He that is to come is not definitely designated as the expected Messiah, but must only be made prominent by what is ascribed to Him as a personage altogether singular.1. “Messiah.” This Hebrew term, equivalent to the Greek Christ, denotes “the Anointed.” The promised Deliverer had already been spoken of by the prophets as God’s Anointed. See 1 Samuel 2:35; 1 Samuel 12:3; 1 Samuel 12:5; Psalms 2:2; Psalms 18:50; Psalms 84:9. Now, however, perhaps for the first time, He is designated by this name alone, Messiah or the Anointed. God speaks in the Psalms of having anointed Him, as the King whom He had chosen and appointed to rule over Israel on the throne of His father David, Solomon’s antitype (Psalms 89:19-20; Psalms 2:6, marg.) Isaiah speaks of Him as anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, as a prophet to make known the glad tidings of salvation to fallen men (Isaiah 61:10). This in accordance with the practice of both kings and prophets being installed in their office with the anointing of oil, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, with whom, as the true king and prophet, Messiah was to be anointed. As the great High Priest also, He was to receive the same anointing, it being appointed under the law that the priests should be introduced into their office by the anointing with oil (Exodus 30:30; Exodus 40:15; Psalms 133:2). This symbolical anointing, which was to receive its fulfilment in the promised Deliverer, hence called the Messiah or Anointed, was actually fulfilled in Jesus, on whom the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape at His baptism, and of whom Peter testifies, that He went about doing good, being anointed by God “with the Holy Ghost, and with power” (Acts 10:38). The evangelists relate that Jesus went up from the Jordan full of the Holy Ghost, and was led by the same Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that it was through the eternal Spirit that Jesus, as the Great High Priest, “offered Himself without spot unto God” (Hebrews 9:14). Through the Holy Ghost He gave commandments to His apostles after His resurrection (Acts 1:2). He was anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows. God gave not His Spirit by measure unto Him (Psalms 45:7; John 3:34). 2. “The Prince.” [260] The Hebrew term here used also applied to the promised Saviour in Isaiah 55:4, and there rendered Leader. It may be regarded as equivalent to king, head, or ruler. Jehovah, in the passage referred to, declares, in regard to the provided and promised Saviour, “I have given Him for a witness to the people (His prophetical office); a leader and a commander to the people,” thus indicating at the same time His office as a king. So we read of Jesus, that He has been exalted by the Father with His own right hand, “a prince and a Saviour, to give repentance unto Israel and the forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31). He is “the Prince of the kings of the earth;” equivalent to “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 1:5; Revelation 19:16). The Saviour was especially promised in the character of a prince or king. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; for behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek and having salvation” (Zechariah 9:9). It was in this character that He was to bruise the serpent’s head, and deprive him of his usurped dominion. His language to Joshua, “as Captain of the Lord’s host am I come.” He is the “Captain of our salvation;” “travelling in the greatness of His strength, mighty to save;” the “King of glory, mighty in battle” (Hebrews 2:10; Isaiah 63:2; Psalms 24:8). His princedom as head of all principality and power, given to Him by the Father as the reward of His mediatorial work, and at the same time as the means of fully securing the ends of that undertaking (Philippians 2:6-11; Ephesians 1:20-22; Matthew 28:18; John 17:2; Psalms 110:1, &c.) [260] “The prince” (Daniel 9:25). Here the Messiah, though in the following verse an earthly prince, probably Titus or the Roman emperor. Josephus applies the term even in this verse to Vespasian as the person intended. Theodoret and Eusebius thought of John Hyrcanus, who was both prince and high priest. Others hare applied it to the anointed governors and elders among the Jews in general. Some of the Jews applied it to Herod Agrippa, who was slain shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem.It may here be interesting to inquire how far Messiah had been promised and made known previously to this communication made to Daniel concerning Him, and through Daniel to the Church. We may mark seven leading promises, previously given, revealing so many particulars concerning the Saviour who was to come:— (1.) The original promise in Eden, showing that the Saviour of men was to be a man, and that while He was to be the destroyer of him who had overcome and sought to ruin man, He was Himself to suffer (Genesis 3:15). Hence the name He generally gave Himself, the Son of Man. (2.) The promise made to Abraham, and renewed to Isaac and Jacob, indicating the nation from which the Saviour was to spring, that of which Abraham was to be the head, the Jewish people (Genesis 12:3). Salvation was to be of the Jews. (3.) The promise made through Jacob on his dying bed, intimating the tribe in the Jewish nation out of which the Messiah was to spring, viz., that of Judah, the royal tribe, indicating that Messiah was to be a king (Genesis 49:10). Jesus claimed the title of King of the Jews. (4.) The promise through Moses, showing that the Saviour was to be a prophet as well as a king (Deuteronomy 18:15). It was more especially in this character that He exercised His three and a half years’ ministry, teaching the people. (5.) The promise by David, showing the family in which Messiah was to be born, viz., that of David the son of Jesse; and that though He was to succeed His father David as king of Israel, He was to be rejected by the leaders of the people, and to suffer and die; while, as a priest, He offered Himself as a sacrifice to God for the sins of the world, the very kind of death He was to suffer being indicated (Acts 2:30; Psalms 89:4; Psalms 110:4; Psalms 118:22; Psalms 40:6-8; Psalms 22:16). The Son of David, the name by which the Jews generally designated the promised Messiah. (6.) The promise by Isaiah, B.C. 714–50, that He was to be miraculously born of a virgin, intimating also that while truly man He was also to possess a divine nature, as Emmanuel, the Mighty God; and showing at the same time more distinctly than before that He was to be rejected by men, and made by God a sacrifice for the sins of the people (Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:7, Isaiah 53.) Isaiah especially the evangelical prophet, or prophet of the Gospel. (7.) The promise given through Micah, B.C. 710, shortly after the preceding, and showing the place where Messiah was to be born, viz., in Bethlehem, a small village in Judah, and declaring still more explicitly that, notwithstanding the lowly place of His birth, He was the everlasting God (Micah 5:2). Singularly fulfilled, while Mary and Joseph were at the time inhabitants of Nazareth. II. The time of Messiah’s appearing. This is expressly intimated in the text, though somewhat enigmatically. Seventy weeks are said to be determined upon Daniel’s people for the accomplishment of those gracious purposes connected with Messiah’s advent (Daniel 9:24). These prophetic weeks are again divided into three portions, of seven, sixty-two, and one; each portion having some important event or transaction connected with it (Daniel 9:25-27). The points requiring consideration are— 1. The seventy weeks and the event they bring. No room is left for doubt that these weeks are prophetic weeks or weeks of years, each week being seven years, and the whole thus making up 490 years, or seventy times seven [261]. The events to take place in the course of them render every other meaning of the expression out of the question. The event with which these years were to terminate is not so certain, and is differently understood [262]. Not improbably that event is the ceasing of the Gospel to be preached exclusively to the Jews, when the kingdom of God was to be given to another people bringing forth the fruits of it. This took place only a few years after the death of Christ (Acts 10.) It is possible that, as some suppose, they extend to the period when the Jews shall be restored. [261] “Seventy weeks” (Daniel 9:24). Seventy ωָׁ ?αֻ ?ςִ ?ιν (shabhu’im), “sevens,” hence, weeks. Dr. Taylor observes that here it is not necessary to adopt the year-day theory, although itself resting on sufficient grounds. The prophet says, “seventy weeks,” or “seventy sevens,” which might either be days or years; and as this allusion appears to be to the seventy years of the captivity, so years are naturally to be understood here. “For the one seventy in exile, there should be seven seventies of continued occupation of the holy city.” Auberlen thinks the seventy weeks, or 490 years, extend to the year 33 a.d. “The fixed chronological point from which to calculate we find in the death of the Messiah, which falls in the middle of the last week, that is, three and a half years before the end of the whole period, consequently the year 30 a.d. But it is in this very year, according to the soundest chronological investigations, and the most generally adopted reckoning, in which Bengel and Wieseler, for example, coincide, that the Lord Jesus was crucified.” So Willet, reckoning from the first year of Cyrus, computes,—the Persian monarchy lasted 130 years; the Greek or Macedonian, 300; the Roman, to the death of Christ, 60; in all, 490. He observes that, “although in the particular account of time there be some disagreement, yet herein most Christian interpreters agree, that all those years expired either at the birth or passion of Christ, or in the destruction of Jerusalem; so that whichever account be received, two main points are proved, namely, that Messiah is come, and that He came not as a temporal prince, but was put to death.” Calvin, who remarks that “the diversity of opinions among interpreters doth not evacuate or extenuate the authority of Scripture,” says that “the Jews agree with us in considering the prophet to reckon the weeks not by days but by years, as in Leviticus 25:8; only they consider them to have begun at the destruction of the former temple, and closed at the overthrow of the second, when God would disperse them over all the earth, as a chastisement for their sin, till at length Messiah should come.” He paraphrases thus: “Sorrowful darkness has brooded over you for seventy years; but God will now follow up this period by one of favour of sevenfold duration, because, by lightening your cares and moderating your sorrow, He will not cease to prove Himself propitious to you, even to the advent of Christ.” Dr. Pusey also, who observes that the choice of the form of the prophecy was itself prophetical, thinks that the interval which God assigned had an evident reference to the seventy years of the captivity; and that that number had a bearing on the broken Sabbaths, in punishment of which Moses foretold that the land should enjoy her Sabbaths in the captivity of the people. “Seventy years were the term of their captivity; seven times seventy years were to be the main term of their new probation in the possession of their land and of their restored city.” Mr. Bosanquet also thinks these seventy weeks are seventy Sabbaths of years, “each ending with a shemittah, or ‘year of release,’ such as were to be observed under the Levitical law; the period of seven weeks representing seven Sabbaths of years, or 49 years, ending with a year of jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-9), and with the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem.” Professor Stuart calls them seventy heptades of years, Daniel having been making diligent inquiry regarding the seventy years of the captivity. Professor Lee understands only an indefinite period. Hofmann and Kliefoth too, with whom Keil agrees, remark that ωָׁ ?αֻ ?ςִ ?ιν (shabh u’im) does not necessarily mean year-weeks, but an intentionally indefinite designation of a period of time measured by the number seven, whose chronological duration must be determined on other grounds. Hengstenberg and Krauichfeld, however, are in favour of year-weeks (periods of seven years), on the ground that such an interpretation is very natural, since they hold so prominent a place in the law of Moses; and the exile had brought them anew very distinctly into remembrance, inasmuch as the seventy years’ desolation of the land was viewed as a punishment for the interrupted festival of the Sabbatical year (2 Chronicles 36:21). So Junius, Pellican, Polanus, &c., the last remarking that the number seven is of great observance among the Jews, indicating periods of holy rest, and pointing to the great year of rest in the redemption of the world by Messiah. [262] “Are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city to finish,” &c. (Daniel 9:24) πֶ ?ηְ ?ϊַּ ?κְ (nekhtach), from ηָ ?ϊַ ?κְ (khathach), occurring only here in Hebrew, but in Chaldee meaning “to cut off, cut up into pieces,” hence “to decide,” or determine; so Pagn. Mont Jun., &c. Not abbreviated or shortened, as the Vulgate, abbreviat�, and as Wieseler thinks. The singular used, either from a singular noun, as ςֵ ?ϊ (‘eth) time, being before the prophet’s mind, as Hengstenberg thinks, or, as Keil prefers, from the seventy weeks being conceived of as a whole or absolute idea; but not from an inexact manner of writing of the later authors, as Ewald supposes. The expression “upon thy people,” &c., implies, according to Kliefoth and Keil, that the people and city of God should not remain in the state of desolation in which they then were, but should at some time be again restored, and should be continued during the time mentioned; Keil understanding these terms certainly to refer first to Israel after the flesh and to the geographical Jerusalem, but also as embracing the New Testament Church and the Church of God on earth. He remarks that the following infinitive clauses, “to finish,” &c., present the object for which the seventy weeks are determined, intimating what shall happen till, or with the expiry of the time determined; it being only to be concluded from the contents of the final clauses whether what is mentioned shall take place only at the end of the period, or shall develop itself gradually in the course of it. He thinks, from the contents of these six clauses, that the termination of the seventy weeks coincides with the end of the present course of the world. Sir Isaac Newton also inclined to apply the last seven weeks of the period to the time when Antichrist should be destroyed by the brightness of the Saviour’s coming. �colampadius understood this last week to be no definite number of years, but commencing with the time of Pompey, continuing to the death of Christ, and terminating in the reign of Adrian, ninety-eight years later. Melanchthon and Junius (first edition) viewed the second half of that week as commencing with Christ’s death and continuing onwards. Polanus and Junius make that latter half to include the destruction of Jerusalem. Bullinger, Broughton, and Willet make the last of the weeks the seven years previous to Christ’s death, the first half being a preparatory season before His baptism, which took place in the middle of it. Scaliger divided the last week into two parts, assigning four years and a half to Christ’s ministry, and the other two and a half to the destruction of Jerusalem. Apollinaris seems to have extended the prophecy to the end of the world. The Duke of Manchester, reckoning the whole period of 490 years from b.c. 424, or anno Nabonassar 325, the supposed time of the vision, brings its termination down to a.d. 66.2. The three portions of the seventy weeks. The first of these appears to be seven weeks or forty-nine years, the event connected with it being, apparently, the rebuilding of Jerusalem [263], when “the street should be built again and the wall, even in troublous times” (Daniel 9:25). The historical fulfilment particularly related in the Book of Nehemiah [264]. The second portion of sixty-two weeks or 434 years, succeeding the former, and with it making up 483 years, would appear to terminate with the death of Messiah, which should take place either then or soon after. “After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off” (Daniel 9:26) [265]. The third portion, or one week of seven years, apparently succeeding the others, and including the death of Messiah, and the fruits of it among the Jews in connection with the preaching of the Gospel during the first few years succeeding that event. Some extend it so as to include the judgments to fall on the Jews for the rejection of the Gospel, according to the verses that immediately follow. [263] “Seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” (Daniel 9:25). Keil observes that most interpreters who understand Christ as Messiah the Prince, have referred both of these periods to the first clause, as being to be reckoned from the going forth of the commandment. Thus Theodotion and the Vulgate. So Hδvernick, Hengstenberg, and Auberlen. Hengstenberg says: “The separation of the two periods of time was of great consequence, in order to show that the seven and the sixty-two weeks are not a mere arbitrary dividing into two of one whole period, but that to each of these two periods its own characteristic mark belongs.” He divides them thus: “Sixty weeks must pass away; seven till the completed restoration of the city, sixty from that time till the Anointed, the Prince.” Keil, however, who regards the periods symbolically and not chronologically, thinks that this interpretation distorts the language of the text, and ought to be suffered to fall aside as untenable, in order that we may do justice to the words of the prophecy. He thinks that the seven weeks are said to terminate with the appearance of Messiah the Prince, after which the sixty and two weeks take their commencement, terminating with the cutting off of the Messiah. Willet, after Calvin, �colampadius, and Broughton, reckoning from the first year of Cyrus, make the first seven weeks, or forty-nine years, to terminate with the finishing of the temple in the sixth year of Darius or Artaxerxes Longimanus. [264] “The street shall be built again and the wall, even in troublous times” (Daniel 9:25). ϊָּ ?ωׁ ?εּ ?α (tashubh), “shall return,” is thus joined adverbially to the second verb, εְ ?πִ ?αְ ?πְ ?ϊָ ?δ (venibhnethah), “and shall be built.” So Hδvernick, Hofmann, and Wieseler. Keil, on the other hand, thinks that the words refer undoubtedly to the expression in the former clause of the verse μְ ?δָ ?ωִׁ ?ιαεְ ?μִ ?αְ ?πεֹ ?ϊ (lehashibh velibhnoth), “to restore and to build;” and that therefore ϊָּ ?ωׁ ?εּ ?α (tashubh) is to be rendered intransitively, “shall be restored,” as Ezekiel 16:55; 1 Kings 13:6, and elsewhere He thinks, against Rosenmόller, Gesenius, and Hengstenberg, that the subject to both verbs is not ψְ ?ηεֹ ?α (rekhobh), “the street,” but Jerusalem, as is manifest both from the words of the commandment, and from the fact that in Zechariah 8:5 the noun is construed as masculine, while here the verb is feminine. He is also of the opinion that the words ψְ ?ηεֹ ?αεְ ?ηָ ?ψεּ ?υ (rekhobh vekharuts), “the street and the wall,” contain together one definition, the former, ψְ ?ηεֹ ?α (rekhobh), the street and wide space before the gate of the temple, being taken as the adverbial accusative, “with wide spaces;” and the latter as a participle, “and yet cut off or limited,” the sense being, “Jerusalem shall be built so that the city takes in a wide space, has wide free places, but not, however, unlimited in width, but such that their compass is measured off, is fixed and bounded.” So Kliefoth, Theodotion, and the Vulgate have “the street and the wall.” To the latter word (ηָ ?ψεּ ?υ) Gesenius and others give the meaning “ditch, wall, aqueduct;”. Ewald, “a pond;” Hofmann, “a confined space;” Hitzig, “the court.” Hδvernick, Hengstenberg, and others translate it as a participle, “and it is determined.” The expression “in troublous times,” αְּ ?φεֹ ?χδָ ?ςִ ?ϊִּ ?ιν (betsoq ha’ittim), “in the difficulty or oppression of the times,” points to the circumstances under which the building was to proceed, and which are fully recorded in the Book of Nehemiah (chaps, 3, 4, 6, 9); but, in Keil’s opinion, is, according to Psalms 51:17, to be applied also to the spiritual building of the city of God. [265] “After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off” (Daniel 9:26). These weeks apparently the period immediately succeeding the seven weeks that constitute the first section of these weeks of years. Keil remarks that from the ΰַ ?δֲ ?ψֵ ?ι (akharι) “after,” it does not follow with certainty that the “cutting off” of the Messiah falls wholly in the beginning of the seventieth week, but only that the “cutting off” shall constitute the first great event of this week, and that those things that are mentioned in the remaining part of the verse shall then follow. Many think that, according to Daniel 9:27, this great event will only take place in the midst of that last week, when, in consequence of it, the typical sacrifices and oblations shall be made to cease, the true sacrifice being now offered.3. The period of their commencement. Where do the seventy weeks begin? Here also is some uncertainty and difference of opinion. [266] In the text, it is the time of “the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem” (Daniel 9:25). The uncertainty is as to what that time was, or what was the precise commandment referred to. There have been four commandments or edicts of the kings of Persia, to which the words of the angel have been referred, each a few years—though only a few—distant from the others. The first is the edict of Cyrus, B.C. 536, permitting the Jews to return to their own land (Ezra 1:1). The second, about sixteen years later, is that of Darius Hystaspis, in the second or third year of his reign, B.C. 520, confirmatory of that of Cyrus (Ezra 6:1). The third is that of Artaxerxes Longimanus, in the seventh year of his reign, B.C. 457, giving commission to Ezra to repair to Jerusalem and put matters right there (Ezra 7:7; Ezra 7:11). The fourth and last is that of the same monarch, in the twentieth year of his reign, B.C. 444, giving permission to Nehemiah to visit Jerusalem with the object of setting forward the restoration of the city (Nehemiah 1:2; Nehemiah 2:1, &c.) The first and the last two appear to have the most to be said in their favour, the third being, perhaps, the most probable. Whichever of these periods or edicts may be the exact one, there can be little doubt that the prophecy was intended to mean that somewhere about five centuries, more or less, after Daniel received the vision, Messiah was to appear. Although there is an uncertainty connected with ancient chronology, it appears that, as a matter of fact, the baptism of Jesus, which was preparatory to His death, like the setting apart of the passover lamb (Exodus 12:3; Exodus 12:6), took place somewhere about 483 years, or 69 prophetic weeks, from the third of the above edicts, and that in little more than seven years, or one prophetic week later, the Gospel had begun to be preached among the Gentiles. It is certain that at the very time when Jesus appeared, the Jews, guided by ancient prophecy, were in earnest expectation of the advent of their promised Messiah. When John the Baptist began to exercise his ministry, all men mused in their hearts whether he were the Christ. From his prison John sent two of his disciples to Jesus with the inquiry, “Art thou He that should come, or look we for another?” At the time of the birth of Jesus the godly in Jerusalem were waiting and looking for Him who was to be the Redeemer and Consolation of Israel. Even the Samaritans were looking for Him: “I know that Messias cometh; when He is come, He will tell us all things” (John 4:25). That there existed at that time a widespread report through all the East that a ruler should appear in Judea and obtain a universal dominion, even Roman historians testify. According to Josephus, it was that very expectation that moved the Jews to revolt from their Roman masters. It has even been believed by Jewish Rabbis that the Messiah was born at the time that the temple was destroyed, and that He lay hid among the lepers in Rome. So fully were the Jews persuaded that He should appear about that period, that, rejecting Him when He came in the person of Jesus, they were ready to embrace and welcome every pretender; till, always disappointed, their Rabbis pronounced a curse upon those who should attempt to calculate the time of His appearing, which could chiefly, and almost only, be done from this very prophecy of Daniel. “When the fulness of the time was come,” God did indeed “send forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). [266] “From the going forth of the commandment,” &c. (Daniel 9:24). Various opinions as to what commandment is here referred to. Calvin and �colampadius, and, among the moderns, Kleinert, Ebrard, Kliefoth, Keil, and others, regard it as the edict of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1), from which, says Kliefoth, the termination of the exile is constantly dated, and from which time the return of the Jews, together with the building up of Jerusalem, began. Keil thinks that Isaiah 44:28 directs us to this view, as also the words in Ezra 6:14, “They builded according to the commandment of the king of Persia.” Hδvernick and Hengstenberg, following some Church fathers, decide in favour of the second decree of Artaxerxes given in favour of Nehemiah in the twentieth year of his reign; Hengstenberg being of opinion that the words of the angel do not refer to the beginning of the building of Jerusalem, but much rather to the beginning of its complete restoration according to its ancient extent and glory. Luther and Bengel regard the “commandment” as the decree of Darius Hystaspis; while Bullinger, Pfaff, Sir Isaac Newton, Prideaux, Auberlen, and others prefer the edict of Artaxerxes given to Ezra in the seventh year of his reign. Dr. Rule, observes that the first decree by Cyrus related only to the temple, not the city; but that the great and decisive decree for rebuilding Jerusalem was issued by Artaxerxes, 457 b.c., in the seventh year of his reign, and is preserved in full in Ezra 7, being no doubt to be found in the archives of the realm. Seven weeks or forty-nine years from that date come down to the year 408 b.c., when Nehemiah finished his work of restoring the city. Sixty-two weeks, added to this, making sixty-nine weeks or 483 years, reach down to a.d. 26, when our Lord was about thirty years of age, and was baptised by John; which Dr. Rule considers to be meant by His being “cut off,” or separated as a victim for sacrifice. The remaining week or seven years was, in his view, occupied with the Saviour’s ministry till His death; during which He confirmed the covenant with many by His teaching. This is also the view of Dr. Pusey, who remarks, that of the four, two only are principal and leading decrees, that of Cyrus, and that in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus; that those of Cyrus and Darius relate to the rebuilding of the temple, those of Artaxerxes to the condition of Judea and Jerusalem; and that this rebuilding of the city and reorganisation of the Jewish polity, begun by Ezra and carried on and perfected by Nehemiah, corresponds with the words in Daniel, “From the going forth,” &c. He observes that the time also corresponds; that 483 years of the whole period of seventy weeks or 490 years, the last seven years being parted off, reckoned from the year 457 b.c., were completed in the year 27 a.d., which, since the nativity was four years earlier than our era, would coincide with our Lord’s baptism, when the Holy Ghost descending upon Him manifested Him to be the Anointed One, or the Messiah. He adds: “But the fact of these several periods being prophesied, and the last above six hundred years before, is the body, not the soul, of the prophecy; it is not that which is the chief evidence of its divinity.” Hesse thinks we are not forced to understand the angel’s words as referring, to only one of these edicts, but that they refer to the whole period during which such edicts were given, revoked, and renewed. Preiswerk thinks that, considering the uncertainty of ancient chronology, we ought not to lay much stress on calculating the exact year, but be content to point out a mere general coincidence of the prophecy with the historical time; and that if we show that possibly even a minute coincidence took place, and at least that no one can prove the contrary, we shall have done enough to prove the truth of the ancient prophecy. Sack thinks it was enough to strengthen faith and keep alive expectation, to leave only a general conception of the time when the Deliverer, Messiah the Prince, should appear.We may observe from the text— 1. The cause of rejoicing afforded by this prediction. This is one of those portions of Scripture that cannot be attentively and believingly read without a thrill of joy. Here is not only a prediction concerning the Saviour who was to come, with the blessed results of His advent, but of the very time when He was to appear, though given nearly five centuries before the event, and given in terms so plain and precise, that in consequence of it the Jews looked for His coming at the very period indicated; [267] while exactly at that period, Jesus, with every prophetic mark of the true Messiah found in Him, actually came; and though rejected, a thing which was also predicted of the Messiah, by the mass of His countrymen, and more especially their leaders, was hailed, accepted, and trusted in as the promised Saviour of the world, by numbers during His life, and by millions more since then in almost every part of the world, and among the most civilised portions of the human race. The reading of the text may well awaken those feelings claimed by another angel for his statement when announcing the actual fulfilment of the prophecy: “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people; for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour which is Christ the Lord.” If any tidings are fitted to evoke feelings of joy, surely it is these. [267] Josephus says: “What gave them (the Jews) courage to fight was a saying found in the Holy Scriptures that about that time (shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem) one of their nation was to obtain the government of the world.” This report was widely spread. Tacitus says: “Many had the conviction that it stood written in their ancient priestly books that just about that very time the East would rise up in great power, and men from Judea would obtain the government of the world.” Suetonius, another Roman historian of the period, also says: “The old and common opinion was spread through all the East that it was destined by fate that met of Judea should obtain at this time the government of the world.” Jewish writings bear the same testimony. “Our Rabbins have delivered to us that in the week in which the Son of David comes,” &c. (Talmud, Sanh. 97, 1). “Seventy weeks after the destruction of the first temple shall intervene till the destruction of the second” (Seder Olam, Yalkut Shimeoni, 2:79, 4). “Why was Jonathan ben Uzziel forbidden to interpret the Hagiographa? Because in it is contained the term of Messiah’s advent” (Megillah, 3, 1). Rashi says, “The term of Messiah is found in the book of Daniel.” Bishop Hurd observes: “They (the Jews) were led by these prophecies, as interpreted by themselves, to expect that they would be completed at the time at which we say they were completed; and it was not till after the coming of Christ that they began to interpret them differently, and to look out for another completion of them.… The natural and proper sense will be thought to be that in which we take them; for that sense occurred first to themselves, and was, in truth, their sense before we adopted it. When I say their sense, I mean especially in respect to the time which they had fixed for the accomplishment of the prophecies concerning the Messiah.” Dr. Keith remarks: Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, and Philo agree in testifying the antiquity of the prophecies, and their acknowledged reference to that period. Even the Jews to this day own that the time when their Messiah ought to have appeared is long since past; and they attribute the delay of His coming to the sinfulness of their nation. And thus, from the distinct prophecies themselves; from the testimony of profane historians; and from the concessions of the Jews, every requisite proof is afforded that Christ appeared when all the concurring circumstances of the time denoted the prophesied period of His advent.”2. The duty of personally accepting that Saviour whose advent was thus graciously foretold, and at the predicted period actually took place. The text reveals a Saviour and promises a salvation which meets the requirements of every human being; a salvation not only from sin’s consequences, but from sin itself, and one which in the Gospel is freely tendered to every creature. Millions, accepting the announcement and cordially embracing the promised Saviour as their own, have experienced its truth both in life and death, and, made by it new creatures in Christ Jesus, have rejoiced with exceeding joy. Such an experience is for each to make his own, and that without delay. “To you is the word of this salvation sent.” “Behold, now is the day of salvation.” “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” Has the reader embraced it? 3. The evidence here afforded of the truth of Christianity and the word of God. With this prophecy of Daniel before us, and the Gospel narrative in our hands, and the existence of the Christian Church before our eyes, we need nothing more to convince us that there is such a thing as divinely inspired prediction, and that Christianity is of God. Sir Isaac Newton, no mean authority in connection with such a subject, was willing to stake the truth of Christianity on this very prophecy of Daniel. With the prediction of the text and the facts of history before us, even the most scriptural may well exclaim with the magicians of Egypt, “This is the finger of God!” Believers, if only from the evidence afforded by this prophecy and its fulfilment, may rejoice with Peter in the assurance, that they “have not followed cunningly devised fables.” Calvin was right when he said, “How clear and sure a testimony we have in Daniel’s prophecy, where he counts the years till the advent of Christ; so that we may with boldness oppose Satan and all the scorn of the ungodly, if it be but true that the book of Daniel was in men’s hands before Christ came.” That it was so is doubted by none; even the keenest opposer of the genuineness of the book placing it at least 150 years before that event. [268][268] The views of the German Rationalists, and others of the same school, are thus expressed by an English writer, R. W. Mackay (Progress of the Intellect): “During the severe persecutions under Antiochus Epiphanes, when the cause of Hebrew faith, in its struggle with colossal heathenism, seemed desperate; and when, notwithstanding some bright examples of heroism, the majority of the higher class was inclined to submit and to apostatise; an unknown writer adopted the ancient name of Daniel, in order to revive the almost extinct hopes of his countrymen, and to exemplify the proper bearing of a faithful Hebrew in the presence of a Gentile tyrant.… The object of Pseudo-Daniel is to foreshadow, under a form adapted to make the deepest impression on his countrymen, by a prophecy, half-allusive, half-apocryphal, the approaching destruction of heathenism through the advent of Messiah.” The prophecies of Daniel are supposed by this school to extend to the death of Antiochus, but no further, the book being completed shortly after that event. The great effort is to make the periods mentioned in this chapter to coincide with the events of that time. The attempt, always failing, is renewed under another form again and again, with the same success. Dr. Pusey has counted thirteen various ways in which this school attempts to reckon the seventy weeks. Keil observes: “The opponents of the genuineness of the book of Daniel generally are agreed in this, that the destruction of this enemy of the Jews, or the purification of the temple occurring a few years earlier, forms the terminus ad quem (or termination) of the seventy weeks; and that their duration is to be reckoned, from the year 168 or 172 b.c., back either to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, or to the beginning of the exile. Hitzig, Ewald, Wieseler, and others suppose that the first seven year-weeks, or forty-nine years, are not to be taken into the reckoning along with the sixty-two weeks, and that only sixty-two weeks, or 434 years, are to be counted to the year 175 (as Ewald), or 172. (as Hitzig thinks), as the beginning of the last week, filled up by the assault of Antiochus against Judaism. But even this reckoning brings us to the year 609 or 606 b.c., the commencement of the exile, or three years further back. To date the sixty years from that event agrees too little with the announcement that “from the going forth of the commandment to restore,” &c. So that of the most recent representatives of this view, no one any longer consents to hold the seventy years of the exile for a time of the restoring and the building of Jerusalem. Thus Hitzig and Ewald openly declare that the reckoning is not correct, and that the Pseudo-Daniel has erred, and assumed ten weeks, or seventy years, too many.… By this change of the sixty-two weeks into fifty-two, or 434 years into 364, they reach from the year 174 to 538 b.c., the year of the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus, by whom the commandment to restore Jerusalem was promulgated. To this the seven weeks (or forty-nine years) are again added, in order to reach the year 588 or 587 b.c., the year of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, from which the year-weeks, shortened from seventy to sixty, are to be reckoned.” Keil adds: “This hypothesis needs no serious refutation; yet this supposition is made among these opponents a dogmatic axiom.”. XXXIV.—THE OBJECTS OF MESSIAH’S ADVENT (Chap. Daniel 9:24) We come to the cream of the prophecy. The angel foretells what were to be the blessed results of Messiah’s advent, which were to take place within the seventy weeks determined upon Daniel’s people. These objects and results are described in six particulars, or in three pairs, more or less connected. [269][269] The six statements are divided by Maurer, Hitzig, Krauichfeld, and others, into three passages of two members each, containing (1) the completion of the measure of sin; (2) the covering of sin and bringing in righteousness; (3) the fulfilling of prophecy and consecration of the temple. Keil regards the passage as rather containing two three-membered sentences; the first three treating of the taking away of sin, and thus giving the negative side of the deliverance; the three last treating of the bringing in of righteousness with its consequences, and thus of the positive deliverance; the members in both classes standing in reciprocal relation to each other.I. Transgression was to be finished or restrained. Daniel 9:24. “To finish transgression.” The word rendered “finish” is ambiguous, [270] many preferring the translation given in the margin of our Bibles, to “restrain.” One blessed result of Messiah’s advent was to be that transgression and sin would be so restrained that it should no longer rule and prevail, and in multitudes of cases should for ever cease among men as before. Accordingly the name to be given to the Messiah, and by which He was to be known among men when He came, was JESUS, because He should “save His people from their sins.” Deliverance from sin the primary object of Messiah’s advent. Hence Zachariah’s song: “That He would grant unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in righteousness and holiness before Him, all the days of our life” (Luke 1:74-75). Such deliverance impossible without an atonement or satisfaction to divine justice for human guilt. Sin must be forgiven before it can cease to reign. But “without shedding of blood there is no remission.” Sin shall have no dominion over us, only because we are delivered from the condemning sentence of the law, and placed on a footing of grace and free favour through the satisfaction made by Christ’s death. It is the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, that purges our conscience “from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). [270] “To finish transgression” (Daniel 9:24). μְ ?λַ ?μֵּ ?ΰ (lechallι), properly to “restrain.” Keil remarks that in this word a double reading is combined; the vowel points not belonging to the Kethibh or text, which rather has μִ ?λְ ?μֹ ?δ (lichloh), but to the Keri; the Masorites holding λμΰ to be of the same meaning with λμδ, to be ended, as Theodotion, Aquila, and the Vulgate have translated it. Rosenmόller, Gesenius, Winer, and others, have followed them in supposing that δ has passed into ΰ; and understand the expression to mean, the filling up or completing the measure of sin. Keil objects to this meaning as not agreeing with the context, and prefers to retain μλμΰ, to “restrain,” in the sense of hemming in or hindering wickedness, so that it can no longer spread about. Calvin understands the expression to mean putting an end to wickedness; Bullinger, that by the coming of Christ and the preaching of the Gospel, there should be a general restraint of sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:10. Dr. Rule understands the finishing or ending the transgression which has lasted through so many ages, in the stubborn rebellion of the ancient people against God’s law.II. Sin was to be forgiven. “To make an end of sin,” or, according to the margin, to “seal” it up, [271] as something that was no longer to see the light. This probably connected with the preceding as its ground or foundation. When sin, having been atoned for, is sealed up as a thing no longer to be seen, it loses its power or prevalence, and so is restrained as under bonds and imprisonment. Deliverance from the guilt of sin, inseparably connected with deliverance from its power; the latter deliverance being in consequence of the former, as it is the guilt or condemnation under which sin brings us that gives it its power. Sin, as an act of transgression against God’s law, brings death, spiritual as well as temporal, as its penalty; but spiritual death is simply the reign of sin in the soul. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Forgiveness cancels the sentence, and so delivers not only from the guilt but from the reigning power of sin. Christ is made “righteousness” to us, in the forgiveness from sin and the acceptance of our person; and so is also immediately made to us “sanctification” for our personal holiness (1 Corinthians 1:30). “In the Lord” we have “righteousness and strength;” righteousness, or forgiveness and acceptance, first, and then, or along with it, strength, in order to overcome sin and serve God (Isaiah 45:24). God first forgives all the sinner’s “iniquities,” and then heals all his “diseases” (Psalms 103:3). This forgiveness is complete and permanent, a true “sealing” up of sin. “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12). “There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “He that believeth is justified from all things;” “hath everlasting life;” and “shall never come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.” “Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Acts 13:38-39; John 3:36; John 5:24; Micah 7:19). This making an end of or “sealing” up of sin, by its entire and everlasting forgiveness, solely the result of Christ’s death. Constantly exhibited in the great central ordinance of the Church, the Lord’s Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood shed for the remission of sins.” [271] “To make an, end of sin.” μְ ?ηָ ?ϊֵ ?ν (lekhathem), literally, to “seal up.” Hofmann, Kliefoth, and Keil understand the expression to mean that sins should be laid under custody, so as no more to be active or increase; while Hengstenberg and others think it means the taking away of sins or removing them out of God’s sight. Polanus and Willet also understand the meaning to be, that sins should be bound up, sealed, and closed, so as never more to be opened, read, or declared against us, as writings are sealed up to be concealed and buried in oblivion (Colossians 2:14). Dr. Rule understands it of the putting away of sin by the atoning sacrifice of One who should establish a better covenant (Hebrews 9:26).III. Satisfaction or atonement was to be made for iniquity. “To make reconciliation for iniquity.” [272] This the ground of the preceding, as that again was of its predecessor. Before sin could be restrained or arrested in its power, it must be forgiven; and before it can be forgiven, it must be atoned for. This the significance of all the sacrificial blood that had flowed from the beginning; for “without shedding of blood is no remission.” The sin that is to be forgiven must be laid and punished somewhere. But “it was impossible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin”—atone or satisfy for man’s guilt. This could only point to blood that was able, from the dignity of the person whose blood it was, to effect this object. This was the Messiah, the Anointed, emphatically called “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” Hence the evangelical prophet: “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief. Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin. He shall bear their iniquities. He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:5-6; Isaiah 53:10-12). Thus exhibited by the Apostle: “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, by His blood, to show His righteousness, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of His righteousness at the present season; that He might Himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25-26, R. V.) [272] “To make reconciliation for iniquity.” μְ ?λַ ?τֵּ ?ψ (lehapper), to pardon, to blot out by means of a sin-offering, i.e., to forgive. So Keil. The term properly denotes, as in Leviticus 1:4, &c., to make atonement by a sacrifice; hence gives its name to the mercy-seat λַּ ?τֹּ ?ψֶ ?ϊ (capporeth), that which makes atonement or propitiation; applied to Christ, and His atoning death,—the “propitiation through His blood” (Romans 3:25). The verb in its simple form or root,” λτψ (caphar), to “cover;” applied to the covering or smearing of the ark with pitch; the atoning sacrifice covers the sin so as not to appear, and covers the sinner so that no deserved wrath shall reach him. Sin, when forgiven, said to be “covered” (Psalms 32:2). Keil observes that “the three expressions in the text—‘to finish or shut up transgression,’ &c.,—all treat alike of the setting aside of sin, but in different ways. The first presents the general thought, that the falling away shall be shut up, the progress and the spreading of the sin shall be prevented. The other two expressions define more closely how the source whence arises the apostasy shall be shut up, the going forth and the continued operation of the sin prevented. This happens in one way with unbelievers, and in a different way with believers. The sins of unbelievers are sealed, are guarded securely under a seal, so that they may no more spread about and increase, nor any longer be active and operative; but the sins of believers are forgiven through a reconciliation.”“Die man or justice must, unless for himSome other, able and as willing, payThe rigid satisfaction, death for death.”—Paradise Lost.IV. Everlasting righteousness for man’s acceptance to be procured. “To bring in everlasting righteousness.” What righteousness is this? [273] Righteousness in the Bible is either judicial or moral; acceptance with God, or that conformity to His law which is the ground of it. In the former sense it includes forgiveness, which is the removal or cancelling of what would otherwise forbid our acceptance with God. Such acceptance, however, requires more than forgiveness. Besides the cancelling of transgressions against God’s law, it requires a perfect obedience to it. It is properly the righteous man, or the man who is able to present such a righteousness as the law demands, that is accepted, or regarded and pronounced righteous. Forgiveness is something negative; righteousness something positive. Forgiveness cancels disobedience; righteousness presents obedience. To be accepted requires both. Both provided for in the Messiah; the one in His atoning death, the other in His spotless life. As the result of both, the Lord was “well pleased for His (Messiah’s) righteousness; He hath magnified the law, and made it honourable” (Isaiah 42:21). It is in the righteousness of Messiah, including both His active and passive obedience, His rendering to the law the obedience it requires, and the penalty it demands for the transgressions which in becoming man and man’s Surety He took upon Him, that we sinners are accepted. We are righteous and accepted in Him who for our sakes became God’s righteous Servant, and is pre-eminently “the Righteous” and “the Just One.” His name was therefore to be called “the Lord Our Righteousness.” “In Him shall all the seed of Israel be justified and shall glory. Surely, shall one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.” In this respect the Messiah was to be the Second Adam, and the contrast as well as the antitype of the first. “As through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19, R. V.) This righteousness of Messiah was to be an “everlasting” righteousness. Unlike the obedience of the first Adam, His obedience was to continue to the end, and to be followed by no disobedience; and the result of it was to be everlasting and perpetual acceptance, as of Himself, the Head, so of all His members who are made to share in His righteousness and be accepted in Him. They, like the Head, were never to come into condemnation, but to be “saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation,” and never to be “ashamed or confounded world without end” (Isaiah 45:17). This everlasting righteousness was brought in by Messiah as the product of His whole life, terminating in the one great act of obedience to His Father’s will and surrender to the law’s demands, His vicarious atoning death. “He said, It is finished; and He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” Thus brought in, it is made to belong to those for whom it was provided, on their belief in and acceptance of it as their own,—their entire trust and dependence on it alone for acceptance with God. This is faith, the means or instrument by which we are put in possession of it, and are justified. “Justified by faith, we have peace with God.” “He that believeth is justified from all things.” “The righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, unto all them that believe” (Acts 8:39; Romans 8:1; Romans 3:22, R.V.) [273] “To bring in everlasting righteousness.” Keil and others, taking the word in its moral sense, understand by “righteousness” that which is practised by believers,—the internal and external righteousness of the new heavens and the new earth, according to 2 Peter 3; called everlasting, as corresponding to the eternity of the Messianic kingdom (chap. Daniel 2:44, Daniel 7:18; Daniel 7:27). Vatablus understands it as Christ Himself; Bullinger and others, as Christ’s righteousness imputed to us (James 2:23).“Oh, how unlike the complex works of man,Heaven’s easy, artless, unencumber’d plan?It stands like the cζrulean arch we see,Majestic in its own simplicity.Inscribed above the portal, from afar,Conspicuous as the brightness of a star,Legible only by the light they give,Stand the soul-quickening words—BELIEVE AND LIVE.”V. Prophecy was to receive its fulfilment and to cease. “To seal up the vision and prophecy;” or, literally, to “seal up vision and prophet.” [274] In the birth, life, death, resurrection, and kingdom of the Messiah, vision and prophecy would receive their fulfilment; for what the Spirit of Christ testified beforehand in the prophets was “the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them” (1 Peter 1:11, R. V.) “The testimony of Jesus was the spirit of prophecy.” Jesus could testify before His death with reference to the “vision and prophecy” of the Old Testament, “The things concerning Me have an end.” To this completion of prophecy His last words might also have reference: “It is finished.” He had told His disciples while yet with them, that “all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms” concerning Him. So after His resurrection, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27; Luke 24:44). As a precious gift indeed for the edification of His Church, and the extension of His kingdom in the world, as had also been made the subject of Old Testament prophecy in connection with the “glories” that should follow Messiah’s sufferings, the Spirit was poured out upon the believers, both men and women, so that they were enabled to “prophesy” (Acts 2:1-18; 1 Corinthians 14:1; Ephesians 4:11). But with the apostles and immediate disciples of Jesus vision and prophecy in relation to the future were to cease. These having received their fulfilment, either absolutely, or, as in the case of Messiah’s kingdom, incipiently, with the communications given to the beloved disciple, the last of the apostles, the canon of Scripture was closed. [274] “To seal up the vision and prophecy,” ηָ ?ζεֹ ?οεְ ?πָ ?αִ ?ιΰ (Khazon venabhi), “vision and prophet.” Not only the prophecy, but the prophet or his calling, must be sealed; namely, when by the full realisation of all prophecies, prophecy itself ceases, and no more prophets appear. So Keil, who, however, thinks that the extinction of prophecy in consequence of its fulfilment is not, as Hengstenberg and others believe, “to be sought in the time of the manifestation of Christ in the flesh; for then only the prophecy of the Old Covenant reached its end, and its place is occupied by the prophecy of the New Testament, the fulfilling of which is still in the future, and which will not come to an end till the kingdom of God is perfected in glory; namely, at the termination of the present course of the world’s history, at the same time with the full conclusive fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy” (Acts 3:21). Willet and others think that the “vision” and “prophecy” intended was that of the Old Testament, which referred to the Messiah and had its fulfilment in Jesus. “Experience shows that long since all prophecies and visions among the Jews are ceased; hence they are convinced (or shown) that the Messiah is come.” Dr. Rule understands the clause to mean the fulfilling of the predictions of former ages, and the confirming of them by “making the events to correspond with the prophecies respecting the Messiah.” It is not, however, to be forgotten that the Old Testament prophets testified beforehand not merely “the sufferings of Christ,” but “the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:12).VI. The new spiritual Temple was to be set up and consecrated. “To anoint the Most Holy;” or, literally, “to anoint a Holy of holies.” [275] The allusion to the most holy place in the tabernacle or temple is obvious. The question is, what is here particularly the thing predicted? This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/phc/ relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXXVII.—ANGEL (Chap. Daniel 10:1-21) In this and the two following chapters we have another of Daniel’s remarkable visions. It is both the last and the longest recorded, occupying, as it does, nearly three whole chapters of the book. It was vouchsafed to Daniel as a man greatly beloved, which he is here again declared twice over to be. It was given him in the third year of Cyrus king of Persia, B.C. 531, Daniel now approaching the ninetieth year of his age. The prophet relates in the present chapter his spiritual exercises previous to his receiving the vision, which were no doubt made preparatory to his doing so. Already with thankfulness and joy he had seen his people, according to Jehovah’s gracious promise, restored, through the edict of Cyrus, the result of his own influence and exertions, to their own land. Notwithstanding this, how-ever, the Jews who had returned to Jerusalem, and who after all formed but a small proportion of the exiles, were in great humiliation and depression. Their first attempt had been to rebuild the temple; but in this they were opposed and hindered by the heathen already in the land. These, who had been settled there by Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, now demanded a share in the erection of the temple. This the Jews refused, on the ground that they formed no part of the covenant-people. Irritated by the refusal, these heathen settlers, or Samaritans, as they were then and afterwards called (Samaria being the part of the country in which they were located), set themselves to oppose the work in every possible way, and especially by seeking to prejudice the king of Persia against it, which they continued to do throughout the reign of Cyrus (Ezra 4:1-4). This opposition to the work, and its consequent interruption, had doubtless reached the ears of Daniel at the Persian court, where, probably on account of his advanced age, he had still remained. The tidings pressed heavily on his spirit; and deeply sympathising with his brethren, and concerned for the cause of his God, at the beginning of the new year, and as the time of the Passover approached, he set himself, as he had done before (chap. Daniel 9:3), to seek the Lord’s mercy for his people by prayer and fasting. He relates that in those days, he, the same Daniel who is also called Belteshazzar, [287] was “mourning three full weeks;” [288] neither eating any pleasant bread, nor drinking wine, nor anointing his body, [289] during the whole of that period (Daniel 10:2-3). The place of retirement which he had chosen for this exercise of continued prayer and fasting was on the banks of the Hiddekel or Tigris, where there already existed an oratory or place of prayer, according to Jewish custom. There, whither he had gone accompanied by some of his friends, he received the vision which he here relates. The communications, as on a former occasion, are made through an angel, who declares that what he communicates is what is “noted in the Scripture of truth;” [290] probably God’s unchanging decree, which was now so far made known to him. It is stated by the angel that the communication “is true,” [291] though the time appointed for its fulfilment (or the warfare and trouble predicted) “was long.” Daniel intimates also that he “understood the thing: I had understanding of the vision;” [292] a thing which, in relation to one point at least, as he afterwards relates, he particularly desired and asked for (chap. Daniel 12:8). The present chapter is remarkable for the insight which it affords into the angel-world and angel-ministries, given as a kind of preface to the divine communications which were to follow. The occasion of this special information being now vouchsafed to the prophet, was the struggle going on between the Jews and their heathen neighbours in the country to obtain the influence of the kings of Persia for, or against, the building of the temple; as also the situation which the Jews were, for centuries to come, to occupy in relation to the great world-powers to which they were to be subject, and from which they were so greatly to suffer. It was to be for the comfort of Daniel and his people to know that the Providence of a covenant-God was watching over them; and that under that Providence angelic agencies were continually employed in their behalf. These celestial beings appear to Daniel in the vision; the first and chief of whom, from a comparison of the description given of him (Daniel 10:5-6) with that in Revelation 1:13, &c., would seem to be identified with the Angel of the covenant, the Lord of angels Himself. [293] It appears uncertain whether he, or one of the other two, is the principal speaker in the vision, though probably one of the latter, [294] speaking under his direction, as in chap. Daniel 8:16. From the view here given regarding the ministry and agency of angels for the benefit of the Church of God in the world, we may observe the following particulars:— [287] “Belteshazzar” (Daniel 10:1). Calvin thinks that Daniel mentions this name as that by which he was better known among the nations with whom he would have this prophecy to become famous. Polanus thinks it is given to show that he was the same person who had the former visions, that so it might be received with greater credit and authority. [288] “Three full weeks” (Daniel 10:2). Literally, “three weeks of days;” an expression, which while it denotes, according to Hebrew idiom, three full weeks, may also indicate that there are weeks of another kind than those of days; e. g., the seventy weeks of the preceding chapter, which are weeks of years. Dr. Cox mentions as reasons for Daniel’s present protracted season of humiliation and prayer—his personal transgressions, the opposition experienced in the rebuilding of the city and temple, the reluctance of many of the Jews to return to Jerusalem and cooperate in the work, and the predicted conduct of his people when Messiah should appear and be “cut off.” [289] “Anoint myself” (Daniel 10:3). Jerome says the Persians, instead of bathing, anointed their bodies all over, which, according to Priny, was done both to defend themselves from the excessive heat, and preserve their bodies in health. Keil observes that the anointing with oil was a sign of joy and a joyous frame of mind, as with guests at a banquet (Amos 6:6); and was now intermitted by Daniel as in a time of sorrow. [290] “In the scripture of truth” (Daniel 10:21). Calvin observes that Holy Scripture often adopts forms of speech according to human custom; the “scripture of truth” being nothing but the eternal and inviolable decree of God Himself. Bishop Lowth remarks: “God’s decrees are spoken of as if they were committed to writing and registered in a book.” Mr. Bosanquet thinks it to have been a book or writing concerning “the truth;” and that what follows is mostly a comment founded upon it, and not to be mistaken for prophecy. [291] “The thing was true” (Daniel 10:1). Keil observes that in this statement Hitzig finds an intimation that betrays the writer’s standpoint, namely, the time when “the thing” was realised, Daniel not being able to say this before it happened. But this objection supposes that the author was a lying prophet who spoke from his own heart (Jeremiah 29:8; Jeremiah 29:15). But if Daniel had actually received a word from God, he could before its fulfilment testify its truth; that testimony here indicating, as in chap. Daniel 8:26, that the word now communicated to the prophet contained things which it would be difficult for the human heart to believe. Mr. Bos-anquet thinks that it was part of the interpretation made by some unknown person in or after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, and in the course of time accidentally transferred from the alternate columns or margin of the sacred roll into the text. But Revelation 22:19, teaches caution in supposing passages to be interpolations. [292] “He understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision” (Daniel 10:1). Rosenmόller understands αִּ ?ιο (bin) imperatively, and αִּ ?ιπָ ?δ (binah) as a mere repetition of the word: “Consider it, consider, I say, the thing made known through the vision.” So Lengerke and Mr. Bosanquet. Keil thinks that a summons to give heed or to understand would not be here in place. He considers αִּ ?ιπָ ?δ (binah) a substantive, and αִּ ?ιο (bin) the preterite, and not, as Hδvernick, the infinitive: “Understanding was to him by that which was seen,” αַּ ?ξַּ ?ψְ ?ΰֶ ?δ (bammareh), by the vision, i.e., by the appearance described in Daniel 10:5, &c. Kliefoth refers this last word to the earlier prophecies of chap. Daniel 8:7; Daniel 8:9. The objection that Daniel says (chap. Daniel 12:8) that he did not understand the vision, is disposed of, he observes, on the ground that the non-understanding had reference to a single point, viz., the duration of the affliction; regarding which, however, disclosures are given to the prophet in chap. Daniel 12:10, &c. Auberlen refers to a distinction, also noticed by Keil, between this and other revelations vouchsafed to the prophet, viz., that it is communicated partly by supernatural illumination for the interpretation of the dream-vision, partly by visions, and partly by the appearance of angels; indicating a noteworthy progression, in which one revelation always prepares the way, in a material and formal respect, for that which follows, and by which God gradually prepared the prophet for the reception of still more definite disclosures. [293] “A certain man clothed in linen” (Daniel 10:5). Dr. Rule thinks that it is Gabriel, distinguished as the Lord’s chosen messenger, who is described in Daniel 10:5-6; and that by a comparison with Revelation 1:13, &c., we find that the descriptions, though resembling each other, are not to be confounded, the latter having every divine attribute, while the former has none. Brightman thinks that his priestly garments proclaim him to be the only priest worthy to be consulted in all doubtful matters, and whose lips “keep knowledge.” Keil is led by Revelation 1:13, &c., to regard him as no common angel-prince, but a manifestation of Jehovah, i.e., the Logos or Word, who afterwards was made flesh; his appearance resembling that of the glory of Jehovah as seen by Ezekiel at the river Chebar, and indicating how by his acts he would reveal himself to his people in the great tribulation. So �colampadius, Willet, and others. [294] “A hand touched me” (Daniel 10:10). Hengstenberg thinks, with many old interpreters, that the person who speaks to Daniel and announces the future, is not the same who is described in Daniel 10:5-6, as the “man clothed in linen.” Jerome thinks they are the same created angel. So Pfaff and Bullinger. �colampadius thinks they are the same person, viz., Christ. So Keil. Hengstenberg identifies him with Gabriel. Dr. Rule thinks that other angels, less terrible than the one described in Daniel 10:5-6, ministered to the prophet (Daniel 10:10; Daniel 10:16; Daniel 10:18). Birks thinks the speaker in the vision is the angel of the covenant, the Son of God.1. The existence of different ranks and orders among those angelic ministers. The angels introduced in this chapter are “princes;” while one of them, named Michael, is called “one of the chief or first princes” (Daniel 10:13); [295] this same Michael being also called (chap. Daniel 12:1) the “great prince,” and elsewhere the archangel or chief of the angels (Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7). [296] As distinguished from the angels in general, some would appear to be princes, and that of different ranks. Peter seems to indicate the existence of such a celestial hierarchy, when he speaks of “angels, authorities, and powers” being subject to Christ; as well as Paul, who speaks of “principalities and powers in heavenly places” (1 Peter 3:22; Ephesians 3:19). Each of those princes apparently the constituted leader of an angelic host, perhaps one of those legions of which Jesus speaks (Matthew 26:53). The Book of Revelation speaks of Michael and his angels conflicting with the devil and his angels (Revelation 12:7). A similar subordination of rank would seem still to continue to exist aiming the angels who fell, and who are still spoken of as “principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). [295] “Michael” (Daniel 10:13). ξִ ?ιλָ ?ΰֵ ?μ = “who is like God,” expresses the idea of God’s unparalleled helping power. Hengstenberg identifies Michael with the “Angel of the Lord,” the leader of the Israelites, and prince of the army of Jehovah, mentioned in Exodus 32:34; Joshua 5:13; Zechariah 1:5). Melanchthon, Broughton, Junius, and others identify him with Christ. Birks and most interpreters think him a created angel. Calvin leaves it indifferent, observing that God does not confine Himself to any fixed rule. [296] “One of the chief princes” (Daniel 10:13). Keil observes that the title here given to Michael points undoubtedly to an arrangement of orders and degrees among the angels. From the circumstance that the guardian spirit of Persia (see next note) is called ωַׂ ?ψ (sar), a prince, it does not follow that “princes” is not a designation of the angels generally, but only, as Hofmann thinks, of the princes of the peoples who are the spirits-ruling in the social affairs of nations and kingdoms. The “chief princes,” he adds, can only be the princes, or chiefs, of the good angels who remain in communion with God and work for His kingdom. The work of standing up for Israel (chap. Daniel 12:1) is committed to Michael as one of them. As God would not intrust to a subordinate spirit a work demanding special power and greatness, the title given to Michael was for Israel’s comfort, as affirming that they were under very powerful protection, though little esteemed before the world.2. Their appointment to different spheres or posts of duty. Thus Michael is here represented as the prince of the people of Israel (Daniel 10:21), and in chap. Daniel 12:1, the prince “that standeth for the children of Daniel’s people;” his post apparently being to defend and protect that favoured nation. On the other side, we read of the princes of Persia and Grecia, being, in the opinion of many, the subordinate leaders among the fallen angels, to whom are assigned by their chief these countries as their respective spheres of operation. [297] So Paul speaks of principalities and powers, the “rulers of the darkness of this world” (Ephesians 6:12). How far individuals may be made the special charge of certain angels is perhaps less certain. Jesus, however, speaks of little children as having “their angels” (Matthew 18:10). The believers in Mary’s house at Jerusalem said of Peter at the door, “It is his angel” (Acts 12:16). The hill on which Elisha’s house stood was seen to be “full of horses and chariots of fire” round about the prophet (2 Kings 6:17). [297] “The prince of Persia—of the kingdom of Persia—of Grecia” (Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:20). Jerome, Melanchthon, Osiander, and others think the “king of Persia” to be Satan or evil angels. Dr. Rule thinks that the “prince of the kingdom of Persia” was Darius, and that the “kings of Persia” (Daniel 10:13) were the kings of subject provinces; while the princes of Persia and of Grecia (Daniel 10:20) were the kings of those countries, the King of Grecia being Alexander the Great. So Calvin, who thinks of Cambyses the son of Cyrus. Dr. Cox thinks that Satan, the prince or god of this world, either by himself or by one of his chief agents, employed his machinations to instigate Cambyses and the court of Persia to hostilities against the Jews; while the angelic spirit, to whom this ministration was intrusted, employed his efforts to influence the king and his nobles in their favour. Keil thinks the “prince of the kingdom of Persia,” in Daniel 10:20 the “prince of Persia,” is not King Cyrus, nor, as Hδvernick and Kranichfeld, with Calvin and most of the reformers, think, the kings of Persia collectively; but the guardian spirit or the protecting genius of the Persian kingdom, as the Rabbis and many Christian interpreters after Jerome have acknowledged; a spirit-being, yet not the heathen national god of the Persians, but, according to the view of Scripture (1 Corinthians 10:20, &c.), the demon (δαιμόνιον) of the Persian kingdom; i.e., the supernatural spirit-power standing behind the national gods, which we may call the guardian spirit of this kingdom. According to Kliefoth, this spirit stood behind the Persian kings to influence them against Israel, and to direct against the chosen people the power lying in Persian heathendom, so as to support the insinuations of the Samaritans, and whom the angel, mentioned in Daniel 10:5, came, at Daniel’s prayer, to dislodge from his position and deprive of his influence; in which, with the aid of Michael, he so far succeeded that, after a contest of twenty-one days, he gained the mastery over him, and stood in his place beside the kings of Persia, so as henceforth to influence them in favour of Israel. By the king of Grecia, Keil understands the spirit of the Maccabean world-kingdom, who, while the angel addressing Daniel returns to Persia to maintain the position he has gained, will come and cause a new conflict. Dr. Pusey, after Gregory, Theodoret, Lyranus, and others, regards these “princes” as good angels desiring the welfare of the peoples committed to their care, and so contending, though in submission to the will of God.3. The deep interest felt by those angelic beings in the welfare of good men and the prosperity of God’s cause. Their interest in good men seen in the manner in which Daniel is addressed as a “man greatly beloved;” words “indicative of tender compassion and encouragement, as addressed to an aged saint in whom the infirmities of age, blended with a deep self-abasement, rendered such assurances of regard especially grateful and appropriate.” The exhortation, “fear not,” expressive of the same loving interest and tender consideration. The earnest endeavour to impart strength to the overpowered and fainting prophet (Daniel 10:18-19) reminds us of the same affectionate concern manifested on behalf of the Man of Sorrows Himself in His agony in the garden (Luke 22:43). The whole of the narrative before us in reference to the exertions of these angelic ministers on behalf of Israel indicative of their deep interest in the welfare of that people, and the prosperity of Jehovah’s cause in the world. 4. The variety of their ministrations. Here, as elsewhere, we see them employed in conveying messages and delivering communications from God to His servants (Daniel 10:14). So in chap. Daniel 9:21-22, we see them also engaged in counteracting the evil influences brought to bear on rulers and others by the adversaries of God’s cause and people. From chap. Daniel 11:1, we find that the same celestial personage who communicates with Daniel had exerted his influence in strengthening and encouraging Darius in favour of the Jews, when thwarted and opposed in their work of restoring Jerusalem by the Samaritans, who sought to prejudice the king against them and their work. Their ministrations as varied as the circumstances, necessities, and requirements of the servants of God and heirs of salvation for whose benefit they are employed in ministering. 5. Their union and mutual help among themselves. “Michael, one of the chief princes,” says the principal speaker in the chapter, “came to help me” (Daniel 10:13). And again (Daniel 10:21), “There is none that holdeth (marg., ‘strengthened himself,—puts forth strenuous efforts or vigorously co-operates) with me in these things but Michael your prince.” The angels, though excelling in strength, yet of limited power. Even among those potent agents, co-operation and mutual aid are necessary and enjoyed. The same important principle experienced among the celestial as among terrestrial workers, Union is strength. “Two are better than one.” An example for the Church on earth in their works of good-doing. 6. Difficulties and opposition experienced by these angelic agents in their benevolent work. The angel who came to Daniel with the divine communications was withstood by the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and that apparently all the twenty-one days during which Daniel was fasting and praying (Daniel 10:13), [298] After fulfilling his mission to the prophet, he had to return to fight again with the prince of Persia, who was still endeavouring to thwart his services on behalf of the Jews (Daniel 10:20). So in Revelation 12:7, Michael and his angels are opposed by the devil and his angels. In Jude, Daniel 10:9, the same archangel is represented as having contended with the devil about the body of Moses, probably when commissioned by Jehovah to bury it (Deuteronomy 34:6). We see and experience the conflict carried on between the friends and foes of truth and righteousness on earth. It is well to know that a similar contest is waged by invisible powers above us and among us. Such contests no less real because unseen. The horses and chariots were on the mountain round about Eiisha before the servant’s eyes were opened to see them. It is certain that Christ’s servants are aided on earth by angelic agents; but it is quite as certain that they are also hindered and opposed by invisible powers of a different character (1 Thessalonians 2:18; Romans 16:20). Even when opposed by earthly adversaries, it is an encouragement to know that we are not alone in such an experience. Angels, who are “greater in power and might,” have also to contend against opposition while ministering to us and to the cause of Christ on earth. [298] “Withstood me” (Daniel 10:13). Dr. Cox remarks that contests of this nature are mentioned in other places of Scripture, as Zechariah 3:1-3; Jude 1:9; Revelation 12:7-8. “The angel lets the prophet catch a glimpse of the invisible struggles between the princes of the angels, in which it is decided who is to exert the determining influence on the worldly monarch (the king of Persia)—whether the god-opposed spirit of this world, or the good spirit whose aim it is to further the interests of God’s kingdom.”—Auberlen; who adds: “We are wont to speak in a spiritualising way of a struggle between the good and the evil spirit in man. Holy Scripture teaches us to regard such a struggle as real and substantial (compare 1 Samuel 16:13-15; 1 Kings 22:22). The Satanic influences, of which we have more particular knowledge through the language of Christ and His apostles, are essentially not different from this. The liberty of human actions is not hereby taken away; for the spirits exercise no compelling influence on men’s hearts, and their chief activity consists probably in the arrangement of outward events.”From the whole narrative we may learn— 1. How glorious must be the place that forms the abode of those angelic beings to whom we are here introduced. The visible glory and splendour of “the man clothed in linen” (Daniel 10:5-6), whether a created or uncreated angel, suggests the glory of the place where such have their residence. A similar appearance is elsewhere ascribed to those angelic ministers; for example, Matthew 28:3. How glorious the throne which is attended by such exalted and resplendent ministers! How glorious the King! A picture of His glory, under a human form, perhaps presented to us in this chapter. The queen of Sheba’s burst of amazement and admiration on seeing the glory of Solomon’s court, likely to be far exceeded by the believer’s experience as he enters the heavenly glory: “It was a true report that I heard—and behold, the half was not told me. Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants that stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom!” Daniel fainted at the glorious vision of the man clothed in linen. [299] Believers beholding “the King in His beauty “shall be filled “with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” [299] “There remained no strength in me” (Daniel 10:8). Keil observes that the effect which the appearance of the man clothed in linen had upon Daniel, formed a pre-intimation and a pledge of what would happen to his people in the future. As Daniel was thrown to the ground and raised up again by a supernatural hand, so should the people of God be thrown to the ground by the fearful judgments that should pass over them, but should again be raised up by the all-powerful help of their God and His angel-prince Michael, and should be strengthened to endure the tribulation.2. Ample provision made for the welfare of the Church and for the success of the Redeemer’s cause. An agency is provided in the wisdom and love of God, and committed into the hands of the Mediator, which, though invisible, is always in operation, and is fully adequate to meet all requirements and exigencies. Such provision made in the ministration of angelic beings, who, though necessarily limited both in their power and knowledge, yet “excel in strength” as well as wisdom; and, while yielding implicit obedience to the will of their Sovereign, are also deeply and lovingly interested in the happiness of His people and the prosperity of His cause. Their influence also, as spiritual beings, is capable of being exercised as well on the mind as on material objects. It is true that in their ministrations they are resisted by beings of a similar nature, though of an opposite character and disposition. How effectually, however, the ministry of angels is exercised on behalf of the Church, is shown by numerous examples both in the Old and New Testaments, one of which is found in this very book (chap. Daniel 6:22). 3. The duty of imitating the character and conduct of those angelic ministers. A petition taught by the Saviour, and constantly on the lips of the professing Church, is, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The book of Daniel, and especially the chapter before us, reveals how it is done there. We see these celestial beings not only promptly obedient to their Maker’s will, but cordially interested in whatever that will is, and especially in the work of ministering for the heirs of salvation about whom they are employed. Their obedience not only prompt but loving and hearty. What is done in obedience to the divine will is done “heartily as to the Lord.” Whatever the service on which they are sent, it is faithfully, zealously, and lovingly executed. Though thwarted and opposed for days and weeks together by hostile influences and wayward dispositions, they persevere in their mission till it is accomplished. It is our privilege to be engaged with them in serving the same Master, and in promoting the same objects. Like them we shall meet with opposition both from visible and invisible adversaries. Like them it is for us, through promised and provided grace, to persevere till our efforts are crowned with success, or we called away by the Master to another field of service. 4. The reverential spirit with which we ought to receive the communications of God’s word. Daniel relates that when the angel brought to him the divine communication with which he was charged, “when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling;” and again, “when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and became dumb” (Daniel 10:11; Daniel 10:15). One of the marks of the truly godly given by God Himself as that with which He is well pleased, is, that they “tremble at His word” (Isaiah 66:2). So Ezra speaks of the godly in his day (Ezra 9:4; Ezra 10:3). Striking contrast to the thoughtless indifference with which the divine oracles are too often read and heard. The deep humility, self-abasement, and godly fear that Daniel exhibited in relation to the divine communications which he received, a part of his general character, and that which doubtless prepared him for receiving those revelations by which he was so greatly honoured. “Them that honour Me, I will honour.” 5. The manifoldness of Scripture teaching. Not only in regard to our own race has the Holy Ghost been pleased to give us information in His word; but also in regard to an order of beings higher than ourselves in the scale of creation, and whose existence dates further back in the annals of the universe. [300] This information, too, the Scriptures afford us, not to gratify curiosity, nor even merely to augment our knowledge; but on account of the relation which those angelic beings bear to ourselves, and the important part assigned to them in connection with the human race, and more especially to that part of it who, like themselves, are engaged in the service of God. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” The information thus afforded us concerning angels calculated to exercise an important influence upon our spirit and daily walk, cheering us by the assurance of their presence and aid, and animating us by their holy and loving example (Psalms 34:7; Psalms 91:11-12; Ecclesiastes 5:6; 1 Corinthians 11:10). [300] This information, given through Daniel, regarding angels has been made an argument against the genuineness of the book as belonging to a later age; the angels being said to appear quite in the form in which they were introduced from the later Parseism into Judea, with the distinction of higher and lower orders, and the names given to certain individuals among them. But, as Dr. Pusey observes, some distinction among those heavenly hosts was revealed from the first (Genesis 3:24). Also, there was one known as distinct from and above all the rest as “the Angel of the Lord,” whether God the Son, or (as Dr. Pusey thinks) a created angel, and especially Michael, in whom God accustomed His creatures to the thought of beholding Himself in human form. He thinks the one thing peculiar in Daniel’s revelations regarding angels is that, as God set one chief angel as the deputed guardian of His people, so He set others over the nations, assigning to each nation one of those ministering spirits to succour and defend them, and to plead their cause with Himself, the Father of all. He observes that it is agreed that the common title Amesha-Cpenta (or Amshaspands), “the holy immortals,” does not occur in the oldest part of the Zendavesta; and that the names by which they are severally distinguished occur there also as names of qualities or substances. Dr. Rule observes: “It is a familiar saying with the Jews that their fathers brought up the names of angels out of Babylon; and, for anything we know to the contrary, it may be true that they brought them thence. But it would be an error to conclude that the Jews learned the names of angels from the Babylonians or from the Persians.” At first sight, he remarks, it might seem probable that, as the later Persian religion, unlike the Assyrian, is distinguished by long lists of angels, good and bad, Persia might be the birthplace of angelology; and it might be conjectured that the inspired writers of the New Testament, who record the names of Gabriel and Michael, drew them from the same source as the Persians, or indeed from the Persians themselves. “In the present case, the Persian documents of or before the age of Daniel, which are now accessible to us, are not known to disclose any information concerning angels’ names. As for Zoroaster, his date is not certainly known; but even if it was he who first taught the Persians that angels existed, and if he really flourished in the reign of Gushtaph or Darius Hystaspis, b.c. 521–486, he was probably born a few years before the decease of Daniel, but had not yet been heard of in Daniel’s time; and the only probability is that he would be glad to borrow from the prophet’s writings anything to serve his own purpose.” He concludes that angel were not known of in Babylonia, and therefore there could not have been angels’ names, except as the Babylonians and others learned them from the Hebrews. relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XXXVIII.—THE KINGS OF THE NORTH AND OF THE SOUTH. (Chap. Daniel 11:1-20.) We come to the things which the angel was commissioned to communicate to the prophet, and through him to the Church. They are spoken of as the things which should befall his people “in the latter days,” [301] being the things noted in “the scripture of truth.” The chapter is a continuation of the angel’s discourse, the first verse being more properly connected with the preceding chapter, as the communication only commences with the second. The prophecy is the most extensive and minute one which the prophet had hitherto received, including a period stretching from Daniel’s own time to the resurrection of the dead. [302] It contains a further filling up of the outline of the four great empires already given in the visions of the Great Image and the Four Beasts (chap. 2 and 7), as well as that of the Third Monarchy and the Little Horn in the vision of the Ram and the He-goat (chap, 8.) The prediction “was given,” says Auberlen, “to be a light to the people of Israel in one of the darkest periods of their chequered history, and, indeed, in the darkest centuries of their abandonment by God—centuries that have not yet run their course.” The angelic communication commences with a glance at the kings of Persia, who were yet to arise, and at the founder of the Third or Grecian Empire who was to succeed them. The angel then passes to the contendings that took place between the kings of two of the divisions of Alexander’s partitioned empire, Syria and Egypt, in order to introduce the power who had already formed a sadly conspicuous object in the visions of Daniel, as the great antagonist and persecutor of the Jews and of the religion of Jehovah, Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the kings of Syria. These Syrian kings are spoken of in the vision as the kings of the North, as distinguished from the kings of Egypt or of the South, to whom, after Alexander’s death, the Jews were subject. From Antiochus the vision appeals to pass to others of whom he appears as the type. [301] “In the latter days” (chap. Daniel 10:14). Dr. Cox remarks that, by this expression in the preceding chapter, “our views are naturally conducted through the perspective of revolving ages; all the events of which, till the great consummation, must be contemplated with reference to the Jewish nation or Daniel’s people, whose affairs form the centre of the chief transactions of this lower world.” [302] “Of all the predictions contained in the holy Scriptures,” observes Auberlen, “this is doubtless the most special and minute.… Its special minuteness, however, is by no means of such a kind as to lift the veil which, in the wise counsels of the Almighty, has been drawn across the future, nor of such a kind as to unfold the future to the gaze of a profane curiosity.” Mr. Birks gives the following summary of it:—“This enlarged prophecy of the ‘Scripture of Truth’ resumes the message of the earlier visions, and unfolds more clearly the idol-worship set up by the Little Horn or Wilful King, in the ‘three times and a half, of his permitted power, with the warfare of the Saracens and Turks, and their dominion in the East. A further extension of the predicted times is at length revealed. In this latest portion of the prophetic calendar, the Wilful King enters on the last form of his apostate power; and assuming to himself the features of personal malignity and an open rejection of Christ, which belong to Antiochus, his type and predecessor, and the king of the North, his temporary rival, gathers at length under his banner all the apostate nations; and in the height of his power and pride is broken and overthrown by the hand of God in the mountains of Israel.” Keil observes: “It is true that the Church interpretation, given by Jerome, is so far valid, in that it interprets the prophecy partially considered under the point of view of the very special predictions of historical persons and events, and from this view concludes that Daniel 11:21-35 treat of Antiochus Epiphanes, and Daniel 11:36-45 of Antichrist; according to which there would be in Daniel 11:36 an immediate passing from Antiochus to the Antichrist, or, in chap. Daniel 12:1, a sudden transition from the death of Antiochus to the time of the end and the resurrection of the dead. But the prophecy does not at all correspond to this representation. The angel of the Lord will reveal to Daniel, not what shall happen from the third year of Cyrus to the time of Antiochus, and further to the resurrection of the dead; but, according to the express declaration of chap. Daniel 10:14, what shall happen to his people, αְּ ?ΰַֽ ?δֲ ?ψִ ?ιϊδַ ?ιָּ ?ξִ ?ιν (beakharith haiyamim), “in the end of the days,” i.e., in the Messianic future, because the prophecy relates to His time. In the ΰַ ?ηֲ ?ψִ ?ιϊδַ ?ιָּ ?ξִ ?ιν (akharith haiyamim), the latter days or end of the days, there takes place the destruction of the world-powers, and the setting up of the Messianic kingdom at the end of the present world ζon. All that the angel says respecting the Persian and the Javanic (or Grecian) world-kingdoms, and the wars of the kings of the North and the South, has its aim to the end-time, and serves only briefly to indicate the chief elements of the development of the world-kingdoms, till the time that brings on the end shall burst forth; and to show how, after the overthrow of the Javanic world-kingdom, neither the kings of the North nor those of the South shall gain the possession of the dominion of the world. Neither by the violence of war, nor by the covenants which they will ratify by political marriages, shall they succeed in establishing a lasting power. They shall not prosper, because (chap. Daniel 11:27) the end goes yet “to the time appointed” by God. A new attempt of the king of the North to subjugate the kingdom of the South will be defeated by the intervention of the “ships of Chittim;” and the anger awakened in him by this frustration of his plans shall break forth against the holy covenant, only for the purifying of the people of God for the time of the end, because the end goes yet to the appointed time (Daniel 11:35). At the time of the end, his power will greatly increase, because that which was determined by God shall prosper till the end of the indignation (Daniel 11:36); but in the time of the end he shall suddenly fall from the summit of his power, and come to his end (Daniel 11:45); but the people of God shall be saved, and the wise shall shine in heavenly glory (chap Daniel 12:1-3).”I. The Persians and Alexander the Great (Daniel 11:2-4). Cyrus, the founder of the Second or Persian Empire, was now, as is stated in the previous chapter (chap. Daniel 10:1), in the third year of his reign, after succeeding his uncle, Darius the Mede, otherwise called Cyaxares II., who on the fall of Babylon had “taken” or received the kingdom, which he ruled for two years. To this second empire the Jews were in subjection, as they had been to the first or Babylonian, Judea being still only a tributary province. It was through the favour of its monarchs that the Jews were for two centuries to enjoy peace and prosperity in their own land and elsewhere. At the head of this empire there were yet to be three kings, who should be followed by a fourth, far richer than any of his predecessors (Daniel 11:2). These three kings are known in history as Cambyses, a son of Cyrus; Smerdis, who pretended to be another son; and Darius Hystaspis. The fourth is the well-known Xerxes, [303] thought to be the same with Ahasuerus of the Book of Esther, whose riches were proverbial, and in whose reign the empire reached its highest magnificence. “By his strength, through his riches,” he was to “stir up all against the realm of Grecia.” He is known as the king who, in his war with Greece, covered the shores of the Hellespont with his immense host. The disasters that attended his expedition, and the entire overthrow of the empire under one of his successors, Darius Codomannus, are well known in history. [303] “The fourth.” The Xerxes of the Book of Esther, according to Keil, Hδvernick, Ebrard, Delitzsch, Auberlen, and Kliefoth. On the contrary, Hitzig and some others would make the fourth king to be the third, to justify their interpretation of the four wings and four heads of the leopard (chap. Daniel 7:6) of the first four kings of the Persian monarchy.After mentioning Xerxes, the angel passes to the power by which the Persian empire was to be overthrown: “A mighty king shall stand up, which shall rule with great dominion, and shall do according to his will” (Daniel 11:3). Alexander the Great, thus referred to, with his rapid and extensive conquests, has been already before us in former visions as the founder of the Third or Grecian Empire. When in the height of his prosperity, however, he was to be cut off and his kingdom to be “broken, and divided toward the four winds of heaven,” his successors being none of his own posterity (Daniel 11:4). This also we have seen fulfilled in the untimely and unexpected death of Alexander, and in the division of his empire, not between his two sons, Alexander and Hercules, who were both murdered soon after their father’s death, but among his four generals, Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. See further under chap. Daniel 7:6, and Daniel 8:5-8; Daniel 8:21-22. Although the condition of the Jews was considerably affected by Alexander, it is more as a link in the historical chain that he is here introduced. II. The kings of Syria and Egypt, or of the North and South (Daniel 11:5-20). These, the most powerful of Alexander’s successors, are made, with their mutual contendings, to occupy a considerable part of the prophecy, from the circumstance that Judea lay between them, and was often the bone of contention to the rival parties. “The Jews,” says Luther, “placed thus between the door and the hinges, were sorely tormented on both sides. Now they fell a prey to Egypt, and anon to Syria, as the one kingdom or the other got the better; and they had to pay dearly for their neighbourhood, as is wont to be in time of war.” The prophecy regarding these kings commences with the statement that the king of the South or of Egypt should “be strong, and one of his princes,” that is, of the princes of Alexander, namely, the king of Syria, who should “be strong above him, and have dominion,” which should be “a great dominion” (Daniel 11:5). [304] This we find verified in the kings of Egypt and Syria, or, as they are sometimes called, the Lagidζ and the Seleucidζ, from the names of their respective founders, Ptolemy Lagus, and Seleucus; the latter becoming the sovereign of not less than three fourths of all the Asiatic dominions conquered by Alexander the Great. It was under Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second of the kings of Egypt, that, in consequence of the number of Jews residing in that country [305] and speaking Greek, the Greek or Septuagint version of the Old Testament was made, about the year 273 B.C. Of these kings, the angel says, “in the end of years,” or after several years, “they shall join themselves together,” in friendly alliance; “for the king’s daughter of the South shall come to the king of the North to make an agreement;” an alliance, however, which was to effect nothing; the angel adding, “but she shall not retain the power of the arm,” or be able to render any permanent help to her father in relation to Syria. “Neither shall he stand, nor his arm; but she shall be given up, and they that brought her, and he that begat her (marg., ‘he whom she brought forth’), and he (or they) that strengthened her in these times” (Daniel 11:6). Jerome, from various ancient authors, gives the following account in verification of the prophecy:—After many years, Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, wishing to bring this troublesome contention to an end, gave his daughter Berenice in marriage to Antiochus, king of Syria (surnamed Theos or the god); Antiochus having two sons, Callinicus and Antiochus, by Laodicea, his first wife, who was still living. Philadelphus himself took his daughter to Pelusium, carrying with him as her dowry many thousands of gold and silver, whence he obtained the name of the Dowry-bearer. But Antiochus, though at first professing to take Berenice for his consort in the kingdom, and to retain Laodicea as his concubine, after a length of time was overcome by the love of his first wife, and took Laodicea and her children back to the palace. Landicea, fearing that Berenice would win back the heart of her fickle husband, employed her servants to take away his life by poison, and then delivered up Berenice and the child she had borne to Antiochus to two princes of Antioch to be murdered, while she made Callinicus, her eldest son, king in the room of his father. The angel foretells the sequel of this tragedy. “But out of a branch of her roots,” sprung from the same parents, “shall one stand up in his estate (or stead), which shall come with an army, and shall enter into the fortress (or strong city) of the king of the North, and shall deal against them, and shall prevail: and shall also carry captives into Egypt their gods, with their princes, and with their precious vessels of silver and gold; and he shall continue more years than the king of the North. So the king of the South shall come into his kingdom, and shall return into his own land” (Daniel 11:7-9). Jerome relates: After the murder of Berenice and the death of her father Ptolemy Phila-delphus, her own brother, Ptolemy Euergetes, came with a great army and entered into the provinces of Callinicus, then reigning in Syria with his mother Laodicea; and after revenging himself upon them, took possession of Syria, Cilicia, the parts beyond the Euphrates, and almost all Asia. Afterwards, on receiving intelligence from Egypt that a sedition had arisen, he seized on the kingdom of Callinicus, took forty thousand talents of silver, precious vessels, and images of gods to the number of two thousand and five hundred, including those which Cambyses had carried out of Egypt into Persia. In reference to the clause, “he shall continue more years than the king of the North,” it has been remarked that the average length of a reign in Egypt was about twenty-seven years and four months, while that in Syria was just one-half; and that “the atrocious cruelty of the Syrians, and especially their oppression of the Jews, is enough to account for the shortness of their lives, to any one who takes into consideration the retributive providence of God, who scourges unjust kings by their discontented subjects.” [304] “Shall be strong, and one of his princes” (Daniel 11:5). C. B. Michaelis, Rosenmόller, and others understand his princes as those of the “mighty king” (Daniel 11:3), or Alexander; while Keil refers the pronoun to the king of the South, the prince being the king of the North. Bishop Newton, who observes that the Hebrew text appears here a little confused, and perhaps defective, thinks that possibly the words ξֶ ?μֶ ?κְ δַ ?φָּ ?τεֹ ?ο (melech hattsaphon), “king of the North,” may have fallen out. The rendering of the Septuagint is clearer: “And one of these princes shall be stronger than he.” It is here where Mr. Bosanquet thinks the marginal comment began, which ultimately became incorporated with the text. He thinks the prophet gives no particulars concerning the four successors of Alexander, but proceeds at once to the object of the vision, the king of the latter days, according to chap. Daniel 10:14, after amplifying in Daniel 11:2-4 what is said in chap. Daniel 8:20-22 concerning the kingdoms of Persia and Greece, and thus leading back the mind of the reader to the words of chap. Daniel 7:17, “at the time of the end shall be the vision,” i.e., the vision of the king of fierce countenance (Daniel 8:23), who shall appear at “the last end of the indignation “(Daniel 8:19), and who “shall stand up in the latter time of those kingdoms” which were to be formed on the platform of Alexander’s empire in the East, that is, in “the latter days.” He thinks the interpreter, passing over Ptolemy Soter, Lysimachus, Cassander, and Seleucus Nicator, selects, out of more than twenty, ten kings, beginning with Ptolemy Philadelphus, and ending with Antiochus Epiphanes and Philometor, who all lived nearly in his own days, being the ten kings or horns for whose succession the kingdom of Alexander was to be “plucked up,” according to Daniel 11:4. In this supposition Mr. B. appears to stand alone. [305] “Robbers of thy people “(Daniel 11:14). τָּ ?ψִ ?ιφֵ ?ιςַ ?ξְּ ?κָ (varitse ’ammecha), according to Dr. Rule, are the separatists who left Judea for Egypt, and there attached themselves to Onias, who built a temple at Heliopolis like that at Jerusalem, and established a kind of rival worship. Sir Isaac Newton considers them to be the Samaritans and such like. The Septuagint has “pestilent ones;” the Vulgate, “prevaricators.” Bishop Newton renders the term “revolters,” the factious and refractory ones, the majority of the Jews at that time being for breaking away from allegiance to Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Keil understands those violent men who break through the barriers of the divine law (Ezekiel 18:10).The angel proceeds. “But his sons (those of the king of Syria) shall be stirred up, and shall assemble a multitude of great forces; and one shall certainly come, and overflow, and pass through: then shall he return, and be stirred up, even to his fortress. And the king of the South shall be moved to choler, and shall come forth, and fight with him, even with the king of the North, and he shall set forth a great multitude, but the multitude shall be given into his hand. And when he shall take away the multitude, his heart shall be lifted up; and he shall cast down many ten thousands; but he shall not be strengthened by it. For the king of the North shall return, and shall set forth a multitude greater than the former, and shall certainly come after many years with a great army and with much riches” (Daniel 11:10-13). The following are the facts of history that verify this part of the prophecy:—The two sons of Callinicus, namely, Seleucus Ceraunus and Antiochus, surnamed the Great, stirred themselves up to recover their father’s dominions. The former, though surnamed the Thunderer, was equally weak in body and mind, and after a reign of three years was poisoned by his generals, having done little more than assemble a large force, which, for want of money, he was unable to keep together. After his death, his brother Antiochus came with a great army, retook Seleucia, his fortress, and recovered Syria; and after a time he returned, overcame the Egyptian general, and had thoughts of invading Egypt itself. Ptolemy Philopator, having succeeded his father Euergetes, whom he had murdered, enraged at his losses, roused himself from his sensual indulgences, and marched with a numerous army us far us Raphia, between Rinocolura and Gaza, where he met Antiochus with a still more powerful host. The latter was defeated, and his numerous armament given into Ptolemy’s hand, ten thousand of his troops having been slain, and four thousand made prisoners. The weak heart of Ptolemy was lifted up by his success, and on making a visit to Jerusalem, among other cities which sent their ambassadors to do him homage, he demanded to be allowed to enter the interior of the temple. When Simon the high priest remonstrated, alleging that not even ordinary priests were admitted into the inner sanctuary, the king haughtily answered that although they were forbidden, he ought not to be so, and then pressed forward. The Jewish historian relates that in passing through the inner court for that purpose, he was seized with a panic and fell speechless to the ground. He was carried out half dead; and soon after his recovery he departed, full of anger against the Jewish people. The result was that on returning to Alexandria, he commenced a bitter persecution of the numerous Jews residing there, so that “many ten thousands were cast down” by it; only three hundred retaining their civil rights at the expense of their religion, while, according to Eusebius, forty thousand, or, according to Jerome, half as many more, preferred death rather than obey the royal decree that commanded them to worship idols. Ptolemy, giving himself up to his pleasures instead of pursuing his victory over Antiochus, was “not strengthened by it.” He died about a dozen years after, and Antiochus, raising an incredibly large army among the upper provinces of Babylonia and Media, came down upon his son, Ptolemy Epiphanes, an infant four years old. The prophecy continues: “And in those times there shall many stand up against the king of the South: also the robbers of thy people, [306] or “breakers,” that is, of the divine law, shall exalt themselves to establish the vision; but they shall fall. So the king of the North shall come, and cast up a mount, and take the most fenced cities; and the arms of the South shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand. But he that cometh against him shall do according to his own will, and none shall stand before him; and he shall stand in the glorious land, which by his hand shall be consumed” (Daniel 11:14-16.) [307] History relates that Philip of Macedon entered into a league with Antiochus to divide Ptolemy’s dominions between them, each taking the part that lay nearest to him; in consequence of which, as Judea lay nearest to Antiochus, that country was seized by him and the generals of Ptolemy by turns. The Jews themselves were divided into factions, part favouring the cause of Ptolemy, to whom they were already under allegiance, while others gave their aid to Antiochus, by which they only prepared the way for the fulfilment of the prophecy regarding the sufferings which the Jews were to endure under one of his successors. The help, however, which was rendered to Antiochus by the Syrian faction at Jerusalem, was of little avail. Scopas, the Egyptian general, recovered Phenicia and C�le-Syria; and after subduing the Jews, placed a garrison in Jerusalem. This, however, only continued for a time. Antiochus, coming to Judea, encountered Scopas at the sources of the Jordan, destroyed a great part of his army, and pursued him to Sidon, where he shut him up, with ten thousand of his men, till famine obliged him to surrender. Antiochus soon retook Phenicia, C�le-Syria, and Palestine, nothing being able to withstand his victorious arms. He stood “in the glorious land.” The party that revolted from Ptolemy cordially received him into Jerusalem, and even assisted him in besieging the garrison which Scopas had left in the citadel, so that his power was established in Judea. The land, however, was wasted by his troops, as well as in other ways. [306] “Robbers of thy people “(Daniel 11:14). τָּ ?ψִ ?ιφֵ ?ιςַ ?ξְּ ?κָ (varitse ’ammecha), according to Dr. Rule, are the separatists who left Judea for Egypt, and there attached themselves to Onias, who built a temple at Heliopolis like that at Jerusalem, and established a kind of rival worship. Sir Isaac Newton considers them to be the Samaritans and such like. The Septuagint has “pestilent ones;” the Vulgate, “prevaricators.” Bishop Newton renders the term “revolters,” the factious and refractory ones, the majority of the Jews at that time being for breaking away from allegiance to Ptolemy, king of Egypt. Keil understands those violent men who break through the barriers of the divine law (Ezekiel 18:10). [307] “Shall be consumed” (Daniel 11:16). λָּ ?μָ ?δ (calah) may also denote, “shall be perfected,” prosper, and flourish. The Septuagint has “shall be finished.” Bishop Newton remarks that Antiochus, in order to reward and encourage the Jews in their fidelity and obedience to him, gave orders that their city should be repaired, and the temple should be finished and adorned. Keil regards the word not as a verb but a substantive, and reads (as an explanatory clause), “and destruction is in his hand;” the destruction referring to the Holy Land, in which violent (or rapacious) people (Daniel 11:14) make common cause with the heathen king, and so put arms into his hands to destroy the land. Hδvernick and others, also regarding λָּ ?μָ ?δ (calah) as a noun, render the clause, “and it (the land) is wholly given into his hand.”The angel proceeds: “He shall also set his face to enter with (or against) the strength of his whole kingdom (or, ‘to enter by force into the whole kingdom,’ i.e., of Egypt), and upright ones (or, according to the margin, ‘equal conditions,’—an agreement by a marriage alliance) with him: thus shall he do: and he shall give him the daughter of women, corrupting her; but she shall not stand on his side, neither be for him. And after this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him. Then he shall turn his face toward the fort of his own land: but he shall stumble, and fall, and not be found” (Daniel 11:17-19). History gives the fulfilment. Antiochus, having been so far successful against Egypt, formed schemes to seize upon the whole kingdom. His aim was to accomplish this by means of a marriage alliance, giving Ptolemy his beautiful daughter Cleopatra in marriage, thinking, through her affection for himself, to obtain the kingdom of her husband. In this, however, he was disappointed. The marriage took place, but Cleopatra was too true a wife for his ambitious schemes, and sided with her husband against her father. Antiochus then, collecting a large fleet, turned his face “to the isles” of the Mediterranean, including the Greek cities of the coast, many of which he took. As these, however, were in alliance with the Romans, the latter, under the consul Acilius, uniting with their allies, after gaining repeated victories over Antiochus, compelled him to return with his army into Asia. After his defeat at Magnesia, he fled to Sardis, and the next day reached Antioch, “the fort of his own land.” Two years after he was slain by the Persians while plundering the temple of Jupiter Belus at Elymais, or, according to another account, by his companions while carousing at a banquet. The prophecy regarding the kings of the North and the South, introductory to the main one relating to Antiochus Epiphanes, closes with the brief notice of Seleucus Philopator. “There shall stand up in his estate (or stead) a raiser of taxes (Marg., ‘one that causeth an exactor to pass over’), [308] in the glory of the kingdom; but within few days he shall be destroyed, neither in anger, nor in battle” (Daniel 11:20). This “raiser of taxes” was Seleucus Philopator, who succeeded his father Antiochus the Great, and did nothing memorable in his twelve years’ reign. Of a sluggish disposition, he was intent on nothing but raising money to pay the tax levied upon him by the Romans. He was murdered by his treasurer or chief collector, Heliodorus, whom he had sent to plunder the Temple at Jerusalem. [308] “A raiser of taxes “(Daniel 11:20). πεֹ ?βֵ ?ωׂ (noghes), according to most, a collector of tribute, as in 2 Kings 23:35; the person understood being Heliodorus, whom Seleucus Philopator sent to Jerusalem to seize the temple treasure. Keil prefers “taskmaster;” and understands the oppressions not only of the Holy Land, but of his kingdom in general. He observes here that, from a comparison of the prophecy with the history, this much follows, that the prophecy does net furnish a prediction of the historical wars of the Seleucidζ and the Ptolemies, but an ideal description of the war of the kings of the North and the South in its general outlines; whereby, it is true, divers special elements of the prophetical announcement have been historically fulfilled, but the historical reality does not correspond with the contents of the prophecy in anything like an exhaustive manner.From this part of the prophecy we may note— 1. The foreknowledge and providence of God. The Apostle only declared what reason itself may teach us, when he said, “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” The architect knows beforehand what he will do in the erection of the building when he prepares the plan. The weaver knows beforehand what he will do with his web when he has fixed upon the pattern. God’s works embrace those of providence as well as of creation. “My Father worketh hitherto,” said Jesus, “and I work.” His almighty power and boundless wisdom are continually occupied in relation to all that His creating hand has produced, upholding and governing all His creatures and all their actions, so that without Him not even a sparrow falls to the ground. “In Him we live and move,” as well as “have our being.” The details predicted in this section, now matters of history, were all included within the divine foreknowledge and Providence, like every other event that takes place. Being foreknown by God, it was easy to communicate the knowledge of them beforehand, as far as divine wisdom saw meet. It is our comfort to know that “the Lord reigneth;” and that not only matters connected with rulers and empires, but all events, whether great or small, are not only known by God beforehand, but are ordered and controlled in His all-wise providence, so that the ends He designs shall be accomplished; making even the wrath of man to praise Him, while the remainder of that wrath He restrains; and causing all things to “work together for good to them that love God, and who are called according to His purpose” (Psalms 76:10; Romans 8:28). This gracious purpose continually kept in view in all His doings. The thing that is determined shall be done (Daniel 11:36). 2. The character and condition of human nature apart from divine grace. The section valuable as confirming the view given of the kingdoms of the world in Daniel’s vision of the Four Beasts, of which the third is here partially exhibited. It affords an epitome of secular history extending over three centuries, and a specimen of that history in all ages of the world. It is especially valuable inasmuch as the period brought before us in the section is that in which Greek culture had reached its highest perfection. It exhibits sin and misery as the characteristics of fallen humanity with all the advantages that worldly art and science could afford it. It shows the works of the flesh, or of man’s fallen nature unrenewed by divine grace, to be what the Bible represents them,—“enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions; unrighteousness, covetousness, envy, murder, deceit, malignity (Galatians 4:20; Romans 1:29). Fifty thousand unoffending Jews cruelly massacred by a Ptolemy in and around his own metropolis, because he was refused a profane entrance into the Holy of Holies at Jerusalem! God’s long-suffering patience and fatherly pity exercised on such a world. The world was shown to need a Saviour, and a Saviour was provided. Into such a world Christ came. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish but have everlasting life.” The view here given of the kingdoms of the world, such as to awaken the longing for the setting up and universal extension of the promised kingdom, which is “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” XXXIX.— ; OR, THE VILE PERSON. (Chaps. Daniel 11:21-35.) The next part of the prophecy is occupied with a person who has been already the subject of divine revelation as the Little Horn of the Third or Grecian Empire (chap. Daniel 8:9-12; Daniel 8:23-25). This is Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanes, or the Illustrious. The present prediction concerning him is a considerable enlargement of the former one. The prominence given to this Syrian king arises in the first instance from his being the great enemy and persecutor of the Jewish people; and secondly, from his being made the type of another persecuting power to arise under the New Testament dispensation, and to continue in one form or other to the time of the end. [309] The prophecy regarding him would seem to make way for and to melt into predictions concerning that other power or powers of which he was to be the forerunner and type. We have— [309] Jerome says, at Daniel 11:19 : “Thus far the order of history is followed, and between Porphyry and our interpreters there is no dispute. The rest that follows, to the end of the book, he (Porphyry) interprets of Antiochus surnamed Epiphanes.… And while much that we shall afterwards read and expound agrees with the person of Antiochus, they (the Christian interpreters) will have him to be the type of Antichrist; and the things which had their first fulfilment in him, they will have to be accomplished in Antichrist.… Our people interpret it all of Antichrist who is to arise in the last time.” Chrysostom, however, as Dr. Rule observes, writing a book against the Jews about the same time, in which he gives a brief account of this latter part of Daniel’s prophecies, applies the whole exclusively to Antiochus.I. His rise. “And in his estate (or stead, viz., that of Seleucus Philopator, the ‘raiser of taxes,’ Daniel 11:20) shall stand up a vile person, [310] to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Daniel 11:21). The vileness of this Antiochus the Illustrious appears, from what profane historians relate of him, as conducting himself much below his dignity, consorting and drinking with people of the lowest rank, frequenting public brothels and places of revelry and dissipation, jesting and dancing with low and frivolous persons, and such like. His vileness such that his reckless conduct earned for him the title of Epimanes the Madman, rather than Epiphanes the Illustrious, even buffoons in the theatre being ashamed of him. The rightful heir to the throne was not Antiochus, but his nephew Demetrius, the son of the late king, Philopator, who at the death of his father was on his way to Rome as a hostage. The right to the Syrian throne, which had immediately been seized by Heliodorus, the murderer of Philopator, was also disputed by Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt, who claimed it as the son of Cleopatra, sister of the late king and daughter of Antiochus the Great. Antiochus did not thus receive the honour of the kingdom as the rightful heir, but coining in “peaceably,” softly, and by stealth, or unexpectedly, [311] obtained the kingdom “by flatteries;” first flattering Eumenes, king of Pergamus, and his brother Attalus, to gain their assistance; then the Syrians themselves, by a promise of clemency and less taxation; and, finally, the Romans, to whom he sent ambassadors to court their favour with a rich present and the payment of the arrears of tribute, desiring them to make the same alliance with him which they had made with his father, Antiochus the Great, and promising constant submission to whatever the senate should require. [310] “A vile person” (Daniel 11:21). πִ ?αְ ?ζֶ ?δ (nibhzeh), “one despised;” that is, says Keil, such a one as by reason of birth has no just claim to the throne, and therefore appears as an intruder; also one who finds no recognition: not bad or unworthy, but supposing unworthiness. The honour of the kingdom, or that which men give to the king, was denied to the despised one on account of his character. [311] “Peaceably” (Daniel 11:21). αְּ ?ωַׁ ?μְ ?εָ ?δ (beshalvah), “in quietness” or security, i.e., says Keil, unexpectedly. “When they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh.”II. His success. “And with the arms of a flood shall they (his opposers) be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant (the Jewish high priest). And after the league made with him he shall work deceitfully: for (rather ‘and’) he shall come up, and shall become strong, with a small people. He shall enter peaceably even upon the fattest places (or, shall enter the quiet and plentiful cities) of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers’ fathers; he shall scatter among them the prey, and spoil, and riches; and he shall forecast his devices against the strongholds, even for a time. And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the South with a great army; and the king of the South shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand, for they shall forecast devices against him. Yea, they that feed of the portion of his meat shall destroy him, and his army shall overflow, and many shall fall down slain. And both these kings’ hearts shall be to do mischief, and they shall speak lies at one table; but it shall not prosper: for yet the end shall be at the time appointed” (Daniel 11:22-45). The following is the historical verification:—The armies of the opposers of Antiochus were vanquished by the king of Pergamus, while his own presence disconcerted all their measures. Onias III., the Jewish high priest, he removed from his office, and appointed his brother Jason in his stead, in return for a large sum of money which he offered him. This league with Jason, “the prince of the covenant,” [312] he broke, and deposed him in favour of Menelaus, who offered a larger price for the priesthood. [313] Having come from Rome, where he had been kept as a hostage, with only a few attendants, he soon received a great increase of followers, and entered the quiet and plentiful cities of Judea, now a province of Syria, as it had previously been of Persia, and then of Egypt. His lavish bestowment of gifts from the spoils he took is referred to in the first book of the Maccabees, where he fears he should no longer have such gifts to bestow as he had done before, “for he had abounded above the kings that were before him” (1Ma 3:30). His object in this liberality was to secure the possession of the provinces of Judea, Phenicia, and C�le-Syria, which were claimed by the king of Egypt. For the same object he put Joppa and the frontier towns in a state of defence, “forecasting devices against (or concerning) the strongholds” (or, as the Septuagiut reads it, against Egypt). A few years after he marched against Egypt with a large army; and although Ptolemy’s generale made great preparations to resist him, they were unable to defeat his “fraudulent counsels.” The author of the second book of Maccabees says, “When the kingdom was established before Antiochus, he thought to reign over Egypt, that he might have dominion over two realms. Wherefore he entered into Egypt with a great multitude, with chariots, and elephants, and horsemen, and a great army; and made war against Ptolemy, king of Egypt; but Ptolemy was afraid of him and fled; and many were wounded to death. Thus they got the strong cities in the land of Egypt; and he took the spoils thereof.” Porphyry, an apostate Jew, who, after he became a heathen, wrote a book on Daniel in the latter part of the third century, says that the battle was fought between Pelusium and Mount Casius. Some of Ptolemy’s servants at the same time proved unfaithful to him, while the Alexandrians revolted and made his brother Euergetes, or Physcon, king in his stead. Partly, it is thought, by his humanity after the victory, he gained not only Pelusium but all Egypt; after which he entered into an outward friendship with the young king, Philometor, and took upon him to order the affairs of the kingdom; Antiochus pretending, as Jerome says, “to consult for his nephew’s interest and to recover him the crown, although only plotting his ruin; while Ptolemy on his part was resolving to take the first opportunity of breaking the league and seeking a reconciliation with his brother. Bishop Newton thinks the mischief they plotted was against the Jews; but which did not take effect, as the time appointed by God was not yet.” [312] “The prince of the covenant” (Daniel 11:22). πְ ?βִ ?ιγαְּ ?ψִ ?ιϊ (neghidh berith) Keil considers analogous to αַּ ?ςֲ ?μֵ ?ιαְּ ?ψִ ?ιϊ (ba’ale berith), “persons in covenant” with another, and, from the absence of the article, to be taken in a general sense, as, according to Kranichfeld, “covenant princes” in general. Calvin understands Ptolemy Philopator, who took the part of his young relative Ptolemy Philometor against Antiochus. According to others, the king of Egypt himself is meant by “the prince of the covenant.” [313] “The holy covenant” (Daniel 11:28). This Dr. Rule understands of the Jewish religion, the term “covenant” being often used in Scripture to denote both the religion of the Israelites and that of the Christians, the former depending on the covenant made with Abraham, the latter on that made with Christ; Christian faith consisting of trust in Him who fulfilled the conditions of the covenant by dying for our sins. Keil understands the expression, not of the holy people in covenant with God, but the divine institution of the old covenant, the Jewish theocracy, of which the Jews were only members; and approves of Calvin’s view that Antiochus carried on war against God, his undertaking being an outrage against the kingdom of God which was established in Israel.III. His persecutions. “Then shall he return into his own land with great riches; and his heart shall be against the holy covenant; [314] and he shall do exploits, and return to his own land. At the time appointed he shall return, and come toward the South; but it shall not be as the former nor as the latter (or, ‘as the former so the latter,’—the latter shall not be as the former). For the ships of Chittim [315] shall come against him; therefore he shall be grieved and return, and have indignation against the holy covenant. And arms [316] shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall be corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many; yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days” (Daniel 11:28-33). History relates that after his success in Egypt, Antiochus returned to Syria; but in doing so, as he had heard while in Egypt that the Jews, from a false report of his death, had revolted, he resolved in his indignation to go up to Jerusalem and chastise his fickle subjects there. He there spoiled the temple of its treasures to the value of eighteen hundred talents, and massacred forty thousand of the people, while be sold as many for slaves. “After that Antiochus had smitten Egypt, he returned again, … and went up against Israel and Jerusalem with a great multitude; and entered proudly into the sanctuary, and took away the golden altar, &c. And when he had taken all away, he went unto his own land, having made a great massacre, and spoken very proudly. Therefore there was great mourning in Israel, in every place where they were” (1Ma 1:20, &c.) The second book relates: “Now when this that was done came to the king’s ear, he thought that Judea had revolted: whereupon removing out of Egypt with a furious mind, he took the city by force of arms, and commanded his men of war not to spare such as they met, and to slay such as went up upon the houses. Then there was killing of young and old, making away of men, women, and children, slaying of virgins and infants. And there were destroyed within the space of three whole days, fourscore thousand, whereof forty thousand were slain in the conflict, and no fewer sold than slain. Yet was he not content with this, but presumed to go into the most holy temple of all the world” (2Ma 5:11-21). Two years after this, having heard that the two brothers, Philometor and Euergetes, or Physcon, had become reconciled and come to an amicable arrangement about the kingdom, Antiochus returned to Egypt, marching through Cζle-Syria, while he despatched a fleet to Cyprus. He had, however, only got within four miles of Alexandria when he was met by Roman legates, headed by Popilius, who showed him their written tablets, and demanded that he should immediately quit Egypt. He was thus very reluctantly obliged at once to return to Syria. His hatred against the Jews and their religion now broke forth afresh with greater violence. “After two years had fully expired, the king sent his chief collector of tribute into the cities of Judea, who came into Jerusalem with a great multitude.… Then builded they the city of David with a great and strong wall and with mighty towers, and made it a stronghold for them; and they put therein a sinful nation, wicked men, and fortified themselves therein. Thus they shed innocent blood on every side of the sanctuary, and defiled it.… Moreover, King Antiuchus wrote to the whole kingdom that all should be one people, and every one should have his laws. So all the heathen agreed, according to the commandment of the king. Yea, many also of the Israelites consented to his religion, and sacrificed unto idols, and profaned the Sabbath. For the king had sent letters by messengers unto Jerusalem and the cities of Judea, that they should follow the strange laws of the land, and forbid burnt-offerings, and sacrifices, and drink-offerings in the temple; and that they should profane the Sabhaths and festival days, and pollute the sanctuary and holy people; set up altars, and groves, and chapels of idols; and sacrifice swines’ flesh and unclean beasts; that they should also leave their children uncircumcised, and make their souls abominable with all manner of uncleanness and abomination; to the end they might forget the law and change all the ordinances. And whoever would not do according to the commandment of the king, he said, he should die. In the selfsame manner wrote he to his whole kingdom, and appointed overseers over all the people, commanding the cities of Judea to sacrifice, city by city. Then many of the people were gathered unto them, to wit, every one that forsook the law; and so they committed evil in the land.… They set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and builded idol-altars throughout the cities of Judea on every side.… And when they had rent in pieces the books of the law which they found, they burned them with fire. And wheresoever any was found with the book of the Testament, or if any consented to the law, the king’s commandment was that they should put him to death. Thus did they, by their authority, unto the Israelites every month, to as many as were found in the cities. Now the five and twentieth day of the month they did sacrifice upon the idol-altar which was upon the altar of God” (1Ma 1:29-59). There were those however who “knew their God,” and, strengthened by His grace, “did exploits.” Through faith, they “out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens” (Hebrews 11:34). “Howbeit,” says the historian, “many in Israel were fully resolved and confirmed in themselves not to eat any unclean thing. Wherefore they chose rather to die, that they might not be defiled with meats, and that they might not profane the holy covenant.” Such was the aged scribe Eleazar, and the mother with her seven sons, who, after refusing to eat swine’s flesh, were first “tormented with scourges and whips,” and then cruelly put to death. “It is good,” said the fourth of the seven sons, when mangled and ready to die, “being put to death by men, to look for hope from God to be raised up again by Him.” Such also were the noble Mattathias and his five sons, the Maccabees, and those who followed him to the mountains. “Whosoever is zealous of the law,” said he, “and maintaineth the covenaut, let him follow me. So he and his sons fled into the mountains, and left whatever they had in the city. Then many that sought after justice and judgment, went down into the wilderness to dwell there, both they, and their children, and their wives, and their cattle; because affliction increased sore upon them” (1Ma 1:27-38). There they “lay hid in the caves and secret places of the wilderness;” a thousand of them being on one occasion discovered and put to death. The second book of Maccabees relates that Nicanor, one of the great officers of Antiochus, “undertook to make so much more money by the captive Jews as should defray the tribute of two thousand talents which the king was to pay to the Romans. Wherefore immediately he sent to the cities upon the sea-coast, proclaiming a sale of the captive Jews, and promising that they should have fourscore and ten bodies for one talent” (2Ma 3:10-11). [314] “The holy covenant” (Daniel 11:28). This Dr. Rule understands of the Jewish religion, the term “covenant” being often used in Scripture to denote both the religion of the Israelites and that of the Christians, the former depending on the covenant made with Abraham, the latter on that made with Christ; Christian faith consisting of trust in Him who fulfilled the conditions of the covenant by dying for our sins. Keil understands the expression, not of the holy people in covenant with God, but the divine institution of the old covenant, the Jewish theocracy, of which the Jews were only members; and approves of Calvin’s view that Antiochus carried on war against God, his undertaking being an outrage against the kingdom of God which was established in Israel. [315] “Ships of Chittim” (Daniel 11:30). φִ ?ιִּ ?ινλִּ ?ϊִּ ?ιν (tsiyim Chittim), literally “ships, the Chittim.” The Septuagint has “the Chittim (or Kitians) going forth.” The expression derived from Numbers 24:24. Chittim is Cyprus, with its chief city Chittion, now Chieti or Chitti (Genesis 10:4). Ships coming from Cyprus, observes Keil, are ships coming from the west, from the islands and coasts of the Mediterranean. [316] “Arms shall stand” (Daniel 11:31). ζְ ?ψֹ ?ςִ ?ιν (zero’im), arms (of the body), a figurative term for exertion, or the means of making it. It is disputed, says Keil, whether these “arms” denote military forces, troops of the hostile king, according to Hδvernick, or his accomplices of the apostate party of the Jews, like those in Daniel 11:30, as Calvin, Hengstenberg, and others think. Keil himself understands the word to mean “help,” warlike forces, as in Daniel 11:15; Daniel 11:22. Dr. Cox thinks the term may be rendered mighty forces or powers, “standing up” being the phrase already employed to denote the rise of the Macedonian and other empires or potentates. He accordingly believes that there appears here a sudden transition to another power, and to other scenes than those which have been previously introduced; these “arms” or powers referring to the military dominion which spread on the side of Greece, when Paulus Ζmilius subdued Macedon, and the remaining states came under the power of Rome; the angel now informing Daniel of what should befall the Jews on the dissolution of their state by the Romans.The angel adds: “Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help; [317] but many shall cleave to them with flatteries: and some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: [318] because it is yet for a time appointed” (Daniel 11:34-35). In the persecutions of Antiochus, the faithful Jews were “holpen with a little help” by the noble efforts made by Mattathias and his five sons. On their side, however, were found those who only clave to them while fortune seemed to smile upon their cause, and who only weakened their ranks. The result however was, like all the troubles of the faithful, their own purification; and it had its appointed end. After a continuance of somewhere about three years and six months, their sufferings terminated with the decisive victories which God gave to their arms, and soon after with the death of their great persecutor, Antiochus himself. His end is not here predicted unless it should be in the last verse of the chapter, where it is said, “He shall come to his end and none shall help’ him;” which, as it seems to be spoken in relation to another hostile power of which Antiochus was the type and forerunner, may be intended to predict at the same time the destruction of all the world-powers that have set themselves in opposition to God’s covenant people, whether in Old or New Testament times. According to chap. Daniel 8:25, Antiochus was to be “broken without hand;” and the commentary on the passage shows how remarkably this was fulfilled. [317] “Holpen with a little help” (Daniel 11:34). The “little help” naturally understood of the victories gained by the Jews under Mattathias and his sons over the armies of Antiochus. This “little help,” says Keil, consists in this, that by the rising up and the wars of those that had understanding among the people the theocracy was preserved, the destruction of the service of Jehovah and of the Church of God, which was aimed at by the hostile king, was prevented, and the purifying of the people of God, the design intended, is brought about; the attaining of this end being only a “little help” in comparison with the complete victory over the arch enemy in the time of the end. [318] “The time of the end” (Daniel 11:35). Keil understands by the “time of the end,” which in chap. Daniel 12:4 is the time of the resurrection of the dead, the end of the present course of the world, with which all the opposition against the people of God ceases, and which comes out “at the appointed time,” viz., that which God has determined for the purifying of His people.The section suggestive of the following reflections:— 1. The prophecy regarding Antiochus, together with its exact fulfilment, may serve as a confirmation of our faith in God’s constant superintendence of the world, and His watchful care over the interests of His Church and people. Everything pertaining to this furious adversary of His people and cause, all the steps that conducted to his elevation, as well as his bitter hostility and cruel proceedings after he reached it, were foreseen and foretold centuries before his appearance. Like Pharaoh, he was raised up for an important purpose in the all-wise providence of God; and that purpose being served, he is brought to his predicted end. 2. God’s Church and people never long without suffering. Afflictions, in one shape or other, their appointed lot in this world. “In the world ye shall have tribulation.” “Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom.” So long as the world lies in wickedness (or “in the wicked one”), so long they are in an enemy’s country, where hostility seldom sleeps, and where they must either conform and sin, or say No and suffer. It was against the holy covenant that Antiochus was filled with such enmity; and that covenant still exists wherever God has His people, to whom it is all their salvation and all their desire, while it must still provoke the enmity of the world who are without God. Besides, so long as God’s people are in the world, so long they will require chastening, and all the more likely after seasons of quiet and prosperity. 3. Grace is able to sustain the people of God under the severest trial and hottest persecution. The furnace may be heated seven times more than usual, but One is with them who has all power in heaven and in earth, and who is able to make His grace sufficient for them, so that they shall even glory in tribulation and be made more than conquerors in all their persecutions. The lamp which God has kindled is constantly guarded and fed, so that no wind of persecution can extinguish it. Many professors may fall in times of trial, but true grace is fast colours. Believers are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” 4. The godly ultimately delivered out of trouble. The persecution may be hot and the sufferings severe, but they have their appointed end. The trouble is weighed and measured. The Refiner sits over the gold in the fire. The ten days’ or ten years’ tribulation comes to an end. The storm may rage and the boat appear in danger of sinking; but in the fourth watch of the night the Master will appear and say, “Peace, be still;” and there shall be a great calm. Patience is first to have her perfect work; and in due time “He that shall come, will come and will not tarry.” Weeping may endure for a night during the Bridegroom’s absence; joy cometh in the morning, when all tears shall be wiped away. SECT. XL.—THE ROMANS. (Chap. Daniel 11:31-35.) In these verses, it is believed by many, a transition is made by the angel from Antiochus to that power which was to succeed the Grecian as the fourth great empire of the world, and which we know is brought upon the stage in Daniel 11:30, as “the ships of Chittim.” Daniel 11:31 may be the place referred to by the Saviour in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which would be decisive as to the application of the passage. But it might also be chap. Daniel 9:27, as read in the Greek version. The section before us may indeed still have its primary reference to Antiochus, while it may also point to a second enemy of God and His truth of whom Antiochus was a type. The Old Testament “little horn” of the Third Empire might be, and possibly was intended to be, a type of the New Testament “little horn” of the Fourth or Roman Empire, now again to be introduced to the prophet’s view as the Wilful King. It is certain that much that took place under the persecution of Antiochus, as detailed in these verses, had its counterpart in the calamities afterwards suffered under the Romans; while much that is predicted of Antiochus was verified in that mysterious power into whose hands the saints of the New Testament were for a lengthened period to be delivered. “All that has passed,” says Calvin, “is in some sense typical of all that is to come.” “The saints of the Most High,” says his translator, “are always the special objects of Jehovah’s regard: they ever meet with an oppressor as fierce as Antiochus and as hateful as the ‘Man of Sin;’ but still, whatever their sufferings under a Guise or an Alva, they shall ultimately ‘take the kingdom,’ and possess it for ever. Strongholds of Mahuzzim there always will be, under either the successors of the Medici or the descendants of Mahomet.… It may be safely asserted that every social and political change from the time of Nebuchadnezzar to those of Constantine have had their historic parallel from the days of Charlemagne to those of Napoleon. Hence predictions which originally related to the empires of the East might be naturally transferred to the transactions of Western Christendom.” In this section we shall trace the passage before us in its application to the Fourth Empire, or to the Romans who succeeded the Greeks as rulers of the world. I. The proceedings of this power against religion. “And arms shall stand on his part,” [319]—“some will help by their exertions,”—“and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength,”—the temple which had been held inviolable as a place of refuge, and was strongly fortified,—“shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate” (Daniel 11:31). We have seen how, in accordance with this part of the prophecy, Antiochus was aided by apostate Jews as well as by his own military forces in the mischief he did at Jerusalem, placing an idol altar on the altar of Jehovah, changing the very name of the temple to that of Jupiter Olympius, and filling it with the riot and revelry of the Gentiles. Sir Isaac Newton, in applying the passage to the Romans, observes: “By various ways the Roman arms ‘stood up’ over the Greeks; and after ninety-five years more, by making war upon the Jews, they ‘polluted the sanctuary of strength,’ ” &c. He remarks that the “abomination that maketh desolate” was placed there after the days of the Saviour, according to Matthew 24:15; adding that in the year of the emperor Adrian, A.D. 132, the Romans “placed” this abomination by building a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus where the temple of God in Jerusalem had stood, and that from the end of the war which ensued upon this in A.D. 137, the land thenceforward “remained desolate of its inhabitants.” [320] Bishop Newton agrees with his illustrious namesake, thinking no interpretation so rational and convincing as that which he proposes. Mr. Birks observes that the first pollution of the “sanctuary of strength” by the Romans took place on the siege and capture of Jerusalem by Pompey the Great, when, according to Josephus, “no small enormities were committed about the temple itself, which in former ages had been inaccessible and seen by none; for Pompey went into it, and not a few of them that were with him, and saw all that was unlawful for any to see but the high priest.” The next signal act of Roman profanation, he observes, was under Crassus; and the third on the accession of Herod, B.C. 38, when Sosius took the city by storm. The cessation of the daily sacrifice during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus is thus referred to by Josephus: “On that very day, the seventeenth of Panemus, the sacrifice, called the daily sacrifice, had failed, and had not been offered to God for want of men to offer it.” It had thus ceased even before the destruction of the temple, which, of course, would of itself have terminated it. [321][319] “Arms shall stand” (Daniel 11:31). In Keil’s opinion, the reference is here to what Antiochus accomplished by the help of apostate Jews. Mr. Birks, who views this and the following verses as referring primarily to Antiochus, and typically to the Romans, says: “These words serve to describe very accurately the character and course of the Romans, from the days of Antiochus to the conquest of Judea. ‘Arms’ (brachia) are used throughout these prophecies to denote military forces or power. They are said to ‘stand up’ when they manifest themselves in vigorous action. After the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans, and the repulse of Epiphanes himself by their ambassadors in the ships from Chittim, which have been already announced, it is natural that their formidable power should be next predicted. The word rendered ‘on his part’ may, as in Daniel 11:23, denote simply a succession in time. And even if it be thought to require a still closer connection between Antiochus and the arms here mentioned, this existed in the case of the Romans no less really than in that of Apollonius and his forces who ravaged Jerusalem. The Romans not only received tribute from Antiochus, but were virtually his successors in the kingdom.” [320] “The abomination that maketh desolate” (Daniel 11:31). It is to this place, in the view of many, that the words of the Saviour in Matthew 24:15 refer, which must therefore have its fulfilment in the times of Vespasian and the Romans. According to others, the reference is to the words in chap. Daniel 9:27. Mr. Birks inclines to the former view, and thinks that the phrase in Matthew 24 occurs only in this place in Daniel. But see under chap. Daniel 9:27. The prophecy received its fulfilment, Mr. Birksremarks, first when the Roman forces under Cestius assailed the temple; secondly, when Titus pitched his camp on the Mount of Olives, and when, after the temple was set on fire, the Romans, as Josephus relates, brought ensigns into the temple and placed them over against the eastern gate, and there offered sacrifice to them; and finally when, in the time of Adrian, a temple was built and consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus, on the very site of the sanctuary of God. Hengstenberg, who refers the present passage to the time of Antiochus rather than to that of the Romans, translates the words, “and shall give the abomination as one that lays waste;” observing that by the “abomination” is designated idolatry in its whole compass and extent, and that thus the passage entirely coincides with that in chap. Daniel 9:27, both making the abomination one that draws after it the train of devastation, as sin draws after it punishment; the abominations being considered as “the antecedent sin, which by means of the supervening destroyer is avenged by the righteous judgment of God.” [321] “Shall take away the daily sacrifice” (Daniel 11:31). Hengstenberg translates the words, “they shall take away that which is constant;” and observes that most interpreters erroneously refer this exclusively to the daily sacrifices; the word ϊָּ ?ξִ ?ιγ (tamidh), as it stands here, never occurring of one particular object, but with the adjuncts, not only of the daily sacrifice, but also of the fire of the altar, of the sacrificial lamps, of the shewbread, &c. Keil regards the words as denoting the removal of the stated worship of Jehovah.II. Their effects. “And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries; but the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits. And they that understand among the people shall instruct many: yet they shall fall by the sword, and by flame, and by captivity, and by spoil, many days” (Daniel 11:32-33). Bishop Newton thinks the former of these verses might be applied to the times of Antiochus, but not so properly the latter; as it does not appear that the Maccabees instructed the people, though they led them to battle and to victory. Neither could it so well be said that the sufferings of the Jews under Antiochus were for “many days,” or years, according to the prophetic import of the expression; that persecution having lasted only a few years. “All these things,” he says, “are much more truly applicable to the Christian Jews; for now the daily sacrifice was taken away, the temple was given to desolation, and the Christian Church had succeeded to the place of the Jewish, and the New Covenant in the room of the Old.” In reference to the clause, “such as do wickedly he shall corrupt by flatteries,” he observes: “The Roman magistrates and officers, it is well known made use of the most alluring promises, as well as the most terrible threatenings, to prevail upon the primitive Christians to renounce their religion, and offer incense to the statues of the emperors and images of the gods.” He quotes an old commentator, who says: “There are some who think that the prophet here had respect to the Christians whom the wicked idolaters endeavoured, from the beginning of the rising Church, to seduce by flatteries; but the persecution of tyrants raged chiefly against the apostles and holy teachers.” Times of persecution will doubtless have much in common; and Christians, suffering as they did, and so long and often so severely under the Roman emperors and magistrates, would naturally find much in the description of the times of Antiochus applicable to their own. The word of prophecy was intended to be a “light shining in a dark place,” in the New as it had been in the Old Testament dispensation. “These things happened unto them (the Old Testament Church) for ensamples; and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The bishop adds: “It may, too, with the strictest truth and propriety be said of the primitive Christians that, being dispersed everywhere, and preaching the Gospel in all the parts of the Roman empire, they ‘instructed many,’ and gained a great number of proselytes to their religion: yet they fell by the sword, &c., ‘many days;’ for they were exposed to the malice and fury of ten general persecutions, and suffered all manner of injuries, afflictions, and tortures, with little intermission, for the space of three hundred years.” III. The relief. “Now when they shall fall, they shall be holpen with a little help: but many shall cleave to them with flatteries. And some of them of understanding shall fall; to try them, and to purge, and to make them white; even to the time of the end; because it is yet for a time appointed” (Daniel 11:34-35). According to Sir Isaac Newton, the “little help” was that afforded to the Christians in the time of Constantine the Great; the result of which was that many of the heathen, on account of the favour shown them by the emperor, and especially when Christianity was made the religion of the empire, as is well known, joined the Church without any real change of heart or faith in Jesus as a Saviour. While the edict of Diocletian, as Dr. Cox observes, was nearly fatal to the Christian cause, the elevation of Constantine to the imperial throne in the year 306 produced a period of external prosperity and peace to the Church. Bishop Newton remarks: “Here Porphyry hath many followers besides Grotius, supposing that by the ‘little help’ was meant Mattathias of Modin, who with his five sons rebelled against the generals of Antiochus, and endeavoured to preserve the worship of the true God. But Mattathias died of old age; and his son Judas Maccabζus several times vanquished the generals of Antiochus, and after recovering the holy city, cleansing the sanctuary and restoring the worship of God, survived Antiochus some years; while the united dignity of the high priesthood and the sovereignty descended to his brother Simon’s son, and continued in the family for many generations: which was much more than being ‘holpen with a little help;’ while the Jews were so far from falling again by persecution, that their religion and government were established upon a firmer basis than before.” He quotes Jerome, who says that some of the Jewish doctors understood these things of the Roman emperors Severus and Antoninus, who greatly loved the Jews; and others, of the Emperor Julian, who pretended to love them, and promised to sacrifice in their temple. The bishop, however, thinks the most natural way of interpretation is to follow the course and series of events; and thus to understand the “little help” of the entire suppression of the protracted persecutions of the Church by Constantine, when instead of being persecuted it was protected and favoured by the civil power; called, however, only a “little help,” first, because while it added much to the temporal prosperity of the Church, it contributed little to its spiritual welfare, proving, on the contrary, the means of corrupting its doctrine and relaxing its discipline, while it caused many to “cleave to them by flatteries,” simply because Christianity was made the religion of the empire; and, further, because this help lasted but a little while, the spirit of persecution soon after reviving, especially under the Arians. “And such,” he adds, “more or less has been the face and condition of the Church ever since.” Calvin remarks on the latter part of the verse, that “in these days (the latter part of the sixteenth century) the very counterpart of this prophecy is exhibited before our eyes. The whole Papacy is called the Church of God, and we the Protestants are but few in number; and yet what a mixture exists even among us! How many in these days profess attachment to the Gospel, in whom there is nothing either solid or sincere.” Mr. Birks, on the passage before us, remarks: “The afflictions of the Maccabees were indeed a brief rehearsal of a longer series of changes, which serve, in the prophecy, to conduct us into a fresh dispensation, and down to the rise of a more dangerous and powerful persecutor than Antiochus, to prevail afterwards in the latter days.” And again, in regard to the words of the prophecy, he observes: “They answer exactly to the troubles of the Jews under Antiochus; but they correspond also with no less accuracy, on a wider scale, to the whole course of Providence towards the Jews and the Christian Church, from the time of the Maccabees far into the present dispensation.” He thinks that the very place which these verses occupy may prove of itself that they form a transition from Antiochus to the time of the end; and that the leading events of that interval, here portrayed in their natural order, are “the gradual encroachment of the Romans in Judea, till at length they destroyed the city and temple, and brought on the desolation which has now for ages brooded over Jerusalem; the preaching of the apostles; the spread of the Gospel through the Roman empire; the pagan persecutions; the triumph of the faith when the whole empire nominally received it; the corruption of the visible Church; renewed troubles and persecutions; and the growth of an apostate tyranny without example in the history of the world. Some of the followers of Jesus, like these men of understanding in the days of Antiochus, were to “fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white.” After the elevation of Christianity as the religion of the empire, “Christians themselves,” says Dr. Cox, “became miserably disunited, and the character of the Church of Christ awfully corrupted. An unholy hierarchy gradually rose to distinction and dominion; and ‘men of understanding,’ or those who obeyed the dictates of conscience, combining with sober inquiry unto the truth,—in fact, multitudes of the faithful followers of the Saviour, became the victims of papal intolerance—a trying indeed, but still a whitening or purifying process.” This was to be “to the time of the end,”—the time when the purposes of God regarding the “scattering” of Israel on account of their sin should be accomplished, and the promised period for their restoration, and the visible and universal establishment of the kingdom of God under the Messiah, should arrive. “Because it is yet for an appointed time.” The time for the fulfilment of the prophecy was fixed in the purpose of God. “The vision is yet for an appointed time; but in the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Habakkuk 2:3). It is our comfort to know that the promises of God, the troubles of His people, and the triumphs of His enemies, have all their appointed time. “It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you that are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven” (2 Thessalonians 1:6-8). In the meantime it is comforting to know that these troubles and persecutions have for believers a gracious mission and a blessed result. Their object on the part of Him who permits them, is to prove and to purify them. The will of God is the sanctification of His people; and afflictions and persecutions are but the fire which He employs for their purification. “This is all the fruit, to take away their sin.” . XLI.—THE WILFUL KING. (Chap. Daniel 11:36-39.) The present part of the prophecy regards a king, power, or sovereignty, emphatically spoken of as “the king.” Some will have Antiochus Epiphanes still intended by this king. The great majority of evangelical interpreters, however, believe that the angel has already passed from that monarch and the empire which he represented, to that which was to succeed it, namely, that of the Romans, who are certainly introduced in a preceding verse as the “ships of Chittim,” and who seem to be the subject of that part of the prophecy immediately preceding the present. [322] The question is whether the Fourth or Roman Empire in general is here described; or, as in the vision of the Four Beasts we saw that empire represented by, concentrated in, and identified with, a little horn or special power springing out of it,—whether we are not also here to consider the same concentration and representative of that empire, or indeed the same little horn which is described in chap. 7. The similarity of the description in both places would seem to leave little room to doubt that the latter is the more correct view; and that in this Wilful King before us we see that power which, springing out of the decayed and dismembered ancient Roman empire, represented it for many centuries, having, like that empire, Rome as its metropolis and seat of government, its head being at the same time a spiritual ruler, the sovereign pontiff,—in other words, the papacy. Bishop Newton, after showing that the prophecy could not with truth be applied to Antiochus Epiphanes, remarks that the prophet now proceeds to describe the principal author of the persecutions that should still follow the Church. The term “king” or kingdom, he observes, signifies any government, state, or potentate; and the meaning of Dan 11:36 he conceives to be, that, after the empire was become Christian, there should spring up in the Church an Antichristian power that should act in the most absolute and arbitrary manner, exalt itself above all laws, divine and human, dispense with the most solemn and sacred obligations, and in many respects enjoin what God had forbidden, and forbid what God had commanded. The power, he further remarks, began in the Roman emperors, who summoned councils, and directed and influenced their determinations almost as they pleased. After the division of the empire, this power still increased, and was exerted principally by the Greek emperors in the East, and by the bishops of Rome in the West. He observes also that this power was to continue till “the end of the indignation,” or till God should have “accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people;” and that it was an ancient tradition among the Jewish doctors that the destruction of Rome and the restoration of the Jews would fall out about the same period. Mr. Birks observes that some have referred the whole passage (Daniel 11:36-39) to Antiochus, others to an infidel king yet to arise, others to democratic infidelity in the Roman empire, and others to the popedom or the Christian Greek emperors; and that most divines, whether Fathers, Protestants, or Roman Catholics, believe that the same power or person is designed as in the Little Horn and the Man of Sin. Mr. Birks himself, like Mede and Bishop Newton, applies the prophecy to “the idolatrous apostasy of the Church in the latter days,” the Wilful King being identical with the Little Horn of chap. 7. We notice— [322] “The king” (Daniel 11:36). Dr. Pusey observes that the characteristics of this infidel king are self-exaltation above every god; contempt for all religion; blasphemy against the true God; apostasy from the God of his fathers; disregard of the desire of women; honouring a god whom his fathers knew not; adding, that of all these only one in the least agrees with Antiochus, while the prophecy unmistakably corresponds with that which in the Revelation is still future (Revelation 13:11-12). But many believe that it also at least as unmistakably corresponds with the papacy, which is also foretold in the Revelation. “By the name ‘king,’ ” says Dr. Cox, “Mede, and others after him, understand the Roman state of power, under whatever kind or government; but it is more especially referred to Rome-papal, of which power the description is deemed peculiarly graphic. His despotism, blasphemy, and self-exaltation are clearly marked: and he was to prosper till the indignation be accomplished, or the ‘time, times,’ &c., the 1260 years, when the ‘wonders,’ as afterwards named, shall have an end.” Mr. Birks argues against the idea of Antiochus, or a single infidel and blasphemous king yet to arise, being meant by this king, on the ground that the marks of time in the prophecy fix the close of the vision far beyond the days of Antiochus, and the promised period of the Jewish restoration; that there is no proof that the Wilful King denotes one individual person; that since the fall of Jerusalem the Jews have been exiles from Palestine, and the West, even more than the East, has been the scene of their sufferings; that the Wilful King is not an open atheist and rejector of all religion; that his place in the prophetic history is between the return of Antiochus from Egypt, b.c. 167, and the events predicted in chap. Daniel 12:1-3, an interval of two thousand years, while the application of the preceding verses to the Romans as far as Constantine the Great would bring the prophecy to the time of the Vandal persecutions in Africa; and finally that the Wilful King is to prosper until the anger of God against Israel is accomplished. Calvin, who acknowledges the passage to be very obscure, applies it entirely to the Roman empire, not, however, considering it to be begun in the reign of the Cζsars; believing that the angel passed from Antiochus to the Romans, as God wished to support the godly under the troubles that awaited them till the time of the Romans, from whom, beginning with Pompey and Crassus, they continued to be harassed by many and continual wars. Mede, who with Calovius, Geier, and others, applies the prophecy to Antichrist, connects Daniel 11:36 with the preceding—“to the time appointed, the king shall do his will,” &c. Dr. Clarke things the prophecy may apply to Antiochus; but observes that it is well known that an Antichristian power did spring up in the Christian Church, showing itself in the Greek emperors in the East, and in the bishops of Rome in the West. Roman Catholic interpreters, as De Lyra, Hugo, and others, after Jerome and the fathers, understand by “the king” the Antichrist who is to appear at the end of the world, and to reign three years and a half. �colampadius and Melanchthon regarded him as both the pope and the Turk. Others of the Reformers, as Osiander and Pfaff, understand the pope to be meant from here to the end of the prophecy. Willet thinks all was historically fulfilled in Antiochus, to whom the prophecy specially pointed, though it has a typical application to the Papal Antichrist. Brightman, like Calvin, applies the prophecy to the Romans, and especially to the Roman emperors, the object of the prophecy being to show what would be the state of the Jews to all ages, till gathered into one fold with the Gentiles. Keil observes, that after the example of Porphyry, Ephrem Syrus, and Grotius, almost all modern interpreters, that is, in Germany, find here only a description of the conduct of Antiochus Epiphanes up to the time of his destruction; while of believing interpreters, some, as C. B. Michaelis, Hδvernick, and others, regard the whole as having a typical reference to Antichrist; while others, as Jerome, Theodoret, Luther, �colampadius, Osiander, Calovius, Geier, and at length Kliefoth, interpret the section as a direct prophecy of Antichrist, the “king” being the little horn growing up among the ten kingdoms of the Fourth Empire, and described in chap. Daniel 9:26 as “the prince that shall come,” and introduced here as a new subject He remarks that the Rabbinical interpreters have also adopted the idea of a change of subject in Daniel 11:36; while his own opinion is that the reference of the section to Antiochus is essentially correct, and that the supposition of a change of subject is not established. He admits, however, that what is said regarding “the king” in Daniel 11:36-39, goes far beyond what Antiochus did, does not harmonise with what is known of Antiochus, and is expressly referred in the New Testament to Antichrist; but thinks that these circumstances rather show that “in the prophetic contemplation there is comprehended in the image of one king what has been historically fulfilled in its beginning by Antiochus Epiphanes, but shall only meet its complete fulfilment by the Antichrist in the time of the end.” By “the king,” Mr. Bosanquet also understands the king of fierce countenance mentioned in chap. Daniel 8:23, to which the prophecy goes back, after coming to Alexander’s kingdom in Daniel 11:4, in order to relate what shall be in the latter days, the great object of the vision; this king being, in his view, the personification of Mohammedanism, who literally destroyed the mighty and the holy people, putting an end to the Jewish kingdom of the Homerites in Arabia Felix, b.c. 627, after it had existed for some seven hundred years, the last remnant of the Jews as a nation.I. The power itself. “The king” (Daniel 11:36). The term might either indicate a single individual ruler, as in the case of Alexander (Daniel 11:3), or a series of rulers—as in the expression “four kings which shall arise” (chap. Daniel 7:17). From the lengthened period of his predicted continuance, the term would seem here to have the latter meaning, and, like the Little Horn in chap. 7, to indicate an arrogant and blasphemous power that should rise in or out of the Roman empire. This, with most expositors of prophecy, we can only regard as, in the first instance at least, the papacy. The expression “the king” seems emphatic; and it is scarcely likely that it should be used to designate Antiochus whom the angel had introduced as a “vile person” to whom they should “not give the honour of the kingdom” (Daniel 11:21). The emphatic term might naturally be chosen to indicate a new power that should occupy a conspicuous place in the future history of God’s people. The type, which doubtless Antiochus was, appears now, as Archdeacon Harrison observes, to be lost sight of in the prophecy, and the antitype to be almost exclusively in view. According to the view of Christian antiquity, the prophecy is now occupied for some time at least with the description of that tyrannical and persecuting power already indicated in the Little Horn of the Fourth Beast, the description of which so closely corresponds with that of this Wilful King. The papacy or popedom may well be spoken of as “the king,” inasmuch as the popes not only claimed to be sovereigns, but sovereigns above all others however exalted, combining with a temporal sovereignty a spiritual jurisdiction which embraced all Christendom. It is justly viewed as the power to which the Apostle referred in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, as that which should arise in the Church as the result of an apostasy, or mystery of iniquity, which had even in his time begun to work, and which was only then withheld from fully developing itself by an existing hindrance which he does not name, and which, on the removal of that hindrance, would reveal itself, and continue until destroyed by the Lord’s second appearing. II. Its character. “The king shall do according to his will” (Daniel 11:36). The leading characteristic of this power was to be absolute and arbitrary conduct. Of all absolute and arbitrary rulers he should be the chief. Antiochus acted as a type and shadow of this “king “when he commanded all the peoples under his sway to receive his laws and follow his religion. It is well known that the popes claimed, and for a time obtained, an absolute sway over the greatest earthly rulers in virtue of their assuming the place and authority of the Vicar of Christ, with power over both worlds, and possessing both the spiritual and the temporal sword, with a judgment that was infallible, and an authority that could set aside oaths and the most sacred obligations. The language of the Decretals and Bulls of the popes, to which the nations of Europe submitted for centuries, is, as Mr. Birks observes, that emperors ought to obey and not to rule over the pontiffs; that they owe an oath of fealty and subjection to the pope as their superior and head; that what the bishops of Rome decree ought to be observed by all; that it is permitted neither to speak nor to think differently from the pope; that he imparts authority to laws, but is not bound by them; and that he is made the head of the whole world. One example may suffice. Hume relates of Pope Paul IV., to whom Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V., applied for his coronation, that “he thundered always in the ears of all ambassadors, that he stood in no need of the assistance of any prince; that he was above all the potentates of the earth; that he would not accustom monarchs to pretend to a familiarity or equality with him; that it belonged to him to alter and regulate kingdoms; that he was successor of those who had deposed kings and emperors; and that rather than submit to anything below his dignity, he would set fire to the four corners of the world. He went so far as, at table, in the presence of many persons, and even openly, in a public consistory, to say that he would not admit any kings for his companions; they were all his subjects, and he would hold them under his feet; so saying, he stamped on the ground with his old and infirm limbs: for he was now past fourscore years of age.” Such was “the king,” the king with emphasis; the king that by his absolute will and arbitrary power was to rule and afflict the Church and the world for many centuries. III. Its doings. Described in various particulars in Daniel 11:36-39. 1. “He shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god” (Daniel 11:36). Here we have especially that which connects this prophecy with 2 Thessalonians 2, and identifies this “king” with the man of sin there predicted. [323] For “every god” the Apostle has all that is called god; the expression, doubtless, referring to civil rulers, who are frequently so called in Scripture, and who are known frequently to have claimed divine honours. How far the Roman pontiffs have claimed this superiority is obvious from what has been already said. The popes have declared that their princedom is far more excellent than any human princedom; that the sacred power and authority of the pontiffs govern the rulers of this world; and that Christian emperors are bound to submit their mandates to theirs. [323] “Magnify himself above every god” (Daniel 11:36). The allusion here, observes Mr. Birks, to 2 Thessalonians 2., is so plain that it has been recognised by every class of interpreters, from Theodoret down to our own day. Polybius, quoted by Bishop Newton, says that Antiochus in his public sacrifices and worship of the gods was more sumptuous and magnificent than all who reigned before him, and that in his solemn shows and processions he had the images of all who were called or reputed gods, demons, or heroes carried before him. On the other hand, Calvin observes that the Romans in their pride and lawlessness surpassed other profane nations, and did not even preserve a superstitious fear of God, making a laughingstock of all divinities, and ridiculing the very name and appearance of piety, which they only used for the purpose of retaining their subjects in obedience.2. “He shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods” (Daniel 11:36). History relates that Antiochus commanded his statue to be erected in the temple at Jerusalem, and that be spoke very proudly; but it records nothing of his speaking “marvellous things against the God of gods.” The Roman pontiffs may be said to have done this when they claimed in their Decretals an equality with God, asserting that the pontiff cannot be bound or judged by the secular power, “because it is manifest that God cannot be judged by man.” They claim also in the mass the power of creating God out of a wafer, according to the well-known saying, Whom they create they adore. The blasphemous title is also known, and never repudiated, “Our Lord God the Pope.” Of the Man of Sin, the Apostle says, “As God he sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” While enthroned on the high altar in St. Peter’s at Rome on the day of his consecration, he has the words of the ninety-fifth psalm blasphemously applied to him, Venite adoremus, “O come, let us worship.” [324][324] “Shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods “(Daniel 11:36). In reference to the blasphemous claims put forth in the bulls and decretals of the popes, as well as the conversion of the consecrated wafer into the divine being, Mr. Birks asks, “If these are not marvellous speeches against the God of gods, how can our imagination invent others which may deserve the name?”3. “He shall not regard the God of his fathers” (Daniel 11:37). Antiochus, on the contrary, commanded all his subjects to adopt the religion of the Greeks, and the worship of his own gods, and was liberal and ostentatious in his religious rites. On the other hand, the ground on which so many seceded from the Church of Rome before the Reformation was, that the popes had changed the nature of Christianity, and that the pope himself was Antichrist. The Man of Sin was to be the outcome of a deep apostasy or falling away from the Christian faith; many departing from the faith and giving heed to seducing spirits (2 Thessalonians 2:3; 1 Timothy 4:1). It is well known that, in the papacy, the appeal in regard to religious truth is not to the Word of God in the Scriptures, but to tradition and the Church; that much of the worship and religion enjoined by the popes is an importation from and imitation of paganism, of which the primitive Church knew nothing, of which the very first act on entering a popish place of worship, the use of holy water, is an example; and of which the pope’s own title, the Pontiff or Pontifex, the title of the high priest of ancient Roman idolatry, is itself an obvious instance; [325] and, finally, that the image of the Virgin Mary is a most prominent object in almost all papal churches, and that she is constantly addressed in hymns and prayers—things entirely unknown in the Scriptures and among the early Christians. [325] Pontifex Maximus was the title of the high priest of the pagan idolatry of ancient Rome. It was borne by the emperors till Gratian, being a Christian, declined the honour, when it was given to and adopted by the Bishop of Rome. For further Pagan importations, see Hyslop’s “Two Babylons.”4. “Nor shall he regard the desire of women” (Daniel 11:37). [326] The clause is acknowledged to be obscure, and the meaning doubtful. Nothing is known of Antiochus to justify its application to that person. One mark of the apostasy, however, which was to develop the “Man of Sin,” was “forbidding to marry” (1 Timothy 4:3); while one of the articles of the creed of Pope Pius V. is, “It is unlawful for ministers to marry.” The honour also that is given in the papal system to so-called vows of chastity, or vows of perpetual celibacy and virginity, is well known. Eusebius, quoted by Bishop Newton, says of Constantine, that he held in the highest veneration those men who devoted themselves to the monastic life, and almost adored the company of perpetual virgins. His example was followed by his successors; and in the fourth century clerical celibacy, like a torrent, overran the Eastern Church, and soon after the Western too. A writer in the “Quarterly Review,” quoted by Mr. Birks, says: “Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.), a wise man in his generation, knew that the power of the pope through the clergy and over the clergy depended on their celibacy. We speak of the system, and we appeal to history. Perhaps the monkish institutes may have the excuse or palliation that they were composed in hard times and for hard men. But what sentences of unfeeling, unmitigated, remorseless cruelty do they contain! What delight do they seem to have in torturing the most sensitive fibres of the heart, in searing the most blameless emotions of human nature!” [326] “The desire of women” (vet. 37). Keil observes that the old interpreters understood these words of conjugal love; the moderns in Germany, on the contrary, after the example of D. Michaelis and Gesenius, understand them of the goddess Anaitis or Mylitta, the Assyrian Venus, and refer them especially to the spoiling of the temple of this goddess in Elymais by Antiochus; while Ewald thinks of the Syrian deity Tammuz or Adonis. Keil’s own opinion is that the love of women is an example selected from the sphere of human love and attachment, for which even the most selfish and most savage of men feel some sensibility. Calvin thinks it refers to the duties of charity; Calovius and Geier, to conjugal love and honest matrimony; the former remarking that πωιν (nasim) properly denotes not harlots but wives. Grotius, applying the words to Antiochus, thinks they mean that he will be touched with no pity for the sex. So Maldonatus. Polanus understands the clause to mean that he will not be moved from his purpose of disturbing religion by the prayers of his wives; and Piscator, that he will not suffer his wives to worship any god but Jupiter Olympius. Brightman understands it of natural affection, the thing most desired by women being to have their children in most honourable positions, while the Roman emperors cared nothing about having children to succeed them. Willet, applying the passage to Antiochus, understands it to mean that he will contemn matrimony; which he thinks may also be applied typically to the pope. Bullinger and Osiander apply it to the pope historically. Some understand the expression of Messiah, whom it was the desire of the women in Israel to bring forth. Dr. Pusey remarks: “Since it was suggested that the ‘desire of women’ might be their Syrian goddess Mylitta, the Germans have commonly adopted the explanation. Yet there is nothing in the revolting and also unnatural worship of Mylitta which should entitle that degrading worship to be called the desire of women. Nor can I bring myself to think that Daniel, in a picture of the sin of Antiochus, would mention the abstinence from such worship as a portion of that sin.”5. “Nor (will he regard) any god: for he shall magnify himself above all” (Daniel 11:37). This could perhaps hardly be said of one who set up the statue of Jupiter in the temple, commanded all his subjects to acknowledge the gods of the Greeks, and was himself prodigal and magnificent in his worship of them. Calvin, applying the prophecy to the Romans, says they manifested a great contempt for God, while they maintained the appearance of piety. If the term “god” is here also to be regarded as denoting civil rulers, which is probable, we have already seen how strictly applicable the description is to the papacy. If the term is to be viewed in a religious sense, the prophecy may still be regarded as having its fulfilment in a system which sets aside the written word of God for human tradition, and which has had the obvious effect of preparing the way for infidelity in the countries where, as in France and Italy, it has ruled with greatest power and appeared in its greatest glory. The worldliness and ambition of the Roman pontiffs, it is well known, has been too generally such as to indicate a secret infidelity under all the outward profession of piety, openly expressed by Leo X., who is reported to have spoken of the Gospel as a profitable fable. [327][327] “Nor regard any God.” Keil and Kliefoth understand the clause to mean that he set himself free from all piety or reverence toward God, or toward that which is divine. Calvin, applying it to the Romans, says, they treated the worship of their deities simply as matters of business, being destitute of any perception of true divinity, and only pretenders to religion, while they manifested a gross contempt of God under the appearance of piety, and thought themselves superior to their gods. Grotius understands it to mean that he (Antiochus) will not regard the god of any nation, but will rob all he can; Piscator, that he will despise all religion. Brightman understands the term “god,” as in the preceding verse, as magistrates, but here, of domestic ones, though anciently established. A. Clarke says, “The mandates and decrees of the papal Church have been often in defiance of God and His Word, the Papacy magnifying itself above all power and authority in heaven and earth.” Boothroyd understands any superior, either magistrates or kings, who are called gods (Psalms 86:6), the papal power arrogating to itself the right of raising or abasing, crowning or deposing, kings at its pleasure.6. “But in his estate he shall honour the god of forces (Marg., “Mauzzim,” or “gods-protectors”); [328] and a god whom his fathers knew not shall he honour with gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things. Thus shall he do in the most strong holds with a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory; and he shall cause them to rule over many, and shall divide the land for gain” (Daniel 11:38-39). The only god whom the Wilful King was really and practically to acknowledge and honour is one here called “the god of forces,” or, as in the Hebrew and the Margin, “the god Mauzzim,” or “the gods-protectors;” apparently the same as the god whom his fathers knew not, a strange god. It is well known that one of the most prominent characteristics of the papacy is the place which it gives to the adoration and invocation of the Virgin Mary and the saints of the calendar, as well as the honour given to and the trust reposed in the relics of the martyrs, as so many strongholds and protectors,—things entirely unknown in the earliest ages of the Church. History informs us that in the fourth and fifth centuries it became common both in the East and West to regard not only angels and departed saints, but the relics of martyrs, as the defences and protection of the church that contained them. Basil speaks of a church being “fortified by the great towers of the martyrs,” and of the martyrs fortifying our country “like some thick towers against the incursions of enemies.” Chrysostom says of the body of Paul, “This corpse surrounds the city (Rome) as with a wall, which is safer than every tower and thousands of ramparts.” Hilary, in the West, speaks of the munitions of angels; while both East and West invoke the Virgin Mary as “the impregnable wall” and the “fortress of salvation.” One of the articles in the creed of Pope Pius V. is, that “the saints reigning together with Christ are to be invoked.” The Litany of Our Lady of Loretto begins with, “We fly to your patronage, O holy Mother of God.” She is addressed as the Refuge of sinners and the Help of Christians. Not only, however, was such worship, invocation, and trust unknown among the early Christians, the professed fathers of the Roman pontiffs, but the Church was expressly guarded by the Apostle against will-worship and the worshipping of angels; while among the signs of the apostasy of the last days are mentioned the giving heed to seducing spirits and to doctrines of devils or demons, a term not unfrequently employed to designate departed spirits. That the shrines of tutelary saints, as well as the images of the Virgin, are honoured and adorned with the most costly offerings is known to all who have visited Roman Catholic churches on the Continent. The ministers of the papacy have naturally been increased with glory, the pope imparting to them the power which he professes himself to possess, of creating the God whom the people are to worship, as well as of receiving their confessions and forgiving their sins; one of the articles of the creed of Pius V. being that sin is to be confessed to a priest at least once a year under pain of damnation. The choicest lands, too, as Bishop Newton observes, have been appropriated for the property of the Church and the use of those who minister at the altars of these gods-protectors. [328] “The god of forces.” ΰֱ ?μεֹ ?δַּ ξָ ?ςֻ ?ζִּ ?ιν (Eloah Ma’uzzim), “god of fortresses.” Sir Isaac Newton understands the term to mean “strong guardians,” and applies the term to the souls of the dead, saints and angels, and especially the Virgin Mary; all being invoked and adored both in the Greek and Latin Churches as patrons, intercessors, and guardians of mankind, their shrines and images being adorned with the most costly offerings. Mede seems to have been the first to apply the term to the papacy, as denoting demons or god-protectors, which the Romans worship with Christ, namely, saints and angels; remarking that Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom, and others call the relics of martyrs towers and bulwarks, while Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret, and others call martyrs patrons and protectors. He remarks: “It is a thing not to be passed by without admiration that the Fathers and others, even at the beginning of saint-worship, by I know not what fatal instinct, used to call saints and their relics walls, bulwarks, and fortresses, i.e., Mahuzzim, in the primary and original signification.” Keil renders the expression, “the god of fortresses,” and observes that, as is now generally acknowledged, ξָ ?ςֻ ?ζִּ ?ιν (ma’uzzim) is not, with Theodotion, the Vulgate, Luther, and others to be regarded as the proper name of a god. He applies the prophecy to the future Antichrist, who, he thinks, is here said to regard no other god—but only war; the taking of fortresses he will make his god, and he will worship this god above all, as the means of his gaining the universal power he aims at. Professor Lee translates the phrase the “god of forces,” and supposes it to apply to the Roman emperors, Nero being the first of the series. C. B. Michaelis, Gesenius, and others, applying the prophecy to Antiochus, suppose Mars, the god of war, to be intended; while Hδvernick, Ewald, and others, after Grotius, think of Jupiter Olympius; which, however, as Keil observes, were not gods unknown to his fathers. Calvin translates the word “strengths, or fortitudes,” observing that the god which the Romans are said to worship, namely, the Roman Jupiter, the prophet calls a “god of bulwarks” or of power; meaning that they claimed a divine power as their own, and acknowledged no deity but themselves. Geier and Vatablus read, “god of fortifications or strengths,” like Asina or Mars, a Syrian deity to whom this king would ascribe all his dignity and power. Mr. Birks thinks that the general feature of the expression is that of one chief and many subordinate objects of worship; the god, along with whom the Mauzzim are worshipped, being the Son of God, or the true God, but made the object of a heathenish worship, with many subordinate idols, degraded into an Eloah or chief patron-divinity, who shares his worship with many Mauzzim; and that the “most strong holds” here mentioned are buildings dedicated to these Mauzzim or tutelary deities. The Wilful King, he thinks, will pay honour to a multitude of guardian powers, and cause them to receive homage and costly worship from his people.IV. Its continuance. “He shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished; for that that is determined shall be done” (Daniel 11:36). The indignation is that of God against His people for their unfaithfulness to, and abuse of, the privileges bestowed upon them, and, in the case of Israel more especially, their rejection and crucifixion of their King and Saviour; the consummation determined (chap. Daniel 9:27); the wrath that was to come upon them to the uttermost (1 Thessalonians 2:16); an indignation that is still experienced in the “great captivity” which the Jews have been suffering for eighteen centuries, with which the indignation in the time of Antiochus was not to be compared. It is spoken of in chap. Daniel 12:7 as the “scattering of the power of the holy people,” which was to be accomplished, or completed and finished, at the time of the end. This indignation or righteous judgment was to be accomplished through human instrumentality; and that instrumentality was mainly to be this very power or “king,” who was therefore, like Pharaoh, to be upheld and suffered, or rather made to prosper, till that object should be accomplished. [329] That period is spoken of as “a time, times, and half a time;” the same period during which the Gentile Church was also to suffer at the hands of the same tyrannical and persecuting power (chap. Daniel 12:7, Daniel 7:25). The purposes of God must be accomplished—“that that is determined must be done;” and the time for their accomplishment is fixed. Till then the instruments for that accomplishment will be provided, preserved, and strengthened, without any consciousness on their part of being so used, while simply acting out the inclinations of their own depraved wills, and seeking the furtherance of their own selfish ends, for which, when the divine purposes shall have been accomplished, they will be called to account. To every persecuting power the voice of Omnipotence is, “Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” [329] How the Jews have suffered at the hands of the papacy is well known. Gibbon, quoted by Mr. Birks, writes in reference to Spain: “The intolerant spirit, since it would find neither idolatry nor heresies, was reduced to the persecution of the Jews.” And in regard to the Italians: “They respected the armed heresy of the Goths; but their rage was safely pointed against the rich and defenceless Jews.” “Of these (the first Crusaders) and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of God; nor had they felt a more bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian.”The Wilful King was not only to continue but to “prosper “during his appointed period. This purpose of God has been the secret of the mysterious continuance and more mysterious prosperity of the papacy during the past twelve centuries. “Four times,” says Macaulay (Essay on Ranke’s History of the Popes), “since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom, has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict, bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous assaults which she has survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.” It was thus that while the mighty work of reformation was proceeding in the north of Europe, and in all the countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees it seemed on the point of triumphing, a counter-reformation took place, carried on with equal energy and success. Hence the mysterious rise and progress of the Order of Jesus, a concentration of the spirit of the papacy, the main instrument in the great papal reaction. Till the appointed time of his decay and overthrow should come, the Wilful King was to be invincible. That time, however, was to come. In May 1514, the orator of the Lateran Council proclaimed that there was an end of resistance to papal rule, and that the whole body of Christendom was now subjected to its head, Pope Leo X. In October 1517, exactly three years and a half after, Luther fixed up his famous Theses at the door of the University of Wittemberg, which were to shake the papacy to its foundations. Three centuries and a half longer were to transpire before “the king,” divested of all his territory, was to cease to be a temporal ruler. But the time came. That that was determined was done. But the end is not yet. We may pause to reflect— 1. How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and His ways past finding out! How mysterious that such a power should be permitted to arise in the Church, and to continue and prosper for so long a period! 2. No evil or calamity but is under God’s control. Evils in Church and state can only exist and continue by His permission and appointment, and will be overruled for His own glory. 3. Solemn responsibility connected with the possession of the Gospel. The misuse or non-acceptance of that Gospel, proceeding from want of love to the truth, the sin that gave rise to this fearful judgment upon the Church of the New Testament, as a similar sin had done with that of the Old (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12). 4. The power and malignity of Satan in contriving, preparing, and employing agencies for evil where they might be least expected. It is our comfort, however, to know that this power is counteracted by the still greater power of God, in controlling these agencies and overruling them for His own glory and the good of His people. 5. The extent to which human depravity may, under Satan’s influence, be carried, even in connection with the highest profession of religion and piety. Hence the constant need of the Psalmist’s prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” . XLII.— AND TURKS. (Chap. Daniel 11:40-45.) Considerable obscurity connected with the present section. According to some, it is a continuation of the prophecy regarding the vile person or Antiochus Epiphanes, here still styled the King of the North. Thus viewed, the prophecy points to a last expedition against Egypt made after those previously mentioned; an expedition, however, of which history gives no intimation, but the reverse. [330] In the opinion of many evangelical expositors, the passage foretells the rise and doings of another power, of which, however, Antiochus was also a type. That power was the Mohammedan, first under the Saracens and subsequently the Turks; a power already noticed as an antitype of Antiochus, predicted as the little horn in the vision of the Ram and He-goat, chap. 8. Historically, it was that power that in the eastern portion of the empire succeeded the Roman, and became a scourge both to the Jews and to the Christian Church. In the prophecy also the section appears to connect itself with the prediction regarding the Roman empire and its representative, the Papacy. Thus viewing it, we notice— [330] Brightman observes that this part of the prophecy cannot apply to Antiochus, as he can find no mention in any author of a third expedition by him into Egypt. He thinks that neither the authors of the books of the Maccabees nor Josephus would have been likely to omit to mention it, had there been any such; the latter, indeed, stating that nothing at all was attempted by Antiochus against that country after his expulsion by the Romans till his death in Persia. Justin relates that after the check he received from the Roman consul Popilius, he died as soon as he returned to his own kingdom. Sending Lysias, his general, into Syria, he himself went into Persia, where he died. Keil also, with V. Lengerke, Maurer, and Hitzig, considers the idea of a last expedition of Antiochus against Egypt in this passage, not only unsupported by history, but in irreconcilable contradiction to the historical facts regarding his last undertakings.I. The time referred to. That the prophecy points to a time far beyond that of Antiochus would seem to be intimated in the words with which the section commences: “In the time of the end.” This probably the “end” already referred to as the time when the “indignation” against Israel is to be accomplished (Daniel 11:35), the latter period of the fourth and last empire, the “time, times, and half a time” of the Little Horn. It is according to the Book of Revelation the time of the three last of the seven “trumpets,” called the three woes; this power being the fifth and sixth, the former under the Saracens, and the latter the Turks, followed by the seventh, which announces the end or finishing of the mystery of God, when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, and when He takes to Himself His great power and reigns (Revelation 9:1-21; Revelation 10:7; Revelation 11:15-18). This time of the end might, as it has done, extend over centuries, being the duration of the last period of Israel’s chastisement, and at the same time the chastisement of the Christian Churches. [331][331] “The time of the end.” Bright-man thinks that, as the Romans did nothing in particular against the Jews after Adrian, the prophecy passes on to the time of the weakened and decayed empire, when the Saracens, under Mahomet, encountered them, as the king of the South, a.d. 630, when they took from the Romans, in about thirty years, Jerusalem, all Syria, Africa, and Asia; the king of the North being the Turks, whose tyranny especially lay against the Romans from the year a.d. 1300. So Joseph Mede, who is followed by most modern evangelical expositors, considers the “time of the end “to be the last times of the Romans, and the king of the South the Saracens under Mahomet; while the king of the North is the Turks from Scythia in the far north, another Antichristian power who should attack and overcome the Saracens.II. The parties predicted. These are twofold, designated according to the phraseology already employed in the former part of the prophecy in relation to two other powers, namely, the kings of the North and of the South. Formerly these terms were applied to the kings of Syria and of Egypt, the most prominent parties in that part of the vision, and so called from their situation in relation to Judea. Now, in the latter part of the prophecy, in the time of the end, they appear to mark the Saracens and the Turks, the latter rising in Scythia, to the north, and the former in Arabia, to the south of Palestine, and hence with equal truth designated the kings of the North and of the South. [332] These powers appear to be represented as acting against that previously predicted, namely, the Roman empire and its representative, the Papacy or Little Horn. They are apparently introduced as the power that was to check and weaken the Wilful King. The Turkish armies, which chiefly consisted of cavalry, appear to be pointed out in the prophecy, which represents the king of the North as coming “like a great whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen.” They are said also to have many ships, without which, as Bishop Newton remarks, they could not have vanquished Venice, or taken Constantinople, Rhodes, Cyprus, or Crete. The description corresponds with that of the Euphratean horsemen, generally understood to represent the Turkish power. “The number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred thousand thousand” (Revelation 9:14-16). This Euphratean power appearing under the sixth trumpet, or in the time of the end, is also represented as having their appointed period of rise and duration, being “prepared for (or, as in the margin, at) an hour and a day, and a month and a year (R.V., for the hour and day and month and year), to slay the third part of men.” The application of the king of the North to the Turkish power confirms that of the king of the South to the Saracens, their predecessors; that power being, according to general opinion, predicted in the locust army or first woe, which after “five months,” or a century and a half, of mischief, was to be succeeded by the second, or horsemen from the Euphrates (Revelation 9:3-10). [332] Bishop Newton, agreeing with Mede, observes that the terms North and South are to be taken and explained according to the times of which the prophet is speaking. Dr. Cox observes: “The sovereignties of Egypt and Syria, before called the king of the South and the king of the North, disappeared when they were absorbed in the Roman empire; and the new powers, or the Saracen and Turkish empires that succeeded, are now brought into view. But let it be observed that the Saracens became masters of Egypt, the original territory of the king of the South, and the Turks possessed Syria, or the kingdom of the North, and still retain it.” Calvin, who considers the power previously introduced, viz., the Romans, to be still described, thinks that the king of the South or Egypt, assisted by the king of the North or Syria, was to carry on war with the Romans, who are here compared to a deluge which should come and overflow, burying all the forces both of Egypt and Syria, and should also invade Judea. Junius and Willet think that the king of the North is still Antiochus, who should come up against the king of the South or Egypt, viz., Philometor, in order to aid his brother Physcon. Bullinger, like Mede and Brightman, understands by the kings of the North and South the Turks. and Saracens. Pfaff and Osiander thought the king of the North to be Antichrist, and the king of the South to be Christ Himself. Roman Catholic writers after Jerome, as well the Futurists, refer the passage to an infidel Antichrist who is yet to arise, and to the last conflicts in the land of Judea, Antichrist being here the king of the North. Kliefoth thinks that the prophecy relates to Antichrist, whom he distinguishes from the kings of the North and South, both of whom will in the time of the end attack him. Keil considers the first “him” to refer to the hostile king, the chief subject of the prophecy, but the second “him,” against whom the king of the North comes, to be the king of the South named immediately before; the king of the North, however, being the hostile king himself, thought of as the ruler of the distant North, reaching far beyond Syria, from which in his fury he comes against the king of the South.III. The doings of the parties. Those of the Turkish power or king of the North mainly described. 1. “The king of the South shall push at him” (Daniel 11:40). Mr. Birks remarks: “The Saracens, however wide their other conquests, did really push, with furious vehemence, against the papal dominions, whether we interpret them in a narrower sense of St. Peter’s patrimony, or more widely of the nations in communion with the See of Rome. How violent their inroads on the Western nations at large, till their defeat by Charles Martel, is known to the most cursory reader of history or romance.” He quotes Gibbon, who says: “A fleet of Saracens from the African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tiber, and to approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered as the metropolis of the Christian world.” The “African coast” marks the invaders as a power from the South. 2. “The king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots,” &c. History decides what the construction seems to leave uncertain, whether the attack of the king of the North was to be directed against the same power pushed at by the king of the South, or against the king of the South himself. We read of the attacks made by hordes of Turkish cavalry, first on the provinces of the Eastern empire, and then on the papal kingdoms of the West, as if following in the steps of the Saracens. Gibbon, speaking of the conquests of Togrul and Alp Arslan, says: “The Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.” After overthrowing the Greek empire, by means of their horsemen and their ships, they directed their attack on the West, more particularly predicted in the words, “He shall enter into the countries, and overflow, and pass over.” Mr. Birks remarks: “These words aptly describe the first passage of the Turks into Europe. They had already entered into the countries of Asia Minor, and established themselves there as kings of the North. But they were not restrained within these narrow bounds.… The results of this first overflow of the Turks into Europe are too well known, and too legible on the map of Europe for centuries, to require further details.” He observes that Sismondi describes Italy and the pope as the true objects, at that time, of the Turkish aggression; and quotes Gibbon, who says: “The grief and terror of the Latins revived, or seemed to revive, the old enthusiasm of the crusades.… The devastation advanced towards the West, and every year saw a new kingdom fall.” These attacks of the king of the North, like those of his predecessor, were the divinely appointed chastisement of the idolatry which had already found so large a place in the Christian churches. The words of the Sultan Mahomet II., read in connection with Revelation 9:20, at once show this to have been the case, and to confirm the view of this power being identical with the second woe and the king of the North: “I will not turn my face from the west to the east, till I overthrow and tread under the feet of my horses the gods of the nations; these gods of wood, of brass, of silver, and of gold, or of painting, which the disciples of Christ have made with their hands,”—as if he had read the passage above referred to,—“and the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils (demons, or departed spirits), and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood.” 3. He (the king of the North) shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown; but these shall escape out of his hand, Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon” (Daniel 11:41). No question as to what is meant by “the glorious land” here and in Daniel 11:16. Palestine or Syria, the tract lying between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, “has been more favoured by nature, and is more richly stored with the various delights of climate, of soil, and of scenery, than any other space of equal extent on the surface of the globe. Were one asked to point to that region of the earth which is the happiest in respect of natural conditions, it is to this tract that he would turn.” The glory and beauty, however, were more especially in the manifested presence and gracious goings of Him who deigned to call it peculiarly His own land. Into that land the victorious Turks entered in 1517, and left, as the trace of their presence and conquest, the present grey walls that surround Jerusalem, erected by the Sultan Suliman in 1542, the land continuing in the possession of the Turks to this day. [333] Those here said to escape out of his hand are Bedouin tribes of Arabia, who, as sons of Ishmael, still make good the prediction of Gen 16:12; whom the Turks have never been able entirely to subdue; and to whom, ever since the time when the Sultan Selim conquered the adjoining countries, they have paid an annual pension for the safe passage of the pilgrims to Mecca. It might seem strange, as Calvin remarks, and not a little trying to the covenant people, to learn that while they and their country, which God had given to Abraham and his seed, and which He had promised to watch over, should be invaded by this hostile power, those other countries, inhabited by their hereditary enemies, should be permitted to escape, and to remain in peace and safety. But they might remember the words of the prophet, “You only have I known of all the nations of the earth, therefore I will punish you for your iniquities.” Egypt, however, was not to escape (Daniel 11:42-43). Selim, among his other conquests, put an end to the government of the Mamelukes, and established in its stead that of the Turks, who continue to this day, as Bishop Newton remarks, to drain immense treasures out of that rich and fertile but oppressed and wretched country. That it is held now by a Khedive or viceroy, only another evidence that the reign of the Turk is drawing to its close. With Egypt, the chief power in the south, should also fall the other nations of Africa,—the Libyans and the Ethiopians or Cushites, still farther to the south, who should become the obsequious followers of his march (Judges 4:10), but who also now give evidence to the drying up of “the great river Euphrates” (Revelation 16:12). [333] Brightman observes that the Sultan Selim, about the year 1514, on his way to Egypt, took his journey by Judea, and carried Jerusalem by assault. Edom, or in general, Arabia, the Turks did not attack, being content to open themselves a way to Egypt through Syria and Palestine, which in the following year they brought under their subjection.4. “Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many; and he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain” (Daniel 11:44-45). The tidings out of the east and the north which shall disturb this victorious power in the midst of his conquests in the Holy Land and the adjacent countries, are such, doubtless, as would inform him of risings among the subdued nations, or invasions from other quarters, which should endanger his acquisitions, or perhaps his own dominions. [334] These tidings should arouse his indignation and draw him from Africa, where he appears then to be, again to Palestine, where he would seem to encamp at Jerusalem, the metropolis of the country, pitching his tent on the “glorious holy mountain, between the seas,” the Mediterranean on the one side and the Dead Sea on the other, [335] his purpose being, like that of his Syrian type, to wreak his vengeance on the people by their utter destruction. [336] How the Turks took and retained possession of Jerusalem we have already seen. It is scarcely likely that the doings of Sultan Selim in reference to that city are here referred to; history only relating concerning him that, having been greatly annoyed by the arrows of the wild Arabs from the hills in the south, he advanced towards Gaza, and thence to Rama, where he revenged himself on the habitations, wives, and children of the Arabs, and soon after turned aside with his cavalry to visit Jerusalem. It is more than probable that, as it is there that this hostile power is to come to his end, the prophecy has not yet received its fulfilment. Probably another power is first to come upon the stage. [337][334] “Tidings from the east and from the north.” Bishop Newton thinks that Persia in the east, and Russia in the north, of the Ottoman empire, may be the quarters from which the tidings referred to may come, and that these nations may hereafter be made the instruments of divine Providence in the restoration of the Jews; quoting a current tradition among the common people in Turkey, that their empire shall at some period be destroyed by the Russians. Pfaff and Osiander, understanding the passage of the Roman Antichrist, regarded the tidings as those of the breaking out of the Reformation, and the preaching of the Gospel in Germany. Melanchthon understood it of the Turks, whose rage the Lord should stay from heaven when no human force could resist them. Bright-man, writing in the seventeenth century, observes that the things hitherto predicted are already past; those which follow, to the end of the chapter, are still to come. No tidings from the east troubled Antiochus, nor the Romans after the battle of Cannζ: nor did the Romans plant their tabernacles in Judea. He thinks the tidings out of the east and north that shall trouble the Turk, is the conversion of the Jews according to Revelation 16:12, which brings him in great fury to the Holy Land, where he is to perish. [335] “He shall plant the tabernacles Of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain.” Mr. Birks inclines to think, with Melanchthon, that in so far as the Turkish power is viewed as the subject of the present prophecy, Constantinople is the place referred to as the “glorious holy mountain,” or, as he says the words might be rendered, a “mountain of holy delight;” the occupying of that place as the seat of empire being the main event of the history between the time of the conquest of Egypt by the Turks and their final overthrow. Regarding the king of the North, however, as the Antichrist yet to arise, he thinks Palestine and Jerusalem the places intended, whither he will lead the confederate nations of Europe, the power of Russia, and the districts held long before by the king of the North. Dr. Cox thinks the passage intimates that the Turk will plant his tabernacles, or fix his encampment, in the Holy Land at Jerusalem, between the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean; and that there, having enjoyed a termporary triumph, he will experience a signal and fatal overthrow. He adds, “Whether the Russian and Persian powers are destined to inflict the providential visitation, as many have supposed, must be left to the disclosures of futurity.” Keil thinks that the expression πָ ?θַ ?ς (nata’), “plant,” probably alludes to the great palace-like tent of the Oriental ruler, whose poles must be struck very deep into the earth; these tents being surrounded by a multitude of smaller ones for the guards and servants, which accounts for the use of the plural, “tabernacles” or “tents.” He renders the words δַ ?ψφְ ?αִ ?ιΞχֹ ?γֶ ?ωׁ (har tsebhi-qodhesh), “the holy hill of the delight,” i.e., of Palestine; and considers it to be the hill on which the Temple stood. He disagrees with Kliefoth and others, who think that the “seas” are the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; and regards the word “seas” as only the poetic plural of fulness for the great Mediterranean. The term ΰֲ ?τַ ?γְ ?πεֹ (aphadhno), “his palace,” as our own and Luther’s version render it, has been variously understood. Theodotion and the Vulgate leave it untranslated, while the Septuagint omits it altogether. Porphyry understood it to be the name of a place, and Junius regards it as that of the country of Mesopotamia or Syria, the “seas” being its fens or marshes. Jerome renders it “his stable,” as referring to cavalry. Calvin has “his palace,” as indicating a permanent abode fixed by the Romans in those countries. The word is used by the Rabbins in the sense of a palace. Dr. Pusey remarks that this is one of the four Syrian words which have been singled out by the opponents of Daniel, as making against his Hebrew, but as agreeing with the situation of a Jewish writer in the time of the Maccabees. The word, he says, survived in heathen and Christian Syriac as well as in the translation of the Scriptures, and was also, in a slightly varied form, probably introduced into Arabia from the Syriac, and had certainly been known in Mesopotamia, since it became the name of a place, Apadnas, near Amida on the Tigris; but was wholly lost in Chaldea, being unintelligible to all the Greek translators, and rendered in the Syriac version, not according to the meaning of the actual Syriac word, but according to the common meaning of padan, which forms part of the name Padan-aram. [336] “To destroy and utterly make away many.” μְ ?δַ ?ωְׁ ?ξִ ?ιγεּ ?μְ ?δַ ?ηֲ ?ψִ ?ιν (lehashmidh ulehakharim), to smite and to ban, or uproot, implying utter destruction. So Antiocbus in his wrath resolved to make Jerusalem a grave for the whole of the Jews. [337] Mr. Birks, who interprets these last verses of the Saracen and Turkish powers, is inclined to extend their bearing to a power that should combine in himself all the forms of Antichristian hostility that had preceded, and believes there is a further accomplishment in events which will complete and close the Gentile dispensation. Keil also views the latter part of this chapter as pointing to a power, whom he designates Antichrist, the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes, and remarks: “The placing of the overthrow of this enemy with his host near the Temple-mountain agrees with other prophecies of the Old Testament, which place the decisive destruction of the hostile world-power by the appearance of the Lord for the consummation of His kingdom upon the mountains of Israel (Ezekiel 39:4), or in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joe 3:2, &c.), in or at Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:2); and confirms the result of our exposition that the hostile king, the last enemy or world-power, is the Antichrist.IV. The end of the hostile power. “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him” (Daniel 11:45). This being the first time we read of the end of the power whose doings are described in the preceding verses, since the introduction of the vile person in Daniel 11:21, some have been led to think that the same power is spoken of throughout. It is probable, however, that the end here foretold is that of the hostile power under its last form, which is at the same time the termination and destruction of all the world-powers that have set themselves in opposition to God’s people whether in Old or New Testament times, and which, of course, is still future. The blending, in the prophecy, of one Antichristian power, or of one form of Antichrist, into another has its parallel in the prophecy of the Saviour Himself, in which the prediction regarding Jerusalem’s destruction blends into that of His second appearing, when He shall take “vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of His Son,” and when the “Man of Sin “shall be destroyed “with the brightness of His coming.” It seems certain, from chap. Daniel 12:1, that the end of the hostile power here predicted is connected with the great tribulation, and the resurrection from the dead which is probably soon to follow it. The angel then adds: “And at that time”—the time referred to in the end of the preceding chapter—“shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” This time of trouble, again, is connected with the resurrection from the dead, which appears to follow it chap. Daniel 12:2), and which we know to be the result of the Lord’s second appearing (1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). The manner in which the end of this and, at the same time, of every hostile power is described, corresponds with this view of the time and circumstances in which it shall happen. It is simply said, “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him.” As if a breath from the Lord’s mouth, or a glance from His eye, brought him and all his chivalry in a moment to destruction. No word is spoken as to the means by which, or the manner in which, the end should be brought about. The scene closes in sublime and mysterious silence. For a fuller description of the solemn event we must, doubtless, look to the prophecy of Zechariah, Zechariah 14:3-4, and especially to the awful and magnificent picture of the battle of the great day of God Almighty presented in Revelation 19:11-21. May both reader and writer be prepared for the terrors and solemnities of that infinitely momentous and rapidly approaching day! . XLIII.—THE INFIDEL AND FINAL . (Chap. Daniel 11:45.) “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him.” It has been remarked that in this last prophecy of Daniel one predicted hostile power appears to merge into and blend with another that succeeds it. This prophetic blending sometimes takes place almost insensibly; so that the same power would almost seem still to continue to be spoken of. Of these various successive powers Antiochus Epiphanes, who is introduced in Daniel 11:21, seems to be regarded as a kind of general type. The powers themselves may be regarded as so many Antichrists,—for, according to the Apostle, “there are many Antichrists,”—or Antichrist under so many different forms. The destruction of all these Antichristian powers would seem to take place together, and to be that “end” predicted in the closing verse of the chapter, of which the sudden and signal end of Antiochus was a type. As the papal Antichrist seemed to blend into the Mahometan in Daniel 11:40, so the Mahometan would appear to blend into the infidel and final one in the last verse of the chapter. From what is said to take place when the power thus predicted comes to his end, viz., the time of great tribulation, the deliverance of the Jewish remnant, and the resurrection from the dead, there can be little doubt that this power is the last enemy that shall appear against the people of God, till the end of the thousand years’ reign of righteousness and peace (Revelation 20:7-9). That last enemy is apparently still the Little Horn of Daniel’s Fourth Beast, and Paul’s Man of Sin; but, as may be gathered from the book of Revelation, under an openly infidel form, as the scarlet-coloured beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit and goeth into perdition, “full of names of blasphemy,” having seven heads and ten horns, who with the false prophet gathers together the kings of the earth and their armies, to make war against Christ in the “battle of the great day of God Almighty,” and who with the same false prophet shall then be taken and “cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone” (Revelation 17:3; Revelation 16:14; Revelation 19:20). Following Mr. Frere in his “Combined View of the Prophecies,” Mr. Irving observes that in the book of Daniel we have four main streams of prophecy, all commencing from the period at which the prophet lived, and running down to the time of the end. The fourth stream is contained in this eleventh chapter, which connects itself with the time of Daniel by the mention of certain “kings” immediately succeeding it, and then makes large leaps to reach the description of a third blasphemous and ungodly power, which was to arise in the form, not of an institution, but of an individual, close to the time of the end; these three powers being the Papal, Mahometan, and the Infidel; all to arise within the bounds of the four great monarchies, which may be called the prophetic earth. The prophet, he remarks, gives a most particular account of one king who should, at the time of the end, exalt himself against God, and prosper in war, till he should “come to his end, and none should help him.” This end of the infidel king, for whose manifestation the whole history was given, shall also be the end or accomplishment of God’s purposes in dispersing the Jews; which, he observes, was most important for Daniel, and is still most important both to the dispersed Jews and the Church of the Gentiles, whose fulness comes not in till the dispersed are gathered again; inasmuch as the prophecy makes this ingathering contemporaneous with the downfall of the great infidel king. Much to the same effect, Mr. Faber, in his “View of the Prophecies regarding Israel,” observes that nearly every prophecy that treats of the restoration of the Jews treats likewise of the contemporary overthrow of some great and impious combination of God’s enemies; a confederacy of which an infidel power, which should appear at the time of the end, should be so powerful as to take the lead, and which should include the ten-horned beast or Roman empire under its last head, the ecclesiastical power represented by Daniel’s little horn, and certain kings of the earth, apparently in a state of vassalage to that sovereign power. All these are said to come to their end, and to be destroyed by some divine interposition after the expiration of a certain period (a “time, times, and half a time”); and that in Palestine, a region between the seas, in the neighbourhood of the glorious holy mountain, or Mount Zion, and in the more immediate vicinity of the town of Megiddo. At the close of the same period, he observes, the prophet teaches (chap. Daniel 12:1) that the restoration of the Jews, the goal to which the angelic communication pointed, should take place. The restoration, contemporaneous with the overthrow of the infidel power, Mr. Faber regarded as prepared for by the fall of the Ottoman empire, or the drying up of the river Euphrates (Revelation 16:12), which takes place previous to the gathering together of the great confederacy. A writer on prophecy already quoted remarks that the manifestation of the last Antichristian apostasy or infidelity consists, like that of the former two, the Papal and the Mahometan, of two parts; the latter and the chief part being the account of the infidel person, his acts, and his destruction; the other part being the historical chain which connects the account with the time of the giving of the vision,—a chain of persons, remarkable kings, who were to intervene. This chain, Mr. Irving observes, brings us to a new dynasty (Daniel 11:18), when the Roman arms under Scipio took the sovereignty of the parts that had constituted the Grecian monarchy; and then the prophecy at one stride brings us down to the immediate predecessor of the infidel king, who is said to be in his estate a “raiser of taxes” (Daniel 11:20). The chain, he thinks, thus brings us to the first manifestation of the infidel power in the “vile person” (Daniel 11:21), whose acts the prophet describes through the remaining part of the chapter. The countries he enters into (Daniel 11:40) he considers to be already prepared, by the dissemination of his infidel sentiments, to give him a welcome; when he will “overflow” and level, like a terrible inundation, ancient thrones and establishments before him. This first manifestation of the infidel power he, with many others, believed to have its realisation in the first Napoleon, to be succeeded by a second like to him. He thinks that the prophet then immediately carries the infidel prince over to another scene of action, quite out of the bounds of the ten-horned papal empire, to the Holy Land (Daniel 11:41), and gives a narrative of his conquests there, carried on probably from a motive of mad ambition: Perhaps, having subdued the western Roman empire, he is to be God’s instrument to bring the Turk to his end, and may thus pass over to the Asiatic and African states, to possess himself of Egypt and the neighbouring kingdoms, to rally the nations of the ancient empire under his banner, the time of the destruction of the fourth beast being nigh at hand. The tidings out of the east, he, with Brightman, thinks refer to the event predicted in Revelation 16:12, regarding the kings of the East, while those from the north refer to Russia. Thus troubled and “moved by what natural impulse we know not, but overruled by all those prophecies that have doomed him and all his chivalry to fall upon the mountains of Israel, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, by the rock of Zion, he plants in Jerusalem the ‘tabernacles of his palace,’ the insignia of his royal state, upon the ‘glorious holy mountain between the seas,’ and there he comes to his end by a mighty overthrow, in a great battle of God Almighty, to which the nations have been gathered together.” He characterises the infidelity or infidel apostasy, contemplated here in the light not of an institution but of a person, as that which has grown like a disease out of the body of the papacy, and been nourished by the very grossness of that superstition, and gathering every evil and corrupt humour out of the wicked mass, till we see it, as it now is, all over its kingdom, ready to burst out and destroy the very organisation of the body. This impersonation of infidelity, or infidel chief, he considers, is to conduct and guide that infidelity to its sure purpose of dissolving that constitution of evil which has so long sat as an incubus upon the spirit of the Church. This infidel Antichrist, having obtained the victory over the papal constitution in order to destroy every vestige of lingering life within it, and being then led onwards to the East where he shall find the Mahometan superstition in its last throes; and thus coming in time to take up the abandoned sceptre of the Eastern empire, and having under him that power of nations and of kingdoms, which both the apostasies of the East and West once possessed,—“he hath accomplished his end, and his time is come.” With his destruction, which is accomplished at Armageddon, the three apostasies are all finished, and Satan’s last desperate throw is ended, and “the kingdom of Christ in good earnest spreads with all the prosperity of the divine blessing over all the earth.” In Mr. Faber’s view, which is similar, the person who forms the subject of the closing verses of the chapter is the infidel king, the leader of the great Antichristian confederacy of the last days, who will, at the time of the end, or the close of the time, times, and half a time, be opposed by a king of the North and a king of the South; yet, in spite of this opposition, will succeed in overflowing many countries, and in conquering Palestine, Egypt, Libya, and the land of Cush or Ethiopia. In the unidst of these victories, he, being in Egypt, will be disturbed by some untoward tidings out of the North and out of the East, probably of the arrival in Palestine of the navy of the great maritime power with the converted of Judah. Enraged at such ungrateful news, he will hasten to Jerusalem, which he will succeed in taking. This, however, will be his last victory. Advancing to Megiddo, a town near the shores of the Mediterranean, in the great plain of Esdraelon, where, according to St. John, the conflict is to be decided, he will come unexpectedly to his end. The triumphant “Word of God” shall break his confederacy, and super-naturally overthrow him with a sudden destruction. The king of the North Mr. Faber thinks to be Russia; some terrible invasion from that quarter, symbolised by the great hailstorm of the Apocalypse, being made upon the papal Roman empire during the time that the infidel king is prosecuting his conquests in Palestine and Egypt. Keil also views the latter verses of the chapter as all pointing to such an infidel power, whom he designates the Antichrist, the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes. He says: “The undertaking of this king (Antiochus) to root out the worship of the living God, and destroy the Jewish religion, shows in type the great war which the world-power shall undertake against the kingdom of God, by exalting itself above every god, to hasten on its own destruction and the consummation of the kingdom of God. The description of this war, as to its origin, character, and issue, forms the principal subject of this prophecy.… From the typical relation in which Antiochus, the Old Testament enemy of God, stands to Antichrist, the New Testament enemy, is explained the connection of the end, the final salvation of the people of God, and the resurrection from the dead, with the description of this enemy, without any express mention being made of the fourth world-kingdom [the Roman empire], and of the last enemy [the little horn] arising out of it—already revealed to Daniel in chap. 7.… In chapter 8, the violent enemy of the people of Israel, who would arise from the Diadoch-kingdoms of the Javanic world-monarchy [the four divisions of the Grecian empire after Alexander’s death], was already designated as the type of the last enemy who would arise out of the ten kingdoms of the fourth world- [or universal] monarchy. After these preceding revelations, the announcement of the great tribulation, that would come upon the people of God from these two enemies, could be presented in one comprehensive painting, wherein the assaults made by the prefigurative enemy against the covenant people should form the foreground of the picture, for a representation of the daring of the antitypical enemy, proceeding even to the extent of abolishing all divine and human ordinances, which shall bring the last and severest tribulation on the Church of God at the end of the days, for its purification and preparation for eternity.” We conclude our remarks on the infidel Antichrist, and on the whole of this deeply interesting though somewhat obscure chapter, with the words of Auberlen: “It cannot be proved with absolute certainty that a personal Antichrist will stand at the head of the Antichristian kingdom; for it is possible that the eighth, like the preceding heads (of the beast in Revelation 7), designates a kingdom, a power, and not a person; and the same may be said concerning the Antichristian horn described by Daniel, when compared with the ten horns. But the type of Antiochus Epiphanes is of decisive importance; for this personal enemy of God’s kingdom is described in the eighth chapter of Daniel, as a little, gradually increasing horn, just as Antichrist is spoken of in the seventh. And this is corroborated by the Apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians 2), who describes Antichrist (Daniel 11:4) with colours evidently furnished by Daniel’s sketch of Antiochus, and who calls him, moreover, the “Man of Sin,” the Son of perdition, which, if explained naturally, must refer to an individual (Compare John 17:12, where the same expression is used of Judas). In favour of the same view may be adduced, likewise, analogies in the history of the world; the previous world-kingdoms (or universal empires) had extraordinary persons as their heads, as Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Alexander the Great. The spiritual and universal character does not exclude individual, personal representations. Every spiritual tendency has its distinguished representatives, and when it has reached its perfection, provides its representative κατʼ ? ἐξοχήν (par excellence). Hence Antichristian tendencies produce different Antichrists; and it is a sober historical view when Christianity maintains that these separate Antichrists shall, some future day, find their consummation in an individual far excelling them in the intensity of his evil character (Lange). In conclusion, we must not omit to mention that Paul and John agree in speaking emphatically of the destruction of Antichrist.… His triumph is but of short duration; judgment speedily overtakes him. The man of sin is of necessity a child of death, the son of perdition.… The return of the “beast” (Revelation 17:11) is represented, or at least prepared, in that principle which, since 1789, has manifested itself in beast-like outbreaks, and has since then been developed both extensively and intensively. This principle has appeared in various forms, in the Revolution, in Napoleon, [338] despotism sanctioning revolution; proving, at the same time, that the beast, even in this shape, can carry the “harlot” in Socialism and Communism. But we may yet expect other manifestations. [339] At present, it is the endeavour of churches and governments to keep down this monster; but it has shown its teeth more than once, and given unmistakable signs that it is regaining life and strength. How long its development shall last,—whether it is to grow up rapidly,—through what different phases it has yet to pass,—at what period the seventh kingdom shall pass over into the eighth (Revelation 17), is not known to man: God alone knows it. It is not for us to know the times or the seasons (Acts 1:7); but it is for us to take to heart the word of our Lord, “Can ye not discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:3). [338] Mr. Irving and others find a remarkable correspondence between the prophecy concerning the “vile person” and the first Napoleon. The “raiser of taxes,” who preceded him, is identified with Louis XVI., whose death was brought about “neither in anger nor in battle,” but in cold blood, by the sentence of that very power to which his raising of taxes had given birth. The rise of Napoleon is considered to be described in Daniel 11:21, “with a general comprehensiveness as wonderful as in the former verse was the Bourbon’s fate.” Daniel 11:22, Mr. Irving thinks, describes the first act of Napoleon’s career in Italy almost in his own words which be addressed to his troops: “You have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the summit of the Apennines.” The “prince of the covenant” he views as the pope, who declared his submission in a league which terminated the campaign. In correspondence with Daniel 11:23, he remarks, that Napoleon, after the league just mentioned so wrought with men of science and letters as well as with the common people, to induce them to regard him as the harbinger of light, reason, and liberty, that he was able, with a small force, so to increase his power as to enter the richest provinces of Italy, and levy upon them exactions of every kind, which he scattered among his soldiers; at the same time plundering churches and repositories of art of their treasures which no conqueror had hitherto done. Daniel 11:25-27 were fulfilled in the surprising victories gained over the emperor of Austria, the king of the South, through secret intelligence had with one high in the Austrian counsels; the emperor concerting the campaign with the pope or prince of the covenant, plotting mischief together, viz., the continuance of the mystery of iniquity,—but in vain, as its end was determined; the result being that Rome became a republic, the priests were banished, and the pope died in exile. Daniel 11:28 is viewed as giving the key to his future wars and animosities, viz., his “indignation against the holy covenant,” or that people who continued to maintain the cause of religion and righteousness against his usurpation and the confederacy to perpetuate the mischiefs of the papacy, viz., the British nation. [339] Faber, Frere, Gauntlett, and others, expressed their conviction, previous to 1820, that a second French emperor, exactly like the first, would arise nearer to the end, and would constitute the last great Antichrist. More than twenty other writers, according to Mr. Baxter, up to 1861, considered the late emperor, Napoleon III., to be the eighth head of the apocalyptic beast or future personal Antichrist. Points of resemblance between him and the first Napoleon were not wanting; enough to show that the idea of a repetition might easily be verified, and to strike the attention of those who, according to the Lord’s direction, seek to discern the signs of the times. That two potentates, so closely related to each other, should arise and, after a brief interval, succeed each other, both so unlikely in themselves, and with such humble beginnings, and bearing so strong a resemblance both to each other and to the prophecy, was certainly remarkable, and fitted at least to keep men on the watch. But the end was not yet. “Deus habet sus horas et moras.” Notwithstanding the expressed presentiment of the first Napoleon that his nephew should be the ultimate representative of the Napoleonic dynasty, and the profound conviction of that nephew, even from early life, that he had a great mission and destiny to fulfil in relation to France; notwithstanding that, singularly, after becoming president of the French Republic in 1851, he became emperor of France in 1852, being crowned on the anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz and the coronation of Napoleon L, thus restoring the Napoleonic dynasty, when the French people inscribed on an arch erected in his honour the remarkable words, “The uncle that was, the nephew that is,” as if in literal fulfilment of Rev 17:8; Revelation 17:11; notwithstanding that from 1849 to 1870 he maintained military occupation of Rome, and declared that the temporal power of the pope was incompatible with the advance of civilisation and must be put down, being termed the “modern Augustus, nephew and heir of Cζsar;” and finally, notwithstanding that he succeeded in acquiring an almost paramount influence over Spain and Italy, while he extended his power in Algeria and the northern coast of Africa, and appeared determined to possess himself of Palestine, and that, as in the case of the first Napoleon, Great Britain appeared to be the only impediment to his attainment of uncontrolled dominion over the Roman world; yet he passed away, broken apparently in the zenith of his prosperity and power, and left the prophecy still unfulfilled. relation to the prediction in Daniel 7:11, regarding the destruction by fire of the body of the Beast or fourth universal empire, that immediately preceding the kingdom of the Son of Man, and of the saints—his body being “given to the burning flame”—science has recently indicated another way in which this judgment might be inflicted on apostate Christendom and the Antichristian kingdoms. The following extract from the Spectator, in relation to a recent conclusion of astronomy, only met the writer’s eye while the preceding work was in the press:—“We sometimes doubt whether the world’s belief in science is quite as genuine as it seems. Here is Mr. Proctor, whose astronomical authority and ability nobody doubts, has told the world for some time back, we believe, that there is really a very considerable chance of a catastrophe only fifteen years hence, which may put an end to us and our earthly hopes and fears altogether; and, so far as we can see, the world has blandly treated Mr. Proctor’s warning as it would have treated an interesting speculation on the future of electricity—that is, has regarded it with a certain mild, literary satisfaction, but has not made any change in its arrangements in consequence.… Yet, supposing Mr. Proctor’s facts to be correctly stated—on which we should like to have the judgment of other astronomers—there does seem a remarkably good chance that in 1897 the sun will suddenly break out into the same kind of intensity of heat and light which caused the conflagration in the star of the Northern Crown in 1866, when for a day or two the heat and light emitted by it became suddenly many hundreds of times greater than they were before, after which the star relapsed into its former relative insignificance. Those few days of violence, however, must have been enough to destroy completely all vegetable and animal life in the planets circulating round that sun, if such planets were in existence; and Mr. Proctor shows no little reason to believe that the same catastrophe may very probably happen to us, doubtless from a precisely similar cause, if the astronomers who believe that the comet of 1880 was identical with the comet of 1843 and the comet of 1668 should be right,—which would imply that the same comet, with a rapidly diminishing period, is likely to return and fall into the sun, with all its meteoric appendages, in or about the year 1897. Mr. Proctor tells us that Professor Winnecke believes that the identity of the comets of 1843 and 1880 hardly admits of a doubt; while Mr. Marth thinks that both may be identical with the comet of 1668, its velocity having been reduced by its passing through the corona of the sun; so that on its next return, in a considerably reduced time, it may be altogether unable to pass out of the sphere of the sun’s influence, and may precipitate itself, with all its meteoric train, into the mass of the sun. If this event occurs—as at some return or other Mr. Proctor believes to be nearly certain—(the next but one, we suppose, if not the next), there will certainly be an abrupt arrest of an enormous momentum as the long train of meteors enters the sun, which arrest would show itself in the shape of enormously increased heat,—the probable result whereof would be the burning up of all vegetable and animal life existing on the planets of the solar system. It is true that Mr. Proctor is not quite sure how the absorption of this comet and its train into the sun would really affect us. He is by no means certain that our sun would burst into flame, as the star in the Northern Crown did in 1866, but he evidently thinks it much more likely than not. And he does not seriously doubt that in the behaviour of the star in the Northern Crown, which so suddenly broke into flame in 1866, we have the example of a real sidereal catastrophe which from time to time either actually destroys, or would destroy, if they existed, such worlds as ours, if they happen to be the planets of a sun thus suddenly fed with a great accession of cosmic heat.” In connection with the same subject the writer has recently met with the following passage in Mr. Garrat’s “Midnight Cry,” written about twenty years ago:—“The fiery flood. So it is described in Peter’s second epistle. The destruction of the ungodly will be by fire; and out of that fire will issue the new heavens and the new earth. The question is often asked, whether that event will happen at the commencement or the close of the millennium. Perhaps, in different degrees, at both. Isaiah says, speaking of a period prior to the thousand years, ‘By fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord shall be many.’ And he seems also to place the creation of new heavens and a new earth at the same period; while it is after the millennium, John says in Revelation, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth.’ This and many other apparent difficulties of the same nature are easily explained. ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ The whole millennium is, in God’s eye, but a day—the great day of the Lord God Almighty. It is the ‘regeneration,’—the period of earth’s new birth; and the events at its commencement and its close are sometimes looked upon as one. God will destroy His enemies with fire at the beginning of these thousand years. The conflagration at their close will be still more terrible. Both are looked upon as one event. And it is to both, regarded as one, that the words of Peter apply: ‘The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.’ It will come as a thief in the night on the world. They will be alone, because the Church will have been translated. With what bitter remorse will men look on the fiery deluge as it comes sweeping along! They might have escaped, and they would not; and now escape is impossible.” . XLIV.—THE GREAT . (Chap. Daniel 12:1.) The angel continues his discourse regarding the things that should befall Daniel’s people in the last days. He had shown him the fall of their last great adversary in the “glorious holy mountain” where, in his pride and indignation against the people of God, he had planted the tabernacles of his palace. He now describes what should be the experience of men in general at that period, but with a special reference to Daniel’s own people. “There shall be a time of trouble, such as there never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” To this, the great tribulation, we now turn our attention. The Lord the Spirit give light! That there should be such a time of trouble previous to the period of lasting peace and prosperity to Israel and the world, Daniel might have already read in the sacred books which he possessed. The song of Moses in the law had concluded with intimations of such a time (Deuteronomy 32:34-43). Isaiah had been led more than once to enlarge upon it, when foretelling the year of the Lord’s redeemed. It was with reference to it that the Lord exhorts His people when He says: “Come, My people, enter into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee, and hide thee for a little season, until the indignation be overpast. For, behold, the Lord cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the world for their iniquity; and the earth shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain” (Isaiah 26:20-21). In reference to the same period the prophet had asked, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments, from Bozrah? This that is glorious in His apparel, travelling in the greatness of His strength?” The answer is given by the Redeemer and Deliverer of His people, “I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save.” The prophet asks again, “Wherefore art thou red in Thine apparel, and Thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat?” To which the answer is returned, “I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with Me: for I will tread them in Mine anger, and trample them in My fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon My garments, and I will stain all My raiment,”—the blood here that of his enemies, not His own. “For the day of vengeance is in Mine heart, and the year of My redeemed is come” (Isaiah 63:1-4). That day of vengeance was to follow “the acceptable year of the Lord;” and hence His object was only to declare the latter when, reading in the synagogue at Nazareth from Isaiah 61:1-2, Jesus stopped at the words, “the day of vengeance of our God.” Zephaniah had also predicted the same time of trouble as ushering in the glory of the future age. “For My determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them Mine indignation, even all My fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of My jealousy. For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent” (Zephaniah 3:8-9). Jeremiah had written of the same period of tribulation, adding, “It is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jeremiah 30:7). Ezekiel, about half a century before this last vision of Daniel, had been inspired to predict the same time of trouble in the following sublime and terrific language:—“Speak to every feathered fowl and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to the sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, and of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan. And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of My sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you. Thus ye shall be filled at My table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord God. And I will set My glory among the nations, and the nations shall see My judgment that I have executed, and My hand that I have laid upon them. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they trespassed against Me, therefore hid I My face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies; so fell they all by the sword. According to their uncleanness, and according to their transgressions, have I done unto them, and hid My face from them. Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Now will I bring again the captivity of Jacob, and have mercy upon the whole house of Israel, and will be jealous for My holy name” (Ezekiel 39:17-25). This was, doubtless, the same tribulation of which Jesus forewarned His disciples when He said, “There shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to that time, no, nor ever shall be;” adding, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” This time of tribulation the Saviour, like the prophets before Him, connects with that of His people’s redemption, adding, according to Luke, “When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28). We may notice in connection with this time of trouble— I. The time of it. The angel says, “At that time,” [340] i.e., when the last hostile power shall, as had just been mentioned, “go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many,” and shall “plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain,” there to meet with his end (chap. Daniel 11:44-45). The last clause of the verse connects it with the time of returning mercy to the covenant people, when “all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:26); while the second verse connects it with the resurrection of the dead, both events being elsewhere connected with the Lord’s second appearing (Zechariah 12:10; Revelation 1:7; Matthew 24:39; Acts 3:19-21, R.V.; 1 Corinthians 15:23; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). So Jesus, as we have seen, connects the time of tribulation with that of His own coming “in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” From the events which are to follow it, however, it is obviously not to be confounded with the time of the general judgment. The fulfilment of the promises regarding Israel is to follow. [340] “At that time.” Keil remarks that the expression points back to the “time of the end “(chap. Daniel 11:40), the time when the final hostile and persecuting power rises up to subdue the whole world, and sets up his camp in the Holy Land, to destroy many in great anger, and totally to uproot them. He observes that the description of this oppression seems to be based upon Jeremiah 30:7, the time of trouble being the climax which the hostile king shall bring upon Israel, and occurring with the expiry of the last or seventieth week (chap. Daniel 9:26); while, with Kranichfeld, he identifies Israel’s deliverance out of it with the setting up of Messiah’s kingdom as described in chap. Daniel 7:22-27. He agrees with Hävernick in opposing those who refer this verse to the period of persecution under Antiochus, on the ground that the statement regarding it is far too strong for such a period, while the promised deliverance of those “written in the book “does not accord with that Syrian oppression. Hävernick understands the “trouble” of the sufferings and oppressions which the people of Israel should endure at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, but which should be most fully realised only at the second coming of the Lord (Matthew 24:21-22). Hofmann finds in this and the two following verses the prophecy of the final close of the history of nations, the time of the great tribulation at the termination of the present course of the world, the complete salvation of Israel in it, and the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. Calvin interpreted the words of the increased troubles and heavier afflictions to be endured by the Church after the manifestation of Christ. Chrysostom, Grotius, and others understand them of the persecutions of Antiochus while his armies were still in Judea. Junius, with Calvin, applies them to the troubles of the Church in the times of the Gospel. Calovius limits them to the last times, in the “end of the days.” Brightman remarks that the tribulation cannot be applied to any trouble from Antiochus or the Romans, as after it no calamity is to be expected by the Jews, the suffering inflicted on them by those powers being insignificant compared with this misery in which, after sixteen, now eighteen, centuries, the Jews still lie buried. He considers the tribulation to have reference to the Jews, Daniel’s own people, of whom, however, he thinks, some will very likely hold obstinately to their legal rights and institutions, notwithstanding the deliverance of their nation, and the glory with which the truth shall then flourish.II. The subjects of the tribulation. These, apparently, are twofold: (1) The nations of apostate Christendom forming the great confederacy under the leadership of the infidel and final Antichrist, who is then to come to his end; and (2) Israel or the Jews, whose great and final trouble it is to be, previous to their restoration as God’s covenant people,—“the time of Jacob’s trouble.” In regard to the former, the tribulation will apparently be both immediately from the hand of God, whose sacrifice their destruction is said to be, and who speaks of “raining upon the infidel leader, and his bands, and the many peoples that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone;” and also mediately, through the instrumentality both of others and themselves, as God declares by the same prophet, that He will call for a sword against the invading enemy throughout all His mountains, while every man’s sword shall be against his fellow, and that He will “plead against him with pestilence and with blood” (Ezekiel 38:21-22). In reference to Israel, the cause or instrument of the tribulation will apparently be the hostile power itself, whom God however brings up against them, and gives into his hand (Ezekiel 38:16-17; Ezekiel 39:23-24). The procuring cause of the tribulation in both cases is sin. On the part of the infidel leader and his followers and abettors throughout the nations, it is pride, infidelity, defiance of God, covetousness and rapacity, the enmity against God and His people culminating in one grand attack upon Israel now apparently prosperous and at ease in their own country (Ezekiel 38:8-13). On the part of Israel, it is unbelief and rejection of their Saviour-King yet unrepented of and unforgiven (Ezekiel 39:23-24), the curse called down upon themselves and their children now taking its full and final effect, when they shall have filled up the measure of their iniquity (Matthew 27:25). III. The greatness of it. It is here spoken of as unparalleled, and is so characterised by Jeremiah: “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the day of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7). The same language used by the Saviour in reference to it. The unparalleled greatness of it seen both in the extent and intensity of it. Terrible indeed the tribulation that shall exceed that of the Deluge, the Cities of the Plain, Jerusalem in its siege and capture by the Chaldeans and then by the Romans, the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Its greatness inferred from the exhortation of Jesus to His disciples and people in every age: “Watch and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). The same to be inferred from the object of it. It is the day of recompenses, both in regard to Israel and the nations of Christendom, when the blood of God’s saints shed from the beginning shall be avenged on Jew and Gentile, when “the earth shall disclose her blood—the blood which she has been caused to drink,—and shall no more cover her slain” (Isaiah 26:21). Its greatness may be inferred also from its results. It is to terminate, in a general sense, not only the sins and sufferings of Israel but of the world at large, and to usher in a period of righteousness and peace that shall continue for at least a thousand years. It is in reference to that period that the prophetic Psalmist writes, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth the (war-) chariot in the fire. Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen; I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalms 46:8-10). It is as the result of it that God will turn upon the peoples a pure language, so that they shall all serve Him with one consent (Zephaniah 3:8). The greatness of the tribulation may also be gathered from its character and the agents in it. Proceeding, as in great part it is to do, from the great infidel leader and his Antichristian host, whose coming as the Man of Sin, the Son of perdition, and that Wicked or Lawless one, is after the power and energy of Satan, it shall inaugurate a time of unbridled wickedness, fully-developed ungodliness, and daring God-defying infidelity; and who, in his fury at the evil tidings that are to reach him in the midst of his triumphant iniquity, shall “go forth to destroy and utterly to make away many.” Of all evil times it will be the most evil, faith being scarcely any longer to be found in the earth, few if any godly men left, those there are being hidden as in a pavilion in the chambers of God’s protection provided for them, and the restraints of His grieved and insulted Spirit being for the time withdrawn from the earth; a period of which the three years and a half at the commencement of the French Revolution, during which religion was publicly and openly proscribed, the Sabbath abolished, the Bible dragged through the streets of Paris at the tail of an ass, and a beautiful but profligate woman worshipped in the church of Notre Dame as the Goddess of Reason, may have been an instalment and a type. Physical disturbances and commotions seem to be indicated both by the prophets and the Saviour Himself, as accompanying these civil and religious ones; signs appearing in the heavenly bodies, and the powers of heaven being shaken, both as symbols and accompaniments of the distress of nations; the godly being taught to sing in the prospect of that time of trouble: “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge: therefore will we not fear, although the earth be removed, and the mountains be cast into the depths of the sea: though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof” (Psalms 46:2-3). Nothing is said in the text to indicate the duration of this time of trouble; but we may gather from other places that its brevity will be in proportion to its intensity. The godly are to hide themselves “for a little moment, till the indignation be overpast.” “A short work will the Lord make upon the earth.” For the elect’s sake “the days will be shortened,” for otherwise, according to the Saviour’s declaration, “no flesh should be saved” (Matthew 24:22). The subject calls for solemn thought and earnest preparation. That this time of great and unparalleled tribulation shall come cannot be questioned by any believer in Revelation. The words of a great writer, philosopher, and divine, now passed away, express the conclusion of a simple-minded, unbiassed reader of the Word: “I utterly despair,” said the late Dr. Chalmers, “of the universal prevalence of Christianity as the result of a painful missionary process. I look for its conclusive establishment through a widening passage of desolating judgments, with the utter demolition of our present civil and ecclesiastical structures.” [341] How near we may be to this predicted state of things, or how far off from it, it is impossible for any one to say. Whether perceptibly or not, we are doubtless approaching to it. Signs are not wanting to indicate that such is the case. “This gospel of the kingdom,” said the Saviour when speaking of that future period, “shall first be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations”—preached, not believed in—“and then shall the end come” (Matthew 24:14). This is rapidly taking place. Missionary operations are constantly multiplying. So also are infidelity and its agencies. It has recently been said by a high authority, that religion seems to be unsettled, and almost going away from various countries. [342] The rapidity with which great changes at present take place is the subject of general remark. A few years may suffice to bring the predicted period. For ought we know, the present living generation may see and participate in the great tribulation. It is for all to seek earnestly to secure for themselves and others a place of security in time, while the doors of the provided ark are open. “Seek righteousness; seek meekness; it may be ye may be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zephaniah 2:3). The present time is to be embraced by earnestly laying hold of the gracious covenant held out to us in Christ, and persuading others also to do the same; and thus being prepared for the time when it will be said, in connection with predicted judgments, “Gather My saints together unto Me, those that have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice” (Psalms 50:5). “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little: blessed are all they that put their trust in Him” (Psalms 2:12). [341] The same writer, in his “Sabbath Scripture Readings” on Revelation 15. says: “Can this sea of glass on which the saints might stand and look on the execution of God’s righteous sentence on the earth at large,—can it be what my friend Edward Irving imagined it to be,—one country in the world that should stand exempted from the desolations which are to go abroad over the face of it, and that country to be the evangelical and missionary Britain, standing aloof from popery, and actuated generally and throughout, or at least infiuentially, though it might be partially, by a pure, and scriptural, and Protestant faith? The song of Moses, as commemorating the destruction of the enemies of the Church, and the Church’s safety as well as prospects, might well harmonise with the song of the Lamb; and both together might harmonise with the circumstances of that transition period, when plagues were to be sent down from heaven upon the earth, and, as the fruit of God’s judgments being made manifest, all nations were to come and worship before Him.” [342] “Any one,” said Cardinal Newman lately in a sermon at Birmingham, “who looked into the news of the day, would see quite enough in the state of things at home and abroad, to understand the great need of intercession. There was certainly a very dark prospect before them with regard to religion; and without saying whether the troubles were greater or less than those which had previously tried the Church, they had a depth which, to those who only saw the present, was more serious and more dangerous than any depth that had been.”. XLV.—THE OF THE JEWS. (Chap. Daniel 12:1, last clause.) The object for which the angel was sent to Daniel was to communicate to him what should befall his people in the latter days. He had already intimated to him the coming of Messiah at a definite period, with the calamities which should follow their wicked rejection of Him even to the time of the end. These calamities, however, were to culminate, as the end approached, in a time of trouble such as had never yet been since there was a nation. It is now promised, however, for the comfort of Daniel and his godly countrymen, that his people should be delivered out of that tribulation, at least a portion of them,—“every one that shall be found written in the book.” We notice, in connection with this promised deliverance— I. The deliverance itself. “Thy people shall be delivered.” Daniel’s people were the Jews, the descendants, with himself, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; those for whom he had so earnestly prayed, and whose sins he had so penitently confessed (chap, 9.) The whole twelve tribes are included. These, in consequence of Solomon’s apostasy, had indeed been divided into two kingdoms, those of Judah and Israel; the former consisting of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, the latter of the remaining ten (1 Kings 11:9-13). They formed, however, but one people, and were yet again to be united in one kingdom (Ezekiel 37:16-24). Those constituting the kingdom of Israel, having been the first to apostatise to idolatry, were the first to be led captive from their own land, which was done by the Assyrians, who placed them in various cities of the Medes (2 Kings 15:29; 2 Kings 17:5-6). The two tribes forming the kingdom of Judah, having imitated the apostasy of the kingdom of Israel, were carried captive, on three separate occasions, by Nebuchadnezzar into Babylon. It was more especially those two tribes who returned to Judea after the edict of Cyrus; and of these only a portion. The whole twelve tribes, however, were regarded as existing in the days of the apostles, though mostly scattered among the Gentiles (Acts 26:6-7; James 1:1; John 7:35). It is more especially those who formed the kingdom of Judah, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with a sprinkling from the other tribes, that are now known as Jews, the ten tribes being as yet comparatively unknown, though doubtless to be found in various parts of the world. It seems to be more especially those of the kingdom of Judah that are here indicated, as it appears to be they who shall be found in Jerusalem and Judea at the period referred to (Zechariah 12:2; Zechariah 12:4; Zechariah 12:6-10). These apparently intended to be the means of seeking out and bringing back their scattered brethren after their own conversion and acceptance of the Saviour (Isaiah 66:19-22). Even of those, however, who, being in Judea and Jerusalem at the time of the great tribulation under their final adversary, only a portion will be delivered. [343] Zechariah predicts that in all the land two-thirds should be cut off and die, but the third should be left therein, to be brought through the fire and refined as silver is refined, and be made God’s people, not merely in name as before, but in reality and truth (Zechariah 13:8-9). They are here spoken of as those “written in the book;” that book being doubtless the secret register of those whom, as an elect remnant, it was the Lord’s sovereign purpose to spare, as the nucleus of the future Church of Abraham’s seed; and doubtless those who, according to the prophet’s exhortation, had truly and in time sought righteousness and meekness, and under the outpoured Spirit of grace and supplication had looked to Him whom they had pierced, and had mourned because of Him, and had thus been led to the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness (Zechariah 12:10; Zechariah 13:1). Such a book frequently referred to as “the book of life,” or “of the living” (Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5; Revelation 13:8; Luke 10:35; Exodus 32:35; Psalms 69:28). The deliverance is, in the first instance, one from death by the sword of the enemy. According to Zechariah, all nations will be gathered at that time, doubtless under this same infidel chief, against Jerusalem; and the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the inhabitants shall go into captivity; but “the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city” (Zechariah 14:2). This residue doubtless the remnant in the text. This deliverance from death, however, to be followed with a still more important and blessed one, the deliverance from spiritual death and introduction into Messiah’s kingdom. [343] “Every one that shall be found written,” &c. According to Professor Lee and others, these are not to be the Jews at large, but the holy remnant who embraced Jesus as the Messiah, and escape to carry the tidings of salvation to the ends of the earth. Speaking of Isa 24:6, “Few men left,” Dr. Chalmers remarks: “a remnant, however, will be left, and a good remnant; and this not confined to the land of Israel, but among all the neighbouring countries that had been laid waste; for the voice of praise was to arise from the sea and from the isles, and this too to God as the Lord God of Israel. This voice was to arise from the midst of cruel sufferings, even ‘in the fires’ wherewith (Daniel 12:6) the houses were burnt by their invaders.” He adds: “In this prophecy is foreshown a visitation upon the earth still future, which is to emerge in the Millennium—how emphatically told in this place!—when the Lord shall reign in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously.”II. The agency employed in effecting it. This is said to be “Michael,” called elsewhere “Michael your prince,” and “the prince that standeth up for the children of thy people.” [344] In the New Testament called Michael the archangel (Jude 1:9). Represented in the book of Revelation as, in conjunction with the angels under him, fighting with the devil and his angels (Revelation 12:7). He appears especially charged with the defence of God’s ancient people. The ministry of angels with their allotment to various charges already referred to under chap. 10. Michael, as the chief of the angel princes, and especial intrusted with the defence and care of Israel, naturally introduced in this their final conflict with the powers of this world, under the leadership of one whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and deceivableness (2 Thessalonians 2:9), and against whom, with his mighty force, it might seem impossible that Israel should be able to stand. Quite in accordance with the economy of God’s providential government of the Church and the world, to employ angelic agency for the accomplishment of His purposes, whether of mercy or of judgment. In what particular manner Michael executes the charge committed to him on this occasion, it is not for us to inquire. An angel smote in one night a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrians that lay encamped about Jerusalem. “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.” In a thousand ways of which we have now no conception the angelic agents fulfil their ministry. [344] “Michael.” Regarded by Calvin and some others of the older commentators as Christ Himself. So Hävernick interprets the text of the first appearance of Christ. Most understand Michael to be the archangel. Dr. Cox thinks that the standing up of Michael for Daniel’s people corresponds with the going forth of Him who is called Faithful and True upon the white horse; the trouble here predicted agreeing with the mighty overthrow of the Antichristian powers, who are to be cast into the “lake burning with brimstone,” as there represented. Brightman thinks Michael to be some certain angel, whose ministry the great Prince will employ in that battle.III. The results of the deliverance. The deliverance, in the first instance, was one from the sword of Antichrist and his infidel host. It is also the deliverance of Israel from their last oppressor, and the termination of that captivity under which, in consequence of their unbelief and rejection of their divine King and Saviour, they had lain for so many centuries, as the curse which their fathers who crucified their King called down upon themselves and their children. The time of their rejection by God, and their scattering and crushing under the hand of the Gentiles into which they had been delivered, will now come to an end. The “seven times” of punishment that were to pass over them for their sin will now have expired. The time to favour Zion, even the set time, will now have come. He that had scattered Israel is now, according to the promise, to gather him. [345] The threatenings and the curses had in righteous judgment been executed, and now in like manner the promises made to their fathers were in unmerited mercy to be fulfilled also. The curse can now be removed and the blessing bestowed, because Israel, through the Spirit of grace and supplication poured upon them, will have penitently accepted their long-rejected King and Saviour. They will have been brought, with the veil removed from their hearts, to say in faith, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,” and their house is to remain no longer desolate. They are now to be betrothed in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving-kindness, in mercies, and in faithfulness,—to be betrothed for ever (Hosea 2:19-20). The blindness that in part overtook Israel as the result of their rejection of their Messiah, was to be taken away when the fulness of the times of the Gentiles should be come in, when all Israel should be saved. That time will now have come. The Deliverer was to come out of Zion to them that turn from ungodliness in Jacob, and to those who have looked on their once pierced Redeemer. That Deliverer now comes. He comes to turn away ungodliness from Jacob, and to graft the natural branches, broken off on account of unbelief, again into their own olive tree. The casting away of Israel for a time was the reconciling of the world; the receiving back of them again was to be to that same world “life from the dead.” [346] They are now to be restored to the high and holy position originally intended for them, as a kingdom of priests unto God in the service of humanity. [347] A mere external deliverance without this spiritual one would have left Israel but as they were. But now the new covenant is to be made with them, in virtue of which, while their iniquities are all forgiven, God’s law is put within their hearts and written indelibly on their minds by the Holy Ghost. That better covenant they accept when they look by faith on Him whom they pierced and mourn for Him, a covenant made through the sacrifice of the Son of God (Psalms 50:5). [345] Auberlen remarks: “The predictions contained in Leviticus 26:31-45; Deuteronomy 28:62-68; Deuteronomy 29:22; Deuteronomy 30:14; Deuteronomy 32:15-43, concerning Israel’s apostasy and dispersion among the heathen, and then concerning their conversion and glorious re-establishment in the Holy Land, were not exhaustively fulfilled in the short decennia of the Assyrian and Babylonian exile, and in the troublous centuries of the restoration that followed those captivities. On the contrary, the curse lies even this day on the Jewish nation; and the promised restoration awaits yet its fulfilment and realisation. For him who believes in the fulfilment of prophecy, it is only necessary to read the words of Scripture in order to be persuaded of this. The great commentary on the history of revelation is given us in the miraculous preservation of the Jewish nation through all centuries to our time, while other nationalities are either destroyed or have mixed to such an extent with other nations, that they are disfigured to such a degree that they can scarcely be recognised,—a preservation which is doubly miraculous; since Israel is dispersed in all countries of the earth, while other nations have their filed stationary residence.” [346] “The conversion of Israel stands in a causal, and not merely temporal or chronological connection with the coming of Christ; and is succeeded by a new state of the world in which a new ‘life,’ in a greater, more richly characteristic fulness of Spirit, will spread from the people of God to all the nations of the earth; and in comparison with which the life of nations, during the preceding ages, might be called ‘death.’ The Apostle designates this new state of the world by the same expression which he uses when speaking of the regeneration of individuals, as ‘life from the dead’ (Romans 6:13, compare Ephesians 2:5; Colossians 2:13). As there is at present a regeneration of individuals, so in the future the life of nations, as such, shall be renewed: there shall be a world-regeneration. Quite in accordance with this is the expression used by our Lord when He denotes the new Æon or age Palingenesia, or ‘the regeneration’ (Matthew 19:28); and by Peter when he designates it as ‘the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord’ (Acts 3:19-21).”—Auberlen. [347] “The people of Israel,” says Auberlen, “receives for all time the destiny to be the recipient and mediator of divine communications.” Referring to Exodus 19:5-6, he says: “Israel stands in the same relation to humanity as a priest stands to the nation; a mediator in the relations of humanity to God. Hereby the relations of Israel are fixed; not merely for the times of the old covenant, during which Israel did not even exercise his priestly office as regards the heathen; but for all times and forever.… From the religious point of view, in their relation to God and Christ, as needing mercy and salvation, Gentiles and Jews stand on a perfect equality; the same righteousness is imputed to them; the same glory is given to them; they have the same participation in Christ, and by Him both have access to the Father in one Spirit. We see this also in the transfigured (or glorified) church, which consists of both Jews and Gentiles. But from the standpoint of the history of revelation, as regards the way in which God uses men as instruments to bring about the objects of His kingdom, the case is altogether different. From this point of view, Israel is, and ever shall be, the chosen people through which God executes His plans concerning humanity.”We may make one reflection. The deliverance in the text suggests the deliverance which every individual, whether Jew or Gentile, needs, and that which, procured by the Son of God incarnate for us, is freely held out to each in the Gospel; that with which no external deliverance is once to be compared, but of which Israel’s deliverance from their external enemies is a type. It is deliverance from the curse of a broken law from the deserved wrath of God, from the dominion of sin, from the power of Satan, and from the pains of eternal death. It is deliverance from a tribulation with which that of Israel under Antichrist, great as it will be, is only as a shadow; a tribulation from which, beyond a certain period, deliverance will be impossible. “After death, the judgment.” It is a deliverance, too, Which, like that of Israel in the text, places the subjects of it in the glorious position of kings and priests to God. This deliverance also, like that in the text, is experienced in looking through the Spirit of grace and supplication, believingly and penitently, on Him whom we too, by our sins and unbelief, have pierced, and, as penitents, washing our guilty souls in the fountain of a Redeemer’s blood, opened for sin and for uncleanness. That deliverance is freely offered in the Gospel. A believing, humble, hearty acceptance of it makes it our own. And it is to be accepted now. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” . XLVI.—THE . (Chap. Daniel 12:2.) We come to a most precious and important part of the angel’s communication. It is that in which he declares more distinctly than had ever been done before the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, and that in connection with retribution, which had not previously been done. The object for which the statement concerning this great truth is now so distinctly made, is obviously to comfort Daniel and his faithful though suffering people, and especially to sustain and encourage those who should be called to lay down their life in the maintenance of God’s truth and worship. That the statement produced this effect in the case of those who suffered under Antiochus in the Maccabζan age, we have historical evidence in the first book of the Maccabees; and more especially in the narrative there given of the Jewish mother and her seven sons, who chose rather to endure a horrible death than renounce their religion, under the assured hope of “the better resurrection.” [348] The statement is made here in connection with the promise of deliverance to an elect remnant during the last great attack upon Israel from the hostile world-power, in which so many should miserably perish; and it is there made apparently with the view of assuring them that at that period of deliverance those who had fallen in maintenance of the truth, or had died in the faith and service of Jehovah, should also receive their reward. The comfort intended appears similar to that designed by the Apostle when he assures believers, who are mourning the departure of those who had fallen asleep in Jesus, that when the Lord should come again to take His people to glory, He would not glorify those who should then be found alive till He had first raised from the dead those that slept in Him (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). [348] “It is good,” said one of these seven sons, when his body was lacerated by the scourge “being put to death by man, to look for hope from God to be raised up again by Him.”In connection with the passage before us, we have to notice— I. The fact of the resurrection. “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” There should be little doubt that a true physical and literal resurrection of the body is here intended, and not a moral, spiritual, and figurative one, such as that described in Ezekiel 36. [349] If a resurrection of the body is not here declared, it will be difficult to find where it is, or to imagine words in which it can be so. Although the doctrine may be found in earlier inspired writings, yet it is doubtless on this passage that the Jewish martyrs more especially based their hope, and from this that the Jews in general drew their assurance that there should be a resurrection of the dead, and that both of the just and the unjust (Acts 24:15). [350] It is justly believed also that to this passage the Saviour’s words had reference when, announcing Himself to be the Lord and Giver of life, He declared, “The hour is coming in the which all that are in their graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28-29). Of this resurrection Jesus Himself rose as a specimen and firstfruits, in whom, as the second Adam and Head of redeemed humanity, those who died literally and physically in the first Adam, should in the same sense be “made alive.” Accordingly after His resurrection, Matthew relates, that many of the bodies of the saints which slept arose, and “went into the holy city and appeared unto many” (Matthew 27:52-53). To such a resurrection Paul referred in his appeal to Agrippa and his audience at Cζsarea when he asked, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8). It is the resurrection of the body that sleeps in the grave, or “in the dust of the earth,” [351] the same, yet changed. In respect to the bodies of believers at least, “it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). The expression of the angel, “them that sleep in the dust,” though a similar one had been already used by Isaiah (Isaiah 26:19), and even by the Psalmist (Psalms 17:15), and still more in the book of Job (Job 14:12), that which more especially gave occasion to the practice of speaking of death as a sleep (Acts 7:60; 1 Corinthians 15:6; 1 Corinthians 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). More than from the mere resemblance between the state of death and sleep, which even the heathen recognised, the expression derives its significance from the fact that out of that sleep there is an awaking, which mere natural reason seems never to have been able to anticipate, and still less to obtain the certainty of; although the transformation of insects might well suggest the possibility, if not the probability, of a similar change for man. [349] Grotius referred the resurrection in the text, in the first instance, figuratively, to the deliverance of the Jews in the time of Antiochus, as Porphyry had done before him; and in the second instance, to the literal resurrection of the body, as rather hinted at than explicitly declared. He has had, however, but few followers in the Christian Church. Brightman understood the resurrection here as pointing to the victories of the Jewish nation, and their being called to the faith in Christ, as John 5:25; Ephesians 5:15; Romans 11:15; Ezekiel 37:1, &c. Some, he thinks, partaking of the deliverance predicted, shall yet persist in their wickedness, and shall rise indeed, but to eternal destruction. [350] It was a saying of Rabbi Eleazar of Capernaum: “They who are born are to die, and the dead to live, and the living to be judged; that we might know, and understand, to be informed, that He is God the Former, the Creator, the Intelligent One, the Judge.… Let not thine imagination persuade thee that the grave shall be a house of refuge for thee; for against thy will thou wast formed, and against thy will thou wast born, and against thy will thou dost live, and against thy will wilt thou die, and against thy will must thou hereafter give in thine account.”—Pirke Abhoth, Daniel 4:23. [351] “In the dust of the earth.” ΰַ ?γְ ?ξַ ?ϊΞςָ ?τָ ?ψ of dust, the dusty ground; the expression formed after Genesis 3:19, and denoting the grave, as in Psalms 22:30, “the dust of death.”II. The time of it. This apparently indicated by the place which the statement occupies, and its connection with the preceding one, expressed by the copula “and.” [352] The angel appears to intimate that when the Jewish remnant experience the promised deliverance, this other deliverance shall also take place in reference to those that shall have slept the sleep of death. These two events, Israel’s conversion and restoration, and the resurrection of the dead, are elsewhere brought together in the Scriptures, as taking place soon after each other. The resurrection is coincident with the Lord’s second appearing: “Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming.” But Israel’s conversion and restoration is connected with the same glorious advent. Peter exhorts the Jews to repent and be converted, not only that their sins may be blotted out, but “that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and He shall send Jesus Christ, who before was preached” unto them, and whom “the heavens must receive till the restitution of all things” (Acts 3:19-21, R.V.) The Jews were not to see Jesus again until they should say, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:39). The promise that they should look on Him whom they had pierced and mourn because of Him, is viewed by the Apostle John as pointing to the Lord’s visible appearing: “Behold He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him” (Revelation 1:7). The Apostle Paul appears to connect the conversion of Israel with the Redeemer’s coming: “There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob;” or, as it stands in Isaiah, “The Redeemer shall come to Zion, and to them that turn from transgression in Jacob” (Isaiah 59:20; Romans 11:26). The destruction of Antichrist, too, when he has “planted the tabernacles of his palace between the seas on the glorious holy mountain,” in the great gathering at Armageddon connected with Israel’s conversion, is also apparently represented in the Apocalypse as speedily, if not immediately, followed by the first resurrection (Revelation 19:19-20; Revelation 20:4-5). Paul also appears unmistakably to connect the destruction of the Man of Sin or Son of perdition, doubtless the same Wicked or Lawless One of whom Daniel prophesied, with the personal and glorious appearing of the Lord Jesus: “whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit (breath) of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness (manifestation) of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2; 2 Thessalonians 2:8, R.V.) Daniel 7 seems also plainly to connect the destruction of the fourth beast and the little horn with the coming of the Son of Man with the clouds of heaven.” The destruction of Antichrist, the conversion and restoration of Israel, the resurrection of the just, thus appear closely connected with each other, and all with the Lord’s glorious appearing. [352] “And many,” &c. “Keil remarks that the copula ε(and) connects this verse with the preceding one, and indicates the continuance of the thought in the latter half of that verse, i.e., the further representation of the deliverance of God’s people, namely, of all those who are written in the book of life. Auberlen and some others separate the resurrection from the predicted time of tribulation, simply because they refer that time to the persecution under Antiochus. He believes, however, that the resurrection will follow immediately after the period of Antichrist, and be contemporary with the coming of the Messiah in glory. Calvin thinks that the angel passes over the intermediate state between the preaching of the Gospel and the final resurrection, because the salvation of the church is connected with that event, it being till then like a dead body. Bishop Newton connects the resurrection with the tribulation as taking place immediately after it. Dr. Chalmers, on Isaiah 26:11-21, remarks that “it will take a time even after they (the Jews) are set upon enlargement, ere the deliverance can be wrought, and their enemies have fallen. But it will come at length, and come gloriously. Then will there be the first resurrection.”III. The subjects of the resurrection. “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth.” Although the Scriptures, and probably this very passage, assure us that all the dead shall rise again, both just and unjust; yet this does not appear to be expressly declared by the angel in the words before us. Not all that sleep, but many of them, shall awake. [353] “Many” are not here equivalent to “all,” as in Romans 5:15; Romans 5:19; both because of the absence of the article, and because the “of,” or from among, that follows gives what is called a partitive signification,—indicating a part, and not the whole. The “many” who shall awake are the godly,—the “some,” or literally “these,” who shall awake to everlasting life, and of whom it is the angel’s special object now to speak. That the rest of the sleepers, or the ungodly, shall also awake, appears to be also intimated; these being the second “some,” or literally “those,” who shall awake to shame and everlasting contempt. It being the angel’s object rather to speak of the future blessedness of the faithful, it is their resurrection which is here especially declared as taking place in connection with the predicted deliverance. The resurrection of the rest or the ungodly, not being here especially intended to be spoken of, though plainly intimated, was apparently indicated as taking place at a period posterior to that of the others. Such we find to be in accordance with the manner in which the resurrection is generally spoken of in the New Testament. The “resurrection of the just” is spoken of by the Saviour as a thing by itself. “Thou shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14). “In the resurrection”—that is, the state which it introduces—“they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God” (Matthew 22:30). Still more expressly in Luke: “The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:34-36). The resurrection here spoken of obviously includes only the godly,—the “resurrection of the just,” which only some shall be accounted worthy to obtain, even the children of God, who are therefore also called “the children of the resurrection.” This is that which the Epistle to the Hebrews represents the ancient martyrs as being so eager to obtain, called “a better,” or rather “the better, resurrection” (Hebrews 11:35). This also apparently that which in the Apocalypse is called “the first resurrection,”—that, namely, of the martyrs and faithful followers of Jesus; the rest of the dead not living again till the thousand years’ reign of Christ and His saints is finished (Revelation 20:4-5). The Apostle also only speaks of them that are Christ’s being raised at His coming, this being according to the appointed order: “Every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:23). So when Christ shall descend with a shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, it is “the dead in Christ” that “rise first,”—before the living saints are changed (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). It is, however, only in the Apocalypse, which closes the canon of Scripture, that we seem to learn anything of the length of the interval elapsing between the resurrection of the just and that of the unjust. [354] It is thus that, according to the Psalmist, the upright “have dominion” over the ungodly “in the morning” (Psalms 49:14); theirs being not merely a resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection from, or from among, the dead (Luke 20:35), where it is literally and emphatically “the resurrection, that from the dead.” This general mode of representing the resurrection is not really at variance with the Saviour’s words in John 5:28, though apparently so. The resurrection of both classes is not said to be simultaneous; the “hour” in which that of both shall take place being simply the time when it shall happen, without defining it to be either at the same moment, or with a lengthened interval between. This was to be learned from other testimonies of Scripture. It may be added that, in like manner, Jewish doctors generally spoke of the resurrection as peculiarly belonging to the righteous; though they also taught that at some period or other the bodies also of the wicked should be restored to life.(8) [353] “Many of them that sleep,” &c. εְ ?ψַ ?αִּ ?ινξִ ?ιּ ?ωְ ?πֵ ?ι (verabbim miyoshene). Keil remarks that ψַ ?αִּ ?ιν (rabbim) does not mean all, and that the partitive interpretation of ξִ ?ο (min), “of or from among,” is the only simple and natural one, and therefore with most interpreters he prefers it. Some, as C. B. Michaelis, following the Masoretic accentuation, separate ψַ ?αִּ ?ιν from ξִ ?ιּ ?ωְׁ ?πֵ ?ι, “And [there shall be many]; of them that sleep, some, or these, shall awake,” &c. Brightman reads the word as equivalent to all, meaning the Jewish nation. Broughton understands it of the universality of them that sleep. Calvin, also, after Augustine, understands the word to mean all. Keil thinks that it is not the object of the angel to give a general statement regarding the resurrection of the dead, but only to give the information that the final salvation of the people shall not be limited to those who shall be living at the end of the great tribulation, but shall include also those who have lost their lives during that period. He thinks, however, that the Israel of the time of the end, who are here referred to, consist not merely of Jews or of Jewish Christians, but embraces all peoples who belong to God’s kingdom of the New Covenant; in which respect the resurrection of all is implied, as it is explicitly declared by Christ when speaking in John 5:28, with unmistakable reference to this verse. He adds: “As with the living (at that time), so also with the dead, not all attain to blessedness. Also among those that arise there shall be a distinction, in which the reward of the faithful and of the unfaithful shall be made known.” He considers the word “many” used only “with allusion to and in contrast with the small number of those who shall then be living, and not with reference either to the universality of the resurrection of the dead or to a portion only of the dead;” the object being merely “to add to the multitude of the dead, who shall then have part with the living, the small number of those who shall experience in the flesh the conclusion of the matter.” Osiander, Bullinger, and Vatablus understand the word many to be chosen instead of all, as some believers will be alive at the Lord’s coming. [354] On Revelation 20:4, Bishop Newton remarks: “The martyrs and confessors of Jesus,—not only those who were beheaded or who suffered death under the heathen emperors, but also those who refused to comply with the idolatrous worship of ‘the beast and his image,’—are raised from the dead, and have the principal share in the felicities of Christ’s kingdom upon earth.… This is the first resurrection,—a particular resurrection preceding the general one at least a thou and years.” Auberlen, on the same passage, says: “Among the saints who are called to reign with Christ, the martyrs of ancient and modern times are mentioned first; because, most like to the Lord Jesus in their suffering and death, they are therefore nearer Him in His life and reign.… Next to the martyrs are mentioned all who had not worshipped the beast, be it in more remote times or in the last days;—all they who refused to take the power of this world as a reality, and to serve it instead of looking to the things invisible and future” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This he says is “the ‘first resurrection,’ as distinguished from the general one, which is mentioned in Daniel 12:12.” A Jewish tradition of the school of Elias is quoted by Bishop Newton, which states that “the righteous whom God shall raise up shall not again be turned to dust, but shall live a thousand years, in which the Holy and Blessed One shall renew His world.” The early fathers in general held the same view. Justin Martyr, in the second century, says: “A certain man among us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, in a revelation made to him, did prophesy that the faithful believers in Christ should live a thousand years in the New Jerusalem, and afterwards there should be a general resurrection and judgment.” Tertullian, in the third century, speaks of it as the belief of himself and the general Church, that “there shall be a resurrection for a thousand years in the New Jerusalem, and after that the destruction of the world, and the general judgment.” Lactantius, in the following century, speaks to the same effect. Mosheim, treating of the third century, says: “Long before this period, an opinion had prevailed that Christ was to come to reign a thousand years among men before the entire and final dissolution of this world. This opinion, which had hitherto met with no opposition, was differently interpreted by different persons; nor did all promise themselves the same kind of enjoyments in the future and glorious kingdom. But in this century its credit began to decline, principally through the influence and authority of Origen, who opposed it with the greatest warmth, because it was incompatible with some of his favourite sentiments. Nepos, an Egyptian bishop, endeavoured to restore this opinion to its former credit, in a book written against the Allegorists; for so he called, by way of contempt, the adversaries of the millennarian system. This work and the hypothesis it defended was extremely well received by great numbers in the canton of Arsinoλ; and among others by Colacion, a priest of no mean influence and reputation. But Dionysius of Alexandria, a disciple of Origen, stopped the growing progress of the doctrine by his private discourses, and also by two learned and judicious dissertations concerning the divine promises.” Mr. Miles (Lectures on Daniel) observes, after Mede, that we have strong evidence that so late as the Council of Nice (a.d. 325) the current of public opinion was in favour of the orthodox primitive belief. “New heavens and a new earth,” says that Council, “we expect according to the sacred writings, when there shall shine forth the appearance and kingdom of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; and then, as saith Daniel, the saints of the Most High shall receive a kingdom, and the earth shall be pure and holy, an earth of the living and not of the dead.” After the fourth century, as the same author observes, “the leading fundamental doctrines of the Gospel were eclipsed by the rapid growth of error, tradition superseding the authority of Scripture. ‘The doctrine,’ says Bishop Burnet in his Sacred Theory of the Earth, ‘was always uneasy, and gave offence to the Church of Rome, because it does not suit to that scheme of Christianity which they have drawn. They suppose that Christ reigns already by His Vicar the Pope.’ ” Auberlen also remarks: “Chiliasm—the doctrine of the thousand years’ reign of Christ—disappeared in the Church in proportion as Roman papal Catholicism advanced.… The papacy, with its fundamental tendency to seek power and external glory, is, in its innermost essence, a false anticipation of the millennial kingdom. Bengel says: ‘When Christianity became a worldly power by Constantine, the hope of the future was weakened by the joy over the present success.’ ” The doctrine appears, however, to have revived with the Reformation. John Bradford the martyr, quoted by Mr. Miles, says: “Methinks it is the duty of a godly mind simply to acknowledge, and thereof to brag in the Lord, that in our resurrection all things shall be so repaired to eternity, as for our sin they were made subject to corruption.” And again: “Now every creature travaileth and groaneth with us; but we being restored, they also shall be restored; there shall be new heavens and new earth, and all things new.” Auberlen observes: “The Reformation protested successfully against the harlot (the papal Church) by opposing to it the original Christian principle of faith, which is opposed, not only to the works of the law, but to living by sight, and to a false externalisation of the Church.… The fundamental principle of apostolical Christianity, viz., of faith, is inseparable from apostolical Chiliasm.… The Reformers did not carry out their principle far enough to attain biblical Chiliasm.… Scholastic priestly tyranny, Cζsaropapism, besides the papacy, brought Antichiliasm.… The conscience of the Reformation protested against this new corruption of the Church in the person of Spener.” In the time of the commonwealth the ancient doctrine seems to have revived in England. Baillie in his Letters says: “The most of the chief divines here (in the Westminster Assembly), not only Independents, but others, such as Twisse, Marshall, Palmer, and many others, are express Chiliasts.” Peter Sterry, one of Cromwell’s Censors, says of the premillennial advent and the thousand years’ reign: “Like a rich coin, which hath been long buried in the earth, and lately dug up again, it begins to grow bright with handling, and to pass current with great numbers of saints and learned men of great authority.” Joseph Caryl, the author of the commentary on Job, his fellow-censor, speaks similarly in his Recommendation of Holmes’s book on the resurrection, in which pre-millennarian views are strongly advocated. “Though I have not skill enough in the exposition of hard prophecies,” says the spiritually minded Baxter, “to make a particular determination about the thousand years’ reign of Christ on the earth before the final judgment, yet I may say that I cannot confute what such learned men as Mr. Mede, and Dr. Twisse, and others (after the old Fathers) have hereof asserted.” John Bunyan expresses his views thus: “The world therefore beginning thus, doth show how it will end, namely, by the reign of the Second Adam, as it began with the reign of the first. These long-lived men, therefore, show us the glory that the Church shall have in the latter day, even the seventh thousand years of the world, the Sabbath when Christ shall set up His kingdom upon earth, according to that which is written, They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” “Christ,” says Dr. Gill, “will be in His kingdom not only by His Spirit and the effusions of His grace, but He will personally appear in all His glory; hence His appearing and kingdom are put together as contemporaneous in 2 Timothy 4:1. This glorious and visible kingdom will not take place till after the resurrection of the just and the renovation of the world. As soon as He personally appears, the dead in Christ shall rise first; this is the first resurrection, in which they who have a part shall reign with Christ a thousand years. This kingdom of Christ will be bounded by two resurrections.” Delitzsch, quoted by Auberlen, marks the general prevalence of the doctrine among believers in Germany, and traces it to the influence of Bengel and his writings. “To whom also,” he asks, “do we owe it that the orthodox Church of the present time does not brand the Chiliastic view of the Last Times as a heterodoxy, as is done in almost all old manuals of dogmatics; but, on the contrary, has allowed it to enter into her innermost life, so that there is scarcely a believing Christian now (that is, in Germany) who does not take this view?”IV. The results of the resurrection. “Some (or these) to everlasting life; some (or those) to shame and everlasting contempt.” The results in the two cases infinitely opposite to each other. In regard to the faithful, of whom the angel particularly speaks, the result is everlasting life. Life the term employed in the Scriptures to express happiness of experience and holiness of character, and likeness to God in both; that happiness being especially found in the enjoyment of His favour, friendship, and fellowship, and that holiness in the possession of His own nature and character. “In His favour is life.” Sin is “alienation” or estrangement “from the life of God.” The term “everlasting” life, so often used in the New Testament, doubtless taken from this very passage, is here met with for the first time. It is everlasting life, as enjoyed in that kingdom of Christ and of God, which is for ever and ever (chap, 7.) It is everlasting, in contrast to the same life enjoyed in Paradise, but which came to an end through Adam’s transgression. Believers who have this life are “saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.” It is found only in, or in vital union with, the Lord Jesus Himself, who is the Life. “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). It is obtained in believing on, or accepting of and trusting in, the Lord Jesus as a Saviour for lost sinners. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). The “shame and contempt” of the rest of the risen dead is that which properly belongs to sin, the abominable thing that God hates, and which makes all those abominable in whom it dwells. The first mark of true repentance is to see this to be the case, and to loathe ourselves for our iniquities. “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?” (Romans 6:21). One part of the punishment of sin is, to be made a loathing to others as well as ourselves. “They shall be an abhorring to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24). That shame and abhorring also everlasting. “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still,” as true as, “He that is holy, let him be holy still” (Revelation 22:11). Continuance, and perhaps growth and intensification, but no change. Let us, from the subject before us, learn— 1. To have our minds deeply and permanently impressed with the truth and reality of the resurrection. It was for this that the statement was made to Daniel by the angel. It is one of the truths most plainly revealed and most frequently referred to in the Word of God. Christ’s resurrection is to be the object of our faith; our own resurrection the object of our hope. It was in the hope and expectation of the resurrection that the Apostle exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man. It was the source of his joy and triumph, that this corruption should put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality. In this blessed hope he cheerfully renounced the world and died daily, ready, “after the manner of men,” to “fight with beasts at Ephesus.” It was this hope that enabled the Jewish martyrs to dare all the rage of their furious persecutors; and will enable us, though not martyrs, to look not at the things that are seen and temporal, but at those that are unseen and eternal. It is our comfort when we part with beloved ones who fall asleep in Jesus, and commit their bodies to the dust of the earth, to know that that body, now sown as a precious seed-corn in weakness and dishonour, shall be raised in power and glory, the same voice of Jesus that comforted Martha and Mary speaking to us at the side of that open grave, “Thy brother shall rise again.” “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 Thessalonians 4:18). 2. To regard everything in the light of the resurrection. It is our wisdom to view things now as they will appear on that day. Everything will then stand forth in its true character. Things often appear quite otherwise now. “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination with God,” and will so appear at the resurrection. Paul and his fellow-apostles were regarded on earth as “the filth of the world and the offscourings of all things.” In the resurrection they will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Men tike Herod Agrippa, who had shed their blood and put them in prison to please the Jews, and who, while seated on his throne in gorgeous array, and delivering his oration to the people, was applauded as a god and not a man, will on that day be the objects of “shame and everlasting contempt.” Dives and Lazarus will then change places. Lazarus, with his ulcered body changed and transfigured into the fashion of Christ’s glorious body, will have his place among the princes of God’s people, inheriting the throne of glory, on which he will reign with Christ for ever and ever, in the enjoyment of an everlasting felicity. The rich man, appearing in a body allied to his unrenewed and sin-polluted soul, will be “an abhorring to all flesh.” The “mighty,” who only lived to the gratification of their own pride and passions, will be “put down from their seats;” while those “of low degree,” who in their poverty trusted in God and, possessing their blood-washed souls in thankful patience, waited for the coming of His Son from heaven, shall be exalted to the position of kings and priests unto God, in mansions of unfading joy and a kingdom of righteousness and peace, with the Lamb for their companion and God for their everlasting light and glory. . XLVII.—THE WISE AND THE WINNERS OF SOULS, WITH THEIR REWARD. (Chap. Daniel 12:3.) This verse stands in close connection with the preceding one. It describes the character and blessedness of those who, at the resurrection of the just, shall awake out of the sleep of death to the enjoyment of eternal life. Perseverance in a life of faith and good-doing, whatever suffering and trial it may have involved, is at length crowned with a glorious and an everlasting reward. The verse partakes of the nature of Hebrew poetry, consisting of two members, each of which contains both a character and the blessedness promised to it. I. The characters mentioned. These are given in two expressions; they are “wise,” and “they turn many to righteousness.” The first is probably to be regarded as the general description, embracing the whole; the second as a more special one, applying more particularly to some. The first expresses the character as viewed with reference to the individuals themselves; the second, the same character, but in its relation to others. All here spoken of are “wise,” with the wisdom more or less developed. One natural and necessary effect of that wisdom is that it acts more or less beneficially upon others, leading them also to the possession and practice of righteousness. But in some this fruit and effect of wisdom in relation to others is more abundant and extensive than in the case of the rest. There are those who, being wise themselves, as a fruit and effect of that wisdom, turn not only others but many others to righteousness. The wisdom is a thing in ourselves, but its influence and action are to be upon others, who are to receive the benefit of it. The wisdom possessed by ourselves will evince and manifest its existence by leading us to seek, and enabling us to promote, the welfare of others, by turning them to righteousness; while to do this requires the possession and exercise of wisdom in ourselves, “He that winneth souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30). To win souls requires wisdom, while it is the evidence and manifestation of it. Accordingly, the wisdom that is from above is described by the Apostle as “full of mercy and of good fruits,” leading us to sow the fruit of righteousness in peace, and so enabling us to make peace (James 3:17-18). Notice— 1. The wise. “They that are wise.” [355] Wisdom has been defined as that which chooses the best ends and pursues them by the best means. The best ends are (1) the glory of God our Maker, who has created all things, and for whose pleasure all “things are and were created;” who has made all things for Himself, and whose glory it is both our duty and happiness, as His rational creatures, to seek in every competent way to promote. Next to this is (2) the present and eternal happiness of ourselves and others in the enjoyment of their Maker’s favour and friendship, the possession of His character, and obedience to His will. To confine our aims to lower ends than these is unworthy of intelligent and immortal natures, and marks us as unwise. The Scriptures accordingly declare wisdom to consist in the true fear of God, and describe ungodliness and wickedness as at the same time fully and madness. This wisdom is that which “comes from above,” and of which God, the only Wise, is the Author; and is described as “first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and of good fruits, without partiality or wrangling, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17). Any wisdom which is not this is described by the same inspired writer as “earthly, sensual, devilish;” allying us less to the only wise God, than to him who is the prince of darkness, though able to transform himself into what he originally was, an angel of light. [355] “They that be wise.” δַ ?ξַּ ?ωְׁ ?λִּ ?ιμִ ?ιν (hammashkilim), the wise or understanding. The margin has “teachers.” The same word used in chap. Daniel 11:33; Daniel 11:35, and rendered “they that understand,” and “them of understanding.” Keil observes that the term is here, as there, not limited to the teachers, but denotes the intelligent, who, by instructing their contemporaries by means of word and deed, have awakened them to steadfastness and fidelity to their confession in the times of tribulation, and have strengthened their faith.2. The soul-winners. “They that turn many to righteousness.” [356] Literally, “that make many righteous.” Righteousness has reference both to character and standing. In its relation to character, it is conformity in heart and life to the law of God, that law which is a transcript of His own character, and which is summarily described as love, even as God is love. In relation to standing, it is a state of acceptance and approval with God, as of those against whom His law has no charges, a freedom from condemnation, or, as the Scriptures often speak of it, a state of justification, which is simply that of one who is declared righteous or innocent in the eye of the law. How is a man made righteous in this sense? How can a man be just with God? or how can he that is a sinner be righteous with his Maker? To be a sinner is to be a transgressor of the law of God; which appears to be the opposite of righteousness both in character and standing. For a transgressor of the law to be righteous before God seems a contradiction in terms. It is the scheme of divine wisdom and mercy in the provision of a Saviour that reconciles this contradiction, and shows how the thing that appeared impossible is actually effected, while truth is strictly maintained and justice retains its rights. It is this provision that constitutes the Gospel, whose object it is to reveal it. It is by the substitution of a righteous person, who while He is man is at the same time God, in the place of the unrighteous, that the latter, on their acceptance of Him as their Surety, are regarded in the eye of the law as righteous, being viewed as one person with Him, and entitled to the same standing which He Himself occupies as righteous before God. This divine plan of making sinners righteous before God by substitution, suretyship, or representation, corresponds with the way in which the race has become guilty. Just as in and by the first Adam, or head of the human race, men were made sinners, so in and by the second Adam, God’s Son made flesh, as the second Head of the race, they that accept of and trust in Him are made righteous (Romans 5.) They stand righteous before God because He who is their Head and Surety does so, and they are, in the eye of the law, one with Him. With this righteousness in state or standing, believing sinners, at the same time and by the same means, obtain righteousness of character. A new inward spiritual life, or principle of righteousness and holiness, is infused in or imparted to them by the Spirit of God, in virtue of and in connection with that same union with the second Adam, or divine Surety, which takes place on their acceptance of and trust in Him; just as a graft partakes not only of the fortunes of the tree but of its life and sap. Accordingly the Word of God declares that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christ is made to those who are thus in Him not only righteousness, for their righteous standing before God, but sanctification for their righteous, holy character. In the Lord they have both “righteousness and strength,”—righteousness for their accepted standing before God, and strength for a holy character and life of new obedience. Thus actually to make persons righteous, as it is of God’s providing, is also of God’s effecting; for it is He that, by His Spirit disposing and enabling us to accept of and trust in Christ as sinners, makes us legally one with Him. Accordingly we read: “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). How, then, do the persons mentioned in the text make others righteous? Instrumentally. He that makes them one with Christ, or grafts them into Him by giving them to accept of and trust in Him as sinners, is the Holy Spirit. But in doing this He employs, as the means of effecting it, the testimony concerning Christ, whether conveyed in the written word or uttered by human lips. For Christ to be accepted of or trusted in, He must be known. “Who is He, Lord, that I should believe on Him?” “How shall they believe on Him of whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14.) It is for this especially that the Spirit employs human instrumentality. “How shall they hear without a preacher?” “It hath pleased God by the foolishness of preaching”—by the preaching of the glad tidings of salvation, which appears foolishness to the world—“to save them that believe.” By this testimony concerning Jesus, and God’s way of making men righteous through Him, whether brought to the eye or the ear, the Spirit persuades and enables men to accept of and trust in Him as their Surety and Saviour, and so be made righteous. To bear this testimony, and so instrumentally to turn others to righteousness, is the privilege and duty of those who have themselves been made personally and experimentally acquainted with it. Accordingly, this is by no means confined to those who are in an official sense teachers or preachers, though especially incumbent on such. It is, in one way or other, within the ability of all who know Christ themselves to tell others of Him, and is accordingly made their duty and privilege. “The Spirit and the Bride—all believing and renewed souls—say, Come: and let him that heareth say, Come.” Even those who do so officially must first have approved themselves by doing so unofficially. “Without doubt,” says Calvin, “the angel here specially denotes the teachers of the truth; but in my opinion he embraces also all the pious worshippers of God. No one of God’s children ought to confine himself privately to himself; but as far as possible, every one ought to interest himself in the welfare of his brethren. God has deposited the doctrine of His salvation with us, not for the purpose of our privately keeping it to ourselves, but of our pointing out the way of salvation to all mankind. This therefore is the common duty of the children of God, to promote the salvation of their brethren.” [356] “They that turn many to righteousness.” ξַ ?φְ ?γִּ ?ιχֵ ?ιδָ ?ψַ ?αִּ ?ιν (matsdiqι harabbim), “they that make the many righteous.” Brightman has, “they that justify others, by teaching, admonishing, exhorting, reproving, and comforting, which are parts and duties of the teachers, and those who enjoy public office in the church.” According to Keil, the word here signifies to assist in obtaining, or to lead to, righteousness; and is here to be read in this general interpretation, and not to be identified with the Pauline δικαιοῦσθαι (justification). The persons here intended, he says, are those who by their fidelity to the law led others to φִ ?γְ ?χָ ?δ (Isidhqah, righteousness),—showed them by their example and teaching the way to righteousness. The same word used in Isaiah 53:11 of Christ as God’s Righteous Servant; who by the knowledge of Himself as their sin-bearer should “justify many.” The only way of being made righteous is by the same knowledge, for the communication of which His people are made His witnesses (Acts 1:8).The angel says, “They that turn many to righteousness.” While all who know Christ themselves are bound to aim at making Him known to others, and so turning them to righteousness, all who do so are not equally successful. The extent to which souls are actually won or turned to righteousness depends, under God, on many things. This will especially depend on the measure in which the requisite wisdom is possessed, the faithfulness and diligence with which it is exercised, and the prayer of faith with which it is accompanied. While Paul plants and Apollos waters, it is God that gives the increase. But there must be the planting and the watering; and ordinarily in proportion to the wisdom, diligence, and prayer in doing this, will the increase be given. “They so spake that many believed.” “In so doing thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee.” To catch men with the Gospel net we require both the skill and the diligence of successful fishermen. “Being crafty, I caught you with guile. I am made all things to all men, if by any means I may save some.” Among the things requisite for turning many to righteousness, whether in a public or private capacity, must be mentioned—love, that both gains the ear and moves the heart, earnestness, that shows the speaker to believe his own words, and so makes others earnest; perseverance, that after toiling all night and taking nothing, will yet again and again let down the net; judgment, to speak the word in season, and to deal with each case as occasion and circumstances require; faith, including both assurance of God’s promised blessing, certainty regarding the truths stated, and the realisation of things unseen; knowledge, so as to give clear and correct direction as to the way of truth and peace; singleness of aim, so as to seek the glory of God in the salvation of men as our one object in all our labour; prayerfulness, seeking continually His aid, blessing, and power, without which we can neither work aright nor work to any effect,—imitating the resolve of the apostles, “We will give ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word;” finally, consistency of life, both as regards our spirit and conduct, the testimony of the lips being seconded by the concurring testimony of the life. II. The reward. This also is exhibited in a twofold manner, a simile being employed in each member of the verse, corresponding with the twofold description of the character. The wise shall “shine as the brightness of the firmament;” [357] they that turn many to righteousness “shall be, or shine, as the stars for ever and ever.” [358] The former, like the character with which it is associated, is a glory of a more general kind, that of the celestial expanse lighted up with the splendour of the noonday sun. The latter is the brilliancy of the stars as they sparkle in the nocturnal sky, especially as seen in a southern or oriental country like Syria or Chaldea, with a radiance all the more glorious from the dark ground in which, like diamonds, they appear to be set. The former comparison, though not to the body of the sun but to the brightness which emanates from it, yet connects itself with that made by the Saviour probably with reference to it: “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43). [357] “As the brightness of the firmament.” Keil observes that the splendour of the vault of heaven (Exodus 24:10) is a figure of the glory which Christ designates as a light like the sun, in Matthew 13:43, referring to the passage before us. He refers also to Revelation 2:28 and 1 Corinthians 15:40, &c., as examples of the figure. Brightman remarks: “The firmament itself, whither no cloud aspireth, nor any earthly pollution ascendeth, to cast any aspersion or blot thereupon: here, not as it often seemeth to us, covered all over with thick clouds, but as it is in itself.” He thinks, however, that this is a less reward than that which is laid up for the righteous at the last day, when they shall shine forth like the sun itself. [358] “As the start.” Stars, says Bright-man, wherewith the firmament shall be beautified and adorned, themselves in the meantime enjoying the chiefest glory. So Revelation 1:10. More especially, he thinks, teachers of the Jews, being the precious stones of which the wall of the New Jerusalem is built (Revelation 21:19). Keil observes: “The salvation of the people, which the end shall bring in, consists in the consummation of the people of God, by the resurrection of the dead and the judgment dividing the pious from the godless, according to which the pious shall be raised to eternal life, and the godless shall be given up to everlasting shame and contempt. But the leaders of the people, who, amid the wars and conflicts of this life, have turned many to righteousness, shall shine in the imperishable glory of heaven.”The comparisons, taken together, suggest, in relation to the promised reward,— 1. An external visible glory. Christ’s glorified body, which is said to shine as the sun as it appeared to the disciples on the mount, emitted a visible refulgence. But the bodies of His people when raised from the dead are to be “fashioned like to His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). As He shall appear, or be manifested, with a visible glory, they shall appear, or be manifested, in glory with Him (Colossians 3:4). As we have borne the image of the earthy, so even in body we who are His members shall also “bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Corinthians 15:49). How poor in comparison with such a glory will appear the most gorgeous splendour of earth’s loftiest princes! It was probably a portion of this glory that made the face of Moses to shine as he came down from the mount, and that made that of Stephen appear to the Jewish council as the face of an angel. 2. Purity and moral excellence. There is a moral and spiritual glory as well as a visible external one, of which indeed the latter is but a symbol and outward expression. Light itself the symbol of moral purity and excellence. God is light; and goodness is the armour of light, as contrasted with sin, which is the work of darkness. The image of Christ’s perfect moral character believers at the resurrection shall also bear, and that in a perfect degree; as well those who shall be alive and remain at His coming, as those who shall be raised from the dead. For “we shall not all sleep (or die), but we shall all be changed, in a moment” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). Even here, while we behold (or reflect) as in a glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18). “It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when. He shall appear we shall be like Him,”—spiritually and visibly, in spirit and in character as well as in body,—“for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). 3. Dignity and honour. Sun and stars are employed in Scripture as symbols of dignity and lofty rank. Balaam, prophesying of Messiah, said: “A star shall come out of Jacob, and a sceptre out of Israel” (Numbers 24:17). Hence stars usually worn as decorations of princely honour. Christ redeemed His people to make them kings and priests unto God. Like Christ Himself, they are hidden for a time, and often appear mean and contemptible. But the time for the manifestation of their royal rank and princely dignity as the sons of God and brethren of the King of kings at length arrives. “When Christ who is our life shall be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with Him in glory.” “He that over-cometh and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: and I will give him the morning star” (Revelation 2:26; Revelation 2:28). This dignity and princely rank will belong to each of the persons spoken of, though, doubtless, in different degrees, as “one star differeth from another star in glory.” 4. Joy and felicity. Light a standing emblem of joy and gladness. “Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.” On the destruction of their enemies, the Jews “had light and gladness and joy and honour” (Esther 8:16). Clouds and darkness the emblems of sorrow. The future of God’s now tried and afflicted people one of unmingled joy, as well as purity and honour. Their experience after the resurrection like the brightness of a cloudless sky, or like the untarnished radiance of the stars in the midnight vault of heaven. No cloud of grief or care to bring a shadow over their happy spirits. The joy of their future experience heightened by the sorrow through which they had passed on their way to it, as the moon and stars appear most beautiful when the clouds that hid them have passed away. Much of their joy the very fruit of their sorrow, as they see around them those whom with tears and travail of soul they sought to turn to righteousness, and on whom they now look as the mother, after her pangs, looks on the child to whom she has given birth. “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For ye are our glory and joy” (1 Thessalonians 2:19-20). “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they do rest from their labours, and their works do follow them,”—the fruits of their labours in those radiant and happy beings, whom they were made the honoured instruments of turning to righteousness, and who now, as stars in their crown, enhance their own felicity. 5. Permanence. “As the stars for ever and ever.” The stars themselves appear the very emblem of permanence, appearing from year to year and from generation to generation, to occupy the same place and to shine with the same brilliancy that they did thousands of years before. This apparent permanence and unchangeableness pictures forth the real permanence and unchanging glory of the wise and those who turn many unto righteousness. They shall reign for ever and ever. Their life is an everlasting one; their crown one that fadeth not away. Their sun never goes down, neither does their moon withdraw itself. Their glory is necessarily abiding and unchanging, as the Lord Jehovah Himself is their everlasting light, and their God their glory. As one with Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, their joy and felicity, their purity and dignity, must be as permanent as His own. Even the stars may lose their lustre, and the sun may cease to fill the firmament with brightness. It is said that during the last three hundred years thirteen fixed stars have disappeared, one of them after presenting a peculiar brilliancy as if on fire, then exhibiting a reddish yellow hue, and before its final disappearance becoming ashy pale, the time occupied by the change being about sixteen months. Philosophers also calculate that in the course of some seventeen millions of years the sun may have emitted all its rays and entirely lost its lustre. The Word of God does not teach that either sun or stars are everlasting, but, on the contrary, that they shall one day cease to be. They will have served their purpose of showing forth their Maker’s glory and ministering to others of His creatures, and then, like a worn-out garment, be laid aside (Psalms 102:25-26). Their Maker, however, remains the same, and so shall all who as His children partake of His nature. “Whatever possible changes may take place with the glorious fabric of the material heavens, though the sun should lose its splendour, or pale before more glorious suns, as the stars disappear before the orb of day; and though the stars, which are mostly only other suns, shall attract no more by their brightness and beauty;” yet those glorious children of the resurrection, who fulfilled on earth their day of labour in doing the will of their Creator and seeking to bring back to Him His banished ones, shall still shine on with unchanged and unchanging glory, like their glorious Head whom they are made to resemble. “In the lapse of millions of ages hence,” says Arthur Butler, “for aught we can tell, it may be the purpose of God that all this universe should gradually give place to some new creation; that other planets should circle around other suns; that unheard-of forms of animated existence should crowd all the chambers of the sensitive universe,—forms of life unlike all that we can dream of; that in slow progression, the immense cycle of our present system of nature shall at length expire; [359] but even then no decay shall dare to touch the universe of souls.” We may add, nor yet the glorified spiritual bodies of those who, having been “wise “in time, shall shine at the resurrection “as the brightness of the firmament,” and of those who, having laboured to turn many to righteousness, shall shine “as the stars for ever and ever.” [359] It is well known that the stars owe their different degrees of size and splendour mainly to their different distances from us; and that the number of those which are visible to the eye even when aided by a powerful telescope, probably bear only a small proportion to those that are scattered through the boundless regions of space. Even the Milky Way, which is simply an immense cluster of countless stars to which our solar system belongs as a unit, is only one of innumerable such clusters.Reader, believest thou this? They are the words of Him that cannot lie. How infinitely important then to make it our first business to secure a place among those who are “wise,” and then through the grace given to us to seek faithfully to do the Master’s work in turning others to righteousness by communicating, in every competent way and in whatever sphere we may move, the knowledge of Him whose name is the Lord our Righteousness! The day is hastening apace when everything else will appear as insignificant as the dust under our feet, and when all earth’s glory will burst and vanish as the empty soap-bubble. The harvest is approaching, when he that went forth bearing precious seed and weeping, shall come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him,—when “both he that soweth and he that reapeth shall rejoice together.” Hold on, brother, ready to faint in the sowing time under the burden and heat of the day. In due time you shall reap, if you faint not. “Harvest home” will soon be sung amid the acclamations of angels; when, after the throes of a dissolving world, the Lord of the harvest shall proclaim, “Behold, I make all things new.” Has the reader not yet begun to be a candidate for that glory? It is not yet too late. Begin now. . XLVIII.—THE OF AS A SIGN OF THE TIME. (Chap. Daniel 12:4.) Daniel had already received a very full and minute account of what was to befall his people in the latter days. The information communicated, however, was to be “shut up and sealed,” [360] as a precious treasure that was to be carefully guarded, and as something that would be more known and appreciated hereafter than at present. The same order we find to have been given in relation to the vision of the Ram and the He-goat, the reason given being that the vision was to be “for many days,” or only to receive its fulfilment after a length of time. So here; the words were to be shut up and the book sealed “even to the time of the end,” when they should be about to receive their entire accomplishment. The meaning conveyed apparently that as the end approached the prophecy would be both more studied and better understood. There would seem to be a time when, for wise reasons, the right understanding of prophetic scripture is withheld, and when that part of the word is not even studied equally with the rest. The prophet was commanded to “bind up the testimony and seal the law among the disciples” (Isaiah 8:16); so that when the book was handed to one to read, the reply should be, “I cannot, for it is sealed” (Isaiah 29:11). John in Patmos, on the other hand, was commanded not to seal the sayings of the Apocalypse, because the time for their fulfilment was at hand (Revelation 22:10). For the same reason a blessing is promised to those who read and those who hear the words of that prophecy, and who keep what is written in it (Revelation 1:3). A sealed book not able to be read till the seals are broken (Revelation 5:1, &c.) The prophecies of the Old Testament confirmed or made “more sure” by the events of the New; so that we are encouraged to take heed to that word of prophecy, as to a light shining in a dark place till the day of clearer knowledge dawn (2 Peter 1:19). [360] “Shut up the words, and seal the book.” According to some, the prophecy was to be only enigmatically delivered to a few, because scarcely one in a hundred would be worthy to receive it, or give it any attention. Calvin thinks the meaning of the order to be that, although it should be universally despised and ridiculed, it was yet to be shut up like a precious treasure; and not to be treated as valueless, because so few should embrace the teaching it contained; the direction being given for the consolation and encouragement of the prophet himself, lest he grew weary and despondent, because it failed to command the applause of all the world. Jerome says the prophet was to fold up the prophecy in dark speech, and sign it that many might read and seek the truth of the history. Bullinger thinks the command meant that nothing was to be added to the prophecy, it being perfect and absolute; Willet, that he should commit it to writing, and set it forth in obscure terms and words, to take care of it as a treasure, and not impart it generally to all; and that many years should elapse before its fulfilment. According to Brightman, the angel would have Daniel to write the prophecy in precisely the same words and after the same manner in which he had received it, and to add nothing of his own by way of exposition. Dr. Cox thinks the command implies that those last events will only be unravelled, in their full glory and meaning, as the time for their accomplishment approaches, when great inquiry should be excited and increasing knowledge acquired, as they should break one after another in rapid and splendid succession upon the view of the Church. Hengstenberg thinks the command only relates to a symbolical action, to be understood of something internal; and after the removal of the mere drapery, the imperatives are to be resolved into futures, thus,—“These prophecies will be closed and sealed till the time of the end.” Keil understands the words in the sense of guarding, while he supposes that the command refers to the whole of the visions received by Daniel, all of which he understands the prophet to have committed to writing. The prophet was to guard the entire book containing them from disfigurement, “till the time of the end,” because its contents stretched out to that periodThe words in the second clause of the verse, from the place which they occupy, have been thought by many to refer to what should take place toward the time of the end, viz., that there should be a greater amount of study given, as to other subjects of knowledge, so more especially to the written word, and to the word of prophecy in particular, and that accordingly there should be a much better understanding of its contents; [361] as well as that, from the increased facilities for locomotion, its dissemination should be greatly increased. And it is a remarkable fact, and one that cannot fail to be regarded as a striking feature of the time in which we live, and a sign of an approaching state of things different from what has hitherto existed, that these words of the prophet have received so literal and extensive a fulfilment during the last eighty or a hundred years far beyond any former period. That many have “run to and fro,” and that a spirit of inquiry and awakened interest in Daniel’s prophecies, and in the teachings of the prophetic scriptures in general, has appeared in our own time, none acquainted with the religious literature and history of the present century can hesitate to acknowledge. In England especially, it is well known that from the time of the first French Revolution the attention has been in a remarkable degree drawn to the subject of prophecy; many thoughtful and enlightened Christians having been led to view, in that event and those which followed, what might probably prove “the beginning of the end.” From that time to the present numerous books have continued to be written on the subject, a thing which had previously been exceedingly rare. The number of those who have been led to give deep and earnest attention to the prophetic word, and who have consequently become comparatively well acquainted with its contents and teaching, has been largely increased. Evidences of the same increased interest, and means tending to the same result, have been seen in the courses of lectures delivered, and the periodicals started, in connection with the same subject. In Germany, somewhat earlier, the attention of the Church was awakened in a similar manner by the writings of Spener, and still more by those of Bengel. This increased attention to and knowledge of prophetic scripture, while it is itself a remarkable fulfilment of such scripture, is at the same time a sign of the approaching “end,” when all prophecy shall have its accomplishment. “Apocalyptic prophecy,” says Auberlen, “is approaching its fulfilment. For this reason the Lord adds to the light of faith also the light of hope. He leads us ever deeper into the understanding of the Apocalypse, and will give us apostolic knowledge for apostolic times and struggles. It is the undisputable merit of Bengel that he prepared the way for such a knowledge.” [361] “Many shall run to and fro.” ιְ ?ωֹׁ ?θְ ?θεּ (yeshotetoo), “shall go up and down,” especially with the view of searching and investigating. So Job 1:7; Job 2:2. Keil remarks that ωׁ ?εּ ?θ (shoot) signifies neither to “go astray,” as J. D. Michaelis supposed, nor to “wander about” as in consciousness of misery, as Hδvernick thought; but only to go to and fro, to pass through a land, in order to seek out or search, to go about spying. It is used of the eyes of God in Zechariah 4:10, as well as of Satan in Job 1:7, &c. Here the idea is that of searching a book, not merely reading it industriously, as Hitzig or Ewald renders the word; but, as Gesenius says, thoroughly searching in it. Keil, however, would not confine the passage to the time of the end; and agrees with Kliefoth in his interpretation of it, that Daniel must place in security the prophecies he has received until the time of the end, so that through all times many men may be able to read them and gain understanding from them. Calvin says: “Many shall investigate; this prophecy shall not always be buried in obscurity; the Lord will at length cause many to embrace it to their own salvation.” He adds that this really came to pass: “Before Christ’s coming, this doctrine was not esteemed according to its value; whereas now this divine assistance affords us strength and enables us to overcome all the attacks of the world and the devil.” Vatablus understands the prediction to mean that many should go to and fro to obtain knowledge.In relation to the diffusion of divine truth in general, and of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, its central subject, the prediction in the text receives a fulfilment in the present beyond any previous period of the world. Probably not even in apostolic times was it true to an equal extent. In reference to England, preeminently the country of Bibles and missions, never were earnest living witness-bearers for Christ, whether as ministers, city missionaries, evangelists, lay-preachers, and Sabbath-school teachers, even in proportion to the increased population, nearly so numerous as at present; and never was the Gospel, in its purity, so widely promulgated in heathen lands. The empire of China, which with its four hundred millions has now opened her doors to the Gospel; India, which, with its two hundred and fifty millions, is now all our own and everywhere accessible to the truth; Japan, Africa, and the islands of the South Seas are now visited by the heralds of salvation as never before. [362] In India, the Zenanas, or apartments of the women, hitherto secluded from Christian intercourse, are now open to the female teacher and missionary of the cross. “The year (1881) upon which we have entered,” says an American publication, “begins with the whole world open to the Gospel; with an array of nearly 3000 foreign missionaries encircling the globe; with one hundred and fifty millions of copies of the Holy Bible proclaiming their message in two hundred and fifty tongues, and with a great multitude of nearly two million converts from heathenism as the firstfruits of the Gentiles. More than one thousand seraglios in India are open to the missionaries of our Women’s Boards; imperial palaces in China are open to our medical missionaries, and imperial patronage is fostering our missionary hospitals; pagan religions are becoming effete, and even Mahommedanism is at last beginning to yield to the Gospel.” “Since the commencement of the nineteenth century,” says Dr. Christlieb, “Protestant missions have been spreading among people of every race, and in every possible state of civilisation; they have been growing ever vaster in extent and in plan of operation, while they are always becoming more difficult to estimate in their effects and fruits, in their leavening influence on the faith and life of the heathen, as well as in their reflex action on the Church at home.” “We live in an age of missions,” he says again, “such—the mere outward extent of them shows it—as the Church has never seen.… The cross of Christ is being lifted up no longer in a few non-Christian lands, but in every one, among all races of men, the comparatively civilised as the most degraded; in colonies, as in independent heathen lands; in hundreds of languages and dialects. Those provinces of the Church, too, once lost to her, and crushed beneath the bloody heel of Islam, by the light of the Gospel are now being awakened to newness of life.” [362] “Knowledge shall be increased.” In the year 1797, says E. Irving, “when the two witnesses were to recover life (Revelation 11), the London Missionary Society was called into being, or, at least, began its first active operations amongst the heathens; for in that year missionaries were landed in the island of Otaheite, which with all that group hath now been yielded to the preaching of the Word. And since that time, the society has laboured with its chief diligence and success among the islands of the Pacific Ocean, the tribes of Southern Africa, the expatriated and enslaved negroes, and the tribes of Northern Asia. The same year the prophecy began to be fulfilled in another way, by the Baptist missionaries in India addressing themselves to the first new translation of the Scriptures which had been undertaken since the Reformation. From that time till this (1826), the spirit of translating the Scriptures into all languages hath never slumbered nor slept, but been aroused in the Church to an extent beyond all former example; insomuch that within the last thirty years more versions of the Scriptures have been made than existed in all languages before.… And when they began to multiply beyond the means of the various societies to print and circulate them, the Lord raised up that most noble instrument, the Bible Society, which hath taken from the hands of the translators their works as fast as they were finished, and brought them into widest circulation.”The increased diffusion of Scripture as well as other knowledge by the printed pages is as remarkable as that by the living teacher. Only during the past year the Religious Tract Society alone has issued no less than eighty-one millions of separate publications, no fewer than sixty millions of these being in our mother tongue and circulated in our own country or in the colonies; while above two thousand millions of books, tracts, and periodicals, all containing the truth as it is in Jesus, have been circulated since the formation of the society. At present the British and Foreign Bible Society alone produces at the rate of two copies of the Scriptures every minute throughout the twenty-four hours of the day, working every day in the week; and these copies are transmitted over the whole habitable globe in no less than a hundred and seventy languages. “At the beginning of the present century,” says Dr. Christlieb, “the Scriptures existed in some fifty translations, and were circulated in certainly not more than five millions of copies. Since 1804, i.e., since the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, new translations of the Bible, or of its more important parts, have been accomplished in at least two hundred and twenty-six languages and dialects. There are translations of all the Sacred Scriptures into fifty-five, of the New Testament into eighty-four, of particular parts into eighty-seven languages; and now the circulation of the Scriptures, in whole or in part, has amounted to a hundred and forty-eight millions of copies. These translations have been made chiefly by missionaries; and within seventy years over sixty languages have been made to possess a literary history.” In this way the visions of Daniel have been read and searched into as they had never been before. If we apply the text to the increase of knowledge in general, the prediction is equally verified in the days in which we live. The present is emphatically the age of travel, of exploration, of investigation, and discovery. In whichever of the two senses we take the word, “many run to and fro,” and as the result, “knowledge is increased.” The cheap and rapid mode of printing by steam is itself a means of the fulfilment of the prophecy. By the discovery and use of steam as a motive power, the age in which we live is an age of books and cheap literature. The diffusion of knowledge, by means of books, journals, schools, and lectures, is one of the characteristics of the present age. The facilities for cheap and rapid travelling and transit tend in the same direction. The productions of authors, as well as the living teachers, are thus continually speeding over land and ocean as at no former period of the world. By these means, as well as the advance of education, mental activity has reached a greater height than ever before. Probably never was the desire to acquire and to communicate knowledge so great as it is at present. Not only do we live in the days of gas and steam, two discoveries of the present century, but of an agent of still greater power, and one likely to produce still greater effects than it has done already in the telegraph,—namely, electricity. At the International Electrical Exhibition recently opened in Paris, visitors are conveyed from the Place de la Concorde to the exhibition building by a tramcar worked by electricity; and when there, they find that the objects exhibited are divided into no less than sixteen classes, and that no less than twenty-eight rooms are each lighted by a different electric system, and contain specimens of electric railways, electric boats, and electric balloons, with vast masses of machinery driven by electricity. [363][363] In relation to the increase of mere natural knowledge as predicted in the text, the same writer, more than half a century ago, observed: “Of all characteristics of the present times, the increase of our natural knowledge is perhaps the most remarkable, except the dissemination of it. The zeal with which the earth hath been run over, for facts and specimens, in all departments of science, the numbers of travellers and voyagers, and the apparatus for discovery and observation with which they go attended; the books which teem from the press in that kind, and the exactness with which they are written, are only surpassed by the inventions of printing and copying by which they are circulated through the earth with the speed of life and death: and cultivation of the intellect in all that respects outward visible things, is the great end of education; and hath been carried to a wonderful perfection; insomuch that these intellectual tastes have rooted out many of the sensual excesses and indulgences of our fathers. And education is the rallying word of all well-disposed men. For the perfecting of which, the inventions which have taken place of late are altogether marvellous; so that from the swaddling-band of childhood up to the fathers of families, you shall find the people in some school or other, either infantine, academical, or mechanical.” If true in 1826, how much more so now in 1881!The prediction in the text may well stimulate the friends of Jesus and of their fellowmen to greater zeal. Much has been done already in diffusing the knowledge of the truth, but still more remains to be done. Millions are still perishing in all parts of the world for lack of knowledge. Only five thousand missionaries are sent to a thousand millions of heathens, or one to two hundred thousand souls. The cry of Macedonia reaches us still from a thousand places, “Come over and help us.” The appeal for more men, and more means for their support, is still addressed to the churches. Increased openings, increased facilities, and increased prosperity, call for greatly increased operations in the field of missions. “Friends of Jesus,” says the author of the Telegraphic Sign, “make haste to the rescue of those who are perishing in ignorance, because they are ‘out of the way.’ Let there be promptness and rapidity in your movements. Everything around you is on the wing, as if the world were running a race, and had scarcely time to take breath, even for a moment. Let there be speed in your operations. In commerce, literature, and the arts, all is expedition. Things are done quickly, fast, in haste. The work of years is accomplished in as many days. The instinctive, predominant, prevailing propensity, as if from some strange presentiment, is, to save time. For what purpose is never seriously inquired. But that which is done is given out to be done without delay. It is getting late. Every moment is precious. The clock is just on the stroke. Hurry, Hurry. Let not a second be lost. Yet what is all this for? What is all this busy, bustling hurry intended to subserve? Merely to relieve, and lighten, and help on the brief hours of a temporary existence. It is vanity and vexation of spirit after all; a scrambling for gain, a labouring only for the meat that perisheth. And yet for this all the world is taxed. Land and water are laid under revenue in the shortest possible time. Steam engines, steam presses, steam ploughs, steam ships, are all charged to do their utmost. The sails of commerce whiten every shore. Screws and paddles propel the mighty merchandise of the seas. Railway carriages ‘run.’ The telegraph outstrips the winds. Power to overcome resistance, derived from natural forces and not from brute strength, is summoned and put on the stretch to do the bidding of man at a word. Do we not rejoice at the wonderful facilities and improvements of our time? We do. We bless God for endowing His creatures with the marvellous faculty of invention, by which various and even opposite properties are combined and utilities created, that would have lain in the crypts and caverns of unexplored nature, had they not been brought out and dominated by the laws of mechanical science, and rendered so beautifully and amazingly subservient to the wants and interests of society. We could not, we would not, go back to the Middle Ages of slow travelling, slow production, slow printing, slow progress in every department of service. We are more than satisfied with our present vantage ground, while we are almost dizzy with our lofty, elevated, far-stretching advance. But here is our condemnation and our shame. Our religious improvement has not gone on in the same ratio with our commercial and political progression. The march of evangelism has not kept pace with the march of intellect. Education is putting out the leaden eyes of ignorance, pouring the light of knowledge on the visual ray, and kindling the spark of intelligence in the minds of the untutored masses, while ‘darkness still covers the earth, and gross darkness the people.’ All else with impetuous stride has nearly reached the goal, while the chariot of the everlasting Gospel, bearing the message of salvation to dying millions, still drags its slow length along; and though above eighteen hundred years on the highway of the world’s amelioration, has not yet traversed half the globe, seeing two-thirds of its population at least are to this day unacquainted with the ‘faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation,’ that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, even the chief. On whom does the charge of negligence in this matter rest? All religious parties are more or less implicated. We have none of us put our shoulder to the wheel as we ought to have done. We have not been zealous for the Lord of Hosts. We have set our affections too much on earthly things. We have hoarded our substance instead of giving it to Christ. We have hid our Lord’s money, instead of employing it for the spread of the Gospel. The streams of wealth that have flowed to us from the bountiful hand of God, we have diverted from their legitimate channels, for their transmission into dry and thirsty lands where no spiritual water is. We have selfishly turned them into our own reservoirs, and made them administer to our whims, and fancies, and pride.” May the time past suffice to have been guilty of our brother’s blood; and may we now at length, in the self-denying spirit of the Master, rise and do our utmost to spread the Gospel of the kingdom among all nations, that the promised end may come! . XLIX.—THE TIME OF THE END. (Chap. Daniel 12:5-12.) Daniel had just received orders from the angel to shut up the words of the vision, and to seal the book that contained them, “even to the time of the end.” As yet, however, there had been no distinct intimation when that time should be. Information on this point was greatly desired by Daniel, and was not to be entirely withheld from him. The time of Messiah’s advent had already been expressly indicated; after sixty-nine weeks of years He was to be cut off; and after that event, war and desolation was determined upon the people for the terrible guilt thus incurred. The time when the first captivity should terminate, and Israel be restored to their own land, had also been distinctly foretold; and the event had verified the prediction. Daniel was, therefore, naturally wishful to be informed as to the end of these predicted “wonders” which had just been communicated to him. Like the prophets in general, who “searched diligently what and what manner of time the Spirit that was in them did signify, when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” Daniel, having already learned the time of the sufferings, wished now to learn something regarding that of the glory that was to succeed them. This was now in part to be communicated; but in a way that should rather lead to the exercise of faith and patience than satisfy curiosity. The scattering and crushing of the power of the covenant but unbelieving and guilty people must first be fully accomplished. The time when that should be completed is indicated in the enigmatical terms with which the prophet’s ear was already acquainted, as that during which the saints were to be given into the hand of the little horn of the fourth universal empire. It was the mysterious “time, times, and half a time,” or three times and a half; but what that period exactly meant, or from what point it was precisely to take its commencement, definite information was not vouchsafed. Some indication, however, as to the length of the period was given. A thousand two hundred and ninety days, probably understood by Daniel as indicative of so many years, were to elapse, after a certain event yet to take place. That event is also named,—the taking away of the daily sacrifice, and the setting up of the abomination that maketh desolate. These terms also Daniel had already heard, and something of their meaning he had already seen in connection with his own personal history. Another period is mentioned, extending forty-five days beyond the preceding one; when all the indignation shall have entirely passed away, and when Israel, visited with Jehovah’s returning mercy, shall, according to the prophetic promise, have sung, “O Lord, I will praise Thee; for though Thou wast angry with me, Thine anger is turned away, and Thou comfortedst me” (Isaiah 12:1). Further information Daniel was not to receive. As God’s faithful and accepted servant, he was to go his way and rest in faith and patience till the end should come. What the angel had commanded Daniel to do, he now speaks of as done: “The words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.” Intimation, however, is given that, sealed as they are, “the wise” should “understand” (Daniel 12:9-10). They were “written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). The information regarding the time of the end was communicated to Daniel in a peculiarly solemn and impressive manner. After the angel had ceased making his communication, Daniel continued to gaze on his celestial informant; when, as he did so, he saw other two, one on each side of the river, [364] on or over which the chief angel, or the man clothed in linen, stood, as Lord of it and what it represented. One of these, addressing the latter, probably for Daniel’s information, possibly for his own, asked, “How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?” [365] Upon which the chief angel, solemnly lifting up both his hands to heaven, and swearing by Him that liveth for ever and ever, as about to make some most important statement, deeply affecting not Daniel only but the Church at large, and calling for the most deep and devout attention to it, declares that “it shall be for a time and times and a half; [366] and when He shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, [367] all these things shall be finished” (Daniel 12:5-7). Daniel, not understanding the precise meaning of the statement, ventures, in his earnestness, to ask for himself, “O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?” Daniel, however, is forbidden to inquire further, and is only assured that though the troubles of his people should be many, the end should be the purification of the wise, who should also understand the vision. Additional information, however, is vouchsafed; and then Daniel is bidden to go his way till the end be, as he should rest and stand in his lot “at the end of the days” (Daniel 12:10-13). [364] “Upon the waters of the river.” Keil remarks that the river, which, according to chap. Daniel 10:4, is the Hiddekel or Tigris, is here called ιְ ?ΰֹ ?ψ (yeor), a name only given in the Old Testament to the Nile; as if to indicate that, as the angel of the Lord once smote the waters of the Nile to ransom His people out of Egypt, so in the future shall He calm and suppress the waves of the river which in Daniel’s time represented the might of the world-kingdom; the river Hiddekel being thus a figure of the Persian monarchy, through whose territory it flowed. The other two angels who appear on the banks of the river, he views as standing by the side of the Angel of the Lord, represented as the ruler of the Hiddekel, as servants prepared to execute His will. Brightman observes that, while in the first vision, the four winds of heaven strove on the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of it, the matters there treated being in regard to all peoples, which were to be described with their four universal empires; the second was given at Ulai, no sea nor any famous river, as it treated only of some particular nations; and the last on Hiddekel, a particular river also, but one that flowed out of Paradise; the matter treated pertaining to a holy and elect people, whose origin was the infinite grace of a merciful God. He views the man clothed in linen as Christ Himself, the only Priest who, as the Spirit moved upon the waters of chaos (Genesis 1:2), sustaining them in that confusion by His mighty power, watches over the affairs of His Church to preserve and support it. He thinks the other two on the banks of the river are added for confirmation of the whole matter, every word being, according to Deuteronomy 19:15, established in the mouth of two or three witnesses, the one of these waiting in silence and modesty, while the other speaks, these holy beings having the Author of order ever before their eyes. Willet observes that the most general opinion regarding the angel on the river is, that it was Gabriel. So De Lyra, Pererius, Bullinger, &c. His own view, however, is that it was Christ Himself, the Palmoni or Certain One, in chap. Daniel 8:13, who, as the “Wonderful,” hath “secrets in account and number.” [365] “How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?” Kranichfeld reads, “When shall the end of these things be?” Keil, however, thinks that the question rather is, How long continues the end of these things,—Heb.,—“Till when is the end?” Not, How long shall they continue? but, How long shall the end of them do so? the end being the “time of the end” prophesied of from chap. Daniel 11:40 to Daniel 12:3, with all that shall happen in it; the wonders being particularly the unheard-of oppressions described in chap. Daniel 11:39, &c. Brightman thinks the “end of these wonders” shall be when the blasphemous kingdom of the Turks shall come to an end, God then making an end of “scattering the power of the holy people.” Auberlen views this period as referring to the time of Antichrist, and pointing back to chap. Daniel 7:25, which refers to the same period, as the time of the world-power, in which the earthly kingdoms rule over the heavenly; and mentioned in the Apocalypse as the times of the Gentiles, extending from the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans to the second advent of Christ. [366] “A time, times, and a half.” Keil thinks that the definition of time here given leads to the conclusion that the answer of the angel refers not to the period of persecution under Antiochus, but to that under the last enemy, the Antichrist; as it accurately agrees with the period of time named in chap. Daniel 7:25, as that of the duration of the enemy of God who should arise out of the fourth world-kingdom. Three and a half times, according to the prophecy of chaps. Daniel 7:25, and Daniel 9:26-27, are given, he thinks, for the fullest unfolding of the power of the last enemy of God till his destruction; and when, in this time of unparalleled oppression, the natural strength of the holy people shall be completely broken to pieces, then shall these terrible things have reached their end. As regards the place here, and the periods named in Revelation 13:5; Revelation 11:2-3, where forty months and 1260 days are used interchangeably, he thinks it is questionable whether the weeks and the days represent the ordinary weeks of the year and days of the week, and whether these periods of time are to be taken chronologically. He thinks the choice of the chronologically indefinite expression “time” shows that a chronological determination of the period is not in view, but that the designation of time is to be understood symbolically. The three and a half times, he observes, are, beyond doubt, the half of “seven times;” but, in his opinion, they only indicate a testing period, a period of judgment, which, according to Matthew 24:22, Proverbs 10:27, will for the elect’s sake be intercepted and shortened. He thinks, however, they refer to a period still future. Several modern interpreters, on the other hand, especially in Germany, refer the period to the duration of the oppression of the Jews under Antiochus Epiphanes. Mr. Habershon (Dissertation on the Prophecies) writes: “It was the opinion of the celebrated Mr. Mede that the time, times, and a half, of Daniel and John, was but the bisection of a complete number of seven times, which he called the Sacred Calendar of the Great Almanack of Prophecy; and which he thought all mention of time in the Scriptures had reference.” The same writer thinks the “time of the end” to signify the same point of time as the termination of these “times;” the “wonders” taking place not only at the fall of the Little Horn of popery but at the restoration of the Jews. Faber observes: “At the close of the self-same period of 1260 years (the time, times, and a half), we are taught by Daniel that the Jews are to be restored.… At the outflowing of the last vial, the 1260 years apparently expire, and the restoration of Judah commences. To this period, therefore, we must ascribe the expedition of the Wilful King; and at the same period the Stone begins to smite the Image upon his feet, and the Ancient of Days to sit in judgment upon the Roman beast and his tyrannical little horn.… During this period of unexampled trouble, which so awfully terminates with the slaughter of Megiddo, we are expressly taught by Daniel, in perfect harmony with the other inspired prophets, that the restoration of Judah shall take place.” Faber, after Mede, recognises the captivity of Israel under the four successive hostile monarchies, as forming the complete period or Great Calendar of Prophecy; and assumes as a datum the number of “seven times” in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the tree, which he considers to mark the duration of the four tyrannical monarchies; the period having a double application to Judah and Israel, while each application has a double commencement and a double termination, the last of these terminations being in the Millennium. [367] “To scatter the power of the holy people.” πַ ?τֵּ ?υιַ ?γ (nappets yadh), literally, to “shatter or crush the hand.” Keil observes that the expression πַ ?τֵּ ?υ (nappets) primarily denotes to beat to pieces, to shatter, as in Psalms 2:9; Psalms 137:9; and is the meaning to be given to it in the text, as has been done by Hengstenberg, Maurer, Auberlen, and others. ιַ ?γ (yadh), hand, is the emblem of active power; and the shattering of the hand he views as the complete destruction of power to work, and the placing in a helpless and powerless condition, as in Deuteronomy 32:36, referring to the crushing by Antichrist of the holy people in the last great tribulation. Jerome understands the oppression of God’s people under the hand of Antichrist, this general dispersion of them being given as a sign of the end of these things. Calvin understands the entire weakening of their strength through persecution.In indicating the time of the end, the man clothed in linen mentions, first, a period that should elapse during which a certain purpose of Jehovah regarding the chosen people should be accomplished (Daniel 12:7); secondly, a period of time that should be reckoned from the occurrence of certain events (Daniel 12:11). We notice both— I. The period to elapse during which a certain purpose of Jehovah should be accomplished. The purpose referred to is the scattering or crushing of the power of the holy people, that is, the Jews, so called as having been taken into covenant with Jehovah, who declared that they should be to Him a holy people or nation (Exodus 19:5-6; Leviticus 20:26; Deuteronomy 7:6). In case of His people’s continued disobedience, He threatened to “break the pride of their power” and to “scatter them among the heathen” (Leviticus 26:18-19; Leviticus 26:33); both apparently indicated in the text, “when He shall have accomplished to scatter or crush the power of the holy people.” We have seen how this scattering or crushing commenced after the rejection and cutting off of the Messiah, when, according to the prophecy, “the people of the prince that should come—the Romans under whose subjection they then were—should destroy the city and the sanctuary,” and the end should be with a flood, even war and desolations determined upon them (chap. Daniel 9:26). Paul speaks of them as already in his day broken off and cast away (Romans 11:15-20). They have been so up to the present time; a nation scattered and peeled, tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast. Even now thousands of them are said to contemplate leaving Germany, from whence they have been all but expelled, in order to return to Spain, from whence their persecuted fathers fled for refuge to Germany several centuries ago. The scattering and crushing of their power is still going on, their own country being still in the hands of the Gentiles. But this is to have an end; and when this purpose of chastening shall have been accomplished, when Jehovah shall see that “their power is gone,” and they “accept the punishment of their iniquity,” and acknowledge their guilt in rejecting and crucifying the Lord’s Anointed, the fulfilment of His gracious promises regarding them shall begin (Leviticus 26:40-45; Deuteronomy 32:36). “If the casting away of them be—as it has been—the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Romans 11:15). The period during which this scattering or crushing was to take place is the enigmatical one already occurring in the prophecy (chap. Daniel 7:27), “a time, times, and a half,” or three and a half times. From chap. Daniel 11:13 (margin) we may gather that the term “time” was understood to indicate a year; “at the end of times, even years,” was the language of the angel. A year was usually reckoned as containing 360 days; so that the period in the text would be that which we twice meet with in the Revelation, a thousand two hundred and sixty days (Revelation 11:3; Revelation 12:6); or, according to prophetical reckoning, each day being considered a year, 1260 years; a period also spoken of in the Revelation as a time, times, and half a time (Revelation 12:14). The two periods thus similarly described in the two Revelations of the Old and New Testament, as of the same length, are probably one and the same, commencing and concluding together, as it is certain that they possess the same character of suffering, persecution, and oppression of the people of God. Its application to the duration of the Little Horn of the Fourth Beast or Roman empire, we have already considered under chap. Daniel 7:27. Although the temporal power of the Little Horn appears since 1870 to be a thing of the past, still its spiritual power continues; and it is certain that the scattering and crushing of the covenant people is not yet at an end. How near, however, in both cases the consummation may be, time alone will show. Far distant, it would seem, it cannot well be. O Israel, return unto the Lord, from whom ye have revolted. “Repent and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, in order that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and He may send again Jesus, who before was preached unto you; whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:19-21, R.V.) The period mentioned in Daniel 12:11, “twelve hundred and ninety days,” is doubtless the same three times and a half with the addition of thirty more; while the third period (Daniel 12:12), or the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days, is a still further extension of it by forty-five; these additions or extensions having probable reference to what should take place between the termination of the scattering and crushing of Israel’s power in their deliverance out of the great tribulation (Daniel 12:1), and their full enjoyment of the blessings promised in connection with their return to their Saviour and King. [368][368] “A thousand two hundred and ninety days; the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.” Mr. Faber thinks that though the restoration of Judah takes place at the close of the 1260 years, or “a time, times, and a half,” the “lost sheep of the house of Israel remain still to be gathered.” He considers the circumstance of the two-fold restoration the reason why the angel divides the seventy-five days or years beyond the 1260 into thirty and forty-five, the former being the period for the restoration of Judah, the latter for that of Israel, the whole seventy-five belonging exclusively to the period of the last vial in the Apocalypse. Bishop Newton considers that it is to the three great events of the fall of Antichrist, the restoration of the Jews, and the beginning of the Millennium, that the three different dates of 1260, 1290, and 1335 years are to be referred. Dr. Cox observes that a further period of thirty days or years is here added, as perhaps marking the season during which the predicted overthrow of the Antichristian powers shall be accomplished, or, as some suppose, the restoration of the Jews. “We presume not to decipher the particular events of the third era of forty-five additional years, producing a period of 1335, the close of the prophetic revelations. As he is pronounced ‘blessed’ who attains that age, we must conclude that it will be the last and most glorious manifestation of God to mankind.” Keil thinks that Daniel 12:11-12 treat of an earlier period of oppression than Daniel 12:7, and that thus the 1290 and 1335 days are not reckoned after the three and a half times. He thinks also that they are not to be reckoned chronologically, but interpreted symbolically; days being used instead of times, to indicate that the time of the tribulation is not one of an immeasurable extent, but limited to a period of moderate duration, which is exactly measured out by God; the 1290 days denoting in general the period of Israel’s affliction on the part of Autiochus Epiphanes, by the taking away of the Mosaic ordinances of worship and the setting up of the worship of idols, but without giving a statement of the duration of this oppression which can be chronologically reckoned. The second definition of time, 1335 days, by which the period is increased by forty-five, he thinks more strictly represents the same idea of a limited period of duration; the oppression wholly ceasing with the expiry of that extended period. Several modern interpreters reckon these two latter periods from chap. Daniel 8:14; Kliefoth remarking that we know from the book of Maccabees that the consecration of the temple took place on the 25th day of the month Kisleu, in the 148th year of the Seleucidan era, and that Antiochus died in the year following, which he thinks may be the end of the 1290 days, while the 1335, or forty-five days longer, reach to the entire cessation of the persecution. Junius and others referred these forty-five days to the time between the restoration of the Jewish worship and the death of Antiochus. The Duke of Manchester (Finished Mystery), with some others, regards the “time of the end” as a period probably of only 1290 or 1335 literal days, ending with the general resurrection. Mr. Habershon thinks that the events to take place during those seventy-five years, about which nothing is said in the vision, correspond with those things which, in Revelation 10., were uttered by the seven thunders, but which the Apostle was to seal up and not to write; the information not concerning the disciples of Jesus, who would be taken out of the reach of those troubles, as Noah was from the deluge, Lot from Sodom, and the Christians from Jerusalem in the siege. Some suppose that of these additional seventy-five years, the first thirty were to be taken up with the outpouring of the vials upon apostate Christendom, after the papal power was brought to an end, and the remaining forty-five with the troubles consequent on the rise and doings of the infidel Antichrist, terminating with the battle of Armageddon. So Mr. Irving, who says: “Knowing as we do from the former vision that the 1260 years bring the Little Horn’s power to an end, and introduce the awful scene of the judgment of the Beast which obeyed his blasphemy, it must necessarily be that these thirty years should run over into that period of judgment; but whether they conclude it or not, no one has a right to declare, because it is not so declared, nor are any grounds revealed for concluding or even conjecturing so. But on the other hand, from the wording of the following verse, I think there was reason for concluding or conjecturing the contrary. ‘Blessed is he that waiteth,’ &c. The language, waiting and coming to, seems to me to imply the exercise of tried patience and the escape from imminent peril, and carrieth to my ear a certain note of trouble, which being safely passed, all will be well, and the blessed time and condition of the world attained to.… And I think that the 1290 days doth not announce the completion of anything; but doth announce the woeful beginning of a long day of trouble and desolation to the Church, whereof the period 1335 announceth not only the complete determination, but the beginning of another period of universal blessedness.” De Lyra, Pintus, and other Roman Catholic writers apply the 1290 days to the reign of Antichrist, which they consider equivalent to the time, times, and half a time, or three and a half years. Jerome considers the additional forty-five days to be between the death of Antichrist and the coming of Christ in glory. So Pererius and the Roman Catholics in general. Calvin, who says he is no conjuror in numerical calculations, thinks that the 1290 days indicate the unlimited period of Antichrist’s long reign, and that the additional forty-five is no certain definite time, but is intended to intimate that the godly should wait with patience, though the time of deliverance seemed long. Melanchthon puts both the numbers together, making seven years and three months, ending with the overthrow of Nicanor, the general of Antiochus. Osiander applies the 1290 days to the profession of religion under the papal Antichrist from its beginning to its end; and thinks the 1335 years mark the continuance of the kingdom of Antichrist, of which the beginning is uncertain. Bullinger refers the 1290 days to the time of the Jewish war begun by Vespasian in the fourteenth of Nero, and ended in the second year of Vespasian, after continuing about three years and a half. He thinks the additional forty-five days began from the taking of Jerusalem by the Romans, multitudes of the Jews being then sold into captivity and subjected to other miseries. Mr. Bosanquet remarks that when the Wilful King is interpreted as representing the personification of the Mahomedan apostasy, these periods of 1290 and 1335 days or years necessarily count from his time even beyond the present days.II. The period of time to be reckoned from the occurrence of certain events (Daniel 12:11). This period is that just mentioned, twelve hundred and ninety days, or thirty days (or years) beyond the 1260, or the “time, times, and half a time.” The events from which this period is to be reckoned are spoken of as the taking away of the daily sacrifice, [369] and the setting up of the abomination that maketh desolate. [370] We have to inquire when these events took place. But first we have to consider what the expressions mean. We have had them before (chap. Daniel 8:11, Daniel 11:31). Literally and primarily in relation to Israel, they are understood to indicate the cessation, or rather violent removal, of the Jewish worship as prescribed in the law of Moses, and the introduction of a false and idolatrous worship, under whatever form, in its stead. This took place first under Antiochus Epiphanes, and afterwards again under the Romans and their successors the Mahomedans, as it is this day. In relation to the Church, or the Israel of the New Testament, the expressions would denote the violent removing or changing of the Christian worship, and corrupting the great doctrine of the one sacrifice for sin, with the substituting of an unscriptural creed and idolatrous worship in their place; things which we have already seen were done by the Little Horn, both of the Fourth and the Third Beast (chap. Daniel 7:25, Daniel 8:11). In relation to the chosen people of the Old Covenant to whom the prophecy seems to have a special reference, it is more difficult to point to a period when these predicted events took place, and from which the 1290 days or years were to take their commencement. It is remarkable, however, as was formerly noted, that the oppression of the Church under the Little Horn of the Fourth or Roman empire, viewed as the Papacy, commenced almost simultaneously with the oppression of Israel by the Little Horn of the Third or Grecian Empire, viewed as Mahomedanism; namely, soon after the beginning of the seventh century; while it is certain that both the Papacy and Mahomedanism have been equally oppressive to the Church of the New Testament and that of the Old. And it appears equally certain that the faithful in both the Old and New Covenants will be the objects of the wrath of the Antichrist under the last or infidel form which he seems destined to assume, when he shall “go forth in great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many” (chap. Daniel 11:45). [369] “The daily sacrifice shall be taken away.” Irving, with many others, views the taking away of the daily sacrifice as equivalent to the violent putting down of the true worship of Jehovah, which was done by the papal power. “In the interpretation of prophecy, respect ought to be had continually to the form of religious truth and religions language in which the prophet and the people to whom he prophesied were instructed, and in which they could be intelligently addressed. That is, we ought to put ourselves as much as we can into their condition of knowledge, in order to understand what the words spoken to them of the Lord signify. Now to the mind of an Israelite, trained under the dispensation of Moses, the taking away of the daily sacrifice from the temple on Mount Zion, signifies no less than the violent putting down of the worship of Jehovah; and the setting up of ‘the abomination that maketh desolate,’ or ‘that astonisheth,’ signified the placing, in its stead, of some form of blasphemous and idolatrous worship. This language, therefore, is applicable only to those great invasions of the Church, whereby the true worship is abolished, and a false one substituted in its stead.” Irving regards the taking away of the daily sacrifice in the text as ascribed to the Wilful King or infidel Antichrist (chap. Daniel 11:31), and understands it of his reconstituting “the papal abomination within the bounds of his empire after it had been for many years abolished.” Brightman, on the other hand, understands the abolition of the ceremonial law of sacrifices accomplished by Christ through His death. [370] “The abomination that maketh desolate.” Bishop Newton understood the desolation here referred to as that of the Eastern Church by Mahomet. “That same time, therefore, is prefixed for the desolation and oppression of the Eastern Church, as for the tyranny of the Little Horn (chap. Daniel 7:25) in the Western Church; and it is wonderfully remarkable that the doctrine of Mahomet was first forged in Mecca, and the supremacy of the pope was established by virtue of a grant from the wicked tyrant Phocas, in the very same year of Christ, 606.” He adds: “The ‘setting up of the abomination of desolation’ appears to be a general phrase, and comprehensive of various events. It is applied by the writer of the first book of the Maccabees (1Ma 1:54) to the profanation of the temple by Antiochus, and his setting up the image of Jupiter Olympius upon the altar of God. It is applied by our Saviour (Matthew 24:15) to the destruction of the city and temple by the Romans under the conduct of Titus in the reign of Vespasian. It may for the same reason be applied to the Roman emperor Adrian’s building a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus in the same place where the temple of God had stood, and to the misery of the Jews, and the desolation of Judea that followed. It may with equal justice be applied to the Mahomedans invading and desolating Christendom, and converting the churches into mosques; and this latter event seemeth to have been particularly intended in this passage.” Brightman, as well as Calvin, understands by ‘the abomination that maketh desolate’ the adulterate and counterfeit worship set up by the Jewish nation since they rejected Christ, and which is a most loathsome abomination before God. He reads ωׁ ?εֹ ?ξֵ ?ν (shomem) as passive, “made desolate,” denoting the time when Christ utterly abolished that impious manner of sacrificing, or the ceremonial worship; this abomination standing in the holy place up to the time of Vespasian, when the temple was destroyed, and being especially put an end to in the time of the emperor Julian (about the year a.d. 360), when, as the historian Socrates says, the temple was utterly overthrown, instead of the new edifice being prepared; so that nothing after that was ever attempted, the abomination being made utterly desolate. Bullinger understood this ‘abomination’ of the laying waste of the nation and city of the Jews; for example, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Osiander, like Irving and others, understands it of the idolatrous service introduced into the Church by the Roman Antichrist. Willet again refers all to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes historically, though typically to that of Antichrist. That the application of the text by Osiander and others to the papal corruptions is not without solid grounds, will appear when it is remembered that article 4 of the creed of Pope Pius is that “in the mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead;” that article 5 is, “I profess that in the most holy sacrifice of the eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ;” that article 7 declares that “the saints reigning together with Christ are to be venerated and invoked;” and that in article 8 it is said, “I most firmly assert that the images of Christ, of the mother of God ever virgin, and also of other saints, may be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration is to be given them.” The practice is accordingly. The following tragical story, taken from an American paper, is told in the Newcastle Chronicle of March 25, 1881:—“The Italian barque Ajace, from Antwerp, bound for an American port, went ashore during a storm on the 4th inst. (March 1881), on Cooney Island, and was lost with all hands, except one man named Pietro Sala. The crew consisted of fourteen, composed of Italians, Austrians, and one Greek. The survivor states that after the vessel struck, the officers and sailors lost all self-control. The captain offered a bottle of brandy to the crew, telling them to drink and die like men who were not afraid of death. The men were too much excited to pay attention to the captain’s offer. He then took a small image of Madonna (the Virgin Mary), which he held aloft in both hands, and the crew all knelt before it, shrieking, and crying, and imploring the Madonna to rescue them. Another man caught the image from the steward’s hands, and carried it into the sea. Then the steward cried out aloud, ‘The Madonna has deserted us; there is no hope;’ and pulling out his sheath-knife, cut his throat, declaring that he would rather die by his own hand than be drowned. The sight of his blood, as it spurted from his neck and fell on the deck where he had fallen, seemed to madden some of the crew; and immediately the carpenter, a Neapolitan, and a Genoese lad, drew their knives and followed his example.”From the whole passage we may make the following reflections and inferences:— 1. The passage appears to teach the duty of taking a lively interest in the future of the Church and in what God has been pleased to reveal in His word regarding the end and the time of it. This is indicated in the very fact that such revelations have been communicated to the Church. These have certainly been given to be studied and inquired into. Christians might possibly give too much attention to such subjects, but it is much easier to give too little. The passage before us exhibits the interest which the angels take in the Church’s future, and in the things revealed regarding it, with the time of their occurrence. It is an angel that asks, “How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?” (Daniel 12:6.) The question suggestive, whether we regard it as asked by the angel for his own information or that of the prophet. When angels are concerned about the future of the Church, its own intelligent members may well be so. Not only into the sufferings of Christ, but the glory that should follow them, the angels desire to look (1 Peter 1:12). The manner in which the exalted personage clothed in linen, and standing over the river, gives the information sought regarding the end, suggestive of the same duty. The information is given by him in the form of a most solemn attestation; lifting up both his hands to heaven, and swearing by Him that liveth for ever and ever (Daniel 12:7). Finally, the same thing seems to be taught by Daniel, who, as if not yet satisfied—such, as Brightman quaintly observes, being the difference of perception in the heavenly and earthly schools—inquires, “O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?” (Daniel 12:8.) This question, so far from being discouraged, is answered by still fuller information on the subject (Daniel 12:11). Indifference on the subject of unfulfilled prophecy in relation to the Church and the world, in the presence of these facts, should hardly be found in the clearer dispensation of the Spirit, when that divine Teacher is promised, among other purposes, to show us “things to come” (John 16:13); still more at a period when we may well believe that the things promised must be hastening to their fulfilment. It is of such prophecy that the Apostle speaks as “a light shining in a dark place,” to which we “do well to take heed until the day dawn” (2 Peter 1:19). It cannot, one should think, be becoming on the part of believers, nor either pleasing or honouring to the Master, to be in any degree indifferent to that which awakened so much interest in heaven,—the unsealing of the book which contained the disclosures of the Church’s future and the things of the end, and which it was the sole prerogative and glory of the Lamb slain to take and unseal (Revelation 5:1, &c.) “There is a point to which we may legitimately pursue our inquiries, but where it becomes us to pause. Prophecy is intended to guide us along the bright outlines of the future, but not to make us historians by anticipation; to impart sufficient for the needful instruction and encouragement of the people of God, amidst the tribulation of these latter days, which will precede the ultimate triumph and glory of the Church; but not to acquaint them with the secret intentions of God with regard to the minuter character of those events which are written in the book of His decrees. To steer between the Scylla and Charybdis of a desponding and neglectful indifference to prophecy, and a dogmatic interpretation, is an important attainment; and is precisely that course which tends to tranquillise the spirit amidst surprising changes, and sustain it by pleasing hopes” (Cox). “As God revealed to the prophets who prophesied of the grace that should come to us, ‘the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,’ that they might search and inquire ‘what and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them did signify;’ so in the times of the accomplishment, we who are living are not exempted from searching and inquiring, but are led by the prophetic word to consider the ‘signs of the times’ in the light of this word; and from that which is already fulfilled, as well as from the nature and manner of the fulfilment, to confirm our faith, for endurance amid the tribulations which prophecy has made known to us; that God, according to His eternal gracious counsel, has measured them, according to their beginning, middle, and end, that thereby we should be purified and guarded for the eternal life” (Keil). 2. It should be the comfort of the Church to know that the time of the end, about which so much interest was felt both by the angels and the “man greatly beloved,” cannot now be far distant. It seems impossible but that the period appointed and predicted for the “scattering and crushing the power of the holy people,” should be near its expiry. [371] For eighteen centuries has that scattering and crushing been going on; and still Jerusalem is trodden under foot of the Gentiles, and the land, given to Abraham and his seed for an everlasting inheritance, lies well-nigh desolate in the hand of their adversaries, while they themselves are still shut up in unbelief. Israel was to be punished “seven times” for their sins. We may well believe that these times of chastening and abandonment are well nigh at an end. Everything indicates that such is the case. Signs of an approaching crisis in the history of Israel, the Church, and the world, are far from being wanting. The great river Euphrates—the Turkish empire—is being rapidly “dried up, that the way of the kings of the East,” whoever they may be—believed by many to be Israel themselves—“may be prepared” (Revelation 16:12). And we know that the drying up of that river synchronises with the time of the end, when Antichrist shall be overthrown, Israel be restored, and “the mystery of God be finished, according to the good tidings which He declared to His servants the prophets” (Revelation 10:7, R.V.) Simultaneously with the drying up of the Euphrates, the beloved disciple saw “coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits as it were frogs; for they are spirits of devils, working signs; which go forth unto the kings of the whole world, to gather them together to the battle of the great day of God Almighty” (Revelation 16:13-14, RV.) While this was going, the voice came forth from Him whose coming again was promised on the day He went up: “Behold I come as a thief; blessed is he who watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.” The events of the last hundred years might justly lead to the conclusion that we had fallen upon “the time of the end,” especially when predicted chronological periods seemed to be probably drawing near their completion. Such events as the French Revolution of 1789, with the shaking of every Continental throne that ensued upon it; the gradual decay and diminution of the Turkish empire, from 1820 till now when the Turkish vizier gives it as his opinion that, if Turkey engages in a war with Cyprus, it will be the last time she will ever fight in Europe; the entire cessation of the pope’s temporal power in 1870; the unexampled increase of knowledge in general, and diffusion of the Gospel in particular, with the special attention given to the word of prophecy; and, finally, the fearful spread of infidelity at home and abroad;—these should be sufficient to convince us, with the Bible in our hands, that our lot is fallen in days when the time of the end is not far distant. [371] “He shall have accomplished to scatter,” &c. It is not a little remarkable that at the time of the French Revolution, when many believed that prophecy was receiving its fulfilment, there were not wanting appearances of the probable termination of the scattering of Israel’s power. Milman, in his History of the Jews, writes: “In the year 1780, the avant-courier of the Revolution, Joseph II., ascended the throne (of Austria). Among the first measures of this restless reformer was a measure for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews.” In his Edict of Toleration he “opened to the Jews the schools and the universities of the empire, and gave them the privilege of taking degrees as doctors in philosophy, medicine, and civil law.… It threw open the whole circle of trade to their speculations, permitting them to establish manufactures of all sorts, excepting gunpowder, and to attend fairs in towns where they were not domiciliated.… It gave them equal rights, and subjugated them to the same laws as the Christians.” Matters are now changed, however, with the Jews in the German empire. After nearly a century of comparative external prosperity, though as yet, alas! far from having returned to the Lord their God and to the true David their King, the popular voice is now lifted, in Prussia especially, to demand their expulsion.—According to an article in the British and Foreign Evangelical Review, there are only about 21,000 Jews at present in the Holy Land, living mostly in the rabbinical cities—Jerusalem, Saffed, Tiberias, and Hebron; about 1500 are found in the commercial centres, but the largest number, about 1300, in Jerusalem.3. Our duty to prepare ourselves for the changes that may speedily come, and to help in preparing others. In connection with the casting off of the Jews, the Gentiles would have their times of Gospel privilege. The casting away of Israel was to be the reconciling of the world, and has been so. These times of the Gentiles have been going on for eighteen centuries. But they were not to be for ever. The time was to come when the Gentiles should be dealt with for their use or abuse of the privileges of the kingdom of God, as Israel had been after their rejection of their King and Saviour. That King was to come again, and reckon with His servants to whom He had intrusted His talents. “The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” so that “every eye shall see Him, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). Such a time of reckoning with those who have possessed the Gospel and the privileges of the kingdom, awaits the Gentiles as truly as it did Israel. An account must be taken of the manner in which that Gospel has been received. What if the Spirit of grace should be withdrawn from Christendom as He was from Israel, and, for the misuse of the Gospel, the Gentile churches be judicially given over to a spirit of unbelief and impenitence, so as to become the willing followers of Antichrist and partake of his doom? (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12.) “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” “Be not highminded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He also spare not thee” (Romans 11:20-21). “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation:” although that day with the Gentiles is now hastening to its close. “To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” He that shall come will come, and will not tarry. “Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give unto every man according as his work shall be” (Revelation 22:12). To all who accept His Gospel and receive Himself as their King and Saviour, He assigns their work till He shall come. “Ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in Judea, and in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth.” “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come” (Acts 1:8; Revelation 22:17). Have we received that Saviour, and are we faithfully endeavouring to do the work He assigns us? The door of the Ark still stands open; let us make sure of entering it ourselves, and endeavour to persuade our kindred, and as many others as possible, to enter it along with us. . L.—THE . (Chap. Daniel 12:10.) This verse stands, like many in the book of the Revelation, like a bright light in a dark and surging sea, both for solemn warning and at the same time for sweet consolation, in the midst of prophecies which might appear dark and unintelligible. It is such as Dr. Chalmers was accustomed to speak of as the memorabilia of Scripture, or passages worthy to be especially noted and remembered. It has special relation to the prophetic communications just delivered by the angel to Daniel, regarding the latter days and what should befall his people in them. It is applicable, however, to the whole contents of Revelation, and to the whole period of the present dispensation, with those who live in it. They imply trouble and affliction; but this is characteristic of our present state on earth, until the happy time arrive when “they shall not hurt nor destroy” in all God’s holy mountain, and when His people “shall dwell in peaceable habitations, and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places” (Isaiah 11:9; Isaiah 32:18). Till Christ, who is “the bright and morning star,” shall visibly and gloriously arise on the earth, as He did above eighteen centuries ago “in great humility,” the time of believers on earth will be one of discipline and of patient waiting. The “whole creation” will continue to “groan and travail together in pain,” as it has done until now, till “delivered from the bondage of corruption unto the glorious liberty of the children of God. And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:21; Romans 8:23). The children of the bridechamber were to mourn while the Bridegroom is away. In the salvation already experienced, and especially in that which is to be revealed, believers “greatly rejoice; though now for a season if need be,” they are “in heaviness through manifold temptations.” The effect, however, of these is a blessed one: “that the trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, may be found unto praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6-7). Such is the comfort held out in the text. “Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” We may note— 1. The blessedness of sanctified trouble. Trouble is sanctified and blessed in two different ways, and to two different classes. It is sanctified to the ungodly, and to those still out of Christ; and it is so when, accompanied by God’s quickening and convicting Spirit, it leads the troubled one to a consideration of sin and its baneful effects, and to an earnest desire to be saved from it, and to be reconciled to God. Such a case was that of Manasseb, who in his captivity and affliction sought the Lord and found Him. Of such sanctified trouble the prodigal son is a standing and divinely given picture. The conversion of Israel in the great tribulation probably to be a distinguished example of the same thing. But trouble is also and especially sanctified to the godly, who are already in Christ. These probably more particularly referred to in the text. The “many” were not only to be purified and made white, but tried,—proved and made manifest as God’s pure gold, His faithful people, who choose rather to suffer than to sin, and who prefer death to denial of His truth. In the case of such, trouble however severe, and persecution however bitter, is only the fire employed by the Purifier to purge away the dross from the precious metal, until He sees His own image perfectly reflected in it. “This is all the fruit to take away their sin.” Persecutors are only God’s rough polishing-stone to brighten His Church. It is the gracious office of the Redeemer to “sit as a refiner of silver, and to purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness” (Malachi 3:3). As trouble and affliction is the instrument employed by Him for that purpose, the man is pronounced blessed whom He thus “chastens and teaches out of His law” (Psalms 94:12). Such trouble and suffering is only the evidence of His fatherly and faithful love. “Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth” (Hebrews 12:6; Revelation 3:19). 2. Persecutions and struggles endured by the godly are overruled for good. Many shall be purified and made white. The result of the suffering predicted. The authors of these meant them, as in the case of Joseph’s brethren, for evil, but God overrules them for good. His people’s purification shall be promoted by them. Instead of being losers they shall be gainers. Thus the wisdom and goodness of God are manifested in permitting them. The wrath of men is made to praise Him by contributing to the purification of His children. The storm is not permitted to destroy, but employed to purify them. The furnace-fires of Babylon, kindled by the ungodly, were made only to consume the bonds of those they were intended by them to destroy. Believers have therefore no cause to fear the wrath and persecution of any adversary. These, with everything else, are only made to work together for their good. 3. Moral purification the great end intended by God in regard to his people. The will of God is their sanctification. Perfect holiness their true excellence and real happiness. Such holiness conformity to God’s own character. This the high calling and destiny of His children. “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” God is love, and His children are to be perfected in love. Sin, which is opposed to this, the only real evil. God’s purpose, therefore, to deliver them from it. The object of Christ’s incarnation, life, and death to save His people from their sins, to “redeem them from all iniquity, and to purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” This moral purification and perfection of His children constantly aimed at by God in His providential dealings both with themselves and the world. Life, with all its chequered experiences and all its varied history, God’s school for the education of His children in order to their moral perfection in His likeness. The Church with its ordinances designed for the same end. “He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water, by the word” (Ephesians 5:25-26). That glorious end ultimately secured. Many shall be purified. An Almighty Agent employed for its accomplishment. Whatever may be the instrumentality, whether events in providence or ordinances in the Church, the Agent is the Spirit of holiness, by whose almighty grace we are changed from glory unto glory, into the perfect image of Him whom in the Word we are enabled by Him to contemplate (2 Corinthians 3:17). He is able to present the subjects of His moral training “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” “Faithful is He who calleth you, who also will do it” (Jude 1:24; 1 Thessalonians 5:24). 4. Godliness the only true wisdom. “The wise shall understand.” So in Daniel 12:3, “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.” Wisdom something very different from mere knowledge or science. Knowledge is precious, but at best is only light; wisdom is light, with life and love combined. Knowledge not necessarily accompanied with moral excellence. Probably a much greater amount of knowledge possessed by fallen spirits than by any human being in this life. “Knowledge puffeth up;” dissociated from renewing grace, is apt to make men vain, heady, highminded. Pythagoras, conscious of the excellence of wisdom, refused to be called by the title which others affected, a “wise man,” claiming only to be a “lover of wisdom,”—a philosopher. Wisdom a practical thing. Chooses the highest and best ends, and pursues them by the best means. Such is true godliness. The highest and best end, the glory of God the Creator of all, and the enjoyment of His friendship, fellowship, and image. Godliness is Godlikeness, and the continual aiming at such by the way that God has revealed. It is “to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6:8). “Pure and undefiled religion before God even the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). This is wisdom, exemplified in the life and character of Him who was Wisdom personified, and who is made wisdom to all who receive and trust in Him (1 Corinthians 1:30). 5. Knowledge and understanding, in all things necessary to true happiness, guaranteed to all God’s renewed children. “The wise shall understand.” To “be wise” is a character equivalent to godliness, and belonging to those who by grace are made new creatures in Christ, who is wisdom Himself, and is made wisdom to them that are in Him. To “understand” is something promised to that character. The promise, though standing absolutely, is yet necessarily limited. The limitation is to those things necessary and desirable for us to understand. Many things which it is the province of science to explore, it is not necessary that we should understand. The same thing true of the Word of God in general, and the word of prophecy in particular. In this life we may well be content to remain, as we must remain, ignorant of many things. Here at best we can but know in part. Hereafter we shall, if approved, know even as we are known. But knowledge and understanding of what is needful is promised to the wise. The promise has special reference to the predictions already delivered by the angel to Daniel; but doubtless intended to extend to the will of God in general. The exhortation is, “Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” It has reference to revealed truth as a whole. “Consider what I say, and the Lord give thee understanding in all things,”—in all things about which I have written, and whatever else is revealed and necessary to be understood. That understanding has especial respect to God Himself, to His will concerning us, to the revelations of His word, and to His dealings in the world. “He hath given us an understanding that we should know Him that is true.” This understanding is to make us to be no mere children, but men (1 Corinthians 14:20). Given, however, to those who are of a child-like, humble, and teachable spirit. “Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matthew 11:26). The author of this understanding is not man but God, through His Holy Spirit. “Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth and is no lie, even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him” (1 John 2:20; 1 John 2:27). Christ counsels the vain, conceited Laodiceans to anoint their eyes with His eye-salve, that they may see (Revelation 3:17). “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.” 6. The inability of the ungodly to understand divine truth, and more especially the word of prophecy. “The wicked shall not understand.” Ungodliness, when continued in, incapacitates for the perception of divine truth. The love and practice of sin associated with a moral blindness. “If any man will do the will of God, he shall know of the doctrine.” A moral and spiritual nature necessary to discern moral and spiritual truth. Mere intellectual light often associated with thick moral darkness. Witness the ancient Greeks and Romans, and many of the heathen at the present day. The ungodly destitute of a taste and relish for divine truth, and therefore incapable of perceiving and appreciating it. Hence the counsel, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” Ungodliness generally associated with pride and self-conceit, the great hindrance to the reception of true knowledge. “Whom shall He teach knowledge, and whom shall He cause to understand doctrine? Those that are drawn from the breasts.” The ungodly, rejecting divine knowledge, are often righteously given over to a mind incapable of discerning it—a “reprobate mind.” Such, especially, to be the case in the time of the end, more particularly referred to in the text. Antichrist’s false pretensions and lying wonders believed by those who received not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12). 7. A time when it may be too late for repentance. “The wicked shall do wickedly.” The effect of indulged sin and practised ungodliness is to perpetuate itself. A time when God may righteously leave ungodliness to follow its own inclinations. “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.” Confirmed ungodliness seen in its persistency both in the time of bestowed mercy, and increased light, and manifested judgments. “Let favour be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness; in the land of uprightness he will deal unjustly, and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. When thy hand is lifted up they will not see” (Isaiah 26:10-11). Such a state of things probably indicated in the text as taking place in the last days, when “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). The greatest blessing, when the wicked is made to turn from his wickedness and live; the greatest curse, when the wicked is left still to do wickedly. “To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your heart.” Sad indeed when neither mercy nor judgment, neither goodness nor severity, leads men to repentance, and when the more they are stricken the more they revolt, till God ceases even to smite (Isaiah 1:5). 8. Solemn contrast presented in the text. Scripture abounds in striking contrasts. Here is one, in relation, first, to persons; and, second, to what is said of them. The persons are the wise and the wicked. The only two classes mentioned, and in God’s eye the only two in the world. The contrast not always sharp or evident in man’s sight, though always in the eye of God—probably to be made more manifest as the end approaches. The wise, those who, like Mary, choose the good part that shall not be taken from them. The wicked, those who are content to have their portion in this life. The wise, those who seek God; the wicked, those who forget Him. The inward language of the wise, “Lord, lift Thou upon me the light of Thy countenance;” that of the wicked, “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” The wise are made such unto salvation, through the knowledge of the Scriptures; the wicked neglect the great salvation, and have no relish for the word that reveals it. The wise often poor and illiterate, with little of the knowledge which the world so eagerly prizes and pursues. “Just know, and know no more, their Bible true;A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.”The wicked often only such in the eye of Him who looks not on the outward appearance, but looks upon the heart; in man’s eye, perhaps, enlightened, respectable, and even religious. That which is highly esteemed among men, often abomination with God. The Laodicean Christian congratulates himself that he is rich, and increased in goods, and having need of nothing; while, without knowing it, he is poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked; satisfied and pleased that he is neither cold nor hot, while, because he is only lukewarm, Christ is ready to spue him out of His mouth. The contrast similar in regard to what is said of the two classes. The wise are purified and made white by the trials and afflictions through which they are made to pass. The wicked, notwithstanding all they either see or experience, all the events of Providence, as well as all the warnings of the Word, still do wickedly. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/phc/ LI.—WAITING AND WORKING. (Chap. Daniel 12:12-13.) Doctrine is to be followed by practice. Knowledge brings reponsibility. Faith evidences itself by works. Light is given, not that we may sleep, but work. The word of prophecy, made sure by its continual fulfilment, was given that we might take heed to it as “a light shining in a dark place till the day dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts.” The communications made to Daniel closed with an intimation as to the use to be made of them. “Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days: But go thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” [372] The latter verse is thus paraphrased by Brightman: “But thou, Daniel, go thy way and rest content, till all these things shall come to pass, towards or before the end; and although they seem to be long delayed, yet the tediousness thereof shall not be grievous unto thee: for thou in the meantime shalt yield to nature, and go the way of all flesh, and being freed from the miseries of this life, shalt quietly rest, and be partaker of that happiness which those enjoy who die in the Lord: and at length also shall thy body be raised up out of the grave, in that lot and condition which God shall give unto thee, that thou mayest be partaker of unspeakable joy with all the rest of the saints, and so reign with Christ for ever and ever.” These concluding verses suggest— [372] “Go thy way till the end be.” Keil, with Theodoret and most interpreters, understands the words to mean, “Go to the end of thy life; the angel of the Lord thus dismissing the highly-favoured prophet from his life’s work, with the comforting assurance that he should stand in his own lot in the end of the days. Daniel was to rest, that is, in the grave, and to rise again, to enjoy his part in the inheritance of the saints in light (Colossians 1:12), to be possessed by the righteous, after the resurrection of the dead, in the heavenly Jerusalem; in those last days when, after the judgment of the world, the kingdom of glory should appear.” According to Calvin, he was to be content with his lot, and expect no more visions. Bullinger understands the words as an exhortation to persevere and continue to the end. According to Junius, he was to set all things in order, and make himself ready for his end, without curiously searching further into these things. Brightman understands the words as intimating that what the Lord might have further to reveal, He would do it by other prophets, as He did by Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.1. The duty of securing with all earnestness a personal interest in the blessedness predicted in the prophecy. We have been told, with Daniel, of the resurrection to everlasting life that shall follow the last great tribulation, and the kingdom of glory with and under the Messiah, when “the wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” It was Daniel’s happiness to be assured of his interest in that predicted blessedness; and with that assurance quietly to wait till the time for the full experience of it arrived. It is for us who read or hear the words of this prophecy, to make sure our participation in the same blessedness. It is for us to secure in time our place among the wise, making sure that with the lamp of an outward possession of faith in Christ, and an intellectual knowledge of the truth, we have the oil of saving grace and spiritual light in the vessel of our hearts. Unless the Bridegroom come speedily, we too, like Daniel, shall lie down to rest in the grave till the resurrection trump shall awake us out of sleep. The question is, How shall we do so? Shall we, like the “man greatly beloved,” lie down renewed in the spirit of our mind, and made accepted in the Beloved; or as those who, unforgiven and destitute of the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, awake only to shame and everlasting contempt; like the foolish virgins who, satisfied with the present, delayed to secure the needful supply for the future till it was too late? Let us make sure that we have gone to Him who has the oil of the Spirit of life and peace to sell, or rather to give freely to those who are willing to buy without money and without price; and let us not rest till with Simeon we are able joyfully to say, “Now, Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. 2. The duty of patient waiting for the future blessedness. The man pronounced “blessed,” who “waiteth and cometh” to the happy period predicted in connection with Israel’s restoration, the resurrection of the dead, and the future glory. That period was in Daniel’s day far distant. It is now two thousand four hundred years nearer than it was then. There must be much less time to wait. That time may be very short. But whatever it may be, it is still to be one of patient waiting. It may, and doubtless will, be one of peculiar trial, temptation, and distress. It will be one in which the enmity of Satan and the world against Christ, His truth, His people, and His cause, will reach its utmost violence; the time in which the great enemy will come forth with “great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time.” It will be the time of the last manifestation of Antichrist, in which all that has been predicted of the two Little Horns, of the Wilful King, and of the Man of Sin, will be fully developed, summed up, and concentrated. It will be the time to which the Church has looked forward for eighteen centuries, as that of the great outbreak of wickedness and of Satanic power, that will call forth and be only terminated by the manifestation of the Lord’s coming. There will, therefore, be need of patient waiting. In patience believing men will need to possess their souls. The period will probably be short, though severe. Its end will be glorious. From the throes and birth-pangs of the period shall come forth a new and beauteous creation, the long-looked for and prayed for “regeneration,” the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, when the petition long presented shall be at length fulfilled, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is worth a long time of patient waiting for it. Like Daniel, we who are now living and working may have to go our way and rest in the grave till the end be, and our waiting be completed there in the dust. But others will follow and have their waiting time on earth, it may be for another generation or two, or perhaps more. Perhaps it may be less. Apparently we are entering upon an age of scientific, as well as grosser, atheism.[373] These are the days of rapid development. As England and the world have recently been reminded, immense strides have been made in the advance of science during the last fifty years; and the outcome seems to be an upsetting of notions hitherto entertained regarding God and His works; so that a prelate of the Church, in a discourse on the occasion, could ask, Will there at last, when the problem is solved, be any place left for God, or Christianity, or prayer, or conscience, or free-will, or responsibility, or duty, or faith in the unseen? and observed that the remarks of many scientific men showed that these questions were not superfluous, and that consequently alarm and anxiety had taken possession of many minds, and his own among the rest. Thus evidently is the time of patient waiting not only still existing, but intensifying. Faith and patience will doubtless yet be severely tried. “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” “Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth” (Luke 18:8; Revelation 3:10). The proper attitude of the Church in these days in which we live, as it was in those of the Apostles, is that of a “patient waiting for Christ.” As the Old Testament Church was found waiting for the first Advent of Him who was the Consolation of Israel, so is it to be with the New Testament Church in relation to the second. This waiting posture is described by the Apostles in such language as, “Looking for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God, even our Saviour Jesus Christ;” “Our conversation is in heaven, from whom also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ;” “Waiting for His Son from heaven;” “Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God;” “To them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Titus 2:13; Philippians 3:20; 2 Thessalonians 1:10; 2 Peter 3:12; Hebrews 9:28). [373] “Fifty years ago,” said Sir John Lubbock in the presidential address at the late Jubilee of the British Association, “it was the general opinion that animals and plants came into existence just as we now see them.” This is represented as the general opinion no longer. “We perceive that there is a reason—and in many cases we know what that reason is—for every difference in form, in size, and in colour; for every bone and every feather, almost for every hair.” “We can now see precisely,” says the Christian World, “where the old opinion differs from the new. The modern biologist professes to understand better than his predecessors those forces or processes by which birds have become different from reptiles, and animals that suckle their young different from both. To put it still more pointedly, the modern doctrine affirms that, leaving out of consideration the unknown beginning (of which science takes no account), nature in the world of life, animal and vegetable, has always worked with the means and methods employed at this hour. Elephants and alligators, sharks, kangaroos, and humming-birds are blood relations.” Again a writer in the same journal says: “The two chief springs of that inspiration with which Christianity has quickened the cold, dead heart of humanity, are, without question, the love of God, and the boundless possibilities of that future which the Gospel opens to man. It is an inspiration which it seems that in these days our wise ones are doing their very utmost to destroy. Of God they tell us that we know nothing, and can know nothing; while of ‘the things which are before us’ we know as little. God’s love, we are now taught, is no more than the mere yearning of the sad human heart to find a living expression in that awful world-system which surrounds us, and whose cruel sternness drives great nations of our fellow-men to long for annihilation, as the supreme benediction which the universe can offer to its intelligent child; while the hope of immortality, by the same rule, is the vain effort of that faculty of our nature which ‘looks before and after,’ to construct a future which may soothe its imagination, but which is baseless and fruitless as its idlest dreams. It is without doubt,” the writer goes on to say, “a very dread aspect of these times, especially for the young who are nursed, as it were, in its atmosphere. But instead of wild denunciations of it, it is wiser for us to study the way in which it comes to be; how it is possible that this ghastly creed could have grown up in the heart of Christendom, in the very age and region in which the triumph of Christian truth and civilisation ought to be most complete.… The saddest result of this theological abuse of the world-system—we can call it nothing else—is to make men believe that it has no meaning or method that man can discover; that all its movements are all mechanical, and that man is but the most highly-finished part of the machinery; like the rest of it, sprung from and returning to the dust. The idea that the universe is guided by a living Intelligence, and that the development of man’s life is an object which the Intelligence that guides the universe has ever in sight, would be banished to the limbo of worn-out superstitions, effete idolatries, if some of our keen thinkers had their way.”3. The duty of working as well as waiting. Daniel was told to go his way till the end be. It is said of him that, after his recovering from the fainting and sickness consequent on a former vision, he “rose and attended to the king’s business” (chap. Daniel 8:27). Although now considerably older, he might still be able to do the same. At the beginning of the present vision we find that he had been engaged for three full weeks in special prayer and fasting. Whatever he might be able to do in the business of his earthly master, he was still in a condition to serve his heavenly one. Whatever his hand found to do in that service, he was to go and do it with his might, before he was called to rest from his labour; whether that work might be in comforting his brethren with the consolation wherewith he himself was comforted of God, communicating to them the knowledge which he himself had just received, or exhorting them to a steadfast faith themselves and fidelity in strengthening the faith of others in the prospect of the trials that were yet before them. Daniel was to wait, but, so long as the Lord gave him strength, he was also to work, showing God’s strength unto that generation, and His saving power to every one that was to come (Psalms 71:18). The “waiting” in the text is not to be an idle, indolent one. Looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God our Saviour, is associated by the Apostle with the denying ourselves to all ungodliness and worldly lust, and living soberly, righteously, and godly in the present world (Titus 2:12-13). On the ground of the same hope, Paul exhorts the Corinthian believers to be “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). While “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life,” we are to “have compassion” on others, and to seek to “save some with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 1:21-23). To be waiting for the Master’s return will naturally move us to diligence in doing the Master’s work. It is the servant who says in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, that begins to “beat his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken” (Luke 12:45-46). The use to be made of the study of the prophetic word, is, with the eunuch, to go on our way rejoicing in the blessed hope that it has set before us. That hope is one of a bright hereafter, not only for ourselves as faithful believers, but for the Church and the world. Like Daniel, we are to be attending diligently to “the king’s business,” till we also shall be called away from the field, as so many before us have been, to hear from the Master’s lips that blessed plaudit, “Well done, good and faithful servant! thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee faithful over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”[374][374] “Let us,” says Auberlen, “who love the word of prophecy, not forget the present, and what has been given us already in thinking of the things we hope for; lest our study of prophecy degenerate to a mere favourite pursuit of our infancy, and unspiritual excitement. Let this hope of the kingdom take the same place in our heart as is assigned to it in the Divine Word; and let us not change the proportion in which Holy Scripture has placed it to the fundamental truths of Christianity. Let the apostolic word be our motto: “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men; teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; looking for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God even our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:11-13). All Christians of the present day find it difficult to lay to heart the words which apply to our days, as well as to the days of Isaiah: “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” But let us remember that we are living in a time when judgments are preparing; and our only duty is to be ever watchful and prayerful witnesses of the coming of the Lord. We are, for this reason, not slothful; we do not fold our hands; only we do not cherish illusive hopes and expectations from our work. Let us be faithful in the little things intrusted to us; as for the great things, we cannot take them to ourselves; but we wait till the Lord will bring them to us.… What our generation wants is, witnesses who can lift up their voice in the spirit and power of the prophets; men who can stand in the breach in the hour of temptation which is coming over the whole earth. In that hour we need to be “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,” so that we may achieve the victory; then we must lift up our heads in blessed hope and joy, knowing that “our redemption draweth nigh.” May our merciful God prepare us for that hour, by teaching us to understand aright and to practise faithfully the word of the Apocalypse: “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”