terious link in that counsel of God's love, planned from all eternity, compared with which, the schemes of all the captains and statesmen of the earth are only like the caprice of childish folly, or the passing dream of a night vision.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE TEN KINGS.

THE three first empires in these visions of Daniel have been shown to correspond, in all points, with the actual history of Babylon, Persia, and Greece. The rise, conquests, and dominion of Rome are described, with equal plainness, in the fourth kingdom. The vision of the Image carries on, in unbroken order, this correspondence between the prophecy and the actual course of secular history; and in the feet and toes of iron has prefigured two later stages of the Roman power, in its weakness and decay. The second vision introduces several fresh elements into the description which the prophecy affords of this later time. Up to this point the fulfilment of the symbols is distinct, clear, and full, a perspicuous testimony of the Divine foreknowledge. Does the light of history fail us here for the first time, and compel us to wait for some future event; or does it still guide us to a simple and clear fulfilment of these new features of the prediction? This is the important inquiry which has now to be answered.

The first of those facts, which this vision sets before us in the latter stage of the fourth empire, is the rise of ten kings, among whom its power is to be shared. This truth might be implied in the ten toes of the image; but the number of the parts was not expressly revealed. Now, however, a tenfold division is asserted four times, in a direct and open form. Are these kings, then, still future, or have they already risen?

The inquiry is one of the highest importance, and of the deepest practical interest to the Church. It involves the true or false interpretation of God's providence for many ages past. It brings the light of inspired truth to bear directly on the great events of European history, or else shuts it out, and leaves us in almost total darkness. The meaning of these kings involves also, by an inseparable connexion, the interpretation of the little horn, by which three of them are uprooted. If they have risen, the little horn has appeared also, and the Roman papacy is the only power which can fulfil the emblem. If these kings are yet to arise, that description must refer to some future Antichrist, and the Protestant interpretation has been a grievous wresting of the word of God. Where the issue is so important, we need the utmost reverence and caution, guarding on the right hand and on the left, lest any secret bias should turn us aside from the pure truth, and we should be guilty of either adding to, or taking from, the words of the prophecy. Let us inquire, with prayer to the fountain of all wisdom, whether the Spirit of God has not supplied us with abundant evidence, to fix the true sense of the prediction, and banish all doubt of its real application.

There are two expositions which may be at once rejected as demonstrably untrue. The first applies them, (as Professor Lee,) to Pagan or Christian emperors of Rome, ruling in succession. This is refuted by two plain arguments. These kings are contemporary, not successive. They are the ten toes of the image. They mingle themselves with the seed of men. They are the fellows or companions of the little horn. They receive power as kings one hour with the beast. And again, just as clearly, they follow after, and do not attend, the undivided state of the empire. On both grounds the opinion is clearly untrue.

But again, these horns have been expounded (as by Dr. Todd,) to be ten kings who are to arise in some future empire. This opinion also is refuted by all

those proofs, internal and external, which fix and establish the fourth kingdom to be the empire of Rome. It has therefore been abundantly refuted already : and the refutation will presently be more complete, when the objections of its advocates to the general view have been shewn to be worthless.

Two important varieties of opinion remain, one of which asserts the past, and the other the future rise, of these ten kings; while both agree that their destined theatre is the Empire of Rome.

I. THE FUTURE RISE of the kings is maintained chiefly by the following arguments; their personal or individual character, their short continuance, and the great discordance among those who believe them to have risen already.

1. The individual character of these kings is, by some writers, treated almost as a self-evident truth. It is urged, as a clear proof of it, that in this chapter kings and kingdoms are mentioned in the same sentence, and therefore in contrast one to the other; and hence that 'expositors are greatly deceived, when they take upon them to expound of kingdoms what the prophecy has foretold of kings.'

The general argument has been elsewhere examined and refuted. (Elem. Proph. pp. 122-134.) It has been shewn, both on grounds of reason and of Scripture usage, that the word king may be, and often is used, to denote a ruling dynasty or government, though held by many persons in succession. Two clear instances occur in Jeremiah, and one in Isaiah, even in literal prophecies; while in these symbolical visions, out of six instances where the application is unquestionable, in one case both meanings of the word coincide, and in all the others, it bears the official, not the personal sense. The confidence, then, with which the argument has been advanced, rests on a vacuum for its basis. The presumption, from Scripture usage alone, is entirely adverse to a strictly personal interpretation.

But is not the contrast between kings and kingdoms plain, at least in this vision? Even this assertion will be found to be untrue. There is no contrast, but an evident interchange of the terms. The real distribution is between an entire monarchy and smaller governments. Let us make the induction complete, by comparing all the phrases which occur.

"These four beasts are four kings which shall arise out of the earth."

"The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon the earth."

"The ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise."

It is clear that the very same kingdom on which the alleged contrast must entirely depend, has been styled a king, only a few lines earlier in the vision. The variation, then, in the term, implies a lesson totally different from that which it has been supposed to prove. When the empire is viewed actively, as a conquering power, it is styled a king; when passively, as undergoing partition, a kingdom. When the four main empires are viewed in their birth, they are called "kings that shall arise." And the origin of these broken parts of the fourth empire is described by the same phrase,-"the ten horns are ten kings that shall arise, and another shall arise after them." Instead of contrast between the four kings or kingdoms, and the ten, there is a marked and striking correspondence.

The symbol yields an argument still more decisive. The contrast between a wild beast and one of its horns bears no resemblance to the contrast between the millions of a vast empire, in many generations, and the person of one individual ruler. And the vision of the ram and the he-goat would thus also exhibit the gross anomaly of four kingdoms growing out of the person of one monarch. It is not the convenience of exposi tors, as some have asserted, but the plain evidence of reason and of the sacred text, which fixes the word kings to its official meaning.