CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE MORAL ASPECT OF THE VISION OF THE LITTLE HORN.

DAN. VII. 19, 20." THEN WOULD I KNOW THE TRUTH.... OF THE TEN HORNS, AND OF THE OTHER WHICH CAME UP, AND BEFORE WHOM THREE FELL.

THESE words convey to us a secret and weighty lesson of Divine wisdom. They imply that the history of the Fourth Empire, and the true application of the Little Horn, would be of the deepest interest and importance to the Church of God. The mind of the holy prophet was therefore drawn forth by the Spirit into a peculiar earnestness of desire. And surely if Daniel, so many ages since, longed to "know the truth,” and understand the real nature of this mysterious Power, much more should Christians, in these latter days, pray earnestly for light and wisdom, that they may understand clearly, and without all doubt, the true meaning of this holy prophecy of God's word.

Some critical and historical proofs have now been given, which confirm the application of the Little Horn to the Papacy of Rome. Four main reasons conspire to establish this view;-the continuous connexion of the prophetic history, the proportion of its various parts, the constancy of the official sense of kings in the symbolic visions, and finally, the minute correspondence of each separate feature in the description. But there are moral and spiritual aspects in which the prophecy may be viewed, and which all point, with one consent, to the same interpretation of its meaning.

I. The whole of Daniel's prophecies may historically be arranged in two parts, those which precede, and those which follow after, the Fall of Jerusalem. The former includes the history of Babylon, Persia, and Greece, with the rising power of Rome, in the two first visions; the history of Cyrus and his conquests, of Alexander and his victories; and the successive reigns in Syria and Egypt, from Seleucus to Antiochus Epiphanes, and the Roman supremacy in the East; the first coming of Messiah, his rejection by his own people, and the desolation of Jerusalem and the temple by the Roman armies. The latter includes mainly the description of the Fourth Empire, its ten divisions, and the history of the Little Horn: with similar predictions in the two later chapters.

Now, in the first of these two parts, the visions are both continuous and comprehensive. They include all the main events of Providence which could affect the Church of God. To suppose this character suddenly reversed in the second part, is an assumption without any reason, and opposed to all analogy. The Spirit of God, in the earlier part of each vision, has already given a key to the style and manner of His own revelations. And this key assures us, that the history of the ten kings, and of their fellow, the Little Horn, ranges through the whole course of the Gospel dispensation.

II. The great purpose for which the Holy Spirit announces evils before they arrive, is to warn the Church, and preserve her from danger. In these two visions, one great event is thus set before her, the rise of the Little Horn, with its confederate powers. Now if the Church, for eighteen centuries, has been free from any danger which needed a Divine warning, and three or four years alone include and limit the range of Satanic temptations, there might be some excuse for contracting the prophecy within this narrow bound. But St. Paul tells us that the mystery of iniquity did already work in his day. Let us grant, therefore, that the dispensa

tion will close with an open and short-lived form of infidel rebellion. Still the moral reasons which might lead us to expect a warning of that last form of evil, apply with tenfold force to those ages of delusion which have prepared its way. Evils, which last for generation after generation, masked under the most subtle disguise, seem far more to require a Divine exposure and admonition, than other forms of wickedness which display their own ungodliness, and hurry themselves into a speedy ruin. The arguments which result from the continuity and order of the vision, are not more conclusive than those derived from its moral purpose, in confirming the earlier and larger application to the corrupt Church of Rome.

III. The phrases of the prophecy, when minutely examined, confirm the longer duration of the Little Horn. "He shall wear out the saints of the Most High." The term most naturally denotes long-continued and persevering acts of oppression. "He shall think to change times and laws. Now, although a reign of three or four years might possibly be enough for the exploits of a mighty conqueror, the character of a lawgiver seems, in its very nature, to require a longer season for its display. So it has been in every case which the world has hitherto witnessed. And of all kinds of power, a control over the times is the most incongruous, if meant to describe a sovereign who is to rise and fall within the tenth part of one single generation of mankind.

The manner in which the duration of this power is described, confirms the same view. The general arguments for the year-day interpretation have been given elsewhere, and need not to be repeated here. But, beside the general proof which they supply, there is another which arises from the peculiar form of the phrase. "They shall be given into his hand," it is said, " for a time, and times, and the dividing of a time." The period is distinguished into three parts, as if to denote a gradual rise, a stable continuance, and a more rapid fall. Now if the whole

period be only three years and six months, this feature perishes entirely. But, on the other view, the full significance of the phrase is retained, and it is found to accord fully with the main outlines of Papal history.

The description of the judgment, which follows, leads to the same conclusion. "They shall take away his dominion, to consume and destroy it unto the end." The words of the prophecy distinguish two stages of the fall, the removal of dominion, and then utter extinction and ruin. There is an air of deliberation and a character of gradual progress, which agrees ill with the instantaneous ruin of a short-lived power, but answers well to the overthrow of a dominion which has endured for ages. The same feature appears again in the Apocalypse, in the two successive stages of the fall of Babylon, with three chapters of the prophecy interposed. (Rev. xiv. 8; xviii. 2.)

All these various indications, though separately minute, become powerful by their concurrence, and establish the truth of the interpretation already given.

IV. A further light is thrown on this prophecy, when we compare it with the general warnings of the New Testament. The rise and dominion of the Little Horn is the one sole evil against which the Spirit of God warns the Church in these two visions. The truth here revealed is also a supplement to those brighter aspects of the visible Church which the New Testament reveals. Yet even the Epistles, while they dwell mainly on the privileges of the Church, contain many scattered warnings of coming evils to which it would be exposed. Now if the power, of which we interpret the Little Horn, can be shewn to unite and embody, in a definite form, all the corruption which those Epistles present to us in their first buddings of evil, a strong and invincible proof will be gained of the truth of that interpretation.

Let us take the Epistles, then, in order of time. The prophecy of the man of sin, in 2 Thess. ii., must be passed by; since, however closely connected with the subject, it is a direct prediction, and not a warning of

the kind which are now to be compared. But the same Epistle, at its close, gives us the notice of an evil, then arising in the Church. "For we hear that there are some among you which walk disorderly, working not at all, but are busy-bodies. Now such we command and exhort by the Lord Jesus, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread." Idleness, under spiritual pretences, was thus one first evil of whose presence the Church is warned. And where was this evil ever presented in so complete and systematic a shape, as in the mendicant orders, the main buttress of the Papacy in the middle ages, and established by many solemn constitutions of the Popes themselves? In the Little Horn, then, as explained above, this first warning of the Apostle receives its full solution, and the evil then germinating assumes a permanent and embodied form.

The Epistle to the Galatians is the next in order of time. The evils here warned against are different; the corruption of the Gospel into a doctrine which is no gospel, but a perversion and a snare of souls; the reliance on external rites and ordinances, and the entangling yoke of ceremonial bondage. These are joined also with the instructive caution- A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.' Read the brief account which Hooker gives, of" the maze the Church of Rome causeth her followers to tread in the matter of justification," and then say, whether the Galatian corruption of the Gospel is not to be found in the kingdom of the Little Horn, complete and full-grown. For the reliance on external rites, it is enough to refer to that one doctrine-'The sacraments of the New Testament do confer grace ex opere operato. For the yoke of bondage which the Little Horn has fully imposed in the Church, we may refer to the sentence of the Capitulars, which the Pope has incorporated in his own decrees, as a state maxim of his government. "In memory of the blessed apostle Peter, let us honour the holy Roman and apostolic see. Wherefore humility must be joined with submission; and, although a yoke scarcely tolerable were imposed by that