remarkable narrative with the vision of the great metallic image.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why, then, are those two metals thus promi

Zechar, xiv. 9.