until the spiritual sense of things should be restored, and the truth of man's divinity bruise the serpent's head. Gentile dominion was the expression of autocracy in all its aspects. The belief that might is right, and that this might is physical, had held the thoughts of mortals from the most primitive times, and reached the acme of its development in the Babylonian monarchy. To become military master of the world was the unscrupulous ambition of that and following ages, and the phrase "Gentile dominion" was truly and terribly earned and maintained. Brute force was the god to whom the Gentile world burned incense, but the "Confounder" in every case was sooner or later confounded and broken in pieces by his own weapons. Egypt fought against the God of Israel, and became the conquered dependent of other nations. Babylonia and Assyria laid their hands upon the Lord's chosen people, taking them into captivity and profaning the temple, and their high places became the abode of the owl and the bat and the beasts of the desert. Persia helped the Jews to rebuild their temple and permitted their return from exile, and although her power was broken she never lost her national existence. Rome gave God's anointed into the hands of the Jews to be crucified, and she went down. and out despite her tremendous power. But for all this, Gentile dominion had not yet passed. With the fall of the Roman empire, the "seven times had about half their course yet to run. There was still "a time, times, and half a time," which were apparently reserved for other phases of Gentile ascendancy. Heretofore the world had been under a military or political autocracy, which, in its more general application, came to an end with the downfall of the Western Roman Empire; but from that time forward, Gentile dominion began gradually to take on the aspect of an ecclesiastical autocracy, which, in its cruelty and inhumanity, eclipsed any military despotism that preceded it. The fourth kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which coincided with Rome, had simply changed its face; it was still Rome, and would so continue to the end of its course, when the whole image and all it stood for would be ground to nothingness by the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, that is, a kingdom not of human origin. The Babylon of the Old Testament was the type of Gentile dominion in its relation to Israel. The Babylon of the New Testament typified the same dominion in its relation to Christianity. Athough the second appeared in history under the name of Rome, the two were undoubtedly identical, and were so treated by St. John in the Apocalypse. The carnal mind might change its spots but its evil nature remained the same, whether it held its grasp upon humanity as a false expression of government or a false expression of religion. There was to be no respite from oppression. The hand of ecclesiasticism that fell upon a war-trampled and suffering race was hard and heavy, and the weary heart of humanity groaned under its pressure for twelve hundred years. That the Roman hierarchy was the counterpart or completion of the fourth kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's image, and the fourth beast of Daniel's own vision, history grimly testifies. The evidences in its support, both internal and external, are too strong and numerous to be seriously questioned. A Roman Catholic writer of the last century is quoted as saying: "The rise of the temporal power of the popes presents to the mind. one of the most extraordinary phenomena which the annals of the human race offer to our wonder and admiration. By a singular combination of concurring circumstances, a new power and a new dominion grew up, silently but steadily, on the ruins of that Roman empire which had extended its sway over, or made itself respected by, nearly all the nations, peoples, and races that lived in the period of its strength and glory; and that new power, of lowly origin, struck a deeper root, and soon exercised a wider authority, than the empire whose gigantic ruins it saw shivered into fragments, and mouldering in dust." But autocracy in religion, under whatever name, is not the expression of God's government on earth. The deeds of violence and torture perpetrated in the name of religion, the unspeakable outrages committed in her name, covering every conceivable form of cruelty, far exceeded and outrivalled the worst that has been recorded of Assyrian despots. One has but to read the history of the Dark and Middle Ages to realize the depth and extent of the infamy of the carnal mind, assuming to occupy the temple of God," and to be His representative upon the earth. The stone cut out of the mountain has surely struck the feet of the image, but the grinding process referred to by Daniel is yet to be completed. The liberation of Jerusalem points to the fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy in its purely external aspect, but a greater freedom remains to be won before the times of the Gentiles are fully ended, and men come to realize their liberty as sons of God. "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19). F CHAPTER XVIII THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfil. MATT. 5:17. And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets. — ACTS 28: 23. ROM the beginning of human discernment between good and evil, followed as it naturally was by the realization of the necessity for salvation, there has been a steady looking forward to something better. Without this desire and expectancy for a more harmonious and enduring consciousness, prophecy would have found a barren and unpromising field for its ministry. Every improvement effected in human experience is in itself a prophecy of perfection, since the achievement of better conditions in any direction not only proves the possibility of continuing this progress until the ideal is reached, but the certainty of its realization, for the impulsion of the race forward has its source in the truth of man's original divinity, and will not cease until perfection is realized. In its earlier use in the Old Testament, the word prophet signified a spokesman, that is one who was delegated to speak for God; and although the word was later used chiefly to denote a foreteller of future events, its original significance naturally remained with it, for unless the Hebrew prophets had been so divinely illumined that they felt commissioned to speak for God in human affairs, their utterances would not have been received as bearing the stamp of authority. These men were undoubtedly inspired to lift a corner of the veil, and disclose something of the course and destiny of Israel, and her relations with the Gentile world. The Hebrew Scriptures present in progressive order and degree the unfoldment of the truth of divinity. God was being revealed to humanity through the only avenue available, namely, the spiritually awakening thought which was given the name of Israel. If there had been found elsewhere a greater responsiveness to spiritual truth, it would naturally have become God's medium of revelation, since it was not a question of preference or privilege, but of opportunity. The spiritual facts of being had been coming to light along the line of least resistance, and without this illumination the night of materialism would have been without a star to bespeak an approaching dawn. It was this star of Israel, the star of prophecy, which led the wise men to "the young child" at Bethlehem, and which, during the succeeding centuries, has ever cheered the watchers on the hilltops of Zion. If men were more alive to the wondrous messages which the Hebrew prophets voiced to the Israel, not of their day only, but of our own day and time, there would be less indifference concerning this subject. Many seem unwilling to acknowledge any connection between the prophecies of the Old or the New Testament and the present age, assuming that they are chiefly or wholly concerned with a remote past or a remote future, forgetting that today is the connecting link between yesterday and tomorrow. It is our own period of history that is linking up the prophetic vision of the past with its fulfilment, and which points to the relation of the prophets' messages to the political and religious life of today. The value of the inspired utterances of the prophets is not lessened because they may be denied or ignored by those who should be awake to their importance, for whatever of God's government is unfolded to men will sometime be universally acknowledged. To minimize the value or to deny the validity of the prophecies indicates a lack of appreciation of the design |