Nor

prophetic picture of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. need we look further than his own inspired interpretation of it to find ample justification for all this exultant adoration.

III. You will notice that it gives an outline of the history and destiny of all earthly dominion, from Nebuchadnezzar to the end of the present world, and for ever. The several metals of which the great image was composed designated a succession of universal empires. For this we have the authority of the prophet himself.

The head was "fine gold;" and Daniel said to Nebuchadnezzar, "Thou art this head of gold." There can therefore be no mistake in the application of this part of the vision. Babylon was the first and greatest of kingdoms, and Nebuchadnezzar was its sublimest king the vision therefore begins with him. He and his successors, as long as his empire stood, constituted the head and neck of this image, the head empire of our world. The exalted character of it is shown in the part of the figure which it occupies—the head; in the material of which it is composed-gold; and in the particular description given by the prophet in his explanation: "Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory: and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the heaven, hath He given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold."

The breast, shoulders and arms of this image were

silver. From the finest of metals the descent is to a less valuable one. The gold gives place to silver. The great empire of Nebuchadnezzar is supplanted by another, less illustrious than his. Nor can we be at a loss to determine its identity. Daniel interprets it as meaning "another kingdom," and one which should arise in immediate succession to that of Babylon. Profane history amply tells what kingdom that was, but we need not travel beyond the records of the Bible to identify it. It is written in the second Book of Chronicles that Nebuchadnezzar carried away to Babylon such of the Jewish people as escaped the edge of the sword, "where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia." Even in this Book of Daniel, in the explanation of the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast, this same power is referred to as of "the Medes and Persians." These were two nations, answering to the two shoulders and arms of the image, but bound together as one in Cyrus, the mighty conqueror, constituting what is known in history as the Medo-Persian empire, the second great universal empire on earth. The conquests of Cyrus, the representative of this power, were second only to those of Nebuchadnezzar himself. Herodotus writes that "wherever Cyrus marched throughout the earth it was impossible for the nations to escape him." Xenophon writes that "he ruled the Medes, subverted the Syrians, the Assyrians, the Arabians, the Cappadocians, the Phrygians, the Lydians, the Carians, the Babylonians, the Indians, the Phoenicians, the Greeks

in Asia, the Cyprians, the Egyptians, and struck all with such dread and terror that none ventured to assail him. He subdued from his throne east, west, north and south." Seventy years from the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's reign did his dynasty run, till, under his grandson, the sensual Belshazzar, Cyrus gained possession of Babylon and established over it the great Medo-Persian dominion. About two hundred years did this Medo-Persian empire stand; and we need only refer to such of its sovereigns as Cambyses, Darius Hystaspes and Xerxes in illustration of its vastness, wealth and power. But it too was to pass away and to be superseded by another.

The abdomen and thighs of the image were of brass, which according to the explanation denoted “a third kingdom," which was likewise to "bear rule over all the earth." In the somewhat parallel vision given in a subsequent chapter we learn what power is here denoted-to wit, "the king of Grecia," or the Græco-Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great. A double line of monarchs had been holding petty sway over the turbulent Greeks for more than eight hundred years when Philip of Macedon, against whom Demosthenes so eloquently harangued, subdued the various Grecian states to his dominion. Alexander was his son, in whom the genius and spirit of conquest reigned and wrought with amazing power. It was a little more than three hundred years before the birth of Christ that he set out in his great Eastern expeditions, conquered the Medo-Persians and took possession of Babylon, feeding the

strength of his own supremacy with the wrecks and spoils of all the great dominions before him, and then sat down and wept because no more great nations remained to be conquered. The kingdoms of the Seleucida and the Ptolemies were the principal continuation of the dominion acquired by Alexander, and answer to the two thighs of this image.

It is worthy of remark here that the period of the Persian and Macedonian empires is regarded as the most brilliant in the world's history. Its lists of heroes, poets, painters, orators, statesmen, historians and men of renown are the longest and most illustrious of any known to earthly fame. But while the annalists of this world view it as the golden age, and cannot get done lauding it as the brightest in the scroll of time, God pictures it as an age of brass -an age of glare and flare, with but little real merit -and assigns to it only the briefest place in His holy records. When Paul stood on Mar's Hill he referred to this age of blaze and splendor, and called it "the times of this ignorance," and the same estimate is put upon it, both positively and negatively, in all parts of the divine word. What this world holds for gold God knows to be but brass.

But the image had legs, and feet, and toes. These were of iron, except the toes, which were of mingled iron and clay. This, Daniel says, denoted "the fourth kingdom," "strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise." The particular name of this power is not given in the

its career belongs Hence we read in

Old Testament, for the time of its rise was after the close of the ancient Canon, and mostly to New Testament times. Luke ii., iii. of a dominion which claimed the sovereignty over the earth, of "a decree from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed," and of an emperor called "Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea." And when we read further of the breaking and bruising wrought under the administration of the Cæsars, the crushing of conquered nations, the crucifixion of the immaculate Son of God, the utter destruction of the Holy City, the slaying of all the apostles of our Lord, the ten mighty persecutions which reddened the whole Roman empire with martyr blood, and the threshing, breaking and stamping done everywhere and in all directions by the iron despotism of Rome,—there can be no reasonable question as to the identity of the power denoted by this part of the great image. The Roman empire had two great divisions, the Eastern and the Western, answering to the two legs. It was universal, like the three universal empires which preceded it. It was the strongest of all the governments the world had ever seen, and from all quarters it is characterized as the one superlatively iron kingdom. When its armies invaded the islands of Britain, the Scottish chieftain Galgacus said, "These ravagers of the world, after all the earth has been too narrow for their ambition, have ransacked the sea also. If their enemy be rich, they are covetous; if poor, they are ambitious. The East cannot satiate them-no