HOMILETICS
SECT. IX.—THE INTERPRETATION OF THE DREAM (Chap. Daniel 2:36-46)
In the interpretation of the king’s dream we come to the prophecies of Daniel. Some of these prophecies were communications from God to Daniel alone, without any other medium; others, like the present, through Daniel as the interpreter of what was already given to another in the shape of a dream. “This vision,” says E. Irving, “was revealed, not to the prophet, but to the king, in order to mark its secular and subsidiary nature, but interpreted by the prophet to show that it was, if not immediately, yet indirectly, connected with the Church.” The prophecies of Daniel have a character peculiar to themselves, as marked by order and distinctness, and as having in them notes of time at which the events predicted should take place. These prophecies especially, like those of St. John, are, as Mr. Birks observes, continuous, beginning with some chief event near to the date when they were given. They are, therefore, said, like those of the Revelation, to be of the historical kind, as distinguished from the discursive, the character of the other prophetical books in general [49]. They constitute an important portion of that “sure word of prophecy, whereto we do well to take heed, as to a light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19). Very specially given, that “through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4). A great part of the prophecies of Daniel have already been accomplished, and that with such remarkable exactness as to have given occasion to objectors to deny the genuineness of the book, as being, in their view, instead of prophecies, mere narrations of events already past. The past and present fulfilment of one large portion of them leaves no room for doubt as to the similar fulfilment of the rest. The prophecy before us we find repeated, with important additions, in a vision given to Daniel himself, and useful in assisting to understand the present one. That vision, given for the sake of the additions, is that of the four beasts, contained in chap. 7. In this and the other prophecies of Daniel, it is not the history of all nations that we find mapped out, but that of those only which have had to do with the people of God; that, namely, of the great universal empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, with the ten Gothic or German nations, into which the last of these came to be divided, comprehending what is called the prophetic earth, or the world as known by the ancients.
[49] “The prophecies of Scripture are of two kinds; the one, Prophecy properly so called, or the showing forth of the purposes of God respecting the world and the Church; the other, Prophetic History, or the same purposes digested in a narrative of coming events, drawn up with reference to time and place.” The latter kind, of which are the Books of Daniel and the Revelation, “are nothing else than histories of the future, expressed for the most part in a natural or emblematic, not an artificial language, that it might be more expressive and universally intelligible. In the Book of Daniel this is done as it were by four main streams, all commencing from the period at which the prophet lived, and running down to the time of the end. In the first of these, are used the emblems of the four metals combined into an image, to denote a fourfold succession of empires, which should arise one out of the other; until at length a fifth, described by a stone cut out without hands, should destroy them all and fill the earth, and endure for evermore. In the second, under the emblem of four beasts, are described the same four empires, not with a view of repeating the former vision, but to connect this new vision with the same points of time, in order to give date and place to the description of a certain blasphemous power, which was to do strange things against the Most High in the time and territory of the last of the four great empires described in the former vision. The third of these four chief streams of prophetic history connecteth itself with the former at the struggle of the third kingdom with the second, in order that it may trace, within the territory of the third, the rise of another blasphemous power, which was also to prevail against the saints of God till the time of the end. Now the fourth (for we purposely omit the prophecy of the seventy weeks) is not symbolical, being the history of men, not of things, and also connects itself with the time of Daniel by the mention of certain kings immediately thereafter; which end of connection having been secured, it makes large leaps in order to reach the description of a third blasphemous and ungodly power, which was to arise in the form of an individual man, not of an institution, close to the time of the end.”—E. Irving.
PART FIRST: THE IMAGE (Daniel 2:37-43).
Daniel interprets the four parts of the image, distinguished by the different materials of which they were composed, as representing the four great successive monarchies of the world, commencing with that of Babylon, of which Nebuchadnezzar was the head, and thus subsisting in the prophet’s own time. These monarchies are styled indiscriminately “kingdoms” and “kings,” or ruling dynasties [50]. These are readily and almost universally understood to be the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome [51], all well known to have possessed, in a popular sense, the character of universality, and to have succeeded each other, the last of the four having also, according to the symbol, been divided in its later period into ten kingdoms. The first of these Daniel himself expressly declares to be that of which Nebuchadnezzar was the head (Daniel 2:38). According to Daniel’s interpretation of the writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace, the empire of Babylon was, at the death of that monarch, given to the Medes and Persians (chap. Daniel 5:26-31). The Persian, or, as it is sometimes called, the Medo-Persian, was thus the second of the four. In the subsequent vision of the ram and the lie-goat contending for the mastery, the latter, which gained the ascendancy, is said by Gabriel to be “the kings of Grecia,” and the former, which was cast down by the other to the ground, to be the “kings of Media and Persia” (chap. Daniel 8:3-21). The Greek empire was therefore the third. This, which was founded by Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, and therefore sometimes called the Macedonian empire, was, after being, at the death of its founder, divided among his four principal generals, Antigonus, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy, terminated by the Romans, who incorporated the whole into their gigantic empire, which therefore formed the fourth, and which, in its divided form, continues to this day [52]. The different materials composing the image and representing the four successive empires, descending from gold to iron and clay, have been viewed as not inaptly exhibiting humanity in its various stages, from its highest excellence to its lowest decay; and as not obscurely indicating a downward course, entirely opposed to the theory of human progress and perfectibility [53]. We now view the constituent parts of the image.
[50] “After thee shall arise another kingdom” (Daniel 2:39). “The exposition of kings as ruling dynasties in the symbolic prophecies is confirmed alike by reason and Scripture usage.”—Birks. Gaussen remarks that in the image we may see a change of metal, indicating not properly a new empire, but a new people, a new language, a new dynasty, which rises up to rule over the world, and to hold under its sway the people of God; the time of the image being the “times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24), that is, the period during which the Gentiles are to rule over Jerusalem and to trample it underfoot, beginning with the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, and continuing under the Persians, until finally the Latins take the place of the Greeks in governing the world and oppressing the people of God.
[51] Calvin says: “My assertion is perfectly correct, that interpreters of any judgment and candour all explain the passage of the Babylonian. Persian. Macedonian, and Roman monarchies.” “The rival interpretation which has prevailed the most is that of which Porphyry is the earliest known advocate, and which has been embraced since by Junius, Hayn, Lightfoot, Grotius, L’Empereur, Venema, and a few other writers down to our own day. Its main feature is to make the successors of Alexander, the fourth empire, distinct from that of Alexander himself, and thus to terminate the vision before the first Advent. This view has now scarcely an advocate. An opposite deviation from the general view has been adopted by a few writers in the last fifteen or twenty years. Their scheme, so far as it has any consistency, is the following. The empire of Persia is only the continuation of the first empire of Babylon; the second, of the Grecian; and the third is the Roman; the fourth is still future.”—Birks, written in 1845. Dr. Pusey says: “It is assumed in Rationalist interpretation that the fourth empire is no empire later than the Macedonian, to which Antiochus Epiphanes belonged. For else there would be prophecy: there is to be no allusion to the Roman empire; for in the time of Antiochus human foresight could not yet discern that it would become an empire of the world. But if the Grecian empire is to be the fourth, which are the other three?… Agreed as this school is as to the result, they have been nothing less than agreed as to the process whereby it is to be arrived at. Every possible combination has been tried.” All ancient authors speak of the kingdom of Alexander and his successors as one and the same kingdom. Josephus says: “Alexander being dead, the empire was divided among his successors.” “He doth not say,” observes Bishop Newton, “that so many new empires were erected. Even Grotius himself acknowledged that even now the Hebrews call those kingdoms by one name, the kingdom of the Grecians.”
[52] “The Roman empire to be the fourth kingdom of Daniel, was believed by the Church of Israel both before and in our Saviour’s time; received by the disciples of the apostles and the whole Christian Church for the first four hundred years, without any known contradiction. And I confess, having so good ground in Scripture, it is with me tantum non articulus fidei, little less than an article of faith. Ephraim Syrus, in the fourth century, interpreted the fourth kingdom of the Greek, dividing that of the Medo-Persian into two, those of the Medes and of the Persians as the second and third,—the only exception to Mede’s assertion. Jerome, in the beginning of the fifth century, speaks of it as what all ecclesiastical writers had “handed down,” that the ten kingdoms were to rise out of the division of the Roman empire. Cyril of Jerusalem, a century later, says “that this (the fourth kingdom) is that of the Romans has been the tradition of the Church’s interpreters.” Irenæus, in the second century, speaks of the division of the empire as a thing still future. HippoIytus, at the beginning of the third, says, “Who then are these but the Romans? which same is the iron, the kingdom which now standeth. For its legs, saith he, are of iron. After this, then, what remaineth, beloved, save the toes of the feet of the image, wherein part shall be of iron and part of clay, being mixed one with another?”—Newton.
[53] “The world,” says Calvin, “grows worse as it grows older; for the Persians and Medes, who seized upon the whole East under the auspices of Cyrus, were worse than the Assyrians and Chaldeans. So profane poets invented fables about the four ages, a golden, silver, brazen, and iron one.” Dr. Coxe observes that the human figure has been often introduced by historians and poets to represent cities, peoples, the progress or decline of empires, or the relative importance of different parts of a government.
1. The head, or the Babylonian Empire. This empire, from its riches, represented by gold. Babylon itself called the “golden city,” or, as the margin, the “exactress of gold” (Isaiah 14:4). The cruel oppressor of God’s ancient people (Psalms 137:8). The mother of idolatry (Jeremiah 51:7). Notorious for its practice of sorcery and divination. Doomed to destruction for its sins (Jeremiah 51:35; Psalms 137:8). Nebuchadnezzar exhibited in the history as an example of cruelty. Hence Babylon made a type of Rome, “drunk with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:5-6). The Babylonian empire, commencing with Nebuchadnezzar’s sole reign about 606–5 B.C., the year also of the commencement of Judah’s captivity, terminated with Belshazzar’s death, about sixty-eight years afterwards (chap. Daniel 5:30-31). The empire said to be universal (Daniel 2:37-38). The words, however, of prophetic Scripture not to be strained to their strictest and literal meaning. In point of fact, the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar never extended to Europe, nor perhaps into Africa beyond the boundaries of Egypt. Virtually, however, it was universal. Raised up by God in His providence for His own purpose. “God hath given thee a kingdom” (Daniel 2:37) [54]. Hence Nebuchadnezzar spoken of by God as His “servant” (Jeremiah 27:6). The purpose designed to be served by Him the chastisement of Israel and other nations, and the glory of Jehovah’s own name. The termination of that empire as truly of God as its establishment. “God hath remembered thy kingdom and finished it” (chap. Daniel 5:26). Babylon destroyed as foretold by Isaiah two centuries before the event (Isaiah 45:1-3). Greek historians relate that Cyrus took Babylon by first drawing off the waters of the Euphrates, and then entering the city from the bed of the river through the brazen gates which opened upon it, but which on the night of a great festival had been left unshut [55].
[54] “God hath given thee a kingdom” (Daniel 2:37). Dr. Rule observes that “this great king could not have forgotten that his father was only a satrap at first, a successful rebel, who perfidiously allied himself with his master’s enemies, and by that means overthrew Nineveh and set up as king at Babylon. By a suddenly acquired sovereignty over all the servant-kings, he became king of kings; and thus Nebuchadnezzar, as son of Nabopolassar, was the first Babylonian king of kings by inheritance.” Gaussen says: “Nebuchadnezzar was the successor of the kings of Assyria, the most ancient and the noblest of monarchies. Since Nebuchadnezzar’s father it had become the empire of Babylon; the Chaldeans formed but one kingdom with the Assyrians. The young King Nebuchadnezzar had met with the most extraordinary successes from the very commencement of his reign; everything had given way to him. He had been led from his victories and his brilliant achievements to regard himself as the creator of his own magnificent fortune, and to look upon himself as a kind of demigod.”
[55] Herodotus relates that Cyrus, wearied with the length of the siege, devised the plan of diverting the course of the river; and that when this was done, those who had been assigned to that post entered by the bed of the river, which had ebbed to the height only of the thighs, and came upon the Babylonians unexpectedly while celebrating a feast with dancing and revelry; those living in the middle of the city not knowing when it was taken on account of its great extent.
2. The breast and arms, or the Medo-Persian Empire. In the night in which Belshazzar was slain, “Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom” (chap. Daniel 5:30-31). The capture of Babylon, however, rather the work of the Persians. Media at first the stronger power, but under Cyrus, who took the city, became the inferior part of the combined monarchy. Both Medes and Persians, however, as indicated by the two horns of the ram in another vision, shared in the sovereign power till united under Cyrus, who was related to both, and from whom the empire has been generally called the Persian [56]. Represented by silver, as inferior to the first empire [57]. The conquests of Cyrus neither so extensive nor so numerous as those of Nebuchadnezzar. The grandeur of the latter and of his great metropolis never equalled by that of the Persian kings and their new capital, Susa or Shushan. The Persian monarchy more extensive in size, as indicated by the symbol, but inferior in imperial majesty. The two arms of the image symbolical of the two powers that first constituted the empire [58]. The monarchy, from its first establishment by Cyrus to the death of the last king, Darius Codomannus, lasted little more than two hundred years [59]. The two years assigned to Darius the Mede, generally supposed to be the same with Cyaxares, completed the seventy years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. It was under this second empire, on the accession of Cyrus, who succeeded his uncle Darius, that the Jews obtained permission to return to their own land, Judæa, however, still remaining tributary to the empire. Under the same empire lived Ezra and Nehemiah, Mordecai and Esther, as well as the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi; while under it Daniel himself spent the last years of his life. It was under the reign of Artaxerxes I., surnamed Longimanus, in the year B.C. 458, that the commission was given to Ezra to repair to Jerusalem and restore the Temple-worship, about eighty years after the edict of Cyrus.
[56] Cyrus was the son of Cambyses, the brother of Darius, who was the son of Astyages and the uncle of Cyrus, and believed to be the second Cyaxares of the Greek historians. Cyrus at first fought under his uncle; and on the taking of Babylon he desired him to take the kingdom. On the death of his father and of his uncle, in the year 536 b.c., he became sovereign of the Medes and Persians.
[57] “Inferior to thee.” Castalio renders the words, “worse than those.” The inferiority might have a probable reference also to the character of the monarchs, the Persian kings being, according to Prideaux, the worst race of men that ever governed an empire. Calvin says, “Cyrus was, it is true, a prudent prince, but yet sanguinary. Ambition and avarice carried him fiercely forwards, and he wandered in every direction like a wild beast, forgetful of all humanity.”
[58] Josephus says that the two hands and shoulders of the image signify that the empire of the Babylonians should be dissolved by two kings.
[59] According to the Canon of Ptolemy, the successors of Darius the Mede were: Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius (Hystaspis), Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius II., Artaxerxes II., Ochus, Arostes, Darius III.
3. The belly and thighs, or the Grecian Empire. The Persians were, after many encounters, ultimately subdued by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, who thus established the Grecian, or, as it is from him sometimes called, the Macedonian empire. The symbolical metal of this, the third great monarchy, was brass, corresponding to the Homeric title, the “brazen-mailed Greeks” [60]. Brass also a frequent symbol of eloquence, for which the Greeks were distinguished. This third empire said, according to Scripture usage, to “bear rule over all the earth.” In the vision of the four beasts it is represented by a leopard with four wings and four heads, while “dominion” is said to be “given to it.” Alexander, after his extensive conquests, commanded that he should be called “king of all the world,” and is said to have wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. After colonising Asia with Grecian cities [61], he died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two, in consequence of a debauch [62]. The Greek or Macedonian empire was continued under his successors, who, however, were not the members of his own family, but his favourite generals. These, as already remarked, were four, being represented in the corresponding vision by the four heads of the leopard, and in another by the four “notable horns” of the he-goat (chap. Daniel 7:6; Daniel 8:8). In the fourfold division of the empire after the battle of Ipsus, the two principal portions, those of Syria and Egypt, fell to Seleucus and Ptolemy Lagus, hence called respectively the Seleucidæ and the Lagidæ, and probably represented by the two thighs of the image, it being with these alone that the Jewish Church and nation had to do [63]. The third empire was the period of the Jews’ greatest suffering, and at the same time their greatest national renown. It included the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, one of the kings of Syria, and the heroic struggles of the Maccabees.
[60] “Another third kingdom of brass.” Josephus explains the symbol by saying that another, coming from the west, completely covered with brass, should destroy the empire of the Medes and Persians.
[61] “Which shall bear rule over all the earth.” Plutarch says that Alexander founded above seventy cities among the barbarous people, and sowed Asia with Greek troops. Dr. Pusey remarks that, apart from garrisons, towards seventy cities founded by him or by his generals at his command, have been traced in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Media, Hyrcania, Parthia, Bactria, Sogdiana, India on the Hydaspes, the Acesines, and the Indus, and in other countries; in modern terms, in the whole of Turkey in Asia, Egypt, all habitable Persia, north, east, and south beyond it, in Beloochistan, the Deccan, Cabool, Afghanistan, the Punjab; and yet northward in Khorassan and Khondooz, to Bokhara and Turkestan. In all this Alexander was imitated by his generals who succeeded him.
[62] “Death,” says Gaussen, “in a moment silences that commanding voice which made the earth to tremble; and he for whom, the evening before, the world seemed too small, is enclosed in a tomb of porphyry, lately found in Egypt, and now in the British Museum.”
[63] “Five years after Alexander’s death, his wife, his brothers, his sisters, and his children, had all perished; and his generals, plunged in blood, were now disputing for his vast empire. At length, after thirty years of war, they ‘divided it toward the four winds of heaven,’ into four kingdoms, two of which (the only ones that had to do with the people of God) soon became more powerful than the others. These were, north of Jerusalem, the Grecian kingdom of the Seleucidæ in Syria; and south of Jerusalem, the Grecian kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt. Seleucus and Ptolemy were two of Alexander’s generals; and their descendants, who in Daniel are called the kings of the North and the kings of the South, reigned until the arrival of the Romans, and ruled in turn over the people of God.”—Gaussen.
4. The legs and feet, or the Roman Empire. The Greeks in their turn were subdued by the Romans, who established the fourth and last of the world’s universal monarchies [64]. The legs were of iron, while, in the feet, the iron was mingled with clay. The fourth empire represented as stronger than any of its predecessors, and as breaking them in pieces, “as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things” (Daniel 2:40). In the corresponding vision, it is represented by a beast without a name, “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly,” having great iron teeth, “devouring and breaking in pieces, and stamping the residue with its feet” (chap. Daniel 7:7). The Romans subdued and broke in pieces the empire of Alexander and his successors, as it did the whole known world. They made Syria a Roman province in the year 65 B.C., as they did Egypt thirty years later. “The arms of the republic,” says the infidel historian of the Roman empire, “sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.” The Roman empire fitly represented by iron as well from its immense strength as from the sternness, hardness, and valour of its people, and the vigour, perseverance, and oppressive consequences of its military achievements. It was an iron crown which was worn by its emperor, and an iron yoke to which it subjected the nations. The Romans pre-eminently “men of the sword.” With the god of war for their legendary parent, their national fierceness was represented by the she-wolf that nourished their founder. The iron feet, however, mixed with clay, aptly indicated that, in the later period of its existence, the empire should degenerate and be weakened by an admixture of foreign nations. The kingdom was to be “divided,—partly strong and partly broken” or brittle. The people were to “mingle themselves with the seed of men,” or with inferior races; but not so as to “cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay” (Daniel 2:40-43). It is well known that the Roman empire, in its later period, was weakened by the irruptions of barbarous nations from the North, who gradually became mingled with the native inhabitants [65]. Their mingling themselves with “the seed of men” without cleaving to each other, is believed to point to the marriage alliances formed by the Romans with the barbarians, which were yet followed by no cordial union [66]; “reasons of state,” as Bishop Newton observes, being “stronger than the ties of blood, and interest generally availing more than affinity.” This fourth empire had the farther marked peculiarity that in its later period of weakness and decay, and in connection with this very admixture of foreign elements represented by the clay, it was to be divided into ten separate kingdoms, indicated by the ten toes of the image. The same remarkable circumstance symbolised, in Daniel’s corresponding vision, by the ten horns of the fourth beast, expressly said to be ten kings or kingdoms (Daniel 7:24). And it is a singular confirmation of the correctness of the application, that the number of inferior kingdoms formed out of the weakened and dismembered Roman empire, in consequence of the irruptions from the North, has been generally regarded as, with more or less exactness, ten [67]. The number of these Gothic or German kingdoms appears to have been exactly ten at the earliest period of their formation, but to have afterwards varied, in consequence of the frequent though temporary alliances predicted in the prophecy; the number, however, never departing far from the original ten. The tenfold character of the kingdoms, it has been observed, “dominant through the whole period of their existence, probably to appear at the beginning and close of their history, though not always strictly maintained throughout” [68]. The two legs of the image may be regarded as foreshadowing the division of the empire into that of the East and West, previous to the formation of the ten kingdoms. To the fourth or Roman empire also were the Jews made subject. It was soon after the battle of Pydna that they first came in contact with that power which, in the providence of God, was to be the instrument of a sorer chastisement and a longer captivity than that by Nebuchadnezzar. Their subjugation itself the consequence of trust in an arm of flesh. Leaning on Rome as they had done on Egypt, they were pierced by the broken reed. The league with Rome, sued for and obtained by Judas and Jason, the Maccabean leaders, against their Grecian masters, proved the step to their subjection to the new world-power. It was after Judaea had become a province of the Roman empire that the Redeemer of the world was born. The predicted manner of His vicarious death and crucifixion the consequence of that subjugation, exhibiting, as it did, Christ “made a curse for us” (Matthew 27:26; Galatians 3:13). It was the representative of this empire in Judaea that wrote the title over the cross, THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS (Matthew 27:37). That same “King of the Jews” to be the Founder of a divine monarchy that shall “fill the whole earth.”
[64] “His legs of iron” (Daniel 2:33). “The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron” (Daniel 2:40). Josephus says that the two legs might denote the two Roman consuls. “After the battle of Pydna, the Roman conqueror divided Macedon into four parts, and soon after reduced it into the form of a province; and not long after the fall of Macedon, Carthage was finally destroyed.”—Birks. Gaussen observes that we may date the destruction of the thighs of brass and the commencement of the legs of iron from the year 65 b.c., when Pompey overthrew the kingdom of Syria, and so broke the first thigh; or from the year 30 b.c., when Augustus Cæsar destroyed the second thigh, the Grecian kingdom of Ptolemy in Egypt, and became the first emperor of Rome, with his authority fully established in Jerusalem.
[65] “His feet part of iron and part of clay” (Daniel 2:33). “The kingdom shall be divided, partly strong and partly broken (marg. brittle)” (Daniel 2:41-42). Jerome, who lived to see the incursions of the Northern barbarians, says in his Commentary: “The fourth kingdom, which plainly belongs to the Romans, is the iron which ‘breaketh and subdueth all things;’ but ‘his feet and toes are part of iron and part of clay,’ which is most manifestly proved at this time. For as in the beginning nothing was stronger and harder than the Roman empire, so in the end of things nothing is weaker; since both in civil wars and against divers nations we need the assistance of other barbarous nations.” “From the reign of Valens,” says Gibbon, “may justly be dated the disastrous period of the fall of the Roman empire. Especially from that time began the infusion of the foreign element, tending to weaken the strength and cohesion of the empire; the mixture being partly in barbarian levies, foreign mercenaries, and conquests made by the Northern invaders. In 412, the Visigoths had Aquitaine given them by the Emperor to retire to. The Burgundians had a region on the Rhine, which they had invaded, granted them for an inheritance. Pharamond, the prince of the Salian Franks in Germany, had seats granted to his people in the empire near the same river.” “And now,” says Sir Isaac Newton, “the barbarians were all quieted and settled in several kingdoms within the empire, not only by conquest, but by the grants of the Emperor Honorius.”—Quoted by Birks. “About four hundred years after Christ,” says M. Gaussen, “almost at the same moment, ten Gothic nations, speaking the same language (a kind of German), warlike and cruel, and countless as the sand, were seen pouring from the remote regions of the North towards the frontiers of the fourth kingdom: they crossed the Danube and the Rhine, seized upon the Roman empire, and established themselves in its capital, a.d. 476. But soon they too adopted the customs, the religion, the worship, the very language of the Romans; so that they continued the fourth empire under another form. Their Church was called the Latin Church, their religion the Romish religion, their empire the Latin empire, their sacred language the Latin language, and their history for ages the history of the Latin Church and empire.”
[66] “Shall mingle themselves with the seed of men, but they shall not cleave one to another” (Daniel 2:43). Dr. Keith observes: “The sovereigns of the different kingdoms into which the Roman empire was divided after being broken down have been perpetually contracting matrimonial alliances with each other; but notwithstanding this seeming bond of union, they have not united or adhered together.” Mr. Birks, in his book on the “First Two Visions of Daniel,” adduces a great number of instances in which this was the case. M. Gaussen, however, regards the mixture of the iron and the clay as rather pointing to the union between the Church and the State, occasioned by the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire, as well as that of the ten Gothic kingdoms. He remarks that at the time of the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, a great change was introduced into the government and internal constitution of the empire. Constantine exempted the ministers of the Christian religion from the payment of taxes, loaded them with riches and honours, and gave them palaces in the principal cities of his states. He established among them an ecclesiastical government, recognised in the empire and sanctioned by the laws, with its superior and inferior heads. After Constantine, almost all the emperors continued or added to his work. The clergy became a power that soon equalled that of the prince. The pastors of the cities governed those of the country. The priests of the large towns aspired to rule over those of the smaller ones. After some time they even aimed at being independent of the princes who had recognised them; and subsequently pushing their haughty pretensions still further, they set themselves above kings, and claimed the right of creating or deposing them at pleasure. The Bishop of Rome proclaimed himself the bishop of bishops, took the title of Pontifex Maximus, a title completely pagan, and which the Roman emperors had hitherto borne for the celebration of idolatrous rites. The mixture was to be an internal, not an external division like that of the toes, but taking place in the very essence of the constitution, and existing both in the feet and in the toes, exactly as we see in all the states of the Western empire—Italy, Austria, France, Spain, &c.; this change taking place eighty years after the arrival of the Gothic nations. Dr. Rule also suggests whether the weakening mixture spoken of as the “seed of men,” or, according to the Vulgate and Jerome, the “seed of man,” was not the uniting of a degenerate Christianity, a Christianity in name rather than in substance,—a system human in origin, in spirit, and in administration,—with all the governments of Europe until three or four centuries ago, and still with some of them, though continually in conflict with one or another. According to Keil, the figure is derived from the sowing of a field with mixed seed, and denotes all the means employed by the rulers to combine the different nationalities, among which marriage is only spoken of as the most important. Dr. Cox remarks that the Roman and Northern nations were so dissimilar in their habits and character that they never could form one uniform people. Hoffmann, quoted by Pusey, says in reference to the marriage alliances: “This was characteristic from the relation of the immigrating nations to Rome; they did not found a new kingdom, but continued the Roman. And so it continues until the end of all earthly power, until its final ramification into ten kingdoms.”
[67] “The toes and the feet were part of iron and part of clay.” Machiavelli, a Roman historian, specifies by name the ten Gothic kingdoms into which, like the ten toes of the feet, the Roman empire was divided: the Herulo-Thuringi, the Ostrogoths, the Lombards, the Franks, the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Sueves and Alans, the Vandals, the Huns, and the Saxons. Jerome, speaking of his own day, in the beginning of the fifth century, says: “Innumerable and most savage nations have taken possession of the whole of Gaul. The Quadians, the Vandals, the Sarmatians, the Alani, the Gepidæ, the Heruli, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and the Pannonians, have ravaged the whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, the ocean, and the Rhine;” thus, as Archdeacon Harrison remarks, enumerating exactly ten nations. “The most usual list, however,” observes Mr. Birks in 1845, “of living commentators, is that which omits the Huns and introduces the Alans as a distinct power.” Gaussen omits both Huns and Saxons; the former, as not settling in the Roman empire, though they devastated it under Alaric, and were neither of the same language nor of the same race as the other kingdoms; the latter, because England did not form a part of the prophetic earth; neither that country, nor Holland, nor Lower Germany having made a part of the Roman State at the accession of Augustus Cæsar. Keil, Dr. Todd, and some others, think that the ten kingdoms belong to the future. On the other hand, Professor Lee thinks that the feet must necessarily symbolise heathen Rome in its last times, and that the kings represented by the toes may be supposed, in a mystical sense, as the digit ten, a round number, and signifying a whole series.
[68] “Asia had been for ages the seat of power, the mightiest and most populous region of the globe. Europe was buried in darkness, and its western tribes were like outcasts from the family of nations. Greece itself had scarce risen into notice, and presented only a confused multitude of feeble and jarring tribes. That an empire was thus born among the barbarians of Latium which would extend its power over Judæa, Syria, and Babylon itself, was an event which no human wisdom could possibly divine. That this empire, like iron, should be endued with a political firmness beyond the mightiest monarchies of the East, was a prediction no less surprising, and would nowhere seem less credible than amidst the proud courtiers of Babylon. Two centuries later, in his various accounts of every region of the earth and of innumerable towns and rivers, Herodotus never once mentions the Tiber or the city of Rome. Yet here, amidst the splendour of Babylon, the prophet announces the rise and dominion of this fourth and greater empire.”—Birks. Speaking of the same unlikelihood in regard to Rome, Dr. Pusey remarks that we have two Jewish documents, the one probably a little after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes, the other not later than the death of John Hyrcanus, b.c. 105, which show two very different aspects of the Jewish mind towards the Roman commonwealth, the one in Alexandria, the other in Palestine; yet in neither is there the slightest apprehension of Roman greatness. The third Sibylline book is now generally held to be the work of a Jew in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. It threatens unhesitatingly that all the evils which had been done by the Romans to Asia should be requited with usury upon them. The first Book of Maccabees, on the other hand, relates the simple unsuspecting trust which Judas Maccabæus had in the Romans, as if they were wholly unambitious, and conquering only when assailed. “The secret springs of Roman greatness,” observes Mr. Birks, “had all been marked and defined in God’s everlasting counsels. While the empires of the East were sinking into unsuspected decay, this mighty power was nursing into strength amidst the gloomy shades of the West, which was soon to eclipse their greatness by a wider extent of dominion and a more enduring sway.… The foundations of the republic were laid in weakness, while Darius and Xerxes marshalled all Asia under their haughty banners, and precipitated their countless hosts on the States of Greece. While Miltiades, Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles broke the strength of Persia, and with a band of poets and sages carried the glory of Athens to its height, Rome was convulsed with the factions of the senate and people, gasping under the tyranny of the Decemvirs, struggling for existence with the Æqui, Volsci, and Veientians, and scarcely heard of beyond their narrow sphere of barbarian hostility.”
From this part of the interpretation of the dream we may notice—
1. The foreknowledge and omniscience of God. Here is a prophetic outline of the history of the civilised world for upwards of a thousand years; the four great world-monarchies, commencing with Nebuchadnezzar who had recently ascended the throne; their respective characters; the decay of the fourth from foreign mixture, with its division into ten separate kingdoms. History shows the prophecy to have been fulfilled as truly since the death of Antiochus Epiphanes as before it. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world.” It is natural that He who created the world should have had a plan, not only for its creation but its future history. All history but the fulfilment of that plan. Why should He not be able to communicate to His servants portions of that plan for His own glory and the comfort and guidance of His people? “The great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter” (Daniel 2:45). These future events, with all their connections, however unlikely to human foresight to occur [69], all open from the beginning to His omniscient eye, as simply His “works” of providence.
[69] M. Gaussen calls attention to the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, while pursuing the study of the prophecies, saw, in counting back the years with the greatest exactness, that the epochs fixed by Daniel for the several events, proved perfectly correct. He saw also that the heathen astronomer Ptolemy, who lived 140 years after Christ, had, in order to mark the years of his eclipses, divided the ages of antiquity exactly in the same manner as the prophet had done 745 years before him; seeing the four great monarchies in the past, as Daniel had seen them in the distant future. He saw also that Ptolemy considered these four monarchies as a succession of reigns, as Daniel views them under the figure of a single statue, and as forming, in a manner, only one kingdom. So that the Babylonian was the commencement of the Roman, while the Roman was merely Babylon in its development and its plenitude. The same author observes that Le Sage or Las Casas, the friend and companion of Napoleon Buonaparte at St. Helena, drew out a chart of the history of the world, in which, unconsciously, he exactly followed Daniel—dividing the history into four parts, and employing four colours to designate the empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome; dividing, further, the Greek or Macedonian empire into four kingdoms, noticing two of these as much more powerful than the others, viz., the Syrian and the Egyptian; and lastly, dividing the Roman empire in reference to the Northern invasions, as is usually done, including both Huns and Anglo-Saxons.
2. The overruling providence of God. History the execution by divine power of a plan which divine wisdom devised. Such execution is providence. Daniel, in his thanksgiving, extolled Jehovah as the God of “wisdom and might,” who “changeth the times, and who removeth kings and setteth up kings.” He accordingly reminds Nebuchadnezzar that it was He who gave the nations into his hand. He did the same thing with his successors. Plutarch wrote a book about the Fortune of Alexander; but that fortune was only the providence of God regarding that monarch, employing him as His free and responsible instrument, as He had done Cyrus and Nebuchadnezzar before him. “The Lord of hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle,” and giveth the victory to whomsoever He will. The providence of God, rather than the boatman, that which carried Cæsar and all his fortunes. That same providence carries the humblest believer and all that concerns him.
3. The evidence of the truth of revelation. Prophecy no mere guess or clever calculation, whether sage or scientific. As a simple declaration of future events, impenetrable to human foresight, it necessarily partakes of the nature of miracle. Its fulfilment, therefore, the credential of a divine message. Supernatural predictions must either be from above or from beneath. With holiness as their character and their object, they cannot be the latter. Necessarily therefore from above, and as such the testimonial of a messenger sent from God. Appealed to as such by Jesus Himself. “These things have I spoken unto you before they come to pass, that when they are come to pass ye may believe that I am He.” The character of the Book of Daniel as inspired Scripture, only attempted to be set aside by the assertion that its prophecies were merely narratives of the past. But these prophecies extended not only up to the times of the Maccabees, but far beyond them, and are receiving their fulfilment at the present day. The simple prediction of four, and only four, universal monarchies, is such, and in itself the evidence of a divinely inspired author.
4. The transient nature of human greatness and glory. These reached their height in the empires of Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome. Yet the three first and much of the fourth have passed away, leaving only vestiges behind, sufficient to testify their existence. The earth-mounds of Babylon, the petty town of Athens with its fragment-strewn Acropolis, and the wretched remains of the palace of the Cæsars, all echo the cry of the prophet in our ears, “All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass” (Isaiah 40:6-7). The contrast that follows is striking: “but the Word of our God shall stand for ever.” History and science, observation and experience, constantly verify the declaration. Happy those who, relying on the truths and promises of that Word, secure to themselves, in the possession of that Saviour whom it reveals, a greatness and a glory that shall not pass away.
HOMILETICS
SECT. X.—THE INTERPRETATION OF THE DREAM—Continued
PART SECOND: THE STONE (Daniel 2:44-45)
The stone no less remarkable than the image. The most glorious part of the vision, and to Christians the most interesting. May be considered under three heads: the Stone itself, its Action on the Image, and its Growth and ultimate Greatness.
I. The Stone itself. While totally unlike all the parts of the image betokening empire, the stone itself was to become a kingdom, or rather the kingdom that was to take the place of all the rest. To be viewed as symbolising both Christ and His kingdom [70]. The two in a sense identified. Nebuchadnezzar thus viewed as one with his empire: “Thou art this head of gold.” The kingdom is Christ reigning by His power and grace. Yet Christ and the kingdom to be viewed separately. The kingdom said to be something given to Him (chap. Daniel 7:14).
[70] “A stone cut out without hands,” “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom” (Daniel 2:34; Daniel 2:44). “The Fathers generally apply the prophecy to Christ Himself, who was miraculously born of a virgin without the concurrence of human means. But it should rather be understood of the kingdom of Christ, which was formed out of the Roman empire; not by number of hands or strength of armies, but without means and the virtue of second causes: first set up while the Roman empire was in its full strength, with legs of iron.”—Bishop Newton. Mr. Birks regards the stone as being also the Church. “Our Lord Himself, by His miraculous conception and His resurrection from the grave, was ‘cut out without hands,’ with a direct and wonderful triumph of divine power. His people, in like manner, are ‘born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever.’ In the day of the resurrection their separation will be complete; and being then united to their Lord, they will form one mystical body, and will along with Him execute the predicted judgments.” Dr. A. Clarke remarks: “This stone refers chiefly to the Church, which is represented as a foundation-stone;” and adds: “As the stone represents Christ and His governing influence, it is here said to be a ‘kingdom,’ i.e., a state of prevailing rule and government.” Mede distinguishes between the “kingdom of the stone” and the “kingdom of the mountain;” the first, when it was cut out without hands; the second, when it became itself a mountain. The Jews acknowledge the stone to be the Messiah. “The ninth king is King Messiah, who reigns from the one end of the world to the other; as it is said, ‘And the stone became a great mountain.’ ”—Pirke R. Eliezer. Willet regards the prophecy as referring, in the first instance, to Christ’s first advent, but, by way of analogy, to His second coming, when He shall make a perfect conquest of all earthly kingdoms and powers. Calvin applies the prophecy both to Christ and His kingdom arriving at the close of the fourth monarchy; the stone indicating the humble and abject beginning of Christ, yet divinely sent, and His kingdom separated from all earthly ones, being divine and heavenly. Gaussen understands it of some “feeble and insignificant portion of the Christian Church,” which shall become the occasion of the overthrow of the image, and of the enemy of the Redeemer’s kingdom, without the will of men being directly employed in it, or having any ground of glorying therein, all being obliged to acknowledge in it the finger of God and the power of His grace alone.
1. Christ Himself. The “stone of Israel” one of the Old Testament names of the Messiah. The stone laid for a foundation for sinners to build their hopes upon (Isaiah 28:16). The corner-stone of the spiritual temple (Psalms 118:22; Ephesians 2:20; 1 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 2:7). A crushing stone of stumbling to those who reject Him, but a sure and precious foundation to all who accept and trust in Him (Matthew 21:42; Matthew 21:44). Like the stone “cut out of the mountains without hands” (Daniel 2:45), Christ’s birth supernatural. Born of a virgin and conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost. Humble in circumstances and mean in outward appearance. A “root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness” (Isaiah 53:2). His resurrection, or official birth as the Messiah, equally of God (Psalms 2:7; Acts 13:33). As a stone, he, as God’s appointed King of Zion, breaks opposing nations as a potter’s vessel (Psalms 2:9). In the corresponding vision of the Four Beasts, he who takes the kingdom is “one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven” (chap. Daniel 7:13). Applied by Jesus to Himself at the judgment seat of Caiaphas (Matthew 26:64). Christ, however, to be viewed as including His people. Christ and believers one (John 15:5; Ephesians 5:30). The head and the members one Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12; Revelation 11:15). Like the head, the members made such by a supernatural and divine birth (John 1:12-13). Believers associated with Christ in His government and judgment of the world (1 Corinthians 6:2; Revelation 5:10; Revelation 20:6; Revelation 22:5; Revelation 19:14; Revelation 15). Employed as His instruments both of mercy and judgment (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Psalms 149:6-9; Jeremiah 51:20-24).
2. The kingdom of Christ. Under this aspect the stone ultimately expanded into “a great mountain, filling the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). This kingdom identified with the visible Church of the New Testament. Called the kingdom of “heaven,” from its origin and character; the kingdom of “God,” from its Author and end; and the kingdom of “Christ,” from its Ruler and King. Announced by John the Baptist and by Christ Himself as then nigh at hand (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17) [71]. The subject of much of Christ’s teaching both before and after His resurrection (Matthew 4:23; Acts 1:3). Preached by the apostles as in a sense already come (Acts 28:31; 1 Corinthians 4:21; Revelation 1:9). The kingdom, however, then as still, hidden or in mystery (Colossians 3:3-4; 1 John 3:2; 1 Peter 1:13; Romans 8:18-25). The kingdom connected with the “patience” or “patient waiting for” of Christ (Revelation 1:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:5). Now the kingdom of grace, hereafter the kingdom of glory; now the kingdom of the cross, hereafter the kingdom of the crown. The “kingdom” of Christ, in its manifestation, connected with His second “appearing” (2 Timothy 4:1). A kingdom, though heavenly in its nature, yet, like the preceding ones, to be set up on earth, and to be everlasting, having no successor (Daniel 2:44). Was to be set up in “the days of those kings” or kingdoms, namely, in the fourth or last of them (Daniel 2:44). Jesus born under Augustus, the first Roman emperor; and the foundation of the kingdom laid on the day of Pentecost under Tiberius, his successor.
[71] “The ‘kingdom of God’ is a phrase which is constantly employed in Scripture to denote that state of things which is placed under the avowed administration of the Messiah, and which consequently could not precede His personal appearance. But during His residence on earth, until His resurrection, this kingdom is uniformly represented as future, though near at hand.”—Robert Hall.
II. The Action of the Stone upon the Image. It “smote the image upon his feet, and brake them in pieces” (Daniel 2:34). “It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms” (Daniel 2:44). “Upon his feet;” therefore in the time of the fourth or Roman empire, and in the latter part of that empire, when it had already degenerated, and the iron had already or was soon to become mixed with clay, though prior to its tenfold division. It was in the reign of the first empire, when Rome, having reached its highest pitch of glory, began to enter on its gradual decline, that Jesus was born, the stone “cut out of the mountain;” and it was in that of His immediate successors that the smiting commenced [72]. Morally and secretly, that smiting might be said to commence when the idolatry and polytheism of the Roman empire was undermined by the preaching of Christ’s gospel and the new religion which it introduced into the world [73]. In the days of Nero, the fifth Roman emperor, the Apostle of the Gentiles could write, “Thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ.” “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14; 2 Corinthians 10:4-5). The Roman empire may be said to have been shaken by the gospel in the first three centuries, and the great image smitten by it to its future destruction. “These that have turned the world upside down.” That destruction, however, was still distant. The judicial smiting of the stone was not to take place till long after. “This gospel of the kingdom must first be preached among all nations for a witness, and then shall the end come.” This judicial destruction prominent in the vision. In the corresponding vision of the prophet himself, after judgment is given upon the “little horn” of the fourth beast, that beast is slain, and its “body destroyed and given to the burning flame” (chap. Daniel 7:11). The judicial smiting probably in various stages, according to the three forms which that fourth beast or Roman empire should assume as Pagan, Papal, and Infidel [74]; the final stage being symbolically exhibited in the Apocalypse by the great battle of Armageddon, in connection with the pouring out of the seventh and last “vial of the wrath of God” (Revelation 16:13-16; Revelation 19:11-21) [75].
[72] “In the days of these kings.” Augustus, the first Roman emperor, in whose reign Jesus Christ was born, had completed the thirty-fourth year of his age when he returned to Rome after the overthrow of Antony. “From that period to the end of a lengthened life he remained in the possession of the greatest power, and at the head of the most extensive territory that had yet fallen to the lot of man.” Its now incipient weakness and decay may be marked in the following farther quotations from Roman history:—“The military operations in which Augustus himself took part were not important. The Arabian campaign was disastrous. The war of the Danube and the Rhine, from a struggle in defence of the frontier, became an aggressive movement against the tribes beyond those rivers, but no permanent impression was made upon them. While Tiberius effected the reduction of Pannonia, the district between the Danube and the great tributaries the Drave and the Save, establishing a line of forts along the river to guard against the future incursions of the Northmen, Drusus conducted an extensive plan of aggression against the Germanic nations in general. He led his troops to the Weser; but the difficulties of the country, want of provisions, and more than all, the firm opposition of the natives, compelled him to return to the Rhine, leaving two forts with garrisons on the east bank as a show of conquest. Tiberius took the command on the Rhine upon the death of his brother (Drusus), and constituted the country from thence to the Weser a Roman province, in a.d. 5; but was eventually succeeded by Publius Quintilius Varus, who lost all the advantages gained, in the autumn of a.d. 9. The army, consisting of above 24,000 men, after an attack of three days, was cut to pieces. The general fell upon his sword, and all the forts and posts on the right bank of the Rhine were taken. Rome was filled with consternation at the news of this defeat. Augustus, then an old man, was cowed by the stroke, and for a time could only exclaim, ‘Varus, Varus, give me back my legions.’ Tiberius was forwarded with reinforcements, but did not deem it advisable to re-occupy the country beyond the Rhine, which reverted to the Germans.” Tiberius, the successor of Augustus, “was favourably known for military capacity; but the dark features of his character were gradually developed by the possession of power, which allowed him to riot in sensual indulgences without restraint or disguise. Two formidable insurrections of the troops greeted his accession. Three legions, stationed on the frontier towards the Danube, revolted. The insubordination of the grand Roman army stationed on the Rhine presented more serious difficulties. The soldiers demanded to have their time of military service shortened. The reign of Tiberius, extending over an interval of twenty-three years, is barren of political events of importance in a general history, excepting the brief career of Germanicus beyond the Rhine. But just when Germany between the Rhine and the Elbe was on the verge of subjection, Germanicus was recalled by the Emperor, who was jealous of his fame, and the country reverted to the native tribes.” The reign of Caligula, who succeeded Tiberius, and whom despotic power so bereft of his senses that he raised his horse to the consulship, and built him a marble stable and an ivory manger, may be passed without notice. Claudius, his successor, now upwards of fifty years of age, was naturally an imbecile. “His society had been chiefly that of women and slaves. Female influence of the worst possible description predominated through his reign. One of the few extensions of territory under the emperors was made in the reign of Claudius, a departure from the policy exemplified by Augustus and bequeathed as a legacy to his successors,—that of restricting the empire to the limits provided by Nature. South Britain was now constituted a Roman province, but the Silures (in Wales) kept the field with unbroken spirit.” It was during the reign of Claudius, who died in a.d. 54, that Christianity was extensively planted in Lesser Asia and in Greece by the labours of Paul, as related in the Acts of the Apostles; eventually abolishing the polytheism of the civilised world, and thus tending to break the great image in pieces.
[73] “Smote the image upon his feet.” The smiting, says Mr. Birks, is “referred by some early writers to the triumphs of the gospel after the first Advent. But Theodoret and others, with more justice, have referred it to His second coming. They saw that the stone was to smite the image on the toes of iron and clay, and that the event must therefore follow the division of the Roman empire. This opinion has, from the same reason, been received by the best expositors in modern times.” But the stone is not said to smite the image on its toes, but on its feet, and therefore, it may be supposed, before the division of the empire. Dr. Coxe remarks: “That the prediction of the stone does not refer exclusively to the uttermost periods of the world, appears evident from the distinctiveness of the intimation that it will strike the image upon its feet, not upon the toes: the latter are mentioned after the former, as, according to the general construction of the statue, subsequent in time. Consequently the empire of Rome was to be smitten when in its strength, or before the division into several kingdoms. This interpretation is verified by the fact that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, and the apostolic labours extended to the period of the commencing decline of Roman power.” “The fallen empire of Rome was forcibly struck when the Apostles fulfilled their Lord’s commission in going forth to preach the gospel to every creature, and fell to pieces when Constantine, in a.d. 331, issued an edict commanding the destruction of all heathen temples.” “We may hear,” says Gibbon, “without suspicion or scandal, that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire.” “Christianity,” he says again, “erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or the limits of the Roman empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of human kind in arts and learning, as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa; and by means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili, in a world unknown to the ancients.” Keil observes: “The stone which breaks the image becomes, from the first time after it has struck the image, ‘a great mountain which fills the whole earth’(Daniel 2:35); and the kingdom of God is erected by the God of heaven, according to Daniel 2:44, not for the first time after the destruction of all the world-kingdoms, but in the days of the fourth world-monarchy, and thus during its continuance.” “Daniel indicates its beginning in a simple form, although he does not at large represent its gradual development in the war against the world-power.… The last judgment forms only the final completion of the judgment commencing at the first coming of Christ to the earth, which continues from that time onward through the centuries of the spread of the kingdom of heaven upon earth in the form of the Christian Church, till the visible return of Christ in His glory in the clouds of heaven to the final judgment of the living and the dead.” Auberlen, however, thinks that “the chief point which it is necessary to recognise distinctly and express simply is, that the commencement of the kingdom, spoken of in the second and seventh Chapter s of Daniel, is nothing else but the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” With this he connects “the re-establishment of the kingdom of Israel.” Calvin says the sense here is proper and literal. According to Grotius, Christ was to put an end to all earthly empires. Bishop Chandler says: “The kingdom of this ‘stone’ shall bruise the Jews that stumbled at Christ’s first coming; but the kingdom of the ‘mountain,’ when manifested, shall bruise the feet of the monarchical statue to dust, and leave no remains of the fourth monarchy in its last and degenerate state.”
[74] “Broken to pieces together” (Daniel 2:35; Daniel 2:44). “In this destruction of the image,” says M. Gaussen, “there shall be nothing but dust, nothing but the most frightful anarchy. This complete and universal breaking up of all existing governments shall begin in the toes and extend to the rest of the image. Disorder, terror, ruin shall overspread the whole earth; unheard-of anarchy, indescribable distress, shall seize upon all nations, which shall seem as in the agonies of dissolution.”
[75] “We have,” says E. Irving, “in the first four seals (in the Book of the Revelation), the four successive emperors in whose times and by whose chief instrumentality Paganism, the first enemy of the Church, was brought to its end, and Rome, its seat, laid low, as heretofore were Babylon and Jerusalem.” The emperors referred to were Constantine the Great, Theodosius the Great, Honorius, and Justinian; the last of whom was likened by Procopiusa contemporary, to “a demon sent by God to destroy men.” “The fifteenth and sixteenth Chapter s,” adds Mr. Irving, “may be considered as belonging to the book with the seven seals, being the seventh seal thereof; or, in general, as the act of judgment upon the nations; or as the period of Christ’s iron reign; or as the period of the stone’s smiting the image to powder—the sevenfold act of judgment upon the Papal nations, beginning from the year 1792, at which the Papal period closed.”
III. Its Growth and ultimate Greatness. The stone, after smiting the image, “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). The interpretation: “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44). In the corresponding vision it is said that to the Son of Man was given “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve Him” (chap. Daniel 7:13-14). This growth and greatness of the stone the glorious part of the king’s dream; that to which all the previous works of the Almighty, both in creation and providence, pointed; the end, as it is the reward, of the mediatorial undertaking of the Son of God (Philippians 2:6-11; Isaiah 53:11); the hope, comfort, and joy of the Church; the deliverance and blessedness of creation; the joyous burden of all the prophets, who testified beforehand “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow” (1 Peter 1:11). In the full enlargement, universal prevalence, and glorious manifestation of that kingdom, which is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,” we see Satan’s head bruised, and paradise restored to a sin-blighted and curse-stricken world; men blessed in Christ and all nations calling Him blessed; earth filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord; a pure language turned upon the people, “so that they shall call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent;” Israel saved, and the receiving back of Israel life from the dead to the world at large; the Father’s house filled with the sound of music and dancing at the return of the long-lost prodigal son; the whole creation “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21-22). The prospect of this blessed consummation and glorious triumph of the kingdom of Christ in the earth, that which has gladdened, animated, and sustained the servants of God while battling with the power of evil in the world, and, as Christ’s witnesses, seeking to carry His gospel to the ends of the earth.
“The time of rest, the promised Sabbath, comes,
Six thousand years of sorrow have well nigh
Fulfilled their tardy and disastrous course
Over a sinful world; and what remains
Of this tempestuous state of human things,
Is merely as the working of the sea
Before a calm, that rocks itself to rest.
For He whose ear the winds are, and the clouds
The dust that waits upon His sultry march,
When sin hath moved Him and His wrath is hot,
Shall visit earth in mercy; shall descend
Propitious in His chariot, paved with love;
And what His storms have blasted and defaced
For man’s revolt, shall with a smile repair.”
From the prophecy of the Stone we may observe—
1. The glorious future opened up for the world. A kingdom to be established and to fill the earth, that exceeds all preceding it in excellence, purity, and happiness, as well as in duration and extent. With heaven for its origin and the Son of God for its King, it will combine in it all the elements of true grandeur in its constitution, while it embraces in its influence unnumbered nations and countless myriads of souls. “To be a subject of this kingdom,” observes Dr. Cox, “to share in its blessings, to be eternally associated with its people and their King, must be to be elevated to the height of all glory, to the very summit of our intelligent, sanctified, and immortal nature.” But this kingdom is to fill the earth and to embrace in it all nations, thus restoring it to its original paradisaical condition [76].
[76] “From this magnificent, most particular, and diversified symbol of the battle of Armageddon,—whereof every part hath an allusion to some previous prophecy of the Apocalypse or of the other Scriptures, so that it is, as it were, the end and accomplishment of a hundred predictions,—we have these certainties: that therein shall the spirit of Papal superstition perish, with all those superstitions and tyrannical forms of civil power and government which grew out of it; that therein shall perish the spirit of infidelity and the forms of destructiveness which are implied thereby; that therein also shall other forms of darkness and cruelty which inspired the heathen world likewise perish; that is, their strength and power shall perish therein, and the whole earth which they possessed and overruled shall become the reward and trophy of ‘Him that sitteth upon the horse’ and His holy army.”—Irving.
2. The certainty of the Word of God and the truth of Christianity. The prediction regarding the stone as well as of the four great monarchies already in great part fulfilled. A King and a kingdom corresponding to the description in the vision have already appeared. Nearly eighteen centuries ago that divine but apparently humble stone-kingdom smote the glorious world-image. Idolatry and polytheism disappeared from the Roman empire, and the world was “turned upside down.” Christianity, with its humble and despised beginning, has, contrary to all human likelihood and expectation, already spread itself, in one form or other, in a greater or less degree, over most of the known world. Islands and groups of islands unknown to the ancients have accepted its blessings and adopted its name. Within the first thirty years after the death of its Founder, one of its chief promoters could testify that the gospel was preached, and brought forth fruit “in all the world” (Colossians 1:6); and within the last eighty years, that same gospel of the kingdom has been published in at least 226 languages and dialects, in the form of translations of the Bible, or the more important parts of it, in scarcely fifty of which it had been printed before; every such translation representing, in a greater or less degree, the subjects of the heavenly kingdom. The “King of the Jews” is acknowledged already as King in almost all the nations, tribes, and languages of the earth [77]. The past and present fulfilment of the prophecy a proof of its divine origin, and a pledge of the future accomplishment of the rest. “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my word shall not pass away.” The stone has already broken the image in pieces and grown into a mountain, filling at least a considerable portion of the earth, and in the way of soon filling the whole. “Therefore let all the house of Israel,” and all the nations of the world, with their rulers and statesmen and philosophers, “know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus who was crucified both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).
[77] Even a heathen poet, probably kindling his torch at the fire of inspired prophecy, through the medium of one of the Sibylline books, could sing in his most elevated strains the happy period awaiting the world in connection with Messiah’s kingdom. Virgil’s Eclogue to Pollio is well known: “Jam redit et virgo,” &c. “Heathen legend,” it has been said, “often seems a vague reflex of Holy Writ, and thus the golden age itself, ere justice left mankind, suggests the state before the Fall; and some broken and clouded rays of a truth once whole and pure, may perhaps be gleaned from this Eclogue as a witness to ‘the desire of all nations.’ ” The author of one, at least, of the Sibylline books, however, is believed to have been a Jew. Pope, in the advertisement to his imitation of the Eclogue to Pollio, says: “In reading several passages of the prophet Isaiah which foretell the coming of Christ and the felicities attending it, I could not but observe a remarkable parity between many of the thoughts and those in the Pollio of Virgil. This will not seem surprising when we reflect that the Eclogue was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject.”
3. The characteristics of Christ’s kingdom.
(1.) Divine in its origin—a “stone cut out of the mountain without hand” (Isaiah 7:14; John 1:12-13).
(2.) Humble in its beginning—a “stone,” small, rough, mean, insignificant in its appearance (Isaiah 53:2; Philippians 2:8).
(3.) Victorious over all opposition—“breaking to pieces” the opposing kingdoms of the world and “subduing” all to itself (2 Corinthians 10:4-5; Acts 5:39).
(4.) Onward in its progress—growing from a little stone into a “great mountain” (Acts 6:7; Acts 12:24; Acts 19:20; Isaiah 9:7).
(5.) Universal in its ultimate extent—destined to “fill the whole earth” (Psalms 2:8; Psalms 72:11; Psalms 72:17; Philippians 2:9-10).
(6.) Everlasting in its duration—never to be “destroyed,” or to be “left to another people,” or succeeded by another kingdom, but to “stand for ever” (Psalms 72:17; Revelation 11:15; Isaiah 9:7).
4. The encouragement given to seek the extension of Christ’s cause and kingdom in the world, and the duty of doing so. That kingdom and cause, however humble, weak, and small in any particular place, destined to be victorious over all opposition. The little one to become a thousand, and the small one a strong nation. The stone to become a mountain filling all the earth, whatever may oppose its progress. This consummation not only purposed and predicted, but provided for. The result guaranteed by Omnipotence. “Not by might nor by power (of man), but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth; go ye therefore and teach all nations, &c; and lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.” Means to be employed by human instruments, but these means and instruments to be made effectual by a divine power accompanying them. “Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem,” &c. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.” At the presence of the Ark, though accompanied only with the sound of rams’ horns and the human voice, the walls of Jericho fell. “Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.” In submission to and personal interest in that kingdom is the only safety and happiness of sinful men. Christ and His kingdom the true Noah’s ark. Inside, peace and safety; outside, a deluge of wrath. The door still open and the invitation issued, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark.” The day of our death or of the Lord’s appearing shuts us either in or out. Either of these may be at hand. It is for us to enter ourselves, and not to cease earnestly to persuade others to enter along with us. The time is short. Jesus waits. Tarry not. Enter now! [78]
[78] “It is owned,” says Dr. Pusey, “by those who set these prophecies at the very latest, that nearly two centuries before our Lord’s ministry began, it wag foreseen that the kingdom of God should be established without human aid, to replace all other kingdoms, and to be replaced by none; to stand for ever, and to fill the earth. Above eighteen centuries have verified the prediction of the permanency of that kingdom, founded as it was by no human means, endowed with inextinguishable life, ever conquering and to conquer in the four quarters of the world; a kingdom one and alone since the world has been; embracing all times and climes, and still expanding; unharmed by that destroyer of all things human, Time; strong amid the decay of empires; the freshness and elasticity of youth written on the brow which has outlived eighteen centuries.”