The critical school have some difficulty in making out their ten rulers, who are symbolized by the ten horns. Porphyry drew on the Egyptian Ptolemies to fill out the deficiencies of the Seleucids. That is evidently an illicit process. The more general scheme now is to start with Alexander the Great, then take the successive Seleucids; as they are not enough, Helio-dorus, who never was king, is inserted. If, however, the fourth beast is the Greek power, and Alexander is to be taken as the first monarch, then all his successors, Lagids, Antegonids, and Attalids, as well as Seleucids, have to be reckoned—a number to be counted by scores rather than tens. Were it not for the necessity they are under to make the fourth monarchy the Greek, this attempt would have been acknowledged to be a failure.
Before we leave this, we must consider this point—the growing degradation of the powers that succeed the Babylonian. In what sense could Babylon be the head of gold, while Persia was silver, Greece bronze, and Rome iron? It is evident that this inferiority is not one of extent of territory; for the successive monarchies were each more extensive geographically than its predecessor. In what, then, consists the inferiority? The only suggestion that seems to me at all to meet the case, is one made by Dr. Bonnar of East Kilbride, in his ingenious book, 'The Great Interregnum.' In looking at this question, we must begin by divesting ourselves of all our preconceived notions of representative government and freedom of the people, in fact, all our Western ideas, and look at monarchy with the eyes of an Oriental. To an Oriental that monarchy is highest that is likest Divine sovereignty. Only the most absolute monarch can at all, in idea, represent Divine sovereignty. The Babylonian government had this absoluteness—the king's will was law, without cheek or limits-ion. This, as the likest to the Divine government, was the head of gold. The Persian monarch had the seven nobles—so to say, peers of the crown—that limited his authority. The hereditary satraps formed a further limitation. This was silver, not gold. This monarchy had still much of the Divine absoluteness in it, but not so much as the Babylonian, The Greek Empire still retained many of the features of Oriental absoluteness, as many of the features of Oriental magnificence, but they limited their own authority by the introduction of autonomous cities all over their dominions. Along with the Greek city life there was a certain independence and freedom assigned to the individual, that limited the action of the monarch. He was no longer removed from all men by an immense distance; with all his absoluteness, he was a Greek among Greeks. Still, the idea of the monarchy was kept up. There is thus a further degradation—the age of bronze is reached; the age of gold is past, and even that of silver. With Rome, the empire that was diverse from all others, the monarchical idea disappeared. The emperor was simply Imperator of a republic. He might be deified in his lifetime, might wield absolute power in actuality, but in idea he was but the servant of the Roman Republic. The bronze had given place to iron. If we carry cur eyes down the ages to the kingdoms that have succeeded the Roman Empire, monarchy has ceased to have much power at all. The iron now is mingled with the miry clay. The progress of constitutional history all over the world has been the lessening of government authority, and setting the individual free. The stone cut out of the mountain, so far as material goes, is at a still lower level in regard to value than the iron mingled with the miry clay. Individualism becomes absolute in Christianity when the believer, in exercise of his absolute personal right over himself, surrenders himself absolutely into the hands of Christ.
The Messianic kingdom, foreseen by the prophet, and foretold in the stone in the vision of the image, and in the Son of man in that of the four beasts, looks forward to a time beyond the present, when all civil governments will have ceased, when the Church shall be manifest as the true state, when Christ, the Anointed of the Lord, alone shall reign. This prophecy is not fulfilled in Christ's coming in weakness as the Babe at Bethlehem, nor in his life of sorrow and death, of shame and suffering. No; it is in his coming the second time unto salvation. It is failure to realize this that leads Bishop Westcott to maintain the fourth monarchy to be the Greek. He somehow thinks that the fourth kingdom must have passed away before the Messiah comes. But in the image-vision the stone was cut out of the mountain before the image had disappeared. When a person approaches this subject with a set of presuppositions, he is all the less likely to reach a true conclusion. Looked at in the way it presents itself to us, this sublime scheme of universal history terminates only when the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ; when the promise made to the Son by the Father, that he should have the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, shall be fulfilled. Only some such time of universal peace can adequately conclude history and fulfil prophecy.
HOMILETICS