not."

"And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet." The words "king" and "kingdom" are used convertibly in Daniel. Mr. Birks, who has written most ably and eloquently upon this book, says the expression "kingdom" is used when it is the subject of change or division, and that it is called a king when it goes forth conquering and deciding the destinies of a nation. Accordingly we read in the 44th verse, "In the days of these kings;" but in the previous passage it is said, "these kingdoms." Again, of the king of Babylon it is said, "Thou art that head of gold;" meaning, 66 thy kingdom is represented by it." The two words, therefore, are used convertibly.

Now it is said that this last kingdom, which we have shown, I think irresistibly, to be the Roman empire, was to be split into ten divisions; or, if the wild beast from the abyss, seen by John in Patmos, be taken, it was to have ten horns; or, if Daniel's subsequent visions be had recourse to, (which we shall come to by-and-by,) it was to be tenfold. We have the fact clearly predicted, that it was to be split or divided into ten kingdoms. Here is a broad prediction, of which palpable facts can alone be regarded as the fulfilment. Is it then matter of historic fact, as it is matter of prophetic declaration, that this Roman empire has been divided into ten kingdoms at its fall or decline? That this has been so, every historian will tell you. Gibbon speaks of the ten kingdoms: Müller, the German historian, alludes to the ten kingdoms of the Roman empire; and I might quote from historians innumerable, all speaking of this tenfold division, not as a prophetic announcement, but as an historical and actual fact.

That this was so, I will show by giving these ten kingdoms as they have appeared in successive centuries. I need not enter into historical details, for they would be inappropriate here-all that devolves upon me is to show you the fulfilment of the prophecies of God; and the discourse that proves to you that what God inspired in prophecy has been fulfilled in history, is a discourse that contributes at least a drop to that mighty, deepening, widening current which carries, day by day, accumulating evidence of the inspiration and heaven-descended origin of God's blessed book.

In the year 532 after the birth of Christ—that is, rather more

than a thousand years after the prophecy was uttered-we find the Roman empire, if I may use the expression, on its last legs; and these last legs divided into the following ten toes, or kingdoms-the Bavarians, the Anglo-Saxons, the Alleman-Franks, the Burgundian-Franks, the Visi-Goths, the Suevi-Franks, the Vandals, Ostro-Goths, and Lombards. The next or last three, as if to fulfil the significance of another vision of Daniel, were devoured by the "little horn," (which we shall afterward speak of,) or were absorbed by the Roman pope, and constitute at this moment what are called "the three estates of the Church." Then, in the year 900, there was the following division: Bavaria, Germany, Burgundy, France, Aragon, Castile, Lower Italy, and Rome, comprehending the three estates of the Church-the Vandals, Ostro-Goths, and Lombards. In the year 1214, the division was: Bavaria, Germany, Upper Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Naples, and Rome with its three estates, represented by the pope's triple crown, subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, and constituting its property. Then we come to 1700, when we find Bavaria, Austria, Savoy, France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Rome with its three estates, making altogether ten kingdoms, into which the Roman empire was at last divided.

As you are aware, there is sometimes, in reading history, a difficulty in distinguishing the one kingdom from the other; but, mark you, that very difficulty only makes the fulfilment of prophecy more clear, because the assertion of the seer is, that they shall attempt to intermingle with the seed of men, but that they should not succeed in being consolidated into one universal empire, as they were under Nebuchadnezzar, under Cyrus, under Alexander, or under the Roman Cæsars; that with all their intermingling, as the sea interlocks with the land, the one losing and the other gaining a bit, the ten kingdoms should cast up at the end of every century, more or less separate, and should last till the end-when they should be smitten into fragments by a "stone cut out without hands." I ask you to notice this startling fact. If you will read any history of Europe, or if you will study the maps showing this division-maps which I hope one day to exhibit in my school-room, as I have exhibited others, if I can only get them prepared on a large enough scale-you will find that in each cen

tury these ten kingdoms have always cast up, have always turned out of each revolution; and every attempt to make them fewer, or to make them one, has signally and historically failed.

The expression, "They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men," simply means, that they should try by human alliances to intermingle. Napoleon, for instance, connected himself by marriage with Austria. One would have supposed that this would surely have brought about the consolidation of the two empires; but it did not do so. Charlemagne subdued Germany, Saxony, Spain, and Italy; but his conquests were temporary he had no sooner turned his back upon the country he conquered, than it rose and reasserted its independence. Louis XIV., whose brilliant, but sensual and profligate reign may be known to many of you, made the same experiment. Napoleon, with his iron crown, his formidable sword, and his devastating battalions, swept through Europe, reached Africa, visited even Palestine itself, or at least Syria; till at last, in his desperate effort to consolidate. all the nations of Europe, Asia, and Africa under his sway, he was all but paralyzed in his infatuated ambition, amid the snows of Russia; and finally, in that great victory in which our country signalized itself with glory, because it was a contribution to the peace of Europe and the well-being of mankind, he was finally smitten down. His attempt showed, as did the attempts of all that preceded him, that the inner powers of repulsion in the ten kingdoms were stronger than the outer compression of Napoleon's, or Charlemagne's, or Louis's sword. We have thus, then, the ten kingdoms always coming up, notwithstanding the efforts of successive despots, conquerors, and heroes to consolidate them. We have the failure of each hero written in blood, and stereotyped upon the page of Europe; in spite of man's great forces, God's true word stands still, fulfilled to the very letter. Did Daniel guess all this? Who is the more credulous-the man who says a Jewish captive guessed the history of Europe, or he that says a Jewish prophet predicted it by the inspiration of God?

We read, after this division of the empire, that "a stone cut out without hands" was to smite "the image upon its feet, that were of iron and clay." Then it is stated that "in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall

never be destroyed." "Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold;" so will it be with the setting up of this great kingdom which shall never be destroyed.

What the stone cut out without hands is, there can be scarcely a doubt in the mind of any Christian. The apostle Peter tells us, "To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones,. are built up a spiritual house." In his birth there was not the least of human agency; in his resurrection there was none. In Christ, peculiarly and alone—and only of him can it be said so— there is realized and verified the symbol of a living stone, "" cut out without hands."

But while this may be true, that Christ here personally is to be the Great Destroyer of the nations, it may be no less true that his people instrumentally are to play a part in it. I cannot believe that the action of the "stone cut out without hands" upon the ten kingdoms was the birth of Christ, and the gradual spread of his empire, because it does not say that a power was to be introduced into the Roman empire that should spread like leaven, though that was true; but it is here asserted that a stone was to strike the toes of the image in its last stage, and shatter it to pieces. Now the progress of the gospel, as a converting power, is gradual, slow, and invisible; but the action of the stone, as here described, is not that of a converting power, but of a destroying and annihilating power. Therefore it is represented as smiting the ten kingdoms, or the toes of the image, and breaking them in pieces, so that they are scattered like chaff upon the threshing-floor of

summer.

It is believed by many, and I am one of those who incline to that belief, that the mystic stone at this moment has begun to smite the ten kingdoms of the Roman empire. And I am sure that no one who looks around him upon Europe, and reads its mysterious and its melancholy history-no one who is at this moment conversant with what is doing in France, where the volcano is smothered, but any thing but extinguished; or with what is now passing in Italy, where the whole soil rocks, and is con

vulsed, as if by the heaving of some mighty, dread, subterranean elements, can doubt that if the stone be not smiting at this moment, preparatory to the final destruction of the kingdoms of Europe, there is that going on which is the likest possible to it. Bavaria, Austria, Savoy, France, Spain, Portugal, Naples, the three kingdoms of the pope, or, as they are called, "the three estates of the Church”—the Vandals, Ostro-Goths, and Lombards -are all at this moment convulsed, each to its very centre; flying from each other, as if by an irresistible centrifugal force; breaking to pieces, as if under the blows of some mysterious stone: Hungary flying off from Austria, as if a hammer smote it and chipped it off; Sicily dashed off from Naples; the pope's "three estates" rent, torn, agitated, convulsed; Ireland feeling also the blows, as if it belonged to the ten kingdoms, whose popish characteristics were to remain to the end, and struggling -we trust, in vain-to be severed from the nation that is its best, and its greatest, though it has been in past times its guilty and its offending friend. Does not all this look as if the stone had begun to smite the ten toes of the kingdoms of the earth? And if it be so, how solemn is the moment we occupy! standing on the eve of startling events; hearing thundering through the sky the reverberation of falling thrones, and exploding dynasties —sharing, indeed, a momentary lull, but, like the lull at sea which the sailor knows between the hurricanes, only preparatory to the rending elements that are instantly and terribly to succeed. Need I tell you that almost all men who have looked abroad upon the subject are full of these thoughts? You cannot read the foreign communications of any of our newspapers without seeing it; you cannot converse with any man acquainted with the state of Europe who does not tremble, if he has any stake in it, for fear of the things that are coming upon the earth. There is an ancient German prophecy, of which you may have heard, that can be traced half a century back; I do not say it is inspiredfar from it-because I have no evidence that it is so-but it was certainly a strange guess for the Germans to make so long ago: "I would not be a king in 1848; I would not be a soldier in 1849; I would not be a grave-digger in 1850; I will be any thing you please in 1851." This may be but a rough conjecture;