fore it is impossible, that the reigns of Darius and Xerxes should constitute the period, which is characterized by the uniformly resistless pushings of the ram.

(2.) The limited conquests of Darius and Xerxes having been thus demonstrated, by the faithful voice of history, to have no connection with the pushings of the hieroglyphical ram; let us next turn to those of Cyrus, by which the allied kingdoms of Media and Persia were erected into the vast Medo-Persian Empire. : That the inquiry may be satisfactorily conducted, I cannot do better than again follow the plan of throwing history into annals.

In the year before Christ 559, Neriglissar king of Babylon made war upon Cyaxares king of Media, who called Cyrus out of Persia to his assistance. In the year 556, Cyrus beat the Babylonians in a pitched battle, and killed their king Neriglissar ; after which he ravaged the whole country to the very walls of Babylon. In the year 551, Belshazzar perceived the necessity of taking some decisive measures to repress the encroachments of his enemies: and, for that purpose, he went into Lydia to Croesus, who had always been his ally; where, by his assistance, he made a very formidable confederacy against the Medes and Persians, hiring a numerous army of Egyptians and Greeks and Thracians and Asiatics, and sending it with Cræsus at its head to invade Media. In the year 549, Cyrus gained a complete victory over Cræsus : and,

immediately afterward, he laid siege to Sardis, which soon fell into his hands. From this time, he never made a single pause, until he became the undisputed lord of Asia: nor did he meet with a single check throughout the whole of his lofty career of victory. In the years 548, 547, 546, and 545, he brought all the lesser Asia under his dominion. In the years 544 and 543, he subdued Syria, Palestine, and Arabia. In the year 541, he reduced the whole of. upper Asia. In the years 539 and 538, he took Babylon, and overthrew the Babylonian Empire. In the year 529, he died, according to the rational account of Xenophon and the Persian historians, full of years and glory, surrounded by his friends and in the capital of the great Empire which he had erected for the idle figment of his destruction by the Scythians scarcely merits a serious confutation. And, in the years 526 and 525, his son Cambyses or Lohrasp brought to a close the never stopped career of the ram by the invasion and conquest of Egypt.

Here we have a series of conquests, which in every respect accords with the pushing of the ram as beheld by Daniel in his hieroglyphical vision. The conquests are those made by Cyrus: to which, we may even naturally conclude, that a vision, seen in the year before Christ 553, will refer, rather than to those of Darius and Xerxes; both because they are prior in point of time, and because they are infinitely superior in point of importance. These conquests were made, in the precise direction

marked out by the prophecy : for, if we reckon from the military station of the ram in Elam, the Medo-Persians conquered Syria and Palestine toward the west ; the lesser Asia and the upper Asia, toward the north ; and Babylonia and Arabia and Egypt, toward the south'. Nor was the period of such conquests a mingled period of alternate success and disaster: in strict accordance with the prediction, the progress of the ram under Cyrus was a progress of uninterrupted triumph; no beasts could stand before him, neither could any Power deliver out of his hand; but he did strictly according to his will, and he became great. Hence, I think, there cannot be a doubt, that the conquests of Cyrus, with the supplemental conquest of Egypt by his son Cambyses, are the conquests of the ram alluded to in the prophecy.

3. The settling of this point is a matter of the greater importance, because it affects, at least negatively, the right calculation of the numerical period connected with the vision.

Those writers, who contend that the conquests of Darius-Hystaspis and his successor Xerxes are meant by the pushings of the ram, take occasion thence to compute the 2300 prophetic days from the commencement of those conquests. But it has

' It is not unworthy of note, as a matter which distinctly shuts out the conquests of Darius from the contemplation of the prophecy, that the chief conquest of that prince, the subjugation of a part of India, was made toward the east; a geographical direction, totally unspecified in the vision.