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world. Going forth in its life-giving, all-penetrating, alltransforming virtue, it moulds the institutions and affairs. of men to its own blessed character, making " God's will to be done on earth even as it is done in heaven."

Having thus, at considerable length, examined and compared these celebrated visions of the kingdom of Christ, I would appeal to the impartial judgment of the reader, whether they do not confirm and illustrate all that I have said of the time and the nature of Christ's kingdom-that it was set up on his ascension to the right Hand of power, or, as Daniel expresses it, "in the days" of the fourth or Roman kingdom;* that the difference between the "two states" of the kingdom-before the millennium and during that period is a difference merely of prosperity and extent -the difference between the presence and the removal of certain gigantic obstructions to its progress and supremacy in the world, and the removal of which, at the appointed time, will be attended with no change of constitution, form, or dispensation, but will merely set free its latent energies, and make way for the development of its internal resources to the benediction of a miserable world? As the birth of a man, all puny though he then be, is the manifestation of his life in its primary sense," and the manhood to which he ultimately attains is but the same life developed and matured; so the millennial state of the kingdom of Christ will be but the full expansion and bright development) the unrestrained and most benign rule of a kingdom, the Sovereign of which is already on his throne-the statutes of which are already proclaimed-the foundations of which

* "He that shall here expound in the days,' to mean 'after the days,' shall give me leave not to believe him, unless also he can persuade me that the Stone which smote the image was hewed out of the mountain after the image was dashed in pieces and vanished."-MEDE, p. 745.

In diebus regum illorum-non posteaquam deleti erunt. (BENG. in Apoc. xi. 15.)

are already laid-and the conquests of which are proceeding a pace. The little leaven may leaven the whole lump of humanity; the grain of mustard seed may grow to be a tree sufficient to overshadow the whole earth; but the mass is the same, and the tree is the same, at every stage. The whole is there from the first. Not a new element is added. Expansion and development, growth and maturity, are all the difference.

3. I had nearly omitted to notice an important particular in Daniel's vision, intimating the gradual nature of the destruction which is to come upon the Papal antichrist. "And the judgment (says the prophet) shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it UNTO THE END." (Ch. vii. 26.) When one reads of the Stone "smiting the image, and breaking it to pieces," and of the beast "being slain and his body destroyed and given to the burning flame;" and when this is compared with the words of Paul, that "the Lord shall consume" this power by the spirit of his mouth, and destroy him with the brightness of his coming" (2 Thess. ii. 8)—he is apt to think of some single act of vengeance-some one act of destructive violence that will cause the instantaneous extinction of the hated power. This may seem to be confirmed if we take "the Stone" to mean not the kingdom of Christ, but Christ himself. That, however will not stand. I admit that able divines have adopted it; but the sacred text is a better interpreter of itself than all commentators, and it informs us that "the Stone" denotes the kingdom of Christ. "In the days of these kings (or kingdoms) shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall (that is the kingdom shall) break in pieces and consume (P) all these kingdoms, and itself (x) shall stand for ever." (Dan. ii. 44.)*

* Prebendary Louth says "The Jews unanimously agree that by the

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Now, the kingdom of Christ not being "of this world," and so not "bearing the sword," does not "break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms" in any such pitched battle as the armies of men contend for the mastery in, and such as many are wont to represent "the battle of that great day of God Almighty" at "Armageddon." I believe in no such way of deciding the question between Christ and antichrist-between "the kingdom which the God of heaven has set up," and "all these kingdoms" which it is to "consume and destroy." Believing that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal," but (just for that reason)

mighty to the pulling down of strongholds," I believe "the warfare itself to be not carnal. There may be much carnal warfare in connexion with it :-I do not deny that. But the conflict, as I have before remarked, is of another kind. And the apocalyptic description of Christ coming out of heaven on a war-horse, magnificently caparisoned-attended by armies of celestial horsemen—to fight the battle against "the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies, gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse and against his army," with the invocation addressed to "all the fowls that fly in the midst of Stone is here meant the Messiah." But by this he does not mean his person as distinguished from his kingdom; for Lowth adduces this testimony in support of his own application of the Stone to the kingdom o. Christ. All he means is, that the Jews agree with the Christians in the Messianic application of this prediction.

The fathers were fond of illustrating the miraculous generation of Christ by the Stone's being "cut out of the mountain without hands;" and thus the application of the words to Christ seem to have gained a footing. (The application of Ezek. xliv. 2 to the same circumstance is scarcely so respectable.) The true but simple sense of the Stone's being "cut out of the mountain without hands," is given in the verse above quoted. "In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom," as contrasted with the frail and perishable, because carthly, kingdoms set up by men-" a kingdom which shall not be left to other people," &c.

heaven to come and sup upon the flesh of kings, captains, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and of all men, free and bond, small and great" (Rev. xix. 11, &c.)-this symbolical description of the conflict that is to issue in the final destruction of antichrist and all his party, does not lead me the more to expect a "carnal warfare," but just the reverse If this view of the conflict be correct, we shall be the less surprised to learn that the final issue is to be gradual rather than immediate-the result of many blows rather than of one. A succession of weakening defeats and wasting visitations, the failure of the very schemes from which the enemies of Christ's kingdom expected the greatest success, and providential manifestations of Heaven's wrath against them—such "untoward events" on the one side; and on the other, a succession of quickenings, enlargements, and triumphs-Christ's cause growing in strength, and his friends "waxing much more confident by the very bonds" which oppress them-such a species of antagonism we may figure to ourselves as consonant to the nature of the parties: such a march of the children of light into the territories of darkness would be worthy of Him who delights to "spoil the Egyptians." It may be a protracted, complicated, and sometimes imperceptible process of "consumption and destruction" that is going on, but one delights to think how the sapping and mining process may be slowly but surely advancing, and "the daughter of Babylon" be

near to destruction," at the very time when "she saith in her heart, I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see

* It is worthy of notice that in all the three places which describe the destruction of antichrist, two terms are employed :

"It shall break in pieces and consume (, make an end of) all these kingdoms." (Dan. ii. 44.)

"The judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy (aina ) it unto the end. (Dan. vii. 26.)

no sorrow." (Rev. xviii. 7.) Infinite complications there may be in the plot; at times the enemies shall make themselves sure of victory, and prepare for the celebration of it. But "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at them; the Lord shall have them in derision." It is his way to take time to all his great works. "One day is with Him as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." It seems, indeed, to be a law of the moral kingdom, that all the great powers-civil and ecclesiastical, of light and of darkness-that have borne sway among men, shall both rise and fall by degrees. So was it with the mighty monarchies that have overshadowed the world. has it been with the kingdom of the false prophet. From the first risings of ambition among Christ's ministers, to the time when all Christendom trembled at the grim tyrant of the seven hills-how slow has been the progress! For three hundred years-from the time when that dark, and withering, and accursed power seemed to get its death-blow at the glorious Reformation, until now-how often has the tide, to human appearance at least, rolled back, and how plausibly has it been asserted that not an inch of solid ground has since that day been gained! Astounding, indeed, are the events of our day. Scarce a year has elapsed since the right arm of the Papacy was paralysed by a revolution, from the effects of which it struggles to recover itself, though as yet with but partial success-I allude, of course, to Austria. The temporal power of the Pope, after being swept away by his own subjects, and suffering a glorious eclipse, has been re-established in a way which has "Whom the Lord shall consume (aveλei) with the Spirit of his mouth, and destroy (karapynoec) with the brightness of his coming." (2 Thess. ii. 8.)

The gradual nature of the destruction of antichrist-the successive steps by which its extermination is to be effected-seems clearly to be thus denoted.