is necessarily the same as "the fourth kingdom" in the imagevision of Nebuchadnezzar, which is described in the same terms, "strong as iron :" its ten horns are typified by the tentoed kingdoms symbolised in the feet of the image. And as it is described as being "diverse" from the other beasts," we may conclude that it refers to the constitution of the fourth kingdom, which is said in its ten-fold division to have been composed partly of "potter's clay and part of iron." Hence Jerome, writing about half a century before the prophecy was fulfilled in the breaking up of the Roman empire, a.d. 476,

says

"The fourth kingdom, which clearly belongs to the Romans, is of iron, that breaks to pieces and subdues all things. But the feet and toes of the image are in part iron, and in part clay, fictiles, as at this time is manifestly proved. For as in the beginning there was nothing stronger and harder than the Roman empire, so in the end of things there is nothing weaker; for, both in civil wars and in wars with foreign nations, we are reduced to need the help of barbarians like them. But at the end of all these four kingdoms, the gold, the silver, the brass, and the iron, there is a Stone, the Lord and Saviour, 'broken off without hands;' that is to say, without human intercourse and seed, proceeding from a Virgin's womb, and having broken to pieces all kingdoms, is become a great mountain, and has filled all the earth. This stone the Jews and wicked Porphery [a noted infidel] erroneously refer to the people of Israel, whom they will have to be the most mighty of all peoples, at the end of the world, and destined to break kingdoms, and to reign for ever.' 118

up all

The ten lesser kingdoms into which the western portion of the Roman empire was broken up towards the close of the fourth century, are the same as the "ten horns" which sprang from the head of the fourth beast. Secular historians as well as prophetic writers have alike borne testimony to the fact, that after the Roman empire had been broken up by the invasion of the Goths and Vandals, it eventually became divided into ten minor kingdoms. Machiavelli and Gibbon are examples of the first class, as Sir Isaac Newton and the late E. B. Elliott, author of the Hora Apocalypticæ, perhaps the most valuable work on prophecy ever given to the Church of Christ, of the

8 Jerome, Comment, in Dan. ii. 31, 45.

second. In the course of 150 years after the overthrow of Romulus Augustus, A.D. 476, the following ten kingdoms are to be found on the platform of the Western Roman empire.

1. The Anglo-Saxons.

2. The Franks.

3. The Allemans.

4. The Burgundians.

5. The Ostrogoths.

6. The Visigoths.

7. The Suevi.

8. The Vandals.

9. The Bavarians. 10. The Lombards.9

Before proceeding to show how these ten kingdoms were the precursors of another kingdom "diverse" from the rest, it may be well to sum up some of the historic facts respecting the treading down of Jerusalem by different Gentile nations since the Roman invasion, and the scattering of the Jewish race. throughout the world, in accordance with our Lord's prophecy.—

"There shall be great distress in the land (of Canaan): and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

2

After the revolt of the Jews against the Roman power in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, when another of our Lord's predictions seems to have been fulfilled in the person of the impostor Bar-cochab, "the son of a star," to whom allusion has already been made, as Christ told the persecuting and unbelieving Jews who sought to slay Him, "I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in in his own name, him ye will receive." Hadrian, who had previously visited the ruins of Jerusalem, as Epiphanius informs us, 47 years after its destruction by Titus, i.e., A.D. 117, and decided on rebuilding the city, proceeded to put his design into execution, though some authors assert that he had commenced it before the rebellion of Bar-cochab, and that the Romans besieged Jerusalem a second time, just as there were two sieges

9 Elliott's Hora Apocalypticæ, part iv., ch. iv., § 2.

1 St. Luke xxi. 23, 24. 2 See pp. 29, 32.

4 Epiphanius, De Mens. et Pond., c. xiv.

3 St. John v. 43.

5 Eusebius, Demons. Evang. ii., c. 38; Chrysostom, Orat V. Adver. Judæos ; Appian de Bell. Syr. 1119, Edit. Steph.

of Babylon by Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes within a few years of each other, and again razed it to the ground. Some of the Jewish writers affirm that more than double the amount of the children of Israel were slain in this revolt than came with Moses out of Egypt, and that their sufferings under Nebuchadnezzar and Titus were not so great as what they endured under Hadrian. Then the emperor completed his design. He rebuilt the city, which he called after his own name, and settled in it a large colony of Roman citizens, erected a temple to Venus, and ordered the statue of a hog in marble to be set up over the gate that opened towards Bethlehem. And having dispersed the remnant of the wretched Jews to the confines of the then known world, he published an edict strictly forbidding any one of that nation upon pain of death to enter the city, or so much as to gaze upon it from a distance."

Jerusalem remained a heathen city under its new name of ELIA CAPITOLINA, till the time of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, at the beginning of the fourth century; but so little was the place known to the heathen, that it is on record when one of the martyrs of Palestine, who suffered in the sixth persecution under the Emperor Maximin, A.D. 235, was asked of what country he was, and answered, "Jerusalem," neither the governor of the province or any of his assistants could understand what city he meant, or where that city stood.

In Constantine's time, however, after his fatal attempt to amalgamate Christianity with effete Paganism, Jerusalem began to resume its ancient name, and something of its ancient splendour. The emperor enlarged and adorned it with so many stately edifices and churches, that Eusebius, with the spirit more of a courtier than of a faithful Christian bishop, hinted that the city might now be considered as the new Jerusalem foretold by the prophets. The revived feeling for Jerusalem was much enhanced by the legend of the Empress

6 Auctor libri Juchasin, quoted by Mede, lib. iii., p. 440.

7 Euseb., Hist. Eccles. iv., c. 6, states this on "the authority of Aristo of Pella."

Helena finding the cross on which the Saviour was supposed to have hung when He paid the penalty of our transgressions. History relates that the mother of the Emperor Constantine, said by some to have been of English birth, when nearly eighty years of age, undertook a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, A.D. 327, in the hope of discovering the cross on which the "Lamb of God" was sacrificed, and of which nothing had been known or heard for nearly 300 years. The Empress Helena's zeal, under the guidance of a superstitious priesthood, was skilfully directed to the supposed place where the Lord had been buried. A vision is said to have disclosed the place of His sepulchre, and wonderful to relate, on digging at the spot, exactly three crosses were found to have been buried close beside it. The difficulty was to decide which was the true cross of Christ. For this emergency the priests had carefully prepared. The body of a dead man was laid upon each. With two of the crosses no effect was produced, but on touching the third the corpse was instantly restored to life. !!! Thus what has life.!!! been called "the true cross was discovered, and so enormous has been the growth of this pretended relic, that not only almost every Roman Cathedral, and many of the great ones of the earth, possess a fragment, but it has been computed that if all the pieces of wood claiming to be portions of the "true cross," which Helena discovered at Jerusalem three centuries after the crucifixion, were collected together, there would be sufficient to build one of the largest of the ships of the line, or as they were familiarly termed before the invention of iron ships, one of the wooden walls of old England. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing within a century after this dis

دو

When the famous Complutensian edition of the Old Testament, prepared by Cardinal Ximenes, Archbishop of Toledo, who died shortly before the Bull of Pope Leo X., authorizing its publication, was issued March 22, 1520, it was found that the Latin Vulgate version occupied the place of honour in the central column, with the original Hebrew on the one side and the Greek LXX. on the other; which arrangement the editors attempted to justify by comparing it in the preface to the position of "Christ crucified between two thieves-the unbelieving Synagogue of the Jews, and the schismatical Greek Church." ! ! !

covery of the empress, declares that "the whole earth was filled with this sacred wood;" and he compares its wonderful and fictitious increase in size and vegetation to miraculous interposition on the part of Almighty God. And Bower, in his History of the Popes, remarks concerning every single fragment of the cross thus discovered, that as they are all supposed to have touched the body of Christ, they are all worshipped with Divine worship." 1

At the time of this alleged discovery of the true cross, the Jews, who abhorred the Christian religion as much as, or possibly still more than, the religion of the heathen, assembled in large numbers, with the hope of recovering their idolized city of Jerusalem, and of rebuilding their glorious Temple; but the emperor sternly repressed this vain attempt of man to alter the irreversible decrees of God; and so, after punishing these wretched rebels by ordering their ears to be cut off, and their bodies to be branded, he scattered them throughout the empire as so many fugitives and slaves. 2

The laws of Constantine were very severe upon the despised race of Israel, and were carried out with great rigour until the accession of his nephew Julian, commonly called "the Apostate," A.D. 361, who patronized the Jews, not on account of his liking their religion, but on account of his bitter hatred to Christianity, and his determination to destroy it as far as he could. Hence his vain attempt to render nugatory our Lord's prophecy that "Jerusalem would be trodden down of the Gentiles," by restoring the Jews to the land of their fathers. For this purpose he addressed their leaders, expressing his regret for their former sufferings, assuring them of his protection; and that if he was successful in the Persian war then commencing, he would rebuild the holy city of Jerusalem, restore them to their habitations, and join with them in worshipping the Supreme Being of the universe on the principle expressed by one of our own poets :

1 Bower's History of the Popes, vol. ii., p. 539.

2 Chrysostom, Orat, V. Adver, Jud., § 11; and Orat. VI., § 2.