BRIEFS 
 
 ON 
 
 PROPHETIC THEMES 
 
 BY A MEMBER OF THE BOSTON BAR. 
 
 " lietiini for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The peo- 
 ple of thy holiness have possessed it but a little while : our adversaries have 
 trodden down thy sanctuary. We are thine : thou never barest rule over 
 them ; they were not called by thy name."— Isaiah Ixiii. 17—19. 
 
 " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her. that her warfare is 
 accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned : for she hath received of the Lord's 
 hand double for all her sins."- Isaiah xl. 2. 
 
 BS649 
 ,J5L85 
 
 BOSTON: 
 P, BUTTON & COMPANY 
 IW YORK : HURD & HOUGHTON. 
 
 1864. 
 
.vTS L85 
 
/t'UA' 
 
 /yiA^ 
 
 ix<>*>^^=^ 
 
 ;./^s-^ K 
 
BRIEFS 
 
 ON 
 
 PROPHETIC THEMES 
 
 BY A MEMBER OF THE BOSTON BAR. 
 
 / - ^^ 
 
 " Return for thy servants' sake, the tribes of thine inheritance. The peo- 
 ple of thy hohness have possessed it but a little while : our adversaries have 
 trodden down thy sanctuary. We are thine : thou never barest rule over 
 them ; they were not called by thy name."— Isaiah Ixiii. 17—19. 
 
 " Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is 
 accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned : for she hath received of the Lord's 
 hand double for all her sins."— Isaiah xl. 2. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 E. P. BUTTON i& COMPANY. 
 
 NEW YORK : HURD & HOUGHTON. 
 
 1864. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 
 By E. P. Button & Co., 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 PRINTKD BY AUG. A. KINGMAN, 
 
 116, Washington Street. 
 
I inscribe these pages to my children, too young as yet 
 to fully apprehend their meaning, in the hope that, in after 
 life, their appeal, in all moral issues, some of which are 
 herein indicated, may be, ever and only, to the Word and 
 providence of their heavenly Father, and to the guidance of 
 his Holy Spirit. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 We were led to write the following pages by a perusal of 
 some of the writings of Doctors S. P. Tregelles and B. W. 
 Newton, of Plymouth, England. Some of their views, though 
 harmonizing with views we had previously entertained, were 
 new to us. These, upon consideration, we have adopted, and 
 now reproduce. Other views, as well as our method of treat- 
 ment, are our own, for which these most learned and estima- 
 ble Bible scholars, to whom we have been so deeply indebted, 
 
 can, in no sense, be held responsible. 
 
 The Author. 
 Boston, November, 1864. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Freface. 4 
 
 The Prophetic Earth of Daniel and the Revelation. 
 Scripture symbols of the rise, decline, and fall, of the 
 four great Gentile Powers 9 
 
 The Literal Babylon of Prophecy. Its final destruction 
 
 co-incident with the future restoration of Israel. . . 22 
 
 The Symbolic Babylon of Prophecy. Its composite 
 character, including, not Romanism only, but all forms 
 of false religion and infidelity 38 
 
 The Antichrist of Prophecy. The restoration of the Jews 
 in unbelief, and their subsequent persecution by Anti- 
 christ ,58 
 
 Israel and Jerusalem of Prophecy. God's covenants 
 
 concerning them, and their final exaltation. . , 80 
 
 Appendix. Extracts froi:^ Colonel Chesney's Report, etc. 105 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROPHETIC EARTH OF DANIEL AND THE 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Dating from the palmiest hours of Babylouian great- 
 ness, under Nebuchadnezzar, and the co-incident decline 
 and fall of the Jewish Theocracy, it will not be denied 
 that the four great empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece 
 and Rome have figured more conspicuously than any 
 other Gentile powers in the world's history ; nor that 
 they have a distinctly recognized historic existence in the 
 prophetic Scriptures ; nor, whatever allusions may therein 
 be made to other powers, that such allusions are merely 
 incidental, revealing no specific outline, nor any approach 
 to an outline, of their history, as of the history of the four 
 empires thus made the special subjects of prophetic men- 
 tion. The reasons of this election are hidden in the 
 counsels of the Divine Mind. The fact that such dis- 
 crimination exists, that such an election is actually made, 
 is alone pertinent to our present purpose. 
 
 The dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and the visions of 
 Daniel embrace the whole period of Gentile civilization, 
 from the conquest, by Nebuchadnezzar, of the two tribes 
 of Judah and Benjamin — the ten revolted tribes of Is- 
 rael having, long before, been lost in their still mysterious 
 2 
 
10 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 and impenetrable captivity — down to the closwg scenes 
 of the present dispensation. These dreams and visions, 
 interpreted, the former by Daniel, and the latter by direct 
 angelic agency, together Avith the visions of the apostle of 
 Patmos, as recorded in the Revelation (which latter vis- 
 ions unveil those closing scenes, with respect to the specific 
 instrumentalities by Avhich they will be accomplished), 
 have a marked geographical import, and relate, exclu- 
 sively, to those portions of the earth which were con- 
 tained within the territorial limits of these four empires, 
 more especially the Roman, as embracing within its 
 boundaries a larger portion of the earth's surface than 
 either of its predecessors, and as being the subject of 
 more minute and extended prophetic detail. 
 
 Wherefore it is that, in a distinctive sense, we term the 
 territory thus incorporated, the prophetic earth. 
 
 This distinctive appellation will be found to be fully 
 justified upon careful reference to the two great apocalyp- 
 tic writers of the Old and New Testaments, the book of 
 Daniel being not less the Apocalypse of the Old Testa- 
 ment, than the book of the Revelation the Apocalypse of 
 the New, the former forecasting the whole future of the 
 four empires, the latter, in its relation to the closing scenes 
 of this dispensation, confining itself chiefly to the Roman. 
 Hence we style the prophetic earth, as thus indicated, 
 the prophetic earth of Daniel and the Revelation. 
 
 The second chapter of Daniel, under the symbol of an 
 inanimate image, presents an outline of the secular his- 
 tory of these empires, in respect to both the intrinsic and 
 comparative value of governmental power, as severally 
 and successively exercised by them. The seventh chapter, 
 under the symbol of four fierce and devouring beasts. 
 
THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 11 
 
 presents an outline of their several histories, in respect to 
 the moral quality of the practical use and exercise of that 
 power. Neither chapter, however, gives any account of 
 their territorial or chronological boundaries. These are 
 clearly determinable from profane history. The dignity 
 of the inspired record stoops not thus to justify itself, or 
 to confirm its never-to-be-questioned verity. 
 
 The wondrous Image of Daniel ii. 31 — 46, glorious 
 and terrible, looking, as with lordly supremacy, down the 
 dim vista of the coming ages, to the very end of the 
 present Gentile dispensation, comprehends, with careful 
 precision, the prophetic earth as we have defined it, but 
 has no direct, nor any thing more than a merely influen- 
 tial, application to other regions of the earth. This dis- 
 tinction it is of great importance to note. 
 
 The prophet Daniel, in revealing and interpreting to 
 Nebuchadnezzar the dream of the Image, assured him 
 that his kingdom, or the empire of Babylon, was its 
 head. " Thou art this head of gold." Its head was 
 not of silver, or of brass, or of iron, or of gold even 
 of any uncertain quality. " The Image's head was 
 of fine gold." Now, therefore, as gold is the most 
 precious of metals, and as fineness is the term used to 
 designate its highest value, it follows that the golden 
 head of the Image must be a symbol, in some special 
 and distinctive sense, be that sense what it may, of 
 governmental power ^ in, intrinsically, its most precious 
 form. 
 
 But what is the special sense thus indicated ? To an- 
 swer this question, we need but to inquire, wdiat single 
 and surpassing attribute, if any, of governmental power, 
 most distinguished the empire of Babylon, and contrib- 
 
12 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 uted most largely to make it preeminent over the three 
 empires that succeeded it ? To this inquiry but one an- 
 swer can be given, Avhich is, that no attribute so distin- 
 guished either its own exaltation, or its preeminence 
 over its successors, as its absolute autocracy and roy- 
 alty of poAver. The prophet said to Nebuchadnezzar ; 
 " Thou, O king, art a king of kings, for the God of 
 heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, 
 and glory ; and wheresoever the children of men dwell, 
 the beasts of the field, and the fowls of heaven, hath 
 he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over 
 them all." * So also in Jeremiah xxvii. 5, 6 : " Thus 
 saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel ; Thus shall ye 
 say unto your masters ; I have made the earth, the man 
 and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great 
 power and by my outstretched arm, and have given it 
 unto whom it seemed meet unto me. And now I have 
 given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar 
 the king of Babylon, my servant ; and the beasts of the 
 field have I given him also to serve him." 
 
 Truly, a grant of power scarcely less absolute and un- 
 
 * Dr. Trcgelles, in commenting upon this passage, has well observed; 
 " These words do not imply that Nebuchadnezzar actually held and ex- 
 ercised this rule over every part of the inhabited earth; but rather that, 
 so far as God was concerned, all was given into his hand; so that 
 he was not limited as to the power w'lich he might obtain, in whatever 
 direction he might turn himself as conqueror ; the only earthly bound to 
 his empire was his own ambition." Tregelles' Daniel, p. 7. 
 
 So also Newton ; " This gift was granted to Nebuchadnezzar in con- 
 sequence of his being part" of the Image, and was not dependent upon 
 his power being " golden " in character. The endowment of all the suc- 
 cessive empires was similar to his. Hence their assumption of names 
 or expressions implying universality of dominion ; and their title to do 
 this is sanctioned in Scripture. The Romans were accustomed to call 
 their empire " Orbis Terrarum," and in Scripture the corresponding ex- 
 Tpression 71 uaa )^ uL>c uiufrii is usied. " There went out a decree from 
 Caesar Augustus that the zchole world {naou /, oly.orni%r^) should be 
 taxed." Thus also Cyrus says, " the God of Heaven hath given me all 
 the kingdoms of the earth." Ezra i. 2. 
 
THE rROPIIETIC EARTH. 13 
 
 limited in its terms than that conferred upon Adam before 
 his tall. With how sublime a title, with what glorious 
 privileges, Gentile civilization set forth upon its career ! 
 How deserved its predicted doom, if recreant to so god- 
 like a trust ! 
 
 The head of gold could not have been a symbol of this 
 empire, in respect to the extent of its territorial domin- 
 ion, for, in this respect, it was inferior to each of the 
 empires symbolised by silver, and brass, and iron, that 
 succeeded it. To what, therefore, can the " fine gold " 
 refer, but to governmental power in the supremest form 
 in which it was ever conferred upon a Gentile king? 
 
 Assuming, then — with all history, sacred and profane, 
 for our warrant — that the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, 
 as thus symbolised, was sovereign power in its most 
 unrestrained, its most autocratic, its most nearly theo- 
 cratic, sense, the symbol further teaches that this form 
 of power is, in itself, not only precious, but the most 
 precious, and that it is, or can be, evil, and was evil 
 in the case of Nebuchadnezzar, in its misuse or mal- 
 administration only. If it were evil in itself, it would 
 not have been conferred upon Nebuchadnezzar, as we 
 have seen that it was, by the direct gift of the Almighty, 
 nor could it be conferred by the Almighty, as we know 
 that it will be, upon Him, of whom, in prophetic vision, it 
 is said, " The sovereignty of the Avorld has become the 
 sovereignty of our God and of his Christ, and He shall 
 reign for ever and ever." 
 
 " After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to 
 thee" — " the breast and arms of silver." This kingdom 
 is admitted, by the common consent of all expositors, to 
 be the immediate successor of the Babylonian, to wit, the 
 
14 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 Medo-Persian. The arms have been supposed to repre- 
 sent, the one Media, and the other Persia. This seems 
 probable enough, but is not material to our purpose. 
 This empire was not, like its predecessor, an absolute 
 monarchy, but a limited sovereignty. It was, as appears 
 both from Scripture and profane history, an aristocratic 
 monarchy^ the nobles, or men of birth, being, not the sup- 
 porters only, but, in an important sense, controllers of the 
 crown, and in all respects, save official rank, its equals. 
 The extent of their influence is shown in the decree which 
 consi":ned Daniel to the den of lions. Not so did Nebu- 
 chadnezzar rule. In his golden power, he would have 
 consigned such counsellors to the den themselves, rather 
 than forego the exercise of his royal Avill, for " whom 
 he Avould he slew, and whom he would he kept alive." 
 So, also, the Persian monarch, Ahasuerus (in the book of 
 Esther), and his princes acted together^ and the king could 
 not undo what they had jointly decreed concerning Queen 
 Yashti. And in Ezra vii. 14, we find authority given to 
 that servant of God /ro?>i the king and his seven counsellors. 
 All this shows, not a king acting in right of his royal 
 prerogative, but controlled by counsellors, without ivhose 
 advice and consent he could not act. Power was beginning 
 to lose its golden excellence, precisely as the metals sym- 
 bolising it were beginning to lessen, not in value only, but, 
 it will be noticed, in specific gravity also, thus exhibiting 
 the reverse of stability as we descend the Image. Cir- 
 cumstances arose, with which the depreciated power of the 
 monarchs of Persia soon found itself unable to contend. 
 
 That silver Avas the symbol of both the intrinsic and 
 relative value of the Persian form of governmental power, 
 and not of the territorial extent of its dominion, is evi- 
 
THE rROrilETiC EARTH. 15 
 
 dent, because, in military prowess and extent of territorial 
 acquisition, it was not inferior to the Babylonian. On 
 the contrary, it subjugated, under Cyrus, regions (Asia 
 Minor, for example), which the monarchs of Chaldea 
 never reached, so that, in this respect, it was not only 
 not inferior, but far superior to its predecessor. And this 
 is the aspect under which the vision of the Image con- 
 tinually presents itself. It is a symbolic outline of the 
 history of the four great Gentile empires, in respect to 
 the character of their power. 
 
 Next succeeded the Greek or Greco-Macedonian em- 
 pire of Alexander — "the belly and thighs of hrass.^* 
 The identity of this symbol with this empire is admitted 
 without a question. Alexander, " the great scourge and 
 destroyer of Asia," but of superlative ambition (which 
 the elder Napoleon affected in vain), Avith his brazen- 
 coated legions, before the close of his brief reign, at 
 the early age of thirty-two years, had far exceeded both 
 the Persian and the Chaldean monarchs, alike in the celer- 
 ity of his conquests, and the territorial extent of his do- 
 minions. Elsewhere in Daniel he is represented under the 
 symbol of a " winged leopard." His conquests extended 
 across Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, to Affghanistan and 
 the Indus ; and he paused not, if we may credit tradi- 
 tion, until compelled to pause, weeping that he had no 
 more worlds to conquer. And yet the character of his 
 power is only worthy of being symbolised by brass, not a 
 precious metal, but a mere alloy. And when, upon his 
 death, his empire Avas divided between his four victorious 
 generals, whose proud, fierce spirits had been nursed 
 amidst the democracies of southern Greece, it is a fact, 
 most significant of the gradual depreciation of Gentile 
 
16 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 power, that, at Rome, an ounce of silver was equivalent, 
 according to Gibbon, to about seventy pounds' weight of 
 brass. 
 
 The Greco-Macedonian empire was a military oli- 
 garchy^ a still inferior grade of power. 
 
 Thus descending the Image, we reach, at last, the em- 
 pire of the Cffisars — "the legs of iron, the feet part of 
 iron and part of clay.'' This empire, in its subdivisions, 
 still, in the prophetic sense, exists, and Avill continue to 
 exist, until the number of its subdivisions, East and West 
 together, shall have reached its full complement, which it 
 has never reached as yet ; and until the present Gentile 
 dispensation shall terminate, upon the overthrow, by the 
 " stone cut out of the mountain without hands," of 
 their representative and united strength, before the walls 
 of Jerusalem. This empire, in its earlier develop- 
 ment under the Caesars, is represented by the symbol 
 of unmixed iron. Its completed development, that of the 
 ten sovereignties, European, Asiatic and African, into 
 which it will eventually be subdivided, is represented un- 
 der the symbol of iron mixed with " miry clay," referring, 
 unquestionably, to the mixed monarchical and popular, 
 or populo-monarchic, character of these ten sovereignties, 
 upon this eventual subdivision of the Roman empire, 
 formed to so large an extent already. 
 
 The term " miry," as applied to clay, is not less sig- 
 nificant of the relative value of the ten toes of the feet 
 of the Image, considered as a symbol of governmental 
 power, than is the term "fineness" of the relative value 
 of the head. A mournful picture, indeed, of the gradual 
 declension, both of the value and the stability of Gentile 
 power, a sad reversal of the flushed and giddy hopes of 
 
THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 17 
 
 our vaunted Gentile progress, and Gentile civilization ! 
 But is it, for that reason, any less the revealed word of 
 God? "SYe humbly submit that it is God's Word. How 
 can we any more doubt it, than we can doubt the verity of 
 Nebuchadnezzar's dream, or of Daniel's revelation and 
 interpretation of it? 
 
 History, sacred and profane, thus bears witness that the 
 dream, as interpreted by Daniel, has come to pass most 
 strictly and literally hitherto, not less so, indeed, than 
 the vision of the "great tree" in Daniel iv. which was 
 fulfilled in Nebuchadnezzar's lifetime. Why then doubt 
 that it will, any the less strictly and literally, continue to 
 come to pass to the very end? As to the divine inspira- 
 tion and authenticity of the prophet Daniel, our Saviour 
 himself attests it, with an endorsement of the most incon- 
 testable character. 
 
 Under the dominion of the Caesars, we reach the most 
 extended limits of the prophetic earth — of that portion 
 of the earth's territory symbolised by the Image — so that 
 as we proceed, Ave shall use the terms prophetic and Ro- 
 man earth in an interchangeable sense. The Roman 
 empire, or " orhis terrarum'^ of the Romans, not only, for 
 the most part, included, but, Avith only here and there an 
 exception, far exceeded the utmost boundaries of the 
 three preceding empires. We can call the countries in- 
 cluded in it all by name, Avhether in the language of 
 ancient or modern geography. We propose to shoAv, in 
 another chapter, that the Roman earth, divided yet united, 
 consisting of ten independent yet confederated kingdoms, 
 will be the special and restricted sphere of the dominion 
 of the last great monarch of the Gentiles, The Anti- 
 christ OF Prophecy. 
 3 
 
18 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 The seventh chapter of Daniel represents these four 
 great world powers in respect to the moral quality of 
 the practical use or exercise of their governmental power, 
 under the symbol, as we have already stated, of four fierce 
 and devouring beasts ; the Babylonian being represented 
 by the majestic fulness and preeminence of power of the 
 lion ; the Persian by the sullen fierceness and voracity 
 ("devouring much flesh") of the bear; the Greek by 
 the swiftness, and grace, and beauty, but subtilty and 
 malignity of the leopard ; the Roman by the stern, and 
 haughty, and crushing strength of a nameless, complica- 
 ted, ten-horned monster, of indescribable horror, " strong 
 exceedingly," who, in the "last days," under the symbol of 
 a " little horn," " exalting himself above all that is called 
 God or that is worshipped," and representing the consum- 
 mated glory of Gentile civilization, " shall stand up against 
 the Prince of princes," the Messiah of Israel, to receive 
 from Him his everlasting condemnation. 
 
 We question not ; on the contrary, we appreciate, and 
 confess ourselves by no means insensible to, the fascina- 
 tions, the bewildering allurements, the aesthetic refine- 
 ments, the magnificent attainments of science and of art, 
 the lofty material splendor, of that consummated Gentile 
 glory, which will seem as fair and desirable to the eye 
 and heart of unregenerate man, as the grapes of Sod- 
 om or clusters of Gomorrah, but which will not, for 
 that reason, in its general spirit, be any the less hostile to 
 God, or bear any the less the dark impress of Sodom, or 
 hasten with less accelerated speed to the same fearful 
 doom. If it leans on Sodom, with Sodom it must fall. 
 
 Witness, finally, the crisis of the Image, the tragical 
 conclusion of Gentile ascendancy : 
 
THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 19 
 
 "A stone was cut out without hands, which smote the 
 image upon its feet that were of iron and clay, and brake 
 them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, 
 the silver and the gold, broken to pieces together, and be- 
 came like the chalF of the summer threshing floor ; and 
 the wind carried them away, that no place was found for 
 them, and the stone that smote the image became a great 
 mountain, and filled the whole earth And i 
 
 m 
 
 the days of these kings [the ten kings, or sovereignties, 
 symbolised by the ten toes of the feet of the image (the 
 two feet referring, not improbably, to the Eastern and 
 Western divisions of the Roman empire), symbolised 
 also, by the ten horns of the fourth beast, or Roman em- 
 pire — ' and the ten horns of this kingdom are the ten 
 kings that shall arise,' Dan. vii. 24] 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 break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, 
 and it shall stand forever. Forasmuch as thou sawest 
 that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, 
 and that it break in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, 
 the silver and the gold ; the great God hath made known 
 to the king what shall come to pass hereafter ; and the 
 dream is certain and the interpretation thereof sure." — 
 Daniel ii. 34, 35, 43—45. 
 
 Surely, if language is capable of interpreting its own 
 meaning, it is an act, not of peaceful and benignant bless- 
 ing, hut of xindictive and destroying judgment, that is here 
 described, not the gradual spread and diflusion of the gos- 
 pel of peace, but the quick, and sudden, and wrathful, 
 and utter destruction of the more than ever proud and 
 stately, but the final and more than ever godless. Babel 
 of Gentile power. " And whosoever shall fall upon tliis 
 
20 THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 
 
 stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it 
 will grind him to powder." 
 
 The "ancient people" of God, alone of all the na- 
 tions of the prophetic earth, will escape the destruction. 
 " In those days shall Juclah he saved, and Jerusalem 
 shall dwell safely." 
 
 " And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of 
 the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to 
 the people of the saints of the most High, whose king- 
 dom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall 
 serve and obey him." — Daniel vii. 27. 
 
 This verse, as we understand it, describes the glorious 
 sequel of these judicial scenes ; the expression, " saints 
 of the most High," referring to the saints, Jew and Gen- 
 tile, of the present dispensation in their thenceforward 
 risen glory, as inhabitants of the new or heavenly Je- 
 rusalem, ministering, as a "royal priesthood" to the 
 blessed inhabitants of earth during its millennial career ; 
 and the expression, "people of the saints of the most 
 High," referring to the restored and now forgiven Jew- 
 ish nation, as the leading nation of the earth during the 
 millennium, dispensing, from the overflowing fulness of 
 its blessings, to all other nations ; thus fulfilling the cove- 
 nant of God with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob — " and 
 in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." * 
 
 * Dr. Tregelles, in remarking upon this passage, has said ; " This ap- 
 pears to me to be a statement, informing us that a certain kingdom, not 
 co-extensive with that of the Son of Man, will be given to a certain na- 
 tion. Who then can this nation be ? Now, it is clear from many Scrip- 
 tures that Israel will, after they are set in grace, and their blindnesss 
 and consequent rejection are ended, be the head of the nations, and bear 
 rule over the earth. In chapter viii. 24, we find the expression ' the 
 mighty and the holy people,' or, more literally, ' people of the holy 
 ones,' or ' people of the saints,'— this Hebrew phrase answering pretty 
 accurately to the Chaldee used in the passage before us. Now as in 
 chapter viii, the Jews are the nation clearly denoted, so do I consider 
 that they are intended here." Tregelles' Daniel, p. 45. 
 
THE PROPHETIC EARTH. 21 
 
 Have not millennial writers been too much accus- 
 tomed to dissociate the restored Jewish Theocracy from 
 their conceptions of the millennial kingdom? 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LITERAL BABYLON OF PROPHECY. 
 
 ITS FINAL DESTRUCTION CO-INCIDENT WITH THE FUTURE 
 RESTORATION OF ISRAEL. 
 
 Perhaps no truth is more clearly revealed in prophetic 
 Scripture than the co-incidence of the restoration of both 
 families of the House of Israel, as one nation, to their 
 own land, and the final destruction and desolation of the 
 city and land of Babylon, as predicted by Isaiah and Jer- 
 emiah. When the feet of the " outcasts of Israel " and 
 of the " dispersed of Judah" shall stand again within the 
 borders of the " pleasant land," and within the " gates of 
 Jerusalem," then, but not till then, will re-united Israel 
 " take up this parable," and join in this acclaim, " How 
 hath the oppressor ceased — the golden city ceased!" 
 When the whole House of Israel, restored and undivided, 
 shall perform, like any other nation, all the functions of a 
 distinct, organized and recognized nationality in their own 
 land, then, but not till then, will the burden of Babylon, 
 which Isaiah and Jeremiah saw, be fulfilled in her 
 final overthrow. When peace revisits the walls and pros- 
 perity the palaces of Jerusalem, when the curse of the 
 Mosaic covenant is revoked, and the blessings of the 
 Abrahamic covenant are ushered in, then, but not till 
 then, will Babylon lie there upon the not distant plains of 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 23 
 
 Shinar, a sudden and utter wreck, the saddest wreck of 
 all, of Gentile evil greatness and Gentile evil glory. 
 
 " Out of the North there coineth up a nation against 
 her [Babylon] which shall make her land desolate, and 
 none shall dwell therein ; they shall remove, they shall 
 depart, both man and beast. In those days, and in 
 THAT TIME, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall 
 come, they and the children of Judah together, going and 
 weeping ; they shall go and seek the Lord their God. 
 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thither- 
 ward, saying, Come let us join ourselves to the Lord in a 
 perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.'* 
 
 " Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of 
 Israel : Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his 
 land, as I have punished the king of Assyria, and I will 
 bring Israel again to his habitation ; and he shall feed on 
 Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied on 
 Mount Ephraim and Gilead. In those day's, and in 
 THAT TIME, saitli the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be 
 sought for, and there shall be none ; and the sins of Ju- 
 dah, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon them 
 whom I reserve." — Jeremiah 1 : 1, 3, 4, 5, 18. 
 
 The co-incidence of the two events, thus so circum- 
 stantially set forth, is here affirmed by the God of Israel 
 Himself, in terms as explicit and direct as language is 
 capable of alFording. If the occurrence of two syn- 
 chronous events be not described in the above Scripture, 
 by what language could it be described ? If it will not 
 bear the construction we have placed upon it, what con- 
 struction would it bear? The Avords, " in THOSe days, 
 AND IN THAT TIME," occurring in both passages and Inking 
 both events together, as co-incident in point of time, are 
 
24 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 perfectly definite. They are neither figurative nor enig- 
 matic. 
 
 Now, if these events have not taken place in the past, 
 they must, as truly as God liveth, take place in the future. 
 This is no less true than that, take place when they will, 
 they will take place together, or so nearly together as 
 justly to be pronounced co-incident in the prophetic 
 Scriptures. 
 
 If, therefore, the two families of the House of Israel 
 have not, as yet, been jointly restored to their own land, 
 and forgiven and blest as an undivided nation therein, 
 according to the conditions and circumstances predicted 
 by Jeremiah, and their re-union sealed by a " perpetual 
 covenant" with the Lord, then cannot the city of Babylon 
 have been destroyed and the city and land of Babylon 
 have been desolated, according to the predictions cited. 
 It is this latter point, that more especially engages our 
 attention in the present chapter. 
 
 Their predicted restoration is clearly and unques- 
 tionably /i^ii^re. For when, since the revolt of the ten 
 tribes under Jeroboam, have the " children of Israel, 
 they and the children of Judah together," sought the 
 Lord and entered into a " perpetual covenant" with him? 
 Speculation was never more at a loss than at this very 
 day, as to who or where the ten tribes are. Nor, on the 
 other hand, was it ever less at a loss. No fact, in the 
 history of God's providence, has ever been wrapped in ob- 
 scurity more profound, more mysterious, more impenetra- 
 ble, than the identity, and abode or abodes, of the ten out- 
 cast tribes of Israel, from the beginning of their captivity 
 even until now. Human curiosity and speculation have 
 never been more completely baffled by the inscrutable pur- 
 
LITEEAL BABYLON. 25 
 
 poses of the Divine will. The concealment has been, and 
 still is, as profound and effectual on the one hand, as the 
 manifestation predicted by Jeremiah will be patent and 
 glorious on the other. There will be no mistaking the 
 event when it occurs, as there could be none, if it had 
 occurred already. 
 
 Earnest advocates are not wanting of theories that 
 traces of the lost tribes are to be discovered in Armenia, 
 Nestoria, Persia, and other regions of Asia. On the 
 other hand. Lord Kingsborough devoted forty years of a 
 most valuable life, and no inconsiderable portion of a 
 most princely fortune, to researches into Mexican antiqui- 
 ties, which tend to show that the ancient Aztecs and other 
 Indian tribes are their descendants. The Roman Catholic 
 and other European museums opened to him all the treas- 
 ures of their archives. The co-incidences adduced by 
 him, of many of their religious and social rites and cus- 
 toms with those of the ancient Hebrews, are most strik- 
 ing and impressive. His theory, though confused, is, 
 perhaps, the most plausible of all, but, after all, and like 
 all, it is a theory only. God, who unfolds his own coun- 
 sels at his own sovereign pleasure only, has never un- 
 locked that secret to mortal ken. 
 
 Wherefore if the " outcasts of Israel" have never yet, 
 hand in hand with the " dispersed of Judah," set their 
 faces Zionward, and been reestablished, forgiven and 
 blest as one nation in their own land, then also cannot 
 the co-incident and final destruction of Babylon, as de- 
 scribed by Jeremiah, have yet occurred. 
 
 The converse inference — namely, that the " dispersed 
 of Judah" never having been restored, so also the " out- 
 casts of Israel " can not have been — is equally legiti- 
 
26 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 mate, and equally conclusive of the futurity of the final 
 destruction of Babylon. 
 
 Again ; Christ assured the Jews that they should be 
 " trodden under foot of the Gentiles, until the times of 
 the Gentiles should be fulfilled." Now if the predictions 
 of Jeremiah, which we have quoted, concerning the resto- 
 ration of the Jews, have been fulfilled in the past, then also 
 must the " times of the Gentiles" have been fulfilled in 
 the past. But most clearly, the " times of the Gentiles" 
 are still unfulfilled. The Jews must therefore still be 
 trodden under foot, for they can not, at one and the same 
 time, be scattered and trodden under foot, and restored, 
 re-established, forgiven and blest, as a nation. Such a 
 supposition would be as illogical and absurd, as it would 
 be contrary to the plainest facts of history, and every 
 day's observation. 
 
 When the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled ; when that 
 promise of God to Israel is redeemed, "Behold, I will 
 take the children of Israel from among the Gentiles, 
 whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, 
 and bring them into their own land ;" and when that other 
 promise of God to Israel is also redeemed, "It shall 
 come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand 
 again the second time, to recover the remnant of his peo- 
 ple which shall be left from Assyria, and from Egypt, and 
 from Pathros, and from Gush, and from Elam, and from 
 Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the isles of the sea, 
 and he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall 
 assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the 
 dispersed of Judah [how wholly unfulfilled in the past !] 
 from the four corners of the earth ;" then it is that the 
 curse, which has hung so long and so heavily over the 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 27 
 
 devoted heads of this suffering but chosen people, will 
 be lifted ; then it is that they will be " settled after their 
 old estates," renationalized, forgiven and blest; then it 
 is, but not till then, that the city and land of Babylon will 
 be finally desolated, and the king of Babylon destroyed ; 
 then it is, but not till then, that the whole House of 
 Israel will, as predicted, " rule over her oppressors," and 
 take up her triumphal song, " How hath the oppressor 
 ceased — the golden city ceased !" The return of re-united 
 Israel and her triumphal reign over her oppressors will 
 be as literal, as conspicuous to the observation of the 
 whole earth, as have been her dispersion and her persecu- 
 tions. We do not see, with such plain declarations of 
 God before us, what principle of reasoning, or what 
 method of interpretation can, with scriptural safety, reach 
 an opposite conclusion. Deny the literal future of Israel, 
 as predicted by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and we are com- 
 pelled, in all logical fairness, to deny, not less, her literal 
 present and literal past, which would be absurd. 
 Observe further the following prediction of Isaiah : 
 " The Lord will have mercy upon Jacob, and will yet 
 choose Israel, and set them in their own land, and the 
 strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave 
 to the house of Jacob. And the peoples [the Gentile na- 
 tions] shall take them and bring them to their place ; and 
 the house of Israel shall possess them in the land of the 
 Lord, for servants and handmaids ; and they shall rule 
 over their oppressors. And it shall come to pass, in the 
 DAY [not before] that the Lord shall give thee rest from 
 thy sorrow, and thy fear, and from the hard bondage 
 wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up 
 this parable against the king of Babylon, and say, How 
 
28 * LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 hath the oppressor ceased — the golden city ceased ! " — 
 Isaiah xiv. 1 — 4. 
 
 When have Israel been carried back to their place by 
 the Gentile nations? When have they taken them cap- 
 tives whose captives they were ? When have they had 
 rest from their sorrow, and their fear, and the hard bon- 
 dage wherein they have been made to serve, and are 
 serving still ? When have they ruled over their oppres- 
 sors ? But a remnant only of the two tribes of Judah 
 and Benjamin were restored by Cyrus at the close of the 
 Babylonian captivity, and instead of ruling over him, 
 they were ruled over by him, while the whole house of 
 Jacob, and a portion of the house of Judah (comprehend- 
 ing always the tribe of Benjamin) remained dispersed 
 among the Gentiles. And yet we are expressly assured 
 that all these events are either to precede or accompany 
 the final destruction of Babylon. 
 
 A recent writer has urged that the predictions of resto- 
 ration and blessing to Israel and the co-incident and final 
 destruction of Babylon have been fulfilled, because they 
 were uttered by Isaiah and Jeremiah antecedently to the 
 restoration from Babylon under Cyrus. But was the 
 nation, both branches of it, fully re-collected and finally 
 forgiven then? Have they suffered nothing for unfor- 
 given sins since? Have not the "outcasts of Israel" 
 remained outcast, and the "dispersed of Judah" dis- 
 persed since? Have they not been a "peeled nation," 
 terribly chastised of heaven, ever since? Has not that 
 added, that most terrible curse of all, self-invoked while 
 their hands were red with the blood of the murdered 
 Messiah, " His blood be on us and on our children," been 
 fulfilled with a terribleness with which no curse was ever 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 29 
 
 fulfilled before? Is it not fulfilling still? When, since 
 the return from Babylon of a portion only of two of the 
 twelve tribes, could the iniquity of Israel be sought for, 
 and there was none ; and the sins of Judah, and they 
 not be found? When has there been heard such violence 
 in her land, such wasting and destruction within her 
 borders, as since their return from the waters of 
 Babylon ? Then have not the predictions of these 
 prophets concerning Israel and Babylon been accom- 
 plished. Then hath not " Babylon, the glory of king- 
 doms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, become as 
 when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." * 
 
 So also the prophet Joel, describing the mustering of 
 the armies of the prophetic earth at Armageddon for the 
 final siege of Jerusalem, which will be co-incident in time 
 with the final destruction of Babylon by the hordes of 
 central and northern Asia, as will elsewhere be shown, 
 says : 
 
 " For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I 
 shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, 
 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down 
 into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them 
 there for my people, and for my heritage Israel, whom 
 they have scattered among the nations, and parted my 
 land." 
 
 * Some learned and excellent writers, such as Gumming, Seiss, and 
 many others, may object to our view, because <iur Lord assured His dis- 
 ciples that, at His second advent, He should come " as a thief," that is, 
 with the suddenness and unexpectedness of a thief, " in the night," '* as 
 a snare," " in an hour that ye think not," &c., and because, this indefi- 
 nite postponing of his coming robs it of its unexpectedness. Not at all. 
 The apostate nations of the prophetic earth, and the sleeping virgins of 
 His church, deceived by Antichrist's counterfeit millennium', will expect 
 Hira less even then, than now. The intermediate restoration of Babylon 
 and the delusive glories of her system will cause His coming to be, not 
 less, but all the more unexpected, all the more a snare. 
 
30 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 t 
 
 This passage fixes, most definitely, the precise period 
 of the final destruction of Babylon. 
 
 If, therefore, the captivity of Israel and Jerusalem has 
 not been "brought again," as we know it has not, then, 
 interpreting Isaiah, Jeremiah and Joel together, or, 
 rather, allowing them to interpret one another, it is alto- 
 gether safe to say that Babylon has not, as yet, been 
 visited with her final doom. 
 
 But our argument rests not here. It would be incom- 
 plete, if we failed to notice the harmony of history with 
 prophecy. Even if the past destruction of Babylon and the 
 present condition of her ruins appeared to answer to the 
 maledictions of prophecy, still it is none the less certain 
 that their final fulfillment must be future, so long as the 
 two families of the House of Israel remain outcast, their 
 organized nationality unrestored, and their sins unfor- 
 given. But they do not so answer, or so appear to answer. 
 
 What are these maledictions, and how far, if at all, 
 have they been fulfilled? 
 
 " Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilder- 
 ness, a land wherein no man dwelleth, neither doth any 
 son of man pass thereby." — Jeremiah li. 43. 
 
 " Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be 
 inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate." — Jeremiah 1 ; 
 13. 
 
 " For every purpose of the Lord shall be performed 
 against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desola- 
 tion without an inhabitant." — Jeremiah li. 29. 
 
 " And they shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, 
 nor a stone for foundations ; but thou shalt be desolate 
 FOR EVER, saith the Lord." — Jeremiah li. 26. 
 
 " And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 31 
 
 the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew 
 Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, 
 neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation ; 
 neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there." — Isaiah xiii. 
 19, 20. 
 
 Bold as the statement may appear, and contravening, 
 as it does, the cherished belief of so many thousand 
 good and faithful Christians of all these tarrying ages, 
 that these predictions have been already fulfilled, and in- 
 deed, that they are to be classed among the very highest 
 completed evidences of the verity of prophecy, and the in- 
 fallibility of God's Word ; yet itis nevertheless true, that 
 not one of these prophecies has ever yet been fulfilled. 
 God's providence in history is a not less infallible teacher 
 than the revelations of His Word. They can not con- 
 flict or disagree. Their testimony, if carefully sought for, 
 will always be found concurrent and harmonious. '' Her 
 cities" have never, in point of fact, been " a desolation, 
 a dry land, and a wilderness, where no man dwelleth, 
 neither doth any son of man pass thereby." Thousands 
 upon thousands of the sons of men have passed and con- 
 tinually pass thereby, have crossed and re-crossed her 
 ruins, throughout their whole extent, in every possible di- 
 rection. Thousands upon thousands of Arabians have, 
 not only casually pitched their tents, but taken up their 
 abodes there, which, in turn, have been inhabited by their 
 children and their children's children, " from oreneration 
 to generation." Within the last seventy years, many 
 European travellers of high note and unquestioned au- 
 thority, among whom may be named Rich, Buckingham, 
 Iver Porter, Keppel, Loftus, Mignan, Chesney and Lay- 
 ard, have carefully traversed and explored her ruins in all 
 
32 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 directions, and always under Arabian escort. The ruins 
 of Babylon contain, in their very midst, the Arab city of 
 Hillah, having a population of ten thousand inhabitants, 
 the brick and stone composing whose " corners " and 
 "foundations" as also the "corners" and "foundations" of 
 Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Kufa, Kerbellah, Baghdad, and other 
 cities in the neighborhood, have been taken from the ruins 
 of Babylon. Not a few of the inhabitants of her ruins 
 find their livelihood, as brick and stone masons, by quarry- 
 ing the ruins for this very purpose. This is proved by 
 the testimony of every traveller who has visited the dis- 
 trict of Hillah.* There are also several Arab villages, 
 inhabited partly in tents, within the limits of the ruins. 
 The site of the ancient city, which is said to have been 
 sixty miles in circumference, is dotted with extensive 
 gardens and date groves, which latter are said to be far 
 superior to those of Egypt and the finest in the world ; 
 also with fruitful wheat and rice fields ; and, as long ago 
 as 1812, yielded, as Rich informs us, an annual tribute to 
 its Turkish masters of 300,000 piasters, f Colonel Ches- 
 
 * See, for example, Mignan's Travels in Chaldea, p. 177 : " Some of 
 the ravines [of the rnins of Babylon] are full sixty feet deep, which 
 may principally be attributed to the Arabs, who were constantly at 
 work to obtain the valuable bricks, which, from the vicinity of the river, 
 are with little trouble and expense conveyed to Hillah, or any to\\Tis 
 north or south." 
 
 t Rich, describing Hillah and the site of the ruins of Babylon, says : 
 " The gardens on both sides of the river [Euphrates] are very extensive, 
 so that the tovm appears embosomed in a wood of date trees. The air 
 is salubrious, and the soil extremely fertile, producing great quantities 
 of rice, dates, and grain of different kinds, though it is not cultivated to 
 above half the degree of which it is susceptible. The grand cause of 
 this fertility is the Euphrates." 
 
 Major Skinner, who visited it in 1835, thus describes his approach to 
 Hillah: " I crossed by a bridge of boats to the west side, which was 
 broad and firm, over which I measured one hundred and seventy paces, 
 giving to the breadth of the Euphrates more than four hundred feet. 
 1'he bridge was naturally a great thoroughfare, and I passed it in com- 
 pany with many on horseback and on foot. The reach of the river be- 
 low the bridge reflected the rays of the setting sun, which had just 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 33 
 
 ney, who surveyed the Euphratean country in the years 
 1835, 1836, and 1837, under a commission from the Brit- 
 ish Government, says, '' an Arabian tribe were encamped 
 in the very midst of the ruins, during the whole time of 
 my sojourn there." 
 
 Again ; not the least striking feature of the predicted 
 destruction of Babylon is its suddenness. 
 
 " Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, 
 that made all the earth drunken ; the nations have 
 drunken of her wine ; therefore the nations are mad." 
 
 " Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed : howl for 
 her." — Jeremiah li. 7, 8. 
 
 " Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, 
 and mourning, and famine ; and she shall be utterly 
 burned with fire." 
 
 " Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine 
 linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and 
 precious stones, and pearls ! for in one hOlJR so great 
 riches is come to nau";ht." 
 
 " Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich 
 all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness ! 
 for IN one hour is she made desolate." 
 
 " And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great mill- 
 stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence 
 shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall 
 be found no more at all." — Rev. xviii. 8, 16, 17, 19, 21. 
 
 turned everything to gold, and the long rows of date trees really trlit- 
 tered in the bosom of the stream." 
 
 Buckingham thus describes his approach to Hillah : " On gaining the 
 summit of this huge mass [amidst the ruins] we had the first sight of 
 the Euphrates, flowing majestically along through verdant banks, and 
 Its serpentme course apparently losing itself in the palm groves of Hil- 
 lah, whose mosques and minarets we could just perceive about five 
 miles to the southward of us." 
 
 Verily, descriptions of anything rather than " a land made desolate 
 so that no man shall dwell therein ! " * 
 
 4 
 
34 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 " And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of read- 
 ing this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and east 
 it into the midst of the Euphrates : and thou shalt say, 
 Thus [thus suddenly and violently] shall Babylon sink, 
 and not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her." — 
 Jer. li. 63, 64. 
 
 But the predictions of the suddenness have not been any 
 more fulfilled than those of the fulness of her destruction. 
 There is nothing in history that tends, in the slightest de- 
 gree, to verify either of these required conditions of her 
 final destruction. That Babylon has been destroyed, no 
 one will deny, but that her destruction was the result, 
 not of sudden violence, but of gradual declension, is 
 equally undeniable. 
 
 " At the noise of the taking of Babylon, the earth is 
 moved, and the cry is heard among the nations — Babylon 
 is suddenly fallen and destroyed." Jeremiah 1:46. But 
 the earth was never moved less by any event than by the 
 taking of Babylon by Cyrus. All that is said of it in 
 Scripture is, " In that night was Belshazzar, the king of 
 the Chaldeans, slain, and Darius, the Mede, took the 
 kingdom." Daniel v. 31. It was no destruction of the 
 city. It was anything rather than suddenly destroyed. 
 It was the simple occupation of the throne of Babylon by 
 one person instead of another, a quiet transfer of power 
 from one dynasty to another, without commotion or vio- 
 lence, or any considerable destruction or slaughter. The 
 sentries of the king w^ere the only victims. Herodotus 
 relates that (Cyrus having taken the city in the night) it 
 was not till three hours after sunrise that the inhabitants 
 of quarters distant from the palace knew they were living 
 under a Persian satrapy. More than two hundred years 
 
LITERAL BABYLON. 35 
 
 after the capture of the city by Cyrus, so far from 
 having been suddenly destroyed at that or any subse- 
 quent period, it was, under the reign of Alexander, one 
 of the chief cities of the East, the metropolis of his do- 
 minion. St. Peter wrote his epistle there in the sixty- 
 fifth year of the Christian era, more than six hundred 
 years after the capture of the city by Cyrus. Long after 
 the establishment of Christianity, the patriarch of Babylon 
 was one of the great ecclesiastical rulers of the East. 
 Four hundred and sixty years after Christ, Theodoret 
 speaks of Babylon as being inhabited in part, by Jews. 
 Five hundred years after Christ, the famous Babylonian 
 Talmud was promulgated. Nine hundred and seventeen 
 years after Christ, Babel is mentioned as a small village 
 on the site of Babylon. The city of Hillah, before re- 
 ferred to, was enlarged and fortified eleven hundred years 
 after Christ. Skinner speaks of Hillah as a city, in 
 eighteen hundred and thirty-three, of twelve thousand 
 inhabitants. Not long since a bishop of Babylon was 
 consecrated by the Pope. 
 
 No period in the declension of Babylon has ever been 
 marked by any of the attending signs and tokens, so nu- 
 merously connected in Scripture with its sudden, its utter, 
 its final, overthrow. 
 
 But what profiteth it to multiply evidence, to show 
 that the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah, concerning 
 the final destruction of Babylon, have never been fulfilled? 
 
 Babylon has never been that great maritime and com- 
 mercial city described in the eighteenth chapter of the 
 Revelation. She was anything rather than a city of mer- 
 chants in the days of Chaldea, Persia, Greece, or Rome. 
 
 Wherefore, we afiirm that Babylon, before she can be 
 
36 
 
 LITERAL BABYLON. 
 
 destroyed accorcling to the predictions of Isaiah, Jere- 
 miah and the apostle John, than the fulfihnent of which 
 nothing can be more certain, must first he restored. That 
 she Avill be restored in more than her ancient splendor, 
 and be the crowning glory of our Gentile civilization, we 
 can in no wise doubt, when we remember the words with 
 which the apostle of the Revelation records her final 
 doom. It must not be forgotten that he reveals only the 
 closing scenes of the present dispensation, thus establish- 
 ing, beyond a question, the futurity of the final destruc- 
 tion of Babylon. 
 
 " After these things I saw another angel, coming 
 down from heaven, having great authority ; and the 
 earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried with a 
 mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, 
 .... because by reason of the wrath of her forni- 
 cation all the nations have fallen, and the kings of the 
 earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants 
 of the earth waxed rich through the power of her delica- 
 cies Because she saith in her heart, 'I sit a queen 
 
 and am not a widow, and shall see no mourning.' There- 
 fore IN ONE DAY shall her plagues come, death, and mourn- 
 ing, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned with fire, 
 
 because mighty is the Lord who judged her And 
 
 the merchants of the earth weep and mourn, .... and 
 every shipmaster, and every passenger, and sailors, and 
 as many as trade by the sea, stood afar off, and cried 
 when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ' what 
 city is like unto the great city, .... alas ! alas the great 
 city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the 
 sea, by reason of her costliness ! because in one hour was 
 she made desolate.' And a mighty angel took up a stone, 
 
LITERAL BABYLOX. 37 
 
 like a great mill-stone, and cast it into the sea, saying, 
 ' Thus with violence shall the great city Babylon be 
 thrown down, and shall no more be found at all.' " 
 
 The Babylon here described, for so Scripture expressly 
 and repeatedly assures us, is Babylon " in the land of 
 Chaldea," not, as some have supposed, Rome in the land 
 of Italy. We have been able to discover in Scripture no 
 color of evidence that there are two cities described 
 therein with the name of Babylon common to both. It 
 appears to us a wholly fanciful and unwarranted substitu- 
 tion of names. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, as if 
 eiFectually to forestall any such substitution, are most 
 careful uniformly to locate the Babylon whose destruction 
 they foretell, in Chaldea. As for instance : " Come down 
 and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on 
 the ground : there is no throne, daughter of the Chal- 
 deans^ for thou shalt no more be called tender and deli- 
 cate, .... sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, 
 O daughter of the Chaldeans : for thou shalt no more be 
 called the lady of kingdoms." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SYMBOLIC BABYLON OF PROPHECY. 
 
 ITS COMPOSITE CHARACTER, INCLUDING, NOT ROMANISM ONLY, 
 
 BUT ALL FORMS OF FALSE RELIGION 
 
 AND INFIDELITY. 
 
 The eighteenth chapter of the Revelation describes the 
 literal Babylon, the seventeenth the symbolic Babylon, of 
 prophecy. 
 
 Two of the most notable symbols of prophetic Scrip- 
 ture are presented in the seventeenth chapter, those of 
 the '''- ivojnan" and the " teasL" The beast is the same 
 as described in the seventh chapter of Daniel, and has 
 been sufficiently referred to in a preceding chapter. But 
 the woman, in the present prophetic connection, is a 
 symbol peculiar to the prophet of the Revelation, and 
 is thus described. 
 
 "And there came one of the seven angels who had 
 the seven bowls, and talked with me, saying, Come 
 hither ; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the 
 great harlot that sitteth upon many waters, with whom 
 the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the 
 inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine 
 of her fornication. And he carried me away into the 
 wilderness in the spirit : and I saw a woman sitting 
 upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 39 
 
 seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was 
 clothed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold, 
 and precious stones and pearls, having a cup of gold 
 in her hand full of abominations — and the filthiness of 
 her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, a 
 Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of the 
 Harlots and the Abominations [Idolatries] of the 
 E.VRTH." — Rev. xvii. 1 — 5. Tregelles' Translation. 
 
 Woman is the invariable Scripture symbol of a moral 
 system, good or evil. The woman here described is the 
 symbol of a manifestly and to the last and most oppro- 
 brious degree evil system. She is seen sitting upon a 
 scarlet colored beast, and is at first represented as his 
 mistress, guiding and controlling him. He is her ser- 
 vant, obsequious to her Avill, and upholds and supports 
 her ; but, afterwards, when she has served his purposes 
 sufficiently, when he no longer requires her aid and her 
 enchantments, when he is able to assert and maintain 
 supreme dominion without them, then " the ten horns 
 which thou sawest [which are symbols of the ten kings 
 of the prophetic earth] and the beast l^xai to <3»;ot'or], these 
 shall hate the harlot^ and shall make her desolate and 
 naked, and shall eat her flesh, and hum her with fire. For 
 God hath put into their hearts to fulfil his mind \_and to 
 make one mind~\, and to give their kingdom unto the heast, 
 until the words of God shall he completed." — Rev. xvii. 
 16, 17. Tregelles' Translation. 
 
 Wherefore it appears that the woman is to be destroyed 
 when this last and sole despot of the prophetic earth 
 shall, through her agency, and by means of her allure- 
 ments, have brought the ten kingdoms, into which the 
 Roman earth will then have been divided, into sub- 
 
40 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 jection to that dominion of which he will be the imperial 
 head, " glorifying himself as God," " until the Avords of 
 God shall be fulfilled." 
 
 Who is this woman, and who the beast? The former 
 inquiry we propose to answer in this chapter, the latter in 
 the chapter next following. 
 
 But, first, we Avill endeavor to define, with more 
 strict and careful precision, the specific sphere of their 
 dominion. 
 
 Her dominion, so far as it is described in the above 
 chapter, is only referred to as co-extensive with his, not 
 as exceeding it. 
 
 His dominion will be the prophetic earth of Daniel and 
 the Revelation, as defined in a former chapter. It Avill, 
 be well, for the sake of greater definiteness, to enumerate, 
 under their modern names, the countries and provinces 
 included Avithin the Roman earth, the identity of which 
 with the prophetic earth has been shoAvn. 
 
 The Roman empire (which first assumed its full impe- 
 rial standing in succession to Greece when Augustus 
 Cassar conquered Cleopatra) attained its widest territorial 
 development under Trajan. The following is a list of the 
 countries then included within its limits.* 
 
 IN WESTERN AND NORTH-WESTERN EUROPE. 
 
 England and Scotland : 7zo^ Ireland. 
 
 Spain and Portugal. 
 
 France and Savoy. 
 
 Belgium and parts of Holland west of the Rhine. 
 
 Luxembourg and Bavarian territory west of the Rhine. 
 
 Rhenish Prussia west of the Rhine. 
 
 * We adopt the enumeration of Dr. B. W. Newton. 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 41 
 
 Baden, "Wiirtemberg, and the southern half of Bavaria. 
 Switzeihmd. 
 
 IX SOUTHERN AND SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE. 
 
 Italy. 
 
 Greece. 
 
 All the islands of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Turkey in Europe south of the Danube, including Bos- 
 nia, Servia and Bulgaria. 
 
 Austrian provinces south of the Danube, including the 
 southwestern wing of Hungary and that part of the Ba- 
 nat Avhich lies east of the Roman Vallum. 
 
 Transylvania, AVallachia, Moldavia, and Bessarabia ; 
 these four countries being situate north of the Danube, 
 and answering to Trajan's province of Dacia. 
 
 The Turkish dominions, taking Assyria as the most 
 easterly province, and an imaginary line skirting the north 
 of Arabia to Egypt as the southern limit. This division 
 includes, of course, Palestine and Asia Minor. 
 
 IN AFRICA. 
 
 ' Egypt and the whole northern coast, namely, Barca, 
 Tripoli, Tunis, Algeria, Morocco and Fez ; Salle, a little 
 outside of the straits of Gibraltar, being the most Avest- 
 erly city. 
 
 Such are the countries that fall within the ""Orhis Ter- 
 rarum*' of the Romans: the Uana I'j aly.ovuivii of Scrip- 
 ture ; such the prophetic earth of Daniel and the Revela- 
 tion ; such the sphere of the dominion of the woman and 
 the beast ; such the boundaries of their empire. "We 
 would not imply that their influence will be circumscribed 
 G 
 
42 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 -with that rigid and absolute precision which these limits 
 would indicate, or that it will not be widely and destruc- 
 tively felt beyond them ; but we speak now only of tlie 
 predicted sphere within which, according to prophetic 
 Scripture, they will bear rule. 
 
 The reign of the woman and the beast, in their ac- 
 complished supremacy of dominion, is clearly future. 
 
 It has been supposed by some that the beast is a 
 symbol of Pagan Kome, and the woman of Paganism. 
 This can not be, for the prophet of the Revelation ex- 
 pressly assures us that the beast "is to ascend'' {[ikUit 
 uraSatrsir), whercas, wheu the prophet wrote. Pagan Rome 
 had already ascended to the height of its power. 
 
 It has also been supposed that the beast represents 
 Papal Rome, and the woman the Papacy. But this 
 supposition must be equally erroneous, for the same 
 prophet no less expressly declares that " the ten liorns and 
 the beast {y.al jo 6>;oto ) these shall hate the harlot, and 
 shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh 
 and burn her with fire." Rev. xvii. 16. If, therefore, the 
 latter supposition were true, it would involve the neces- 
 sity of the Pope's destroying the Papacy, in order to exalt 
 himself to supreme dominion, as Pope, which would be 
 absurd. 
 
 Again ; the reign of the woman and the beast must 
 be future, for Avhat sovereign system, symbolised by 
 the Avoman, reigns, or has ever reigned, over ten kings 
 of the prophetic earth ? When has the prophetic earth, 
 the territory of the Roman Empire (eastern and Avestern 
 divisions together), been divided into ten separate and 
 independent kingdoms, or been ruled over by ten confed- 
 erated and conspiring kings, and they been subject to a 
 
SYMBOLIC BALJYLOX. 43 
 
 single sovereign, to whom they have conciirred to "give 
 their kingdoms until the Avords of God shall be fulfilled," 
 and with whom they have concurred to hate and destroy 
 that system? What single sovereign wears, or has 
 ever Avorn, these ten prophetic diadems, or held these ten 
 prophetic realms subject to his sceptre? If such a system 
 and such a sovereign have existed not in the past, and 
 exist not now, then must their predicted reign be future, 
 Avhat types so ever have signified, or may now signify, 
 their character or their appearing. 
 
 The Papacy furnishes no evidence of any drift in this 
 direction. The confluent floods of a system so compre- 
 hensive, so all-embracing, as symbolic Babylon, can never 
 flow in so shallow a channel, between banks so narroAV, 
 or be impeded by the opposing but ineffectual waves of so 
 confined and exclusive an ecclesiasticism. Modern ten- 
 dencies set overwhelmingly in other directions. The Pa- 
 pacy can not hold her own at their side, excepting as a 
 concurring force? And, surely, the channel is deep 
 enough and the stream wide enough for all, for sym- 
 bolic Babylon is the mother not of this harlot, or of that, 
 only, — not the slightest limitation in this regard is intim- 
 ated by the prophet— but of all the harlots, of all the 
 evil systems. So prolific and comprehensive a maternity 
 can not be predicated of any one known system, of Ro- 
 manism, or of Judaism, or of Mohammedanism, or of 
 the Greek Church, or of Iliudooism, or of any or all forms 
 of infidel protestantism, or of any or all forms of ritual- 
 ism or ecclesiasticism, most of all of one so exclusive, 
 so unsympathetic, so jealous and exacting, so offensive 
 to its sister harlots, as Romanism. What more improb- 
 able, not to say impossible, in the light of present tenden- 
 
44 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 cies, than that any one of the systems thus named or 
 referred to should ever absorb and become the sover- 
 eign mistress of all ? No ! the exclusiveness of each and 
 every one of these systems excludes it from so extended 
 sway, from that universality of dominion ascribed to 
 symbolic Babylon. " And in her ivas found the hlood of 
 prophets, and of saints, and o/all that have heen slain 
 upon the earths — Rev. xviii. 24. 
 
 Nor, if it Avere probable, which, from present appear- 
 ances, is not in the least so, that Romanism, or any one 
 of these systems, would ever become co-extensive with 
 the prophetic or Roman earth, would it be possible 
 tliat the stain of exclusive and universal blood-guilti- 
 ness should ever rest upon Romanism, or upon any one of 
 these systems, which system so ever may have shed, or 
 shall shed, the most blood. The blood which Paganism 
 has shed can never be said to attach to Romanism. No 
 more can the blood which Judaism, or Hindooism, or 
 Mohammedanism, or the Greek Church, or an infidel 
 protestantism, or any other evil system, has shed, or may 
 shed, be said to attach to her. To no city which Roman- 
 ism has ever occupied, or can occupy, as her ecclesiastical 
 seat and metropolitan centre, can so solitary a preemi- 
 nence, so unshared a monopoly, of blood-guiltiness, be said 
 to attach ; certainly so long as she remains true to her 
 record, and so long as her present characteristics and dis- 
 position remain unchanged, nor ever, indeed, unless, for- 
 sooth, she should so loosen the iron fetters of her ecclesi- 
 asticism, and so extend the shelter of her wings, as, not to 
 tolerate only, but to absorb and concentrate within herself, 
 so as to make wholly her own, and contract and assume 
 the proper responsibility, and respective guilt, of each 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 45 
 
 and all the other evil systems and forms of harlotry, from 
 the lowest and most debased of Paganism, to the highest 
 and most refined of an infidel and self-glorifying protestant- 
 ism. She must become the fond, the loving, the accred- 
 ited foster-mother alike of the JeAvish and the Greek, the 
 Hindoo and the Mohammedan, and all other abomina- 
 tions. They, and, with them, the ten kings and the inhab- 
 itants of the prophetic earth, must joyfully accept, and be 
 made drunk by, the golden cup of the wine of the wrath 
 of her fornication. She must brood with as fond and so- 
 licitous a maternity over the polished Pagan worshippers 
 of Mars' Hill, as over kings and priests and long trains of 
 loAvlier worshippers "svithin the courts of her own tem- 
 ples. She must bow as supple a knee to the Jupi- 
 ter Ultor of the Pantheon, as to the paintings and 
 frescoes of the Vatican. She must know no differ- 
 ence in her lustful embrace, between the juggling priests 
 of the East, the licentious fetich Avorshippers of the South, 
 and the learned and pcdite, but conceited and scornful, 
 defamers and defiers of the divinity of Jesus, " speaking 
 great and blasphemous things against the Most High " 
 from the chairs of the protestant academies of the AVest. 
 She must accept, nothing loth, the transfer to her own 
 skirts of all the stains of blood-guiltiness to be found upon 
 the skirts of all her sister harlots, for in her, if she be 
 symbolic Babylon, must be found the " blood of prophets, 
 and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the 
 earth." Ah no ! Romanism has in reserve for her no fu- 
 ture such as this. Xo tokens, not the remotest, of such a 
 destiny are to be discerned. The '' Mores Catholici," the 
 " Ages of Faith," are past. 
 
 Who, then, is this woman of the Revelation, this 
 
46 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 mother of [«?/] the harlots, and [«//] the abominatioDS 
 of the earth" ? 
 
 We have located the sphere of her dominion, and de- 
 fined its boundaries. We have rendered certain the futu- 
 rity of her reign. We have seen who she is not and can 
 not be. But does not Scripture reveal to us who she is, 
 any sign by which we may identify her presence or dis- 
 cern her approach ? Most assuredly. The woman hath 
 her types and her precursors not fewer nor less notable 
 than the beast. More than this, her exact lineaments 
 can be quite as precisely and unmistakably traced and 
 defined. 
 
 In the first place, she is to be inseparably associated, if 
 not absolutely identified, with a world-wide commercial 
 system, of proportions more grand, more deftly harmon- 
 ized, more glorious (according to the standards of earthly 
 glory), than the world has ever seen. 
 
 The prophet Zechariah had a vision of her, considered 
 in this aspect. " Then the angel that talked with me 
 went forth, and said unto me. Lift up now thine eyes and 
 see what is this that goeth forth. And I said, What is it? 
 And he said, This is an ephah that goeth forth. He said 
 moreover. This is their resemblance [aspect or appear- 
 ance,] through all the earth. And, behold, then there 
 was lifted up a talent [weighty piece] of lead ; and this 
 is the woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah. And 
 he said, This is wickedness. And he cast it into the midst 
 of the ephah ; and he cast the weight of lead upon the 
 mouth thereof. Then I lifted up mine eyes and looked, 
 and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind 
 was in tlieir wings ; for they had wings like the wings of 
 a stork : and they lifted up the ephah between the earth 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 47 
 
 and the heaven. Then said I to the angel that talked Avith 
 me, Whither do they bear the ephah? And he said unto 
 me, To build it an house in the land of Shinar ; and it 
 shall be established and set there upon her own base." 
 
 The ephah was a Hebrew measure of all kinds of solids 
 and liquids, equivalent to about seven and a half gallons 
 of our measure. It was the Hebrew emblem of com- 
 merce, the symbol of merchants. The ephah of this vis- 
 ion, when first seen by the prophet, was in motion, " go- 
 ing forth." Afterwards, though at first invisible (being 
 concealed therein by a weighty cover of lead) the cover 
 being removed, a woman (the remembered symbol of a 
 moral system) is disclosed to the view of the prophet, 
 sitting in the midst of the ephah. After which the angel 
 casts into the ephah another Avoman, who is named by the 
 angel " wickedness." He then casts upon the ephah its 
 cover of lead, concealing both from the prophet's sight. 
 Finally (and we are now introduced to the sequel of the 
 vision, to the closing events symbolized by it) the two 
 women are seen to break forth from their confinement, 
 to exalt their haughty symbol between the earth and the 
 heaven, and to bear it, with swift Avings and strong. 
 Where? "To the laud of Shinar." Wherefore? "To 
 build it an house there, to establish it, and set her upon 
 her own base there." 
 
 We have, therefore, in this vision, first, the symbol, 
 not of a commercial system only, but of a vast commercial 
 system, for " this is their resemblance through all the 
 earth." We are next introduced to the moral systems 
 Avhich, under the symbol of the two Avomen, are seen to 
 inhabit that system ; Avhich assume the sovereign control 
 of it ; Avhicli actuate and inspire it ; Avhich direct and de- 
 
48 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 termine its movements ; which buikl for it an house, a lit- 
 eral city, and establish for it a dwelling place. That city 
 is declared to be on the plains of Shinar, on the banks 
 of the Euphrates, in the land of Babylon. 
 
 Now Zechariah is preeminently a latter day prophet. 
 He details, to a more remarkable and circumstantial ex- 
 tent than, perhaps, any other Old Testament prophet, 
 those scenes which are to be immediately associated with 
 the conversion and the dawning of the millennial glory 
 of the House of Israel. The vision of the ephah must, 
 therefore, have specific connection with those scenes, with 
 that period of the world's history in which they will occur. 
 It teaches us that not the sceptre, or the sword, or the 
 mitre, but the ephah is the appointed symbol of that pe- 
 riod ; that at least one of its chief characteristics will be 
 a colossal, world-wide and most imposing commercial sys- 
 tem ; that that system will have been controlled, and will 
 doubtless be controlled unto the very end, by two women, 
 two moral systems, and that the name of one of them will 
 be " Wickedness." 
 
 Turn now to the apostle Paul. In discoursing to the 
 Thessalonians of the second coming of our Saviour, he 
 says (we translate literally from the Greek) : 
 
 " That day [the day of the Lord] will not commence 
 except there first come the apostasy ; and the man of sin 
 
 be revealed, the son of perdition [the 'beast'?] 
 
 Ye know that at at present there is that which restrainetii 
 [tlic talent of lead that covered the ephah?] in order that 
 he might be revealed in his appointed season. For the 
 mystery [and ' upon her forehead a name was written. 
 Mystery,'] of ivickedness (u.o«/u'c, lawlessness) [of her 
 who was cast by the angel into the ephah ?] is already 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 49 
 
 Avorking [so prevalent when the apostle wrote, among the 
 Sacldiieees, the Herodians, tlie Athenians and others], 
 only there is at present one that restraineth [the angel 
 who cast the talent of lead upon the mouth of the 
 ephah?], imtil it become developed out of the midst [out 
 of the midst of what ? the ephah ?] and then shall the 
 wicked one [6 urouog, the lawless one, the masculine of 
 urouiu, "wickedness"] be revealed, whom the Lord shall 
 consume by the breath of his moutli, and destroy by the 
 brightness of his coming." — 2 Thess. ii. 3 — 9. 
 
 What is this but an immaterially differing account of 
 one and the same order of events predicted by Zechariah ? 
 Wha; but a reciprocal interpretation, ihe one prophet by 
 the other? 
 
 Turn again to the great New Testament prophet of the 
 closing scenes of the present dispensation. He describes 
 the harlot. He calls her by name. He locates her on 
 the plains of Shinar, on the banks of the Euphrates, in 
 the land of Babylon, seated in her own house, established 
 on her own base. He makes her house the great mer- 
 chant city of the earth, "whose merchants are princes," 
 the metropolis of a world's commerce, reigned over by 
 her as its sovereign mistress, entertaining, in her satanic 
 hospitality, and making drunk with the wine of the wrath 
 of her fornication, the kings and inhabitants of the apos- 
 tate Roman earth. 
 
 " All that have ships in the sea will be made rich by 
 reason of her costliness .... and every ship-master, 
 and every passenger, and sailors, and as many as trade 
 by the sea [will be there] .... and merchandise, the 
 merchandise of gold, and of silver, and precious stones, 
 and of pearls, and of fine linen, and of purple and of 
 
50 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 scarlet and all thyine wood, and every vessel of ivory, 
 and every vessel of most precious wood, and of brass, and 
 of iron and of marble, and of cinnamon, and spice, and 
 odors, and ointment, and frankincense and wine, and oil, 
 and fine flour and wheat, and cattle and sheep, and of 
 horses, and of chariots, and of the bodies and souls of 
 men." — Rev. xviii. 
 
 Such will be the house of the ephah in the land of 
 Shinar. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, commenting upon this passage from the 
 Revelation, says : " Revelation xviii. What can be the 
 city here spoken of? It is much liker London than Rome 
 — a commercial than a mere ecclesiastical capital. The 
 lamentation of the kings for Babylon point more to the 
 ecclesiastical capital of their monarchies, whereas the 
 description of her wealth and merchandise point greatly 
 more to our own London. The lamentation of the sailors 
 points more to a place of great shipping interest than to 
 Rome or any place in Italy, and strengthens the argu- 
 ment for its being the capital of our own land. We can 
 not observe that shipmasters are much engaged by the 
 traffic of Rome ; and their lamentation seems far more 
 applicable to London, lapsed, it may be, when the period 
 of this fidfilment comes round, into Antichristianism. The 
 merchants of our own land are far more the great men 
 of the earth than those of any other nation." — Sabbath 
 Scripture Readings, vol. iv., p. 423. 
 
 Now it will not be denied, in view of this and abundant 
 other evidence to the same effect, in view, indeed, of the 
 knowledge and observation of all, that England is, at 
 present, the chief representative centre of the commerce 
 of the world ; or that London is an understood synonym 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 51 
 
 for, SO to speak, the capital of a vast, world-wide, and 
 more and more increasingly venal, commercial system. 
 Not, by any means, would we imply, however, that Lon- 
 don is, or is destined to be, the literal Babylon of the Rev- 
 elation, in however impressive a sense she may typify her. 
 In view of the express declarations of prophecy (to which 
 we have already adverted) which locate, with such abun- 
 dance, precision and certainty of evidence, the literal 
 Babylon of prophecy " in the land of Chaldea," we can 
 not look upon the supposition of Dr. Chalmers that Lon- 
 don may be the prophetic Babylon, as any less fanciful 
 and gratuitous, any less unwarranted by Scripture, than 
 the supposition of others (to which he refers) that Rome 
 is that Babylon. The commercial system of England 
 maybe the typical ephah. The presiding genius by which 
 that system is, to so large an extent, animated and con- 
 trolled, may be the woman first seen sitting in the ephah, 
 not evil in herself at first (commerce is not evil in itself) 
 so far as is revealed or can be inferred, but only as after- 
 wards corrupted by her companion, " wickedness." The 
 ephah may "go forth" from England, may be borne by 
 the swift wings of her commerce to the "land of Shinar ;" 
 but its "house" will not be builded in England, any 
 more than in Italy. Its final "base," its last great 
 centre, is no more likely to be established on the banks 
 of the Thames than upon that fanciful cluster of seven 
 hills upon the banks of the yellow Tiber, which men call 
 Rome.* 
 
 * Says one of the most learned and profound, but not less accurate 
 and cautious classical scholars of England; "The seven A «7/s which orig- 
 inally gave the well-known designation to Rome, were Palatium, Yelia, 
 Cermalus, Cirlius, Fagutal, Oppuis, Cispius. [So Niebuhr.] The three 
 first of these belonged to the Palatine, the two next to the Coelian, and 
 the other two to the Esquiline ; being thus, in fact, so many ascents, and 
 
52 SY3IB0LIC BABYLON. 
 
 "We can not doubt that the present commercial system of 
 En'^dand presents a more remarkable type of what will be 
 the commercial system of Babylon at the period designated 
 in the eighteenth of the Revelation, than is, or has ever been, 
 presented by any other nation. Many things look strongly 
 in this direction. England and the commercial system of 
 England are interchangeable terms. The English gov- 
 ernment is the mere creature of her commercial system, 
 and but reflects its spirit and enacts its will. It is the 
 power behind her throne. She, the pretending, or, if you 
 please, the actual, mother of Protestantism, has not only 
 established upon munificent foundations Roman Catholic 
 universities (as witness her Maynooth grant) and educated 
 Roman Catholic priests, but, for the sake of her com- 
 merce, has legalized the support of eastern idolatries, and 
 ministered in their temples ; paid tribute to the obscene 
 rites of Juggernaut ; acknowledged Mohammedanism ; 
 presided over the priesthood of Buddha ; and forced open 
 the ports of the most populous nation of the earth to her 
 baleful opium trade, surrounding, to this end, with all- 
 powerful safeguards, the most gigantic commercial mo- 
 
 not distinct hills. The name of Septicollis [seven-hilled] having been 
 applied to Rome in its early form, was retained long after it ceased to 
 be applicable in its original connection. After Rome had extended, it 
 was supposed by some to relate to seven distinct hills ; and thus the 
 itumber was made to correspond by counting the Palatine, Capitoline, 
 Quirinal, Esquiline, Ca^lian, Aventine, and the trans-Tiberine Janicu- 
 lum. n this arrangement the Viminal (which lies between the Quiri- 
 nal and the Esquiline) was omitted, in order not to exceed the number ; 
 in another arrangement, Janiculum , as being on the right side of the 
 Tiber, was excluded, and the Yiminal reckoned : the seven hills were 
 thus arbitrarily restricted to the left bank of the river, although the hill 
 on the other side is the highest of the whole. In the days of Augustus 
 and his successors, a large part of Rome had extended far beyond the 
 hills and rhe intervening hollows, into the flat plain of the Campus 
 Martius, which is the site of the greater part of the modern city of the 
 popes." Tregelles' Daniel, pp. ot, o2. The " seven mountains upon 
 which the woman sittcth " (Rev. xvii. 9.) and the " seven heads " of the 
 scarlet beast (Rev. xvii. 3.) can not, therefore, be said, as so many have 
 loosely fancied, to be the seven hills of Rome. 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLOX. 53 
 
 nopoly the world has ever seen. Indeed, as if actually to 
 verify the vision of the ephali, and to " build an house" for 
 it, she has sent out, under a three years' commission, 
 Colonel Chesney, accompanied by a most competent and 
 intelligent staff, gentlemen of high commercial and scien- 
 tific attainments, to explore, survey, and report upon, the 
 commercial capabilities of the Euphratean country, the 
 land of Shinar itself, and they have reported most 
 favorably.* In running over the record of England in 
 this regard, and counting up a few only of the anti- 
 christian enormities of her infidel latitudinarianism, how 
 can we fail to behold in her, at least the beginning of the 
 fulfilment of the vision of the ephah ; not a type, merely, 
 but, as it were, the veritable features of the symbolic Bab- 
 ylon of prophecy, " the mother of [all] the harlots, and 
 [all] the abominations of the earth"? 
 
 Wherefore, in conclusion, we believe that the symbolic 
 Babylon of prophecy, the harlot of the Revelation, will, 
 in a distinctive and systematic sense, be the moral animus, 
 the animating and presiding genius, of a vast, confede- 
 rated system of governmental policy and poAver, co- 
 extensive Avith the limits, and having, as the basis of its 
 support, the commercial wealth and energy, of the pro- 
 phetic earth of Daniel and the Revelation ; that it Avill be 
 the sovereign and acknowedged mistress of that system, 
 and, as such, be glorified, and be a shining, but deceitful 
 and fatal counterfeit of Christ's millennium ; that her 
 " costliness " and delicacy of life, administered unto by 
 all that the concentrated governmental power and concen- 
 trated commercial wealth of the apostate prophetic earth 
 can confer, and her earthly glory, in all its myriad forms 
 
 * See Appendix : Extracts from Col. Chesney's Report. 
 
54 SY5IB0LIC BABYLON. 
 
 and appliances, llie loftiness of her self-conceit and the 
 meretricious grandeur of her style, will be beyond all 
 former compare ; that she will be the last, the proudest, 
 the most magnificent triumph of Gentile civilization, pre- 
 luding in her pleasant palaces, to the measure of her 
 flutes and soft recorders, the quickly-speeding dominion of 
 the beast, her own fiery judgment, and the final destruc- 
 tion of her queenly capital ; that her local and metropoli- 
 tan centre will be "in the land of Shinar," on the banks 
 of the Euphrates, in the city and land of Babylon ; that 
 Antichrist — the " monster" of Daniel, and the "beast" 
 of the Revelation — first wooing and supporting her as 
 his mistress, and ascending into sole and supreme domin- 
 ion by the aid, in part, of her fascinations, her enchant- 
 ments and her sorceries, will, in the end, invoking the 
 willing concurrence of the ten confederate kings of the 
 prophetic earth, turn upon and destroy her, and himself 
 thenceforward attract the wonder, and command the hom- 
 age, and exact the worship of the rulers and the inhabit- 
 ants of the prophetic earth (" and all that dwell upon the 
 earth shall worship him." — Rev. xiii. 8.), "glorifying 
 himself as God until the words of God shall be fulfilled ;" 
 until the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Messiah 
 of Israel, shall come again, the second time, not as a des- 
 pised carpenter's son, born in a manger, but as the " stone 
 cut out of the mountain without hands," the King of 
 kings and Lord of lords, whom the heaven of heavens can 
 not contain, to judge and to execute vengeance upon the 
 apostate earth ; to render his anger with fury and his re- 
 buke with flames of fire ; to gather his living saints, and 
 the departed saints of all the lingering ages, in their risen 
 glory unto liimself, to their eternal rest in the heav- 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 55 
 
 enly Jerusalem ; to re-establish, under a more glori- 
 ous theocracy than of old, restored and now forgiven 
 Israel in their earthly Jerusalem ; and to send forth this 
 ransomed and chosen people upon the sublimest, as it will 
 be the most successful, of earthly missions (of which all 
 present Christian missions are, or can be, but the faint- 
 est types,) namely, the redemption, through his blood, not 
 as now, of a " little flock'' — here a Jcav and a Gentile 
 there — but of all the spared inhabitants of the earth. 
 
 " Come, Lord, and tarry not; 
 
 Bring the long-looked-for day : 
 Oh ! why these years of waiting here, 
 These ages of delay ! 
 
 " Come in thy glorious might, 
 Come "with the iron rod, 
 Scattering thy foes before thy face, 
 Thou mighty Son of God. 
 
 " Come, and begin thy reign 
 Of everlasting peace : 
 Come, take the kingdom to thyself, 
 Great King of righteousness." 
 
 Before dismissing the Babylon, both literal and sym- 
 bolic, of prophecy, we invite the attention of our readers 
 to a comparison of texts, taken from Isaiah and Jere- 
 miah, on the one hand, and from the Revelation on the 
 other, showing, if it were possible, still more definitely 
 and conclusively, that the Babylon, both literal and sym- 
 bolic, severally described by them, is identical. 
 
 Jer. li. 13. '* thou that dwell- Rev. xvii. 1. " Come hither, I 
 
 est upon many waters, thine end is will show thee the judgment of the 
 
 come, and the measure of thy cov- gi-eat whore, that sitteth upon many 
 
 etousness." waters." 
 
 Jer. li. 7. "Babylon hath been a Rev. xvii. 4. "Having a golden 
 
 golden cup in the Lord's hand, that cup in her hand full of abomina- 
 
 made all the earth drunken." tions." 
 
 Jer. i. 7. " The nations have Rev. xvii. 2. " The inhabitants 
 
 drunken of her wine ; therefore the of the earth have been made drunk 
 
 nations are mad." by the wine of the wrath of her for- 
 nication." 
 
56 
 
 SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 
 
 It is impossible to properly understand the Babylon, 
 either literal or symbolic, of prophecy, without always 
 uotiug the difference between them. They are almost 
 alway confounded. The passages just cited refer ob- 
 viously to symbolic Babylon, and ascribe to her a univer- 
 sality of influence Avhich certainly exceeds any that she 
 has ever exercised or possessed in the past, or possesses 
 
 now. 
 
 Isaiah xlvii. 5. " daughter of 
 the Chaldeans .... the lady of 
 kingdoms." 
 
 Isaiah xiii. 9. " Babylon the 
 glory of kingdoms." 
 
 Isaiah xlvii. 7. " Thou saidst, I 
 shall be a lady for ever . . . There- 
 fore hear now this, thou that art 
 given to pleasures, that dwellest 
 carelessly, that sayest in thine 
 heart, I am, and none else beside 
 me; I shall not sit as a widow, 
 neither shall I know the loss of 
 children ; but these two things shall 
 come to thee in a moment, in one 
 day, the loss of children, and wid- 
 owhood." 
 
 Rev. xviii. 7, 8. " How much 
 she hath glorified herself, and lived 
 deliciously, so much torment and 
 sorrow give her ; for she hath said 
 in her heart, I sit a queen, and am 
 no widow-, and shall see no sorrow. 
 Therefore shall her plagues come 
 in one day, death and mourning, 
 and famine." 
 
 Jer. xli. 2.5. " I will make thee Rev. xviii. 8. " She shall be ut- 
 terly burned with fire." 
 
 Rev. xviii. 4. "Come out of her, 
 my people, that ye be not parta- 
 kers of her sins." 
 
 a burnt mountain." 
 ' Jer. xli. 45. " My people, go ye 
 out of the midst of her, and deliver 
 ye every man his soul from the 
 fierce anger of the Lord." 
 
 Jer. 1. 8. " Remove out of the 
 midst of Babylon." 
 
 Jer. 1. 6. " Flee out of the midst 
 of Babylon." 
 
 Jer. ii. 9. " For her judgment 
 reacheth unto heaven." 
 
 Jer, 1. lo. " Take vengeance 
 upon her ; as she hath done, do 
 unto her." 
 
 Jer. 1. 29. " Recompense her ac- 
 cording to her work ; according to 
 all she hath done, do unto her." 
 
 Isaiah xxi. 9. Jer. li. 8. " Bab- 
 ylon is fallen, is fallen. Babylon is 
 s id('enlv fallen and destroyed." 
 
 Isaiah xiii. 21. " Wild beasts of 
 the desert shall be there, and their 
 houses shall be full of doleful crea- 
 tures ; and owls shall dwell there, 
 and satyrs {datuoviu Ixx.) shall 
 dance there." 
 
 Rev. xviii. .5. " For her sins have 
 reached unto heaven." 
 
 Rev. xviii. 6. " Reward her even 
 as she has rewarded you, and dou- 
 ble unto her double, according to 
 her works ... in the cup which 
 she hath filled, fill to her double." 
 
 Rev. xviii. 2. "Babylon the great 
 is fallen, is fallen." 
 
 Rev. xviii. 2. " And is become 
 the habitation of devils, and the 
 hold of every foul spirit, and a cage 
 of every unclean and hateful bird"." 
 
SYMBOLIC BABYLON. 57 
 
 Jer. li. 63, 64. « And it shall be, Rev. xviii. 21. «' And a miehty 
 
 when thou hast made an end of angel took up a stone like to a 
 
 reading this book, that thou shalt great millstone, and cast it into the 
 
 bind a stone to it, and cast it into sea, saying, Thus with violence 
 
 the midst of the Euphrates; and shall that great city Babylon be 
 
 thou shalt say, Thus shalt Babylon thrown down, and shall be found 
 
 sink, and shall not rise from the no more at all." 
 evil that I will bring upon her." 
 
 The passages last cited and compared, those espe- 
 cially of the eighteenth of the Revelation, refer to the lit- 
 eral Babylon of prophecy. But John describes only the 
 closing scenes of the present dispensation, when Christ 
 will re-appear, at Armageddon, with the armies of heaven 
 following, which event is future. If the evidence thus 
 taken from these three prophets is sufficient to identify the 
 city severally described by them, both literal and sym- 
 bolic, as being, under each comparison, one and the 
 same city — and who can doubt it without rejecting all 
 rules of evidence ? — then must literal Babylon first be 
 restored, and symbolic Babylon still await the full con- 
 summation of her predicted reign. 
 
CHAPTER ly. 
 
 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 THE RESTORATIOX OF THE JEWS IX UXBELIEF, AND THEIR 
 SUBSEQUENT PERSECUTION BY ANTICHRIST. 
 
 Antichrist is not anticliristianism, an abstraction, an 
 imembodied principle, an impersonal idea. 
 
 Antichrist is the " beast " of the Revelation ; the " lit- 
 tle horn " of, respectively, the seventh and eleventh chap- 
 ters of Daniel ; the " king of fierce countenance " of the 
 eighth and " prince that shall come "of the ninth of Dan- 
 iel ; the "king of Assyria" of the tenth, and "king of 
 Babylon" and "Lucifer" of the fourteenth of Isaiah; 
 the " man of sin" and " son of perdition" of the second 
 chapter of the second epistle to the Thessalonians. But 
 he is more conspicuously known and portrayed than, per- 
 haps, under any other title, as the " beast " of the Reve- 
 lation. These, with their accompanying descriptions and 
 portraitures, are separate titles and accounts of one and 
 the same person. That person is the last great monarch 
 of the Gentiles, the Antichrist of prophecy. He is nOt 
 many persons, or a succession of persons (as, for in- 
 stance, the Popes of Rome), but one person, having 
 an individuality which is all his own, which no other nor 
 any number of other persons has ever in the least shared, 
 or ever can share, however remarkably they may, in some 
 
. THE ANTICHRIST OF rROPHECT. 59 
 
 or in many respects, have answered to the prophetic account 
 of him, have typified his character, or foreshadowed his 
 coming and his career. Antichrist, the Antichrist, is no 
 more to be regarded in any merely Protean, or generic 
 and representative, or speculative and mystical and spirit- 
 ualized, sense, than is He, against whom he will finally 
 gather the chosen strength of the armies of the ten con- 
 federated kings of the prophetic earth before the walls of 
 Jerusalem, Himself so to be regarded. The antithesis, 
 Christ and Antichrist, is a perfect one, as perfect in its 
 opposing personalities, as in its opposing moral qualities. 
 Thus, for example : 
 
 CHRIST. ANTICHRIST. 
 
 John iii. 31. " Comes from Rev. xi. 7. "Comes from below." 
 above." 
 
 John V. 43. " Comes in his Fa- John v. 43. "Comes in his own." 
 ther's name." 
 
 Phil. ii. 8. " Humbled himself 2. Thess. ii. 4. " Exalts himself 
 
 and became obedient." above all." 
 
 Is. liii. 3. " Was despised and Rev. xiii. 3, 4. " All the world 
 
 rejected and we esteemed him wonder after the beast, saying, who 
 
 not." is like imto him ?" 
 
 John vi. 38. " Comes to do his Daniel xi. 31. " Does according 
 
 Father's will." to his own." 
 
 John xvii. 4. " Glorifies God on Rev. xiii. 6. " Blasphemes the 
 
 earth." name of God." 
 
 Johnx. 14, lo. "The good Shep- Zech. xi. 16, 17. "The evil 
 
 herd that giveth his life for the shepherd or idol shepherd who shall 
 
 sheep." tear the flesh." 
 
 Phil. ii. 9, 10. " God highly ex- Is. xiv. 14, 15. " Exalteth him- 
 
 alts him, and gives him a name self above the heights of the douds, 
 
 above every name, that at the name yet is brought down to hell." 
 of Jesus every knee should bow." 
 
 Matt. xxiv. 30. " Shall be seen Is. xiv. 16. " They that see thee 
 
 coming in the clouds with power shall narrowly look upon thee, say- 
 
 and o-reat f^lory." ing, Is this the man that made the 
 
 ° ° earth to tremble, that did shake 
 
 the kingdoms ? " 
 
 Rev. xi. 15. "Shall reign for Dan. vii. 26. " They shall take 
 
 ever and ever." away his dominion to consume and 
 
 destroy it to the end." 
 
 Heb. i. 2. " The heir of all 2 Thess. ii. 3. " The son of per- 
 
 things." dition." 
 
60 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 Althougli we might dwell, at length, upon the texts 
 thus cited and compared, as furnishing clear and substan- 
 tial criteria, by which to recognize and identify Antichrist 
 when he shall enter upon his career, and by which to de- 
 termine many of his principal characteristics, and many 
 of the principal incidents of his reign, yet our only ob- 
 ject now is to refer to them, as establishing, beyond a 
 question, his personality. If on the other hand, they 
 afford no evidence of his personality, then do not the 
 contrasted texts, on the other, afford any evidence of 
 the personality of Christ. If we claim that the one class 
 of texts fail to prove the personality of Antichrist, of one 
 particular Antichrist, as contradistinguished from and 
 preeminent over all types and forerunners which shall 
 have preceded him, then, upon the same principles of 
 logic and evidence by which this conclusion is reached, 
 must the other class of texts equally fail to prove the 
 personality of Christ. Deny that the prophets. Old and 
 New Testament alike, prove the existence of the partic- 
 ular, personal and final Antichrist, or that they describe 
 the principal events of his career, and it is impossible, in 
 all logical fairness, not to deny, also, that the prophets 
 and evangelists prove the existence of the particular 
 and personal Christ (as distinguished, if you please, 
 from the " false Christs," which he warned his disciples 
 would come in his name), and that they record the prin- 
 cipal acts of his life and the principal events of his career. 
 
 True, the prophet who portrays the beast of the Reve- 
 lation elsewhere informs us that there are many anti- 
 christs (1 John ii. 18), indeed, that whosoever denies that 
 Christ IS to come (fp/oue»ov in the original, and venturus 
 in the Vulgate) in the flesh is antichrist ; but it will be 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 61 
 
 observed that he does not, in his epistle, as in the Revela- 
 tion, call these antichrists by name, or give us any partic- 
 ular account of them, or attach any specific title to them. 
 It is of antichristianism, of the " spirit of antichrist," 
 of which the prophet, professedly, discourses in his epistle, 
 but it is of THE Antichrist that he discourses, and whose 
 portraiture he draws, in the Revelation ; not of his types 
 and forerunners of any or of all ages, of Antiochus Epiph- 
 anes, or Mohammed, or the Napoleons, or either of them, 
 or any one Pope, or any succession of Popes, however 
 signally they may have foreshadowed his reign, or con- 
 tributed to cast up a highway for him ; but of the literal 
 Antichrist of the very last days, of, so to speak, the very 
 closing hours of the Gentile dispensation ; of tlie^ great 
 final monarch of the prophetic earth, and of him alone. 
 The prophet of the Revelation means, as Daniel, the great 
 apocalyptic revelator of the Old Testament, meant before 
 him, that there should be no mistake as to the personal 
 identity, or the lofty preeminence in evil, of this last 
 Antichrist, or as to the distinctive and expressly revealed 
 characteristics of his reign. 
 
 To further illustrate the personal identity of this literal 
 and final Antichrist, but, more especially, to identify the 
 symbols enumerated at the commencement of this chap- 
 ter, as referring, one and all, to one and the same per- 
 son, we will compare the accounts given of him under 
 these symbols in different chapters of Daniel and the 
 Revelation, premising only that we can but anticipate the 
 surprise of the reader (once having made himself familiar 
 with the portraiture of Antichrist in the Revelation) 
 to find how easily he will be able to follow him, un- 
 der every change of symbol, under every altered title, 
 
62 
 
 THE ANTICHRIST OF PKOPHECY. 
 
 through, not the pages of Daniel only, but the entire 
 range of prophetic Scripture, never, for a moment losing 
 sight of him, or erring as to his personal identity in all 
 its strict and proper fulness. Thus ; 
 
 AS THE BEAST. 
 
 AS THE LITTLE HORN. 
 
 Rev. xiii. 6. " He opens his Dan. vii. 25. " He speaks great 
 
 mouth in blasphemy against God, words against the Most High." 
 to blaspheme his name, and his 
 tabernacle, and them that dwell in 
 heaven." 
 
 Rev. xiii. 7. " He makes war Dan. vii. 21 . " He mfakes war 
 
 with the saints and overcomes with the saints and prevails." 
 them." 
 
 Rev. xiii. 5. " Authority was Dan. vii. 25. •' The saints are 
 
 given unto him forty and two given into his hand until time, 
 
 months," i. e. 1260 days. times and the dividing of time," 
 
 i. e. 1250 days. 
 
 A strong presumption certainly that the beast of the 
 
 thirteenth of the Revelation and the little horn of the 
 
 seventh of Daniel are identical, symbols of one and the 
 same person. Again ; 
 
 AS THE LITTLE HORN. 
 
 AS THE SECOND LITTLE HORN. 
 
 Dan. vii. 25. " Speaks great Dan. xi. 26. " Speaks marvel- 
 words against the Most High." lous things against the God of 
 
 gods." 
 
 Dan. vii. 22. " Shall prevail un- Dan. xi. 36. Shall prosper till 
 
 til the Ancient of days comes, and the indignation [against Israel and 
 
 judgment is given to the saints of Jerusalem] be accomplished," 
 the Most High, and the time comes 
 that the saints possess the king- 
 dom." 
 
 Thus tlie symbols of the seventh and eleventh of Dan- 
 iel are as clearly identical as those of the seventh of Dan- 
 iel and the thirteenth of the Revelation. Again ; 
 
 AS THE SECOND LITTLE HORN. 
 
 Dan. xi. 41. " He shall enter 
 also into the glorious land." 
 
 Dan. xi. 40. " Enters the glo- 
 rious land at the time of the end." 
 
 Dan. xi. 36. " He shall prosper 
 till the indignation [against Israel 
 and Jerusalem] be accomplished." 
 
 AS THE KING OF FIEBCE COUN- 
 TENANCE. 
 
 Dan. viii. 9. " He waxes great 
 towards the pleasant land." 
 
 Dan. viii. 17. " At the time of 
 the end shall be the vision." 
 
 Dan. viii. 19. " He shall pros- 
 per in the last end of the indigna- 
 tion" [against Israel and Jerusa- 
 lem]. 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 63 
 
 Thus the identity of the king of fierce countenance of 
 the eighth and the little horn of the eleventh of Daniel 
 can not be denied, as it appears to us, without, at the 
 same time, denying the identity of the symbols previously 
 considered, and their identity one and all with that of the 
 eighth of Daniel. Finally ; 
 
 THE KING OF FIEKCE COUN- THE PRINCE THAT SHALL COME. 
 
 TENANCE. 
 
 Dan. viii. 11. "Takes away the Dan. ix. 27. " Causes the sacri- 
 daily sacrifice." fice and obhition to cease." 
 
 Dan. viii. 19. "Shall prosper Dan. ix. 27. "Till that deter- 
 in the last end of the indignation." mined is poured upon the desola- 
 
 tor." 
 
 Thus are the beast of the thirteenth of the Revelation, 
 the little horn of the seventh, the little horn of the 
 eleventh, the king of fierce countenance of the eighth, 
 and the prince that shall come of the ninth, of Daniel, 
 identical symbols, representative of the literal and final 
 Antichrist of prophecy. We say final^ because it will bef 
 observed that, with a single exception, the last two con- 
 trasted texts in each of the foregoing sets of compari- 
 sons, establish his fall as being " when the indignation 
 [against Israel and Jerusalem] shall be accomplished," 
 which, certainly, as the observation of the most indiifer- 
 ent must convince them, has not been accomplished as 
 yet, and as being " at the time of the end," which has 
 certainly not yet arrived. 
 
 The evidence by which the identity of the symbols, 
 thus variously and concurrently representing Antichrist 
 in prophetic Scripture is clearly established, might be 
 multiplied indefinitely. We add a single instance more. 
 " The prince that shall come" of the ninth of Daniel, 
 " shall prosper until the consummation, and that deter- 
 mined is poured upon the desolator." (v. 27.) The 
 
g4 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 "kino- of Assyria " of the tenth of Isaiah shall pros- 
 per " till the Lord hath performed his whole work 
 upon Mount Zion, and on Jerusalem." The " king 
 of Assyria" is, therefore, still another title of the An- 
 tichrist. 
 
 In the fourteenth of Isaiah he is again called the Assy- 
 rian, " The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying. Surely as 
 I have thought, so shall it come to pass ; and as I have 
 purposed, so shall it stand : That I will break the Assy- 
 rian in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under 
 foot ; THEN shall his yoke depart from off them and his 
 burden from off their shoulders" — i. e. the shoulders of 
 Israel ; a sure proof of their restoration in unbelief. 
 
 In the same chapter he is also called " the king of 
 Babylon" and " Lucifer," from his blasphemous assump- 
 tion, perhaps, of the character of Christ as the bright 
 and morning star. 
 
 We have thus considered some of the evidences of the 
 personality of the literal and final Antichrist of prophecy, 
 and of the identity of not a few of the various symbols by 
 which he is represented ; which evidences contain, in most 
 instances, direct proof, and, in all, conclusive implica- 
 tions, of the futurity of his reign. 
 
 It remains to consider, more particularly and more by 
 themselves, still other proofs of the futurity of the reign 
 of Antichrist, though nothing, probably, could establish 
 that fact more completely than the plain declarations of 
 prophetic Scripture already considered, which place the 
 period of his reign "at the time of the end" ; when " the 
 indignation [against Israel and Jerusalem] shall be ac- 
 complished" ; "when the Lord hath performed his whole 
 work upon Mount Zion, and on Jerusalem"; in "the 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPIIFXY. 65 
 
 last end of the indignation" — and "when the transgres- 
 sors are come to the full," i. e. when their full number 
 is accomplished, which certainly is not as yet. These 
 plain declarations are perfectly definite and conclusive, 
 and yet they are but a tithe of the scriptural evidence 
 of the futurity of Antichrist's reign, nor do we propose, 
 in proceeding to the consideration of further proof on 
 this point, to allude to more than a tithe of that which 
 remains. 
 
 First, Antichrist is described as " exalting himself 
 above all that is called God, or that is worshipped," 
 2 Thess. ii. 4 ; as " planting the tabernacles of his 
 palace between the seas [the Dead and Mediterranean] 
 in the glorious holy mountain," Daniel xi. 45 ; as 
 sitting in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is 
 Godr—2 Thess. ii. 4. 
 
 Now " the temple of God" is an expression applied 
 in Scripture to three things, and three only ; 1st. To 
 the actual temple at Jerusalem, as in 1 Sam. i. 9. 2d. 
 To the bodies of individual saints, as in 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 3d. To the Church of God, as in 1 Cor. iii. 17. 
 It is manifestly impossible that Antichrist could sit 
 in any but the first of these three, and the co-inciding ex- 
 pression of Daniel, " the glorious holy mountain," fixes 
 the locality of that temple, not, as some would have it, at 
 Rome, but in the holy city, at Jerusalem and there 
 only. 
 
 We have seen that the symbols of Antichrist in 
 
 Daniel and the symbol of Antichrist in the Revelation 
 
 are identical, also that the periods at which these prophets 
 
 severally predicted his reign, are identical. Their de- 
 
 9 
 
^6 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 scriptions in this regard are perfectly precise and harmo- 
 nious. 
 
 But the Apocalypse was written by John twenty years 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A. D. 
 71, and was a revelation, as the term itself implies, not 
 of the past^ but of the future. But there has been no 
 temple at Jerusalem thus to " sit in" and to pollute, from 
 the time of its destruction by Titus even until now. 
 John, therefore (and not less Daniel), in prophetically re- 
 cording the desecration of the Jewish temple by Anti- 
 christ, must have had reference to a period which is 
 clearly and unquestionably /t^^wre. 
 
 And here, in passing, we pause for a moment, to show, 
 more specifically, that Antiochus Epiphanes, could not, 
 as many have supposed, have been the Antichrist either 
 of Daniel or the Revelation (although Daniel, in his 
 eleventh chapter, describes Antiochus at length as pol- 
 luting the Jewish temple and worship), for he died more 
 than one hundred and sixty years before Christ. He can 
 not, therefore, be the Antichrist of John, and if not of 
 John certainly not of Daniel, for we have seen that they 
 are identical. Antiochus is, perhaps, the most remarka- 
 ble of all the types of Antichrist, certainly in many re- 
 spects, lie overrun the holy city and the holy land. 
 lie "took away the daily sacrifice." He profaned the 
 temple. But he did not live " at the time of the end," 
 " in the last end of the indignation ," " when the trans- 
 gressors were come to the full," when the Lord had 
 " performed his whole work upon Mount Zion, and on 
 Jerusalem." He did not " stand up against the Prince 
 of princes." He was not "broken without hand," i. e. by 
 special and direct divine interposition. He did not reign in 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PKOrilECY. G7 
 
 undivided sovereignty over the ten prophetic realms of the 
 eastern and western Roman earth, nor did any ten confed- 
 erated kings therein flee to him, to seek, under his more 
 iron rule, a refuge from the popular commotions that men- 
 aced their thrones. The age of democracy, of the struggle 
 for independence of the clay, as against the iron, was com- 
 paratively unknown and undeveloped then. For the same 
 reason Mohammed can not have been Antichrist, nor can 
 any Pope, nor any number or succession of Popes. There 
 is, moreover, no mountain in Rome, much less the " glo- 
 rious holy mountain " of which Daniel speaks, and to 
 which our Saviour alludes, as he does in the twenty-fourth 
 of Matthew, as the seat of the " Holy Place." There 
 are not (as we have shown) seven distinct hills even 
 there. There is no Temple of God there, capable of be- 
 ing thus desecrated and profaned, unless it be claimed that 
 it is St. Peter's, which, surely, with its satanic record, is 
 any thing, and has ever been any thing, rather than " the 
 Holy Place." Certainly Bishop Colenso could not, by 
 any possible ingenuity of his " verifying faculty," or in 
 any possible consistency with his neologic conceits, so 
 contract the range of his Anglican latitudinarianism, as to 
 grant to the Pope so full and exclusive a dispensation as 
 this. Not thus does he minister at the altars of symbolic 
 Babylon ! 
 
 Again ; we are told by Daniel that the period of Anti- 
 christ's reign will be a season of unexampled tribula- 
 tion. He says, expressly, that this tribulation will be 
 " at the time of the end," and that it will be connected 
 immediately with the reign of Antichrist. 
 
 '•'• And he [Antichrist] shall plant the tabernacles of 
 his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain 
 
68 THE A^'TICHEIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 .... and at that time there shall be a time of trouble, 
 such as never was since there was a nation, . . . and at 
 this time thy people [the House of Israel] shall be deliv- 
 ered, every one that shall be found written in the book." 
 — Daniel xi. 45 ; xii. 1. 
 
 John, in the Revelation, refers distinctly to the severity 
 of this tribulation, ideniifying it plainly Avith the reign 
 of Antichrist. 
 
 " And it was given unto him [the beast] to make Avar 
 with the saints, and to overcome them .... and he 
 causeth all, the small and the great, and the rich and the 
 poor, and the free and the bond, to receive a mark on 
 their right hand, or on their forehead : [and] that no one 
 be able to buy or to sell, save he that hath the mark, the 
 
 name of the beast, or the number of his name 
 
 and all that dwell upon the earth shall Avorship him, 
 Avhose names are not written in the book of life of the 
 Lamb slain from the foundation of the Avorld." — Revela- 
 tion xiii. 
 
 So also our Saviour foretold this season of tribulation 
 to his disciples, connecting it immediately Avith the reign 
 of Antichrist, and his OAvn second appearing. 
 
 " When ye therefore shall see the abomination of deso- 
 lation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy 
 
 place there shall be great tribulation, such as 
 
 Avas not since the beginning of the Avorld to this time, no, 
 nor ever shall be Immediately after the tribula- 
 tion of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the 
 moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall 
 from heaven, and the poA\^ers of the heavens shall be 
 shaken ; and then shall appear the sign of the Son of 
 man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 69 
 
 earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming 
 in the clouds of heaven ^vith power and great glory." — 
 Matthew xxiv. 
 
 Now if this season of unprecedented and unexampled 
 tribulation has already past, then is " the time of the 
 end" also past; then, also, has Antichrist "planted the 
 tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious 
 holy mountain " in the past ; then has the full number of 
 transgressors been accomplished in the past ; then has 
 the indignation against Israel and Jerusalem ceased, and 
 the House of Israel been delivered, in the past ; then has 
 the sign of the Son of man, which our Saviour foretold, 
 (^not reverted to) appeared in heaven in the past ; then has 
 the Son of man come again in his own glory, and in his 
 Father's glory, and in the glory of the holy angels, and 
 the righteous living been transformed, and the sainted 
 dead been raised from their graves, in the past, to meet 
 him at his coming ; then are we living in the millen- 
 nium now. Alas, how many aching hearts, and weary 
 heads, and weeping eyes, how many righteous and 
 believing souls, will attest the contrary ! If, therefore, 
 we are not living in the millennium now, and Anti- 
 christ is not reigning now, as we know from indu- 
 bitable criteria (already referred to) that he is not, then 
 must his reign, clearly and unquestionably, hefuture. 
 
 Once more ; not only is the empire of Antichrist (em- 
 bracing the territory comprised within the boundaries 
 of the four great world powers, as already considered) 
 to be supernaturally destroyed " at the time of the 
 end," and " in the days of these kings " (the ten 
 kings of the prophetic earth, Daniel ii. 44) by the 
 " stone cut out of the mountain, without hands," but An- 
 
70 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 tichrist is, at the same time, to be supernaturaUy destroyed 
 himself. We cite the following Scripture in proof. 
 
 " lie shall also stand up against the Prince of princes, 
 but he shall be destroyed without hand,'' (Daniel viii. 25) 
 i. e., by direct divine interposition, which interposition, it 
 is worthy of notice, will be attended with various miracu- 
 lous signs and tokens, such as are described by our 
 Saviour, — the darkening of the sun, the witholding of the 
 lisht of the moon, the fallin"^ of the stars from heaven, 
 and the shaking of its powers. 
 
 " These [the ten kings of the prophetic earth and the 
 beast] shall make war upon the Lamb and the Lamb 
 shall overcome them, for he is the Lord of lords and the 
 King of kings." — Revelation xvii. 12, 14. 
 
 " And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth, and 
 his armies, gathered together to make war upon him that 
 sat on the horse, and with his army [the legions of heaven.] 
 And the beast was taken, and he who was with him, the 
 false prophet, that wrought miracles in his presence, with 
 which he deceived those that received the mark of the 
 beast, and those that worship his image. [What false 
 prophet thus ministers, or has ever thus ministered, to the 
 Pope of Rome?) These both were cast alive into the 
 lake of fire which burneth with brimstone. And the rest 
 were killed with the sword of him that sat upon the 
 horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth ; and all 
 the fowls were filled with their flesh." — Rev. xix. 19 — 21. 
 
 So also the apostle Paul expressly couples the super- 
 natural destruction of Antichrist with Christ's second 
 coming. 
 
 " Tlie man of sin, the son of perdition . . that wicked 
 one whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of his 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 71 
 
 spirit, and destroy with the brightness of his coming." — 
 2 Thes. ii. 3, 8. 
 
 So also Isaiah ; 
 
 " And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his 
 mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the 
 wicked one." — xi. 4. 
 
 In the light of this Scripture, it is enough simply to 
 ask what sovereign of the entire (eastern and western) 
 prophetic earth, holding sway over its ten allied realms 
 and ten concurring kings, has ever been thus supernatu- 
 rally destroyed in the past? If no one, then must the 
 reign of Antichrist be, most clearly and unquestionably, 
 future. 
 
 We have thus considered the personality of Antichrist ; 
 the identity of the symhols" which represent him ; the sphere^ 
 in its precise boundaries, and the futurity^ in its appointed 
 period, of his reign. Let us now consider, more particu- 
 larly, the prophetic record of his reign. 
 
 Its most distinguishing feature will be its connection with 
 Israel and Jerusalem. In this connection, it would almost 
 appear as if Antichrist were to be raised up purposely to 
 be the judicial, final and most consuming scourge of 
 God's " chosen people." His record, in this regard, is to 
 be found, chiefly, in the last six chapters of Daniel. The 
 first six chapters give us a picture of the four great Gen- 
 tile empires, and the course of Gentile civilization from 
 its commencement to its close ; the last six a picture of 
 Israel and Jerusalem as affected by Gentile rule and the 
 reign of Antichrist. The first six revolve around Bab- 
 ylon as their centre ; the last six around Jerusalem. The 
 first six are written in the native tongue of Babylon, the 
 Chaldee ; the last six in the native tongue of Israel, the 
 
72 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 Hebrew. The first six give iis, in outline, the career of 
 the great Gentile kings who precede Antichrist ; the last 
 six give us, in detail, the principal acts of Antichrist as 
 connected with Israel and Jerusalem. It is thus, and thus 
 only, that it is possible to view Antichrist in proper bold- 
 ness of relief. Israel and Jerusalem, far more than many 
 would at first suppose, constitute the great key-note of hu- 
 man history, and Antichrist will, on the one hand, be 
 their last, their most vengeful, and, for a season, their 
 most successful foe, as he will be, on the other, the last 
 great idol of Gentile civilization, the representative of 
 its grandest epoch, "wondered after and worshipped by 
 all." But the Jews are to be " trodden under foot of the 
 Gentiles " to the very end. 
 
 Contemporaneously with his reign, the Jews will be a 
 restored, but still unforgiven and unbelieving nation, with 
 a rebuilded temple and reinstituted worship. Their 
 worldly resources and worldly pride will be beyond all 
 precedent or comparison. This is the special burden of 
 the second chapter of Isaiah. " Replenished from the East, 
 their land will be full of silver and gold, neither is there 
 any end of their treasures ; their land is also full of 
 horses, neither is there any end of their chariots ; their 
 land is also full of idols."— Isaiah ii. 6—8. Thus, though 
 restored as a nation, they will be restored, not in favor, 
 but in anger. Judgments more consuming than were 
 ever inflicted upon them before await them now. "The 
 Lord shall lop their bough with terror, and the high ones 
 of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be 
 made humble." Antichrist will be the instrument em- 
 ployed. " I will send him against an hypocritical nation, 
 and against the people of my wrath Avill I give him a 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF rROPHECT. 73 
 
 charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to 
 tread them down like the mire of the streets." (Isaiah 
 X. 9.) " Wherefore thus saith the Lord God ; Because ye 
 are all become dross, behold, therefore I will bring you 
 [the entire House of Israel, all the tribes] into the midst 
 of Jerusalem. As they gather silver, and brass, and 
 iron, and lead, and tin, into the midst of the furnace, 
 to blow upon it, to melt it ; so will I gather you [when 
 have they ever been so gathered in the past ?] in my an- 
 ger and my fury, and I will leave you there and melt 
 you. Yes ! I will gather you, and blow upon you in the 
 fire of my wrath, and ye shall be melted in the midst 
 thereof; and ye shall know that I the Lord liave poured 
 out my fury upon you." — Ezekiel xxii. 19 — 22. 
 
 " And the people of the prince that shall come shall 
 destroy the city, and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof 
 shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war [of 
 Antichrist against Israel and Jerusalem] desolations are 
 determined." — Daniel ix. 26. 
 
 These persecutions will not cease until the hour for 
 the destruction of Antichrist, and the co-incident conver- 
 sion of Israel shall arrive. 
 
 If the Jews are to be restored as a believing and for- 
 given nation, as some believe, why these persecutions 
 after their return ? If they are to be converted as a na- 
 tion^ as we know from Zechariah that they are to be, 
 then, of course, must they have returned unconverted. 
 
 The Jews will, at first, willingly receive Antichrist. 
 " I am come in my Father's name and ye receive me not, 
 if another shall come in his own name, him ye will 
 receive." 
 
 Antichrist will enter into a covenant with them, 
 10 
 
74 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 " cleaving unto them with flatteries." " And he shall 
 confirm the covenant with many [i. e., with Israel] for 
 one week [or hebdomad, a period of seven years], and 
 in the midst of the week [at the end of three and a half 
 years] he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to 
 cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he 
 shall make it desolate, even until the consummation and 
 that determined shall be poured upon the desolator." 
 (Daniel ix. 27.) That is, in his jealousy of the undivided 
 homage and worship of all adherents of his dominion, 
 and of every vestige and memorial, however prostituted, 
 of the true God, he will violate his covenant, assail Jeru- 
 salem, and make war upon its people. He will, for a 
 time, be victorious. He will overthrow the Jewish wor- 
 ship. He will " plant the tabernacles of his palace be- 
 tween the seas in the glorious holy mountain." He will 
 " sit in the temple of God, showing himself that he is 
 God," " exalting himself above all that is called God, or 
 that is worshipped," setting up " the abomination of des- 
 olation" in the "Holy Place." Then shall there be a 
 time of trouble for Israel, such as shall not have been 
 since there was a nation, no, nor ever shall be. " Behold 
 the day [not the " day of the Lord," of Christ's second 
 coming; that is still future] cometh for Jehovah, and 
 thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I 
 will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle ; and 
 the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the 
 women ravished ; and half of the city shall go forth into 
 captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut 
 off'." (Zechariah xiv. 2.) This description applies, in no 
 sense, to the subsequent and final siege of Jerusalem, 
 for then the city will not be taken, no outrage will be 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 75 
 
 committed upon it by its foes, no portion of it will go 
 forth into captivity. 
 
 But the end drawetli nigh. " For the elects' sake [now 
 so nearly worn out by Antichrist] those days shall be 
 shortened." Antichrist " shall come to his end and none 
 shall help him." The " battle of the great day of God 
 the Almighty" is at hand. But Antichrist little foresees 
 that he will be opposed by the armies of heaven and their 
 divine Commander, appearing in proper person. 
 
 For some untold reason, the " residue that is not cut 
 off" rebel again against the rule of Antichrist and defy 
 his utmost rage. Whereupon he prepares to assail Jeru- 
 salem more fiercely than ever. 
 
 " For behold, in those days, and in that time, when I 
 shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, 
 I will also gather all nations [of the prophetic earth] and 
 will bring them do^vn into the valley of Jehoshaphat [Je- 
 hovah judging] and will plead with them for my people, 
 and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered 
 among the nations, and parted my land." — Joel iii. 1, 2. 
 
 " Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles : Prepare war, 
 wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw 
 near, let them come up : Beat your ploughshares into 
 
 swords, your pruning hooks into spears Put ye in 
 
 the sickle, for the harvest is ripe ; come, and get ye 
 down, for the press is full, the vats overflow ; for their 
 wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley 
 
 of decision The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, 
 
 and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and 
 the earth shall shake, but the Lord will be the hope of his 
 people, and the strength of the children of Israel." — Joel 
 iii. 9—16. 
 
76 THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 
 
 " The Lord shall go forth, and fight against those na- 
 tions, as when he fought in the day of battle, and Ms feet 
 shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives." — Zecli- 
 ariah xiv. 3, 4. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek 
 to destroy [not all nations, but] all the nations that come 
 against Jerusalem [i. e., the ten nations of the prophetic 
 earth] . . . and they [i. e., Israel] shall look tqoon me 
 whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, 
 as one mourneth for his only son."-7-Zechariah xii. 9, 10. 
 
 " And when they had spoken these things, while they 
 beheld, he was taken up ; and a cloud received him out of 
 their sight. And while they looked steadfastly towards 
 heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in 
 white apparel ; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why 
 stand ye gazing up into heaven ? this same Jesus that is 
 taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like man- 
 ner as ye have seen him go into heaven." — Acts i. 9 — 11. 
 
 " And they shall see the Son of man coming in the 
 clouds of heaven with power and great glory." — Our 
 Saviour, in Matthew xxiv. 30. 
 
 " For they are the spirits of demons, working mira- 
 cles, that go forth unto the kings of the whole world [t/;? 
 oiaoo^niviig o/.jjc, i. e., the whole prophetic earth,] to gather 
 them to the battle of the great day of God the Almighty. 
 .... And they gathered them together into the place 
 
 which is called in Hebrew Armageddon These 
 
 [i. e., the ten kings of the prophetic earth, and the least'] 
 shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb shall over- 
 come them, because he is the Lord of lords, and Kinjr of 
 kings, and those who are with him are called, and chosen, 
 and faithful." .... "And I saw heaven opened, and 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 77 
 
 behold a white horse ; and he that sat upon him was 
 
 [called] Faithful and True And the armies which 
 
 Avere in heaven were following him . . . and out of his 
 mouth proceeded a sharp sword, that with it he should 
 smite the nations : and he shall rule them with a rod of 
 iron : and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of 
 the wrath of God the Almighty. And he hath on his gar- 
 ment and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and 
 Lord of lords. And I saw an angel standing in the sun ; 
 and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls 
 that fly in the mid-heaven, Come, be gathered together 
 unto the great supper of God ; that ye may eat the flesh 
 of kings, and the flesh of chief-captains, and the flesh of 
 mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of those that 
 sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both small and 
 • great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, 
 and his armies, gathered together to make war with hini 
 that sat on the horse, and with his army. And the beast 
 was taken, and he who was with him, the false prophet 
 that wrought miracles in his presence, with which he 
 deceived those that worship his image. These both were 
 cast alive into the lake of fire which burneth with brim- 
 stone. And the rest were killed with the sword of him 
 that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of 
 his mouth : and all the fowls were filled with their flesh." 
 — Revelation xvi., xvii., xix.* 
 
 But Antichrist and his armies are not to be the only 
 
 vulhTi"'- J'^r"""* ^^ ^\^ ""J"^^- occasion when there has been a direct and 
 GnH rfu H /^I'^'l'^^i almighty power for the deliverance of Israel 
 God diyded the Red Sea for their escape from Egypt. He caused the 
 walls of Jericho to fall down. He fought for thenT'against the kin.s of 
 Canaan He descended on Sinai to confirm with them, for their fifture 
 guidance, the covenant of the Law with its glorious but rejected C! 
 native of perpetual blessing. Sinai trembled and was shaken ; and He 
 has said, "Yet one more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven " 
 
V5 THE AJSTHJHKlDi un rti.Kjtrxi.iL\^L. 
 
 victims of the interposing vengeance of heaven. The 
 hour of the final destruction of his golden capital, the 
 literal Babylon of prophecy, has also arrived. Note 
 the call that summons forth the hordes of central and 
 northern Asia to its destruction, even while his armies 
 are beleaguring Jerusalem. 
 
 " Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet 
 among the nations, prepare the nations against her, the 
 kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Aschenaz, appoint a 
 captain against her ; cause the horses to come up as the 
 rough caterpillars. Prepare against her the nations with 
 the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the 
 rulers thereof. And the land [of Babylon] shall tremble 
 and sorrow : for every purpose of the Lord shall be per- 
 formed against Babylon, to make her a desolation with- 
 out an inhabitant." — Jeremiah 1. 27 — 29.* 
 
 Thus Babylon will fall. Thus " her broad walls shall 
 be broken, and her high gates be burned with fire," "her 
 mighty men be taken, and every one of their bows be 
 broken," " for the spoilers have come unto her from the 
 north," even at the very time (as swift messengers from 
 Babylon will hasten to announce) that the Lord of hosts 
 " shall break the Assyrian in his land," and " upon His 
 mountains tread him under foot." Israel, now repentant 
 and forgiven, will rejoice and lift up her loud and tri- 
 umphant acclaim, " How hath the oppressor ceased — the 
 golden city ceased." 
 
 Thus sets, in divided glory and gloom, the Saturday 
 evening's sun of this Gentile dispensation, briefly pre- 
 
 * The " nations " here referred to can not be the same as those de- 
 scribed as being gathered, under Antichrist, before Jerusalem, for the 
 latter are said expressly to be those of the ten kings of the prophetic 
 earth. See Revelation xvii. 12, 13, 14. 
 
THE ANTICHRIST OF PROPHECY. 79 
 
 ceding the millennial dawn of the new Judaic dispensa- 
 tion, when Jerusalem shall, at last, " dwell safely," at 
 rest from her Gentile foes ; when "her light shall go forth 
 as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that 
 burneth " to " all the families of the earth," w^ith none 
 to molest or make afraid in all God's holy mountain. 
 Thus, too, shall Antichrist arise and " prosper and 
 practice " and pass away, and the groaning and travailing 
 earth, now, at last, relieved, enter upon a Sabbath of 
 peaceful and blessed rest, and Satan be bound for a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 Oh, how boundless, as a source of comfort and support 
 and repose, will be the prospect of that millennial rest, 
 with its earthly felicity and its heavenly ministrations, to 
 those destined to pass through the perilous scenes of 
 the great tribulation, upon the very threshold of w^hich 
 we are entering even now ! Yerily, on the other side of 
 that fiery flood, there is "a rest that remaineth to the 
 people of God," where all tears will be wiped away and 
 there Avill be no cross to bear. Earth hath no sorrow 
 which that rest will not heal. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM OF PROPHECY. 
 
 god's covenants concerning them, and their final 
 exaltation. 
 
 Intimately connected with the subjects of the preced- 
 ing chapters — the restoration of the Jews, as an undi- 
 vided and incorporated nation, to their own land — their 
 restoration in unbelief — their subsequent persecutions under 
 Antichrist, and their Ausii forgiveness and blessing' — are 
 God's covenants concerning them, and concerning his 
 and their '' beloved city." 
 
 These covenants consist of a regular series, and bind 
 up within themselves almost the entire history of the 
 Jewish nation, insomuch that their history can not be 
 properly understood without properly understanding these 
 covenants also. 
 
 They are four in number, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, 
 the Davidic, and the " new and everlasting covenant of 
 grace." 
 
 We shall consider them in the order in which Scripture 
 places them, that is, in the order of time. 
 
 First in order, both in importance and in time, is the 
 Abrahamic covenant. 
 
 Concerning this covenant it should be said, before en- 
 tering upon a more particular consideration of it, that. 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 81 
 
 perhaps, there is no higher scriptural evidence of the 
 future restoration of both families of the House of Israel, 
 as an undivided nation, to their own land, and of the 
 restoration of the land itself to more than its ancient 
 beauty, fertility and glory, than the very terms in which 
 this covenant is, not only at first expressed, but afterwards 
 so fully and repeatedly confirmed. This covenant is not 
 only the proper and essential starting point, but the very 
 key to a just biblical understanding of the past and pres- 
 ent suffering condition, and the final earthly glory of 
 Israel and Jerusalem. 
 
 Abraham, obedient to the command of God, " left his 
 country, his kindred and his father's house," and jour- 
 neyed westward toward Canaan. Having entered Canaan, 
 not knowing whither he was to go, or where he was to 
 take up even a temporary abode, he continued his journey 
 until he reached the plain of Moreh. There " the 'Lord 
 appeared unto him and said. Unto thy seed will I give 
 this land.'' And Abraham built an aUar there unto the 
 Lord. 
 
 Subsequently, after his return from Egypt, he came 
 again unto "the place where his tent had been pitched at 
 the beginning, unto the place of the altar which he had 
 made there at the first." The Lord, appearing to him, 
 not directly upon the plain of Moreh, but upon a not 
 distant mountain, from whence the land, afterwards 
 called Holy, stretched on every side, to its farthest extent 
 of view, " said unto Abraham, Lift up now thine eyes, and 
 look from the place lohere thou art, northward, and south- 
 ward, and eastward, and luestward : for all the land which 
 thou seest, to thee will I give ity and to thy seed for ever. 
 Arise, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the 
 11 
 
82 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 hreadtli of it ; for I ivill give it unto thee." From this 
 elevated site, in the clear atmosphere of Canaan, the 
 patriarch could not see a single spot, in the entire range 
 of view that encircled him, except the peak of a far dis- 
 tant mountain, that did not form a portion of the land 
 given by these words of the Lord to him and to his seed 
 for ever. Verily, " a good land and a large," a gift wor- 
 thy, in its freeness, and fulness, and richness, and perpe- 
 tuity, of the Lord of the whole earth to give to Abraham, 
 his servant and his friend ! 
 
 This gift the Lord afterwards confirmed by a covenant, 
 defining more particularly its extent, on the day when he 
 announced to the aged and childless pilgrim that he 
 would give unto him a son (to be the " heir no less of 
 the spiritual than material blessings promised unto him). 
 " In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abra- 
 ham, saying. Unto thy seed have I given this land, from 
 the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates ; 
 the Kenites, and the Kennizzites, and the Kadmonites, and 
 the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, and the 
 Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the 
 Jebusites.'* 
 
 Again ; in visions of the night, " the Lord called him 
 forth from the curtains of his tent and commanded him, 
 " Look now toivards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou he 
 ahle to number them." Under the pure skies of a Judean 
 night, he lifted up his eyes to the innumerable heavenly 
 host, " and the word of the Lord said unto him. So shall 
 thy seed he, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of 
 the Chahlees, to give thee this land to inherit it." 
 
 Finally ; when Abraham was ninety years old and nine, 
 and one year before the birth of Isaac, the Lord again 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 83 
 
 appeared to him and said, '' I ivill establish my covenant 
 hetween me and thee and thy seed after thee^ in their 
 generations^ for an everlasting covenant^ to he a God 
 unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I tvill give unto 
 thee and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a 
 stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting posses- 
 sion; and I loill he their God.''* Verily, a gift of godlike 
 munificence to one, who, previously thereto, was neither 
 the father of an heir, nor, humanly speaking, likely to be, 
 nor the owner of a foot of ground ! But he trusted in 
 the most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, 
 and kept his charge, his commandments, his statutes, and 
 his laws. This was the secret of the promise and the 
 blessing. 
 
 If the plainest of terms and the divinest of authority 
 can establish the right of the seed of Abraham to the pos- 
 session of the land of promise, against the adverse claims 
 or occupancy of any and all other nations ; or the ever- 
 lasting tenure of that right ; or the certainty that it will 
 be ultimately and nationally enjoyed as an everlasting in- 
 heritance ; then, surely, such right, with all the privileges 
 and blessings pertaining to it, is granted here. Xo inter- 
 vals of interrupted possession, or dispersion and persecu- 
 tion in other lands, no tenancy of other nations, of what- 
 ever duration, can devest a right, or impair the certainty 
 of its ultimate and everlasting enjoyment, clothed Avith 
 sanctions so sacred. No human proscription, no technical 
 forfeiture, can run against so divine a title. 
 
 Observe now, briefly, the renewals by the Almighty of 
 this covenant. 
 
 To Isaac, God said, '•'■ Sojourn in this land, and I tvill 
 he with thee and bless thee ; for unto thee and thy seed will 
 
84 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 I give all these countries; and I ivill perform the oath wMcJi 
 I sivare unto Abraham thy father^ and I will make thy 
 seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and ivill give unto 
 thy seed all these countries ; and in thy seed shcdl all the na- 
 tions of the earth he blessed." 
 
 To Jacob, God said, " The land ivhich I gave Abraham 
 and Isaac, to thee ivill I give it, and to thy seed after thee 
 ivill I give the land" 
 
 The dying Joseph said to his brethren in Egypt, *' God 
 will surely bring you out of this land unto the land which 
 he sware to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob." 
 
 Such is the Abrahamic covenant ; such the circum- 
 stances under which it was made ; the terms in which 
 it is expressed ; the divinely official sanctions which in- 
 vest it ; its renewals, and its perpetuity ; such the title 
 it conveys, and the muniments by which that title is 
 surrounded. Such is the heaven-chartered right, which 
 Antichrist will seek, with unprecedented fury, to wrest 
 from this now dispersed and despised and bleeding peo- 
 ple, and such the covenants and oaths by which the 
 God of Israel will oppose the fierce onsets of his Satanic 
 wrath. 
 
 The territory thus granted [not to all the seed of 
 Abraham and Isaac, for they had other seed than 
 Jacob, to whom these covenants did not pertain, and 
 who had no inheritance in Israel, but to all the seed of 
 Jacob"] was not left by the Almighty uncertain or unde- 
 fined. Its exact boundaries, at all points, are laid down 
 in Scripture, with the most careful and unambiguous pre- 
 cision, whatever difficulty there may be in defining them 
 with similar accuracy in modern terms. 
 
 When the Lord appeared unto Moses with the declared 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 86 
 
 purpose of delivering the children of Israel from their 
 Egyptian captivity, and of thus fulfilling his covenants 
 with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, he said, " I am 
 come down to deliver my people — and to bring them up 
 out of the land of Egypt, and to bring them unto a good 
 land and a large." God himself defined the limits of the 
 land, " And I will set thy bounds by the Red Sea, even 
 unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto 
 
 the river Every place whereon the soles of your 
 
 feet shall tread shall be yours ; from the wilderness and 
 Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto 
 the uttermost sea shall your coast be." — Deut. xi. 22 — 
 26. 
 
 Again, Moses defines, as follows, a portion of its bor- 
 ders, in the thirty-fourth chapter of Numbers (6 — 11.) 
 "As for the western border, ye shall have the great sea 
 for a border ; this shall be your west border. This shall 
 be your north border ; from the great sea ye shall point 
 out for you Mount Hor. From Mount Hor ye shall 
 point out your border unto the entrance of Hamath ; and 
 the goings forth of the border shall be to Zedad. And 
 the border shall go on to Ziphron, and the goings out of it 
 shall be at Hazar-enan ; this shall be your north border. 
 And ye shall point out your east border from Hazar-enan 
 to Shepham ; and the coast shall go down from Shepham 
 to Riblah, on the east side Ain," &c. 
 
 Thus, as above, has Moses recorded the limits of the 
 Promised Land, after the Canaanitish tribes had acquired 
 a prescriptive right thereto (if such a thing were possible 
 against the sure word of God) by adverse and unin- 
 terrupted possession during a period of four hundred 
 years. 
 
86 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 Centuries afterwards, when all the tribes of Israel Avere 
 captive bondmen in lands far distant from Jerusalem and 
 Samaria, a portion of them for a period of seventy years, 
 but by far the greater portion for a period which has 
 not ended even now, the prophet Ezekiel, himself a fellow- 
 exile in Chaldea with Daniel and Jeremiah and the tribes 
 of Judah and Benjamin, thus, as follows, defines, in per- 
 fect harmony with Moses, the boundaries of the Promised 
 Land, and declares to the sorrowing and weeping exiles 
 by the waters of Babylon, not less, than its divinely ap- 
 pointed borders, the immutability of God's covenants con- 
 cerning it : 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord God, This shall be the border 
 whereby ye shall inherit the land according to the twelve 
 tribes of Israel ; Joseph shall have two portions. And 
 ye shall inherit it one as well as another ; concerning the 
 which I lifted up my hand to give it unto your fathers ; and 
 this land shall fall to you for inheritance. And this 
 shall be the border of the land toward the north side, 
 from the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to 
 Zedad ; Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is between 
 the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath ; 
 Hazar-hatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran. And 
 the border from the sea shall be Hazar-enan, the border 
 of Damascus, and the north northward, and the border 
 of Hamath. And this is the north side. And the east 
 side ye shall measure from Hauran, and from Damascus, 
 and from Gilead, and from the land of Israel by Jordan, 
 from the border unto the east sea. And this is the east 
 side. And the south side southward, from Tamar to the 
 waters of strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea. 
 And this is the south side southward. The west side 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 87 
 
 also shall be tlie great sea from the border, till a man 
 comes over against Hamath. This is the west side. 
 So shall ye divide this land according to the tribes of 
 Israel."— Ezekiel xlvii. 13—22. 
 
 We may not be able to trace these boundaries now as 
 accurately as the above description would seem to imply, or 
 to verify them in terms of modern geography, but they 
 are not, for that reason, any the less absolutely definite, as 
 the immutable and divinely-declared limits of the Prom- 
 ised Land ; as immutable to-day as on those far distant 
 days, when God, both by direct communication, and by 
 the mouth of his holy prophets, first defined them. And 
 the immutability of his covenanted purposes concerning 
 the children of Israel and their land can no more be 
 shaken by any occupancy, or user, or prescriptive claims 
 of other nations, during these long and weary cen- 
 turies of dispersion and persecution among the Gen- 
 tiles, than it was by the captivity of four hundred 
 years in Egypt, or the exile of seventy years at Baby- 
 lon. All the tribes will, as truly as God liveth, and 
 his covenant standeth sure, go back to the Prom- 
 ised Land from their Gentile dispersion, even as all went 
 back from their Egyptian, and a portion of them from 
 their Babylonian bondage, for the covenant with Abra- 
 ham was an everlasting covenant. And when they re- 
 turn from among the Gentiles, it will be their last return, 
 their final restoration ; " ^o look " (after a brief season of 
 unequalled tribulation) ''upon him whom they pierced"; to 
 acknowledge him as their king ; to repent and be forgiven ; 
 and to become a blessing to all the nations of the earth, 
 which latter provision of the Abrahamic covenant has 
 
88 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 never, in the past, been, in any sense, or for the briefest 
 period, fulfilled. Then will the " times of the Gentiles 
 be fulfilled," and Antichrist and his hosts be miraculously 
 destroyed, and hi» golden capital be destroyed, and 
 down-trodden Israel be uplifted, and their beloved city 
 become " a name of joy, and a praise and honor, in all 
 the earth." Then will all the blessings, hotli material and 
 spiritual, of the Abrahamic covenant, for the first time, 
 and for all coming time, be realized by Israel, and its 
 spiritual blessings by all other nations of the earth. 
 
 Such is the covenant, which God made with the 
 fathers of Israel, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, 
 commencing with a homeless but trusting and believing 
 wanderer amidst the oaks of Moreh, and ending only 
 when the last of his seed shall have closed their earthly 
 career, and time shall be succeeded by the eternal state. 
 Such, so actual, so almost inconceivable, is to be the fu- 
 ture glory of Israel. But we need not envy her, for, when 
 restored and pardoned, she will dispense the spiritual 
 blessings of the covenant with overflowing fulness, with 
 a God-like beneficence, with no invidious hand, and 
 all other people, and kindreds and tongues will be wel- 
 come partakers of her glory. " The Gentiles shall come 
 to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." 
 
 Every covenant hath its seal. The seal of the Abra- 
 hamic covenant Avas the rite of circumcision. Circum- 
 cision was instituted as a token of an everlasting cove- 
 nant, which it was also called. " This is my covenant 
 which ye shall keep, between mo and you, and thy seed 
 after thee : every man child among you shall be circum- 
 cised ; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 89 
 
 and you : He that is born in thy house, and he that is 
 bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised ; and 
 my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting 
 covenant." — Genesis xvii. 6, 8. 
 
 The children of Israel might have entered into full 
 and quiet and uninterrupted possession of their covenanted 
 inheritance at once, and into the enjoyment of its cove- 
 nanted blessings, so unconditioned, so unmingled, so glo- 
 rious, but their uncircumcised hearts turned away from 
 the God of their fathers, and they chose other and false 
 gods, until, at last, to punish them for their sins, to bring 
 them to repentance, to subdue their hearts and cleanse 
 them from their iniquities, God sent them into cap- 
 tivity to the kings of Egypt ; if so be they might thereby 
 be made worthy heirs and possessors of so precious a 
 heritage. 
 
 When, at the end of four hundred years, the bitterness 
 of their bondage had become almost insupportable, God 
 " brought them up out of Egypt" ; but scarcely had they 
 recrossed its borders, on their way to the Promised land, 
 amidst miraculous displays of divine mercy in their be- 
 half, when they again rebelled, and forfeited again the 
 blessings of the covenant. 
 
 Whereupon God instituted a new covenant, entering 
 into covenant with them, as he had entered into cove- 
 nant with their fathers. But the covenant with them was 
 not, like the former covenant, a covenant of unmingled 
 blessing, but presented to their choice an alternative of 
 blessing or of cursing. If they chose its curses (which 
 they did), the Abrahamic covenant was to be, thereafter, 
 not superseded or annulled, but suspended^ until the cov- 
 enant with them, exhausted of its curses and its coming 
 12 
 
90 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 woes, should, upon their final repentance, ensuing upon 
 the persecutions of Antichrist, and supernatural interpo- 
 sitions in their behalf, be remitted and annulled by the 
 "new and everlasting covenant of grace." 
 
 But, though suspended, how wholly unforgotten of God 
 was his covenant with Abraham ; how for ever sure its 
 promises and its ratifying oaths ! for upon the very 
 day that God commanded them, "To-morrow, turn ye, 
 get ye into the wilderness," he also said, remembering 
 his covenant with their fathers, and " swearing by him- 
 self, as he could not swear by a greater," " As truly as 
 I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the 
 Lord." 
 
 The covenant thus entered into with his rebellious chil- 
 dren, amidst the thunders of Sinai, was the Mosaic cove- 
 nant, the covenant of the Law, of the ten commandments. 
 
 If its ofiered blessings were accepted (as accepted they 
 were not), the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant, both 
 material (so far as themselves were concerned) and spir- 
 itual (so far as both themselves and, through them, " all 
 the nations of the earth" were concerned) might begin to 
 be realized at once, and their full consummation be 
 speedily attained. But if the ofiered curse should be 
 their choice (as their choice it was), then would the 
 blessings of the Abrahamic covenant remain abeyant, and 
 be realized by their children's children only, in remotest 
 generations, after centuries upon centuries of bitterest 
 persecution and most fiery trial had passed away. And 
 its spiritual blessings, according to the proper sense and 
 full import of its terms (as is so convincingly attested by 
 the whole subsequent history of God's providence, and 
 as the " sure word of prophecy" so abundantly confirms) 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 91 
 
 were not " to be realized by all other nations and all 
 other families of the earth {through their agency)^ until 
 its blessings (both material and spiritual) were first 
 realized by them. 
 
 We should note carefully the terms in which the Mo- 
 saic covenant is expressed. We quote but in part. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken dili- 
 gently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and 
 do all his commandments which I command thee this 
 day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above 
 all nations of the earth : and all these blessings shall 
 come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken 
 unto the voice of the Lord thy God, Blessed shalt thou 
 be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. 
 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy 
 ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, and the increase of 
 thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be 
 thy basket and thy store. Blessed shalt thou be when 
 thou comest in, and blessed shalt thou be when thou goest 
 
 out The Lord shall command the blessing upon 
 
 thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine 
 hand unto ; and he shall bless thee in the land which the 
 Lord thy God giveth thee. 
 
 " But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto 
 the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his 
 commandments and his statutes which I command thee 
 this day ; that all these curses shall come upon thee and 
 overtake thee ; cursed shalt thou be in the city, and 
 cursed shalt thou be in the field. Cursed shall be thy 
 basket and thy store. Cursed shall be the fruit of thy 
 body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, 
 and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when 
 
y2 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 thou comest in, and cursed shalt thou be when thou goest 
 
 out and the heaven that is over thy head shall be 
 
 brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron . . . 
 and thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and 
 a byword among all the nations whither the Lord shall 
 lead thee." 
 
 " I call heaven and earth to record against thee this 
 day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing 
 and cursing ; therefore choose life, that thou may est dwell 
 in the land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, to 
 Abraliam^ to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.'' — Deut. 
 xxviii, XXX. 
 
 But observe how ever-mindful was God of his cove- 
 nant with their fathers. Standing, as it were, upon the 
 sure foundation of its everlasting promises, and appealing 
 unto them therefrom, his mercy thus invites them. 
 
 " And it shall come to pass when all these things are 
 come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have 
 set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind, among 
 all the nations among wiiom the Lord thy God hath 
 driven thee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and 
 shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee 
 this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul ; that then the Lord thy God will turn 
 thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will 
 return and gather thee from all the nations, ivhither the 
 Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be 
 driven into the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will 
 the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he 
 fetch thee : and the Lord thy God will Iring thee into 
 the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt 
 
ISRAEL AND JEKUSALEM. 93. 
 
 2WSSCSS it ; and he imll do thee good and multiply thee above 
 thy fathers." — Deut. xxx. 
 
 " If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity 
 of their fathers, with their trespasses which they tres- 
 passed against me, and also that they have walked con- 
 trary unto me ; and that I also have walked contrary 
 unto them, and have brought them into the land of their 
 enemies ; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, 
 and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity : 
 Then loill I remember my covenant luith Jacob, and also 
 my covenant with Isaac, and cdso my covenant with Abra- 
 ham will I remember, and I ivill remember the land." — 
 Levit. XX vi. 40 — 42. 
 
 " When all these things are come upon thee, even in 
 the LATTER DAYS, if thou tum to the Lord thy God, and 
 shalt be obedient to his voice (for the Lord thy God is a 
 merciful God) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy 
 thee, nor forget the covenant with thy fathers luhich he 
 sware unto them." — Deut. iv. 30, 31. 
 
 But alas ! alas for them, and alas for us, children of the 
 Gentiles, whose millennium must await their millennium, 
 whose millennium can not commence so long as we tread 
 them down, and our times are not fulfilled, and Anti- 
 christ hath not reigned and passed away, and the tribula- 
 tion inflicted upon the Jews, as a re-gathered nation, by 
 his persecutions, hath not ceased (for when the millennium 
 comes at last, it will come to all, both Jew and Gentile, 
 and will know no discrimination between any of the in- 
 habitants of the earth, of whatever nation or kindred or 
 tongue, Jew or Gentile, bond or free, in the spiritual 
 blessino^s it will bestow, for the millennium is but another 
 name for the consummation, the fruition, of the spiritual 
 
94 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 blessings of the Abrahamic covenant), — alas ! we say, 
 alas for them, and alas for us ! they, the children of 
 Israel, the chosen seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, 
 even at the foot of Sinai, despised the offered blessing, 
 and chose the offered curse. It was little less than a 
 second apostasy, involving, as it were, in a second fall, 
 and a deeper ruin, not themselves only, but all the 
 nations of the earth. The weary round of those chosen 
 curses has been rolling over their smitten land and 
 guilty heads ever since, — is rolling now. No seats in 
 parliaments, or cabinets, or chairs of learning, no vaults 
 of silver and gold, stretching, Rothschild-like, their Bri- 
 arean arms across land and sea, over almost the entire 
 circle of Gentile rule, and laying their weight no where 
 so heavily or so securely, with, as it were, so irresistible 
 a destiny, as upon the " Promised Land," no political 
 encompassment of thrones, no lapse of time, no witch- 
 ery of music or of song, can soothe the anguish, or lull 
 to rest the unsleeping terrors of that chosen doom. 
 
 Notice the tenderness of David in their behalf: " Seek 
 ye the Lord and his strength ; seek his face contin- 
 ually. Remember his marvellous works that he hath 
 done, his Avonders, and the judgments of his mouth ; O ye 
 seed of Jacob his servant, ye children of Jacob, his 
 chosen ones. He is the Lord our God ; his judgments are 
 in all the earth. Be ye mindful always of his covenant^ 
 the word Avhich he commanded to a thousand generations ; 
 even the covenant which he made with Abraham, and his 
 oath unto Isaac ; and hath enjoined the same to Jacob for 
 a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant; saying, 
 Unto thee will / give the land of Canaan^ the lot of your 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 95 
 
 inheritance; when ye were but few, even a few, and stran- 
 gers in it."— 1 Chron. xvi. 11—19. Ps. cv. 4—12. 
 
 But rebellious Israel remembered not his " marvellous 
 works, and the judgments of his mouth" ; they were not 
 " mindful always " of the covenant which he swore unto 
 their fathers. They heeded the persuasions of mercy, as 
 little as the warnings of wrath. And yet God "forgot, 
 never for a moment, his ancient covenant. His heart was 
 always turned towards them. His hand was always 
 stretched out still. Indeed, as if to affix a final, a more 
 solemn, seal to the Abrahamic covenant, as if to reaffirm 
 its perpetuity, and to renew the oaths that bound it, as if, 
 indeed, that " everlasting covenant" would not otherwise 
 stand for ever sure, as if to anticipate their repentance 
 and forgiveness, and its measureless wealth of unmingled 
 blessing, he superadded to it a supplementary covenant, 
 the covenant with his servant David, filled, not less, with 
 unmingled and overflowing blessing, without the shadow 
 of a curse. 
 
 " I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have 
 sworn unto David my servant. Thy seed will I establish 
 for ever and build up thy throne to all generations." — 
 Ps. Ixxxix. 1 — 4. 
 
 "Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy One, and 
 saidst, I have laid help on one that is mighty ; I have ex- 
 alted one chosen out of the people. I have found David 
 my servant ; with my holy oil have I anointed him ; — 
 Avith whom my hand shall be established. My faithful- 
 ness and my mercy shall be with him ; and in my name 
 shall his horn be exalted. Also, I will make him, my 
 first-born, higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy 
 will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall 
 
96 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 stand fast ivith him. His seed also will I make to endure 
 for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. I ivill not 
 suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not 
 hreaJt,, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once 
 more I sware by my holiness that I will not lie unto 
 David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as 
 the sun before me." — Ps. Ixxxix. 19, 20, 24 — 26. 
 
 Listen to the millennial invitation of Israel to " all the 
 nations of the earth," when this covenant with David 
 shall have been fulfilled ; when Zion shall have awaked 
 and put on her strength and Jerusalem her beautiful gar- 
 ments, " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the 
 waters, and he that hath no money ; come ye, buy and eat ; 
 yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and with- 
 out price ; incline your ear and come unto me ; hear and 
 your soul shall live ; and I will make an everlasting cove- 
 nant with you, even the sure mercies of David.'" — Isaiah 
 iv. 1—3. 
 
 This invitation is, doubtless (in a spiritual sense) both 
 pre-millennial and millennial. It is, without question, 
 spiritually applicable, at all times, both before and after 
 the second coming of Christ, to all, Jew and Gentile alike, 
 to become partakers of the spiritual blessings of the 
 Abrahamic covenant, to be followers of Christ, and to be 
 numbered with the elect. But in its primary and more 
 specially intended sense, it would seem more strictly ap- 
 plicable to Israel in the period of her millennial glory, 
 when in the full enjoyment of the material, not less than 
 spiritual, blessings of that covenant. 
 
 But in the days of the covenants and invitations and 
 warnings which we have considered, nothing availed 
 against the rebellious obstinacy of Israel. The appeals 
 
ISRAEL AND JEUUSALEM. 97 
 
 of the greatest of their hiwgivers to the thunders of 
 Sinai : of the most eloquent and glowing of their prophets 
 to the millennial glories of Zion, upon the second coming 
 of their Lord ; the appeals of the mightiest of their kings 
 (though in strains attuned to a lyre that was mightier even 
 tlian his throne), when he called to their remembrance the 
 promised blessings of the covenant with Abraham, the 
 '' word which God commanded to a thousand genera- 
 tions," invested with an added glory by the covenant made 
 by God with himself, were all alike in vain. Never was 
 there, never has there been, even until now, a time, when 
 it was not true of the rebellious House of Israel, that 
 which was spoken by Isaiah : " Hear, O heavens, give 
 ear, O earth ; for the Lord hath spoken. I have nour- 
 ished and brought up children, and they have rebelled 
 against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his 
 master's crib : but Israel doth not know, my people doth 
 not consider. A sinful nation, a people laden with 
 iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters : 
 tliey have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the 
 Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away back- 
 ward." — Isaiah i. 2 — 4:. 
 
 And yet listen to the yearnings, not less than to the lam- 
 entations, of God over them. " When Israel was a child, 
 then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. . . . 
 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, 
 and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their 
 
 jaws, and I laid meat unto them But my people 
 
 are bent to backsliding from me : though they called them 
 to the Most High, none at all would exalt him. How 
 shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, 
 Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set 
 
98 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my re- 
 pentings are kindled together." — Hosea xi. 
 
 Even when their Messiah came, to plead with them ; to 
 weep over them ; to gather them together as a hen gather- 
 eth her chickens under her wings, that their house might 
 no more be left unto them desolate ; to enter into a new 
 and everlasting covenant of grace with them ; they derided 
 and reviled him ; they smote him ; they spat upon him ; 
 they crucified him, with as little compunction as their Ro- 
 man rulers would have crucified a Roman slave. But a 
 hidden thunderbolt, red with uncommon wrath, was about 
 to descend upon them from the stores of heaven. "His 
 blood be on us and on our children." And, true to the 
 self-imprecation, his blood has fallen, and this added curse 
 has rested, and will rest, upon them, until, at last, de- 
 livered from their captivity, and regathered as a nation in 
 unbelief, they will be smitten by Antichrist as never smitten 
 before, and be overwhelmed by that flood of tribulation, 
 such as never was since there was a nation, no, nor ever 
 shall be. 
 
 But darkness abideth only for the night, and though its 
 latest be its deepest darkness, yet "joy cometh in the 
 morning." 
 
 When, gathered, at last, in and around their ancient 
 and beloved capital to defend it against the assaults of 
 Antichrist and his innumerable hosts — summoned to the 
 " battle of the great day of God Almighty," from the 
 ten allied realms of the prophetic earth — they behold 
 their rejected and crucified, but now kingly Messiah, 
 appearing, in proper person, in the clouds of heaven, 
 with power and great glory, " with the armies of heaven 
 following"; when they behold him "standing upon the 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 99 
 
 Moiint of Olives," and look upon " him" (" the same 
 Jesus") ''whom they pierced," when they behold him, 
 though presented to their view, as of old, in bodily form, 
 yet arrayed in the celestial splendor of resurrection 
 glory, surrounded by the sainted dead of all the ages, 
 and by the sainted living, arrayed, in like manner with 
 him, in their resurrection glory : surrounded, too, by all 
 the holy angels ; when the rending earth, and the dark- 
 ened sun, and the moonless and starless sky, and the 
 shaking heavens, conspire to attest the immediate appear- 
 ing of the King of kings ; when they behold the mani- 
 festations of divine mercy displayed in their behalf, and 
 of divine wrath displayed against their foes, when they 
 witness their supernatural destruction ; then, then, at last, 
 hut not till then, will they confess their guilt, and ac- 
 kuowledore their kinjij : then " there shall be a fountain 
 opened to the house of David, and upon the inhabitants 
 of Jerusalem, for sin and uncleanness," and " the 
 spirit of grace and of supplication be poured upon 
 the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Je- 
 rusalem," and " the land shall mourn every family 
 apart," " as one mourneth for an only son," and blessed 
 shall they be 'svhen they mourn ; for they shall be com- 
 forted. God will accept their repentance, and " will cast 
 all their sins into the depths of the sea." Then will be 
 repealed the dread covenant of Sinai, and a millennium 
 of blessing and an eternity of glory succeed to a few 
 brief and forgotten generations of guilt, and tribulation, 
 and shame. Then will be fulfilled that blessed trinity of 
 covenants, the covenant of Abraham, the covenant of 
 David, and the new and everlasting covenant of grace. 
 The covenant of David will exalt to his now lapsed 
 
100 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 throne a " righteous branch," Avhich shall " execute judg- 
 ment and righteousness," and reign for a thousand years ; 
 until He shall give up the kingdom unto his Father, that 
 God may be all in all. " And when all things shall be 
 subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be sub- 
 ject unto him that put all things under him, that God may 
 be all in all."— 1 Cor. xv. 28. 
 
 The new and everlasting covenant of grace Avill descend 
 to bless, not, as now, scattered individuals only, here a 
 Jew and a Gentile there, but, as was confirmed unto Isaac, 
 *''• all the nations of the earth." 
 
 But first of all, and last of all, and comprehending all, 
 Avill be established, in fulness of millennial glory, over 
 all the land, and over all the inhabitants of the land, 
 the covenant with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. 
 
 Says Jeremiah, looking forward to the fulfilment of 
 this covenant ; 
 
 " Behold, I will bring it [Jerusalem] health and cure, 
 and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the 
 abundance of peace and truth. And I will cause the 
 captivity of Israel and the captivity of Judah to return^ 
 and will build them up as at the first [which certainly has 
 never been as yet]. And it [Jerusalem] shall be to me 
 a name of joy, a praise and an honor before all the na- 
 tions of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do 
 unto them ; and they shall fear and tremble for all the 
 goodness and all the prosperity that I procure unto it." 
 — Jer. xxxiii. 6 — 10. 
 
 These visions of Jeremiah of the glory and blessedness 
 of Israel and Jerusalem, consequent upon the joint return 
 of all the tribes ; upon their corporate unity as a restored 
 nation, and upon the termination of the persecutions of 
 
ISKAEL AND JEKUjjALEM. 101 
 
 Antichrist, mIicti God's consuming vengeance and their 
 great tribulation shall reach their full ; when that which 
 is determined shall be poured upon the desolator, and the 
 consumption shall overflow with righteousness : were ut- 
 tered by Jeremiah inore than a century after the ten tribes 
 of Israel were carried into that captivity from which they 
 have never to this day returned, and in which no sure 
 trace of them has ever been discovered. Their fulfilment 
 belongs, therefore, beyond all question, to the future. 
 
 The verses next preceding those last quoted from Jere- 
 miah, emphasize, more especially, the material blessings 
 which will ensue upon the fulfilment of the Abrahamic 
 covenant. 
 
 "• Thus saith the Lord, Again there shall be heard in 
 this place, which ye say shall be desolate without man, 
 and without inhabitants, and without beast, the voice of 
 joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bride- 
 groom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that 
 shall say. Praise the Lord of hosts ; for the Lord is 
 good ; for his mercy endureth for ever ; and of them that 
 shall bring the sacrifice of praise unto the house of the 
 Lord : for I will cause to return the captivity of the land as 
 at the first. 
 
 "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Again in this place, 
 which is desolate Avithout man and without beast, and in 
 all the cities thereof, shall be an habitation of shepherds 
 causing their flocks to lie down. In the cities of the 
 mountains, in the cities of the vale, and in the cities of 
 the south, and in the land of Benjamin, and in the places 
 about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, shall the 
 flocks pass again under the hands of him that telleth 
 them, saith the Lord." — Jer. xxxiii. 10 — 14. Surely 
 
102 ISRAEL AND JP:RUSALEM. 
 
 this revelation would seem to contemplate something more 
 than spiritual blessings only. 
 
 The prophet proceeds, in the succeeding verses of the 
 same chapter, to announce the fulfilment of the Davidic 
 covenant ; the period of its fulfilment and the contempo- 
 raneousness of that period with that of the fulfilment of 
 the covenant with Abraham. 
 
 " In those days, and at that time, will I cause tlie 
 branch of righteousness to grow up unto David ; and he 
 shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land. In 
 those days shall Judah he saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell 
 safely, and this is the name wherewith she shall be called. 
 
 The Lord our righteousness If my covenant be 
 
 not Avith day and night, and if I have not appointed the 
 ordinances of heaven and earth ; then will I cast away 
 the seed of Jacob, and David my servant, so that I will 
 not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob : for I will cause their captivity to 
 return, and have mercy on them." — Jeremiah xxxiii. 15, 
 16, 25, 26. 
 
 Observe the descending, at the same time, of the new 
 and everlasting covenant of grace, and its overflowing 
 fulness of blessing. " Behold, the days come, saith the 
 Lord, that I will make a new covenant ivith the house of 
 Israel, and with the house of Judah ; not according to the 
 covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that 
 I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of 
 Egypt ; which my covenant they brake, although I was 
 an husband unto them, saith the Lord : But this shall be 
 the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel ; 
 After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in 
 their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will 
 
ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 103 
 
 be their God aud they shall be my people. And they 
 shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every 
 man his brother, saying, know the Lord ! for they shall 
 all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of 
 them, saith the Lord : for I will forgive their iniquity, 
 and I will remember their sin no more." — Jeremiah xxxi. 
 31—35. 
 
 Who will venture to say that their iniquity, or the tres- 
 passes Avherewith they have trespassed against the Al- 
 mighty, have ever yet been forgiven, or that their sins are 
 not remembered still? Then can this prophecy find its 
 appointed fulfilment in the future only. 
 
 But the crowning blessing, and crowning glory of that 
 blissful era, will be the city of Jerusalem, "the city of 
 the Great King," the "mountain of the Lord's house," 
 the metropolis of the millennial earth. 
 
 " The place of my throne and the place of the soles of 
 my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of 
 Israel for ever." — Ezekiel xliii. 7. 
 
 " O thou aflflicted, tossed with tempest, and not com- 
 forted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and 
 lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make 
 thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and 
 all thy borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children 
 siiall be taught of the Lord, and great shall be the peace 
 cf thy children."— Isaiah liv. 11—13. 
 
 " And thy seed shall be known among the Gentiles, 
 and their oiF.^pring among the peoples ; all that see them 
 shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the 
 Lord hath blessed" — Isaiah Ixi. 9. 
 
 " And all nations shall call you blessed ! for ye shall 
 be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts." — Mala- 
 chi iii. 12. 
 
104 ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM. 
 
 The king of France complacently announced to the 
 French Chambers, on the fourth day of December, 1841, 
 that he had concluded a connection with the king of Prus- 
 sia and the queen of England, for the consolidation of the 
 repose of the Ottoman Empire. The repose of, at 
 least, one portion of that empire will be consolidated by 
 no human connections, but consolidated it will be, and 
 when consolidated, as truly as God liveth, its repose will 
 be sweet and everlasting, for the blessed trinity of cove- 
 nants is established on sure foundations, on Heaven's firm 
 decrees. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 We extract as follows, from the work of Colonel Clies- 
 ney, which is entitled, " The Expedition for the survey 
 of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris, carried on by order 
 of the British Government in the years 1835, 1836, and 
 1837, by Lieut. Colonel Chesney, R. A., F. R. S., etc., 
 Commander of the Expedition." (Longman's, 1850.) 
 
 "The river now about to be described (i. e. the Euphrates) rises 
 at no great distance from the shores of the Euxine, and in its 
 course to the Indian Ocean, almost skirts those of the Mediterra- 
 nean The Euphrates at one time formed the principal 
 
 link connecting Europe commercially with the East. Its historical 
 celebrity has excited in its favor an interest superior to that 
 which has been felt for any other river ; and it may reasonably 
 be expected, that when its advantages shall be fully known, and 
 duly appreciated, it will rise to a high degree of political and com- 
 mercial importance." 
 
 " In a range of more than 1780 miles from its eastern source, 
 this river may be said to unite three great and important seas ; 
 which, without it, would be destitute of any water communication 
 with each other, whilst the varied productions of the intervening 
 territory would, in a great measure, be lost to the rest of the 
 world." Vol. I., p. 40. 
 
 ^'Bir is one of the most frequented of all the passages into Meso- 
 potamia, and about sixteen large passage boats are kept, .... for 
 the use of the caravans, which occasionally number 5000 camels." 
 P. 46. 
 
 " This great river then proceeds through the Date-groves .... 
 
 across a bare country onwards to Hillah This Town is 
 
 built on a part of Babylon, and chiefly with materials obtained from 
 U 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 its ruins : it contained, in 1831, the time of my first visit, about 
 10,000 inhabitants, whose dwellings are principally on the right 
 bank ; the line of houses forming an obtuse angle, almost midway 
 between the Mujellebe and the still more celebrated Birs Nim- 
 roud." P. 57. 
 
 Extracts of Letters to Colonel Chesney, from Officers sent by him to 
 explore the capabilities of the Euphrates for Steam Navigation and 
 Traffic. 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " The noble and interesting river Euphrates is far too cele- 
 brated to require from me more than a fair view of the prospect it 
 offers for establishing an economical and more rapid communica- 
 tion between Great Britain and her Indian possessions, than has 
 hitherto been attained. The brilliant prospects of a new channel 
 being opened to our enterprising mercantile world through a 
 steam establishment on the Euphrates, ought to awaken our best 
 energies." 
 
 (Signed) " R. F. Cleveland, R.N." 
 
 "Dated 17th July, 1836." 
 
 Extract of Letter from E. P. Charhvood, Esq., R. N., to Colonel 
 Chesney. (P. 691.) 
 
 " The Arabs always evinced great eagerness to barter their pro- 
 visions, and in fact everything they possessed, for our Glasgow 
 merchandise so that I am convinced considerable com- 
 merce would be carried on with great success on the river. 
 Taking all these things into consideration, I should say it would 
 be highly advisable to navigate this river, as being the sj^eediest 
 and most secure route between Great Britain and her Indian pos- 
 sessions." 
 
 Extract of Letter fi-om James Fitzjames, Esq., R. N., to Colonel 
 Chesney. (P. 694.) 
 
 " The advantages that would ensue from the establishment of a 
 regular steam communication on the Euphrates, would, I am con- 
 vinced, amply repay any outlay and trouble which might attend 
 the commencement. The avidity with which the inhabitants of 
 the different towns on the river bought oiir Manchester woollen 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 107 
 
 goods, &c., sufficiently proves that a great opening is presented to 
 our commerce. Aleppo, Bagdad, Basrah, and (should the Karim 
 be navigated) Ispahan, would soon become marts for British pro- 
 duce, and the influence of the British name be thus increased and 
 extended." 
 
 " Taking these things into consideration, it appears to me, that 
 England would not have cause to regret having made the Euphra- 
 tes the high road to her Indian possessions, even should it after- 
 wards be found that letters and passengers might be conveyed 
 with more speed by the line of the Red Sea." 
 
 " A splendid road might be made over the .100 miles which sep- 
 arate the Euphrates from the Mediterranean. I should think a 
 
 railroad impracticable, but I think a canal might be cut 
 
 This would complete the communication by water, of England 
 with India, by the shortest possible line." 
 
 Extract from Letter of W. Ainsworth, Esq., Surgeon and Geologist to 
 the Expedition. 
 
 " The river Euphrates is evidently a navigable stream. I am 
 acquainted with it ... . from the Taurus, to its embushure in 
 the Persian Gulf, a distance of upwards of 1,200 miles ; and in 
 that extent, there are only two real difficulties, both of which are 
 superable, by undergoing an expense quite disproportioned to the 
 importance of rendering efficient at all seasons of the year, and 
 throughout so lengthened a course, the navigation of this noble 
 river In a commercial point of view, the close communi- 
 cation thus established with so great an emporium of trade as 
 Bagdad, is of the very first importance ; nor is the connexion that 
 would be established between Basrah and Bagdad of a trifling 
 character ; but there are also on the river between Kurnah and 
 Felujah, large towns, as Sheikhel-Shuyakh and Hillah, and pow- 
 erful tribes, as the Mountefik Arabs, who have long been actuated 
 by the spirit of commercial enterprise." 
 
 "There is, indeed, amongst almost all the tribes a cupidity that 
 is easily aroused, and which would stir up the people to new exer- 
 tion, in order to obtain comforts and luxuries with Avhich they 
 would then first become acquainted, and would not be slow in ap- 
 preciating. The boasted frugality and indifference of the Arab, 
 
108 APPENDIX. 
 
 are not proof against the inventions of an improved mechanism in 
 cutlery or fire-arms ; and nowhere is there displayed a greater 
 anxiety for gay dresses and ornaments : this taste has become 
 almost a passion with both sexes. We have abundant evidences 
 of the love of decorating their children, and of a desire to improve 
 their condition." 
 
 " The advantages which are presented by the opening of the 
 navigation of the river Euphrates, belong to the universal civiliza- 
 tion, as well as to increase of national power. The waters of this 
 great river flow past the habitations of four millions of human 
 beings, amongst whom their own traditions have transmitted, the 
 sense of a revolution to be effected by the introduction of a religion 
 of humility, of charity, and of forbearance." 
 
 " The intellectual powers of the descendants from the most no- 
 ble stocks of the human race, are not extinct in their present fallen 
 representatives, and it would be difficult to say to what extent 
 civilization might flourish, when revived in its most antique 
 home." 
 
 " The national importance of this navigation, is of the most 
 comprehensive character. All acquainted with the history of the 
 communication of nations, which, as Montesquieu has ably pointed 
 out, is the history of commerce, must be aware, that those circum- 
 stances which led to the annihilation of the commerce of the East, 
 would be revolutionised by the opening now proposed to be 
 effected ; and that whilst civilization might be confidently ex- 
 pected to return to its almost primeval seat, it would do so under 
 a very difl'erent aspect, and with vastly improved means, over the 
 days of Opis and Ophir, or of Caucasium and Callinicum." "All 
 these advantages are to be obtained by the navigation which you 
 have entered upon, and of which you have proved the practicabil- 
 ity." P. 697. 
 
 Dr. Layard, "WTiting to an eminent English merchant in 1843, 
 says, " I believe Susiana to be a province highly capable of the 
 most varied cultivation ; the soil is rich, labour cheap, the inhab- 
 itants well disposed, and the country traversed by several noble 
 rivers : . . . . the land is highly favorable for the cultivation of 
 cotton, which is now much neglected, but which might be much 
 improved. I made many enquiries as to the growth of hemp, . . 
 
APPENDIX. 109 
 
 . . and I found the country well adapted for its cultivation." P. 
 701. 
 
 " Notwithstanding all the existing disadvantages, boats with 
 merchandise are continually tracking up the rivers in Mesopota- 
 mia ; but the fleets going up the Tigris against the stream, from 
 Basrah to Bagdad, consume from thirty to forty days, while a 
 steamer would perform this distance in four days and a haK." P. 
 705. 
 
 " Good freights are therefore secured for steamers, and a valua- 
 ble opening presented for trade, since an Arab population of about 
 twelve millions is to be supplied. The actual trade to Bagdad was 
 in 1833 — 12,000 bales or packages, brought up the Tigris at a 
 freight of 1/. per bale." 
 
 '• The establishment of the navigation, would probably lead to 
 that of English mercantile houses at all the chief places of trade 
 on the Euphrates and other rivers and branches at the interior 
 stations. Pp. 704, 705. 
 
 «' The wheat and barley are particularly fine ; nor is it very 
 uncommon to have three successive crops of grain in some places. 
 The gardens yield grapes in abundance, also oranges, peaches, 
 nectarines, figs, apples, pomegranates, and other fruits. Honey, 
 wax, manna, and gall-nuts, are exported from the more mountain- 
 ous districts, where, especially eastward of Tarabusim, the finest 
 timber is very abundant. The scenery here is at once beautiful 
 and strikingly grand from various points of view, as the moun- 
 tains are seen rising abruptly from the sea to an elevation of four 
 or five thousand feet, their sides being covered with dense forests, 
 composed of gigantic chesnut, beech, walnut, alder, poplar, wil- 
 low, ash, maple, and box trees, with firs towards their summits, 
 and a magnificent iinderwood of rhododendron, bay, and hazel 
 
 &c The less elevated grounds produce cotton, hemp, 
 
 tobacco, and raw silk in abundance ; besides precious stones, such 
 as the turquoise, beryl, chrystal, pearl, and ruby. Besides the 
 more valuable metals, gold and silver, Armenia abounds in cop- 
 per, lead, iron, saltpetre, sulphur, bitumen, quarries of coal, mar- 
 ble, and jasper, with several mineral springs, which have been 
 celebrated for many ages." 
 
 " The Armenians are exceedingly fond of foreign commerce and 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 home trade, both of which are prosecuted with such success, that 
 even the Jews are in many instances driven out of the field of 
 competition. The Armenians have been described as hrave^ a 
 quality however that has long passed from them. They are now 
 a commercial and agricultural people ; well clad, abundantly fed, 
 and possessing sheep, cattle, and fine horses in abundance." Pp. 
 95—99. 
 
 " The exports of Mesopotamia are : wheat, barley, rice, and 
 other grains, horses, pearls, coral, honey, dates, cotton, silk, 
 tobacco, gall-jiuts, wool, bitumen, naptha, saltpetre, salt, coarse 
 coloured cottons, fine handkerchiefs, and other manufactures of 
 a country enjoying advantages which which will eventually make 
 its commerce more important than that of Egypt." P. 109. 
 
 •' The numerous towns along the Euphrates, and the extensive 
 population, partly permanent, and partly nomadic, on the banks 
 of that river, will ultimately require several stations ; but for the 
 present, one should be at Hillah (Babylon), and another at Anah, 
 and a third at Beles." 
 
 "Though the subject has only been considered relatively to the 
 people in their present state, it should not be forgotten that Meso- 
 potamia possesses as many advantages as, or perhaps more than, 
 any other country in the world. Although greatly changed by 
 the neglect of man, those portions which are still cultivated, as 
 the country about Hillah (Babylon), show that the region has all 
 the fertility ascribed to it by Herodotus, Avho considered its pro- 
 ductions as equal to one-third of those furnished by all Asia. 
 Being equal to, and in many respects even superior to Egypt with 
 regard to its position and its capabilities, the time need not be 
 distant when the date-groves of the Euphrates may be inter- 
 spersed with flourishing towns, surrounded with fields of the 
 finest wheat, and the most productive plantations of indigo, cot- 
 ton, and sugar-cane." Vol. II., p. 603. 
 
APPENDIX. Ill 
 
 To these extracts, we add, as follows, from Dr. B. W. 
 Newton. 
 
 "The following is an extract from a letter kindly sent to me by a gentle- 
 man in India. It was written upwards of twenty years ago, after a 
 visit to the ruins of Babylon. He was, I believe, not at all aware at 
 that time that any were expecting the restoration and future destruc- 
 tion of Babylon. His conviction respecting the non-fulfilment of the 
 prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah were the result of his own personal 
 observation of facts. A few verbal alterations, not affecting the sense, 
 have been made, and I have been obliged to leave a blank in one or 
 two places where the manuscript is illegible." 
 
 " A fair Anew of the prophecies against Babylon, as given in 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah, will show that they have not yet been fully 
 and finally accomplished. Much has been done in demonstration 
 of judgment against her ; but her last and complete ruin is yet to 
 come. A stone was bound to a book, and cast into the Euphrates, 
 and it was said, ' Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise 
 from the evil that I shall bring upon her.' (Jer. li. 63, 64.) This 
 speaks clearly of one final and irrecoverable ruin ; but Babylon 
 rose again repeatedly from the ruin that at first assailed her. Keith's 
 book on prophecy shows that she was several hundred years being 
 brought to desolation, and that her end was not sudden, but most 
 gradual. Cyrus took her more than 500 years before Christ: 
 Alexander took and attempted to rebuild her 200 years after 
 CjTus. In that interval her walls were reduced, and she was 
 much shorn of her power and wealth. She was finally brought 
 to desolation by the building of Seleucia and Ctesiphon in her 
 neighborhood by the successes of Alexander, who thereby suc- 
 ceeded in drawing away the inhabitants from Babylon. She did 
 not fall once and for all — suddenly— never to rise, like a stone cast 
 into the waters. 
 
 " It is said that they shall not take of thee « a stone for a comer 
 nor a stone for a foundation.' (Jer. li.) But the ruin of the build- 
 ings at Babylon has been mainly accelerated by the removal of 
 the materials with which she was built, for the construction of 
 other towns in the neighborhood. 
 
 '« It is said that this land of Babylon shall be a desolation, with- 
 out an inhabitant (Jer. li.) ; but there is now the modern Arab 
 tOAvn of Hillah and two villages besides, together with several 
 gardens and date plantations within the limits of the ruins. 
 
112 APPENDIX . 
 
 "It is said that she shall 'be a land where no man dwelleth, 
 neither doth any son of man pass thereby.' Now, besides myriads 
 of Asiatics, many Europeans have passed thereby, and thoroughly 
 examined the place. 
 
 " It is said that ' the Arabian shall not pitch his tent there.' 
 (Isaiah xiii. 20.) In 1835, when I was there, I saw marks of an 
 Arab encampment which must have halted there for several 
 weeks. When the Arabs make a long stay in any place, they 
 erect mud pillars breast high, and hollowed out at the top for 
 their horses to feed from, as from a manger. The remains of these 
 pillars I saw ; they could not have formed part of the old ruins, 
 for a heavy shower of rain would have washed them down. My 
 attendant explained to me what they wel'e. 
 
 '<I believe then, that Babylon will be rebuilt, and rise to the 
 splendor described in the Book of Revelation, and that she will 
 then suddenly and finally be brought to ruin. There are facilities 
 in that country for bringing about such prosperity in a wonder- 
 fully short time. The soil is all ... . mould and clay, without 
 a single stone, and productive if watered. Formerly there were 
 canals in all directions, fed by the Tigris and Euphrates. It is 
 only necessary to repair the banks of these to make Babylonia 
 the most fertile land in the globe. Wealth is so easily attained, 
 that in a few years the Pasha of Bagdad, fifty miles from Babylon, 
 by withholding tribute from the Sultan, was enabled to have a 
 court rivalling that of Erzeroum." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Pag. 
 
 Preface. . . . . • -^ 
 
 The Prophetic Earth of Daniel and the Revelation. 
 Scripture symbols of the rise, decline, and fall, of the 
 four great Gentile Powers 9 
 
 The Literal Babylon of Prophecy. Its final destruction 
 
 co-incident with the future restoration of Israel. . . 22 
 
 The Symbolic Babylon of Prophecy. Its composite 
 character, including, not Komanism only, but all farms 
 of false religion and infidelity 38 
 
 The Antichrist of Prophecy. The restoration of the Jews 
 in unbelief, and their subsequent persecution by Anti- 
 christ 
 
 Israel and Jerusalem of Prophecy. God's covenants 
 concerning them, and their final exaltation. . 
 
 Appendix. Extracts frojp Colonel Chesney's Report, etc. 1( 
 
DATE DUE 
 
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 Briefs on prophetic themes 
 
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