12. THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH

IN explaining the significance of the Beast to John, the angel told him that its seven heads had a double

¹ Rev. xvii. 18.

meaning, and were to be interpreted in one way in their reference to the Woman, and in another when they were taken in connection with itself. As regards the Woman, they denoted seven mountains on which she sat; and since it was usual in those days to speak of Rome as the City of the Seven Mountains,¹ or, Hills, the apostle would easily perceive what was intended, even before the angel added that the Woman was the imperial city which was then ruling the world.

But, when taken in their connection with the Beast, the seven heads have a very different meaning: for they are then said to signify seven kings, while the Beast himself represents an eighth. Of these eight monarchs, we are told that five had already fallen, that one was in existence when John wrote, and that a seventh was yet to come; and then an eighth, who would be one of the seven, and would be so identified with the World-power, so perfect an exponent of the popular will, that he is not called a head, but rather the very Beast himself.

The five kings are said to have fallen. From the use in the Apocalypse of the verb "to fall" we may,

¹ Although the city soon exceeded its ancient limits, yet the Romans never reckoned more than seven hills. Indeed, as Niebuhr remarks, "when Augustus divided the city into regions, though it was entirely for practical purposes, he determined their number by doubling that of the oldest divisions. Christian Rome, too, was very early divided into seven regions."

The custom was doubtless perpetuated by the Septimontium, or Festival of the Seven Mountains, held annually to commemorate their inclosure within the wads of Rome. Curiously enough Suetonius (Dom. iv.) mentions a celebration of this Festival by Domitian, the Emperor in whose reign the Apocalypse was written. About a century afterwards Tertullian (De Idol. x.) complains that Christian schoolmasters were in the habit of attending it, in order to obtain fresh pupils.

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH.

perhaps, infer that they died by violent, and not by natural, deaths.¹

In the description of the thirteenth chapter, we are told that names of blasphemy were upon the seven heads of the Beast; in that of the seventeenth, that his whole body was full of them. This apparently indicates that each of the seven kings, as well as the eighth, who is the Beast, would set themselves forth as gods to the world. So far, therefore, we seem to have the following data for the identification of these kings.

I. They are all monarchs of the fourth, or Roman, World-power.

II. Five of them had already died by violent deaths, before John saw the vision.

III. A sixth was reigning at the time of the vision.

IV. The seventh and eighth were yet to come.

V. All were, or would be, worshipped as gods.

Now, so far as we can judge from their history, the five who had fallen were probably Julius Cæsar, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero.² The sixth was doubtless Domitian, during whose reign John appears to have received the revelation.³ He was the

¹ Whether the sixth and seventh kings were to perish in like manner the prophecy does not determine.

² We have supposed the remaining Cæsars to be excluded from the prophecy for the following among other reasons. Augustus Vespasian and Titus, because their lives were terminated by ordinary disease: and Galba Otho and Vitellius, on account of their insignificance and the probability that no one of them became an acting Grand Master of the initiated.

³ The almost universal testimony of antiquity is in favour of the Domitianic date of the Apocalypse: and against such an array it is impossible to give any weight to a statement of the notoriously inaccurate Epiphanius of Salamis, who flourished at the end of the fourth century. As a specimen of the evidence on the other side, last of the twelve Cæsars, and directed the second persecution of the Church.

Between the sixth and the seventh it may be that a considerable space of time intervenes: there is possibly a hint of this in the words, "The other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little we may cite that of Irenæus, who had been taught by Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John, and who died at the close of the second, or beginning of the third, century. Speaking of the Apocalyptic vision, he says;—"For it was seen, not long ago, but almost in our own generation, in the last days of the reign of Domitian" (Advers. Haer. V. cap. xxx. 3). Such a witness is not likely to be mistaken, and he is corroborated by many others (e.g., Eusebius, Tertullian, Victorinus, Jerome, Sulpicius Severus), and also by the fact that what we know of John's banishment is in perfect accord with the procedure of Domitian; whereas Nero's persecution does not seem to have extended beyond the immediate district of Rome, or ever to have expended itself in the punishment of exile.

As to the alleged historical arguments from internal evidence, which have been lately revived, such reasonings can only affect those who believe the book to have been prompted by, and solely concerned with, contemporaneous events. To one who regards the vision as a Divine prediction, there is nothing strange in the fact that Jerusalem and the Temple are represented as standing, though they had just been destroyed by Titus (Rev. xi. 1, 2); for the prophets contemplated their restoration. Nor do we find any difficulty in the mention of the Twelve Tribes as still existing (vii. 4-8); for the Bible elsewhere assures us that they will yet be gathered.

To explain why the Greek of the Apocalypse is less polished, and contains more Hebraisms than that of the Gospel and Epistles, which were written earlier, may be difficult; but such a difficulty cannot be allowed to overthrow direct evidence. Men do not necessarily continue to improve in a language which they have acquired; and since John wrote his last book in extreme old age, it may be that he was an illustration of that comparison which likens an old man's mind to a palimpsest; and that, becoming somewhat forgetful of the Greek which he had learnt, he occasionally recalled phrases and constructions of the speech of his youth. Or, possibly, the subject of the book, which is much more Jewish than his other works, had some influence upon the style.

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH.

while." Perhaps he is still in the future; but there are some reasons—which we will presently consider—for believing that he has already appeared in the person of the first Napoleon.

In regard to the eighth king, we seem able, by putting together the information of the thirteenth and seventeenth chapters, to deduce the following particulars. The seventeenth chapter describes him as one of the seven kings—that is, one of them resuscitated. And, this being the case, there is no mention of an eighth head, but only of an eighth king. In the thirteenth chapter also there is no notice of an eighth head; but John perceived that one of the seven had been slain unto death—that is, had been unmistakably slain—and while he was gazing upon it, the head revived, and thus plainly indicated the meaning of the statement in the later vision that the last king "is of the seven."

Thus the eighth king is one of the seven raised from the dead; and, accordingly, it is said that the Beast which represents him will ascend out of the abyss, or place of the dead.¹ By keeping this in mind we shall understand his ultimate fate, and also that of the False Prophet; for being both of them re-incarnated spirits, and having, therefore, already experienced the first death, they are not, when seized at the height of their rebellion, cast into the abyss, but hurled alive into the lake of fire and brimstone.² For it is ap-

¹ Rev. xvii. 8.

² Rev. xix. 20. Their immediate punishment is thus more severe than that of Satan himself. The latter, never having suffered the first death, must do so before he can be subjected to the second; and will, therefore, be confined in the abyss until the close of the Millennium, Rev. xx. 1-3. See also the exposition of Psa. lxxxii. in "Earth's Earliest Ages." Chap. III.

pointed unto men once to die, and afterwards comes the judgment.

Again; John is told of the Beast which is the eighth king, that he "was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition." Or, in other words, he had been upon earth before John saw the vision, was then in the place of the dead, and would in future time ascend therefrom, and head the great rebellion which would cause him to be consigned to everlasting perdition. Therefore this terrible being, who will a second time trouble the world, cannot be the sixth or seventh king, but must be one of those who had already fallen at the time of the vision; that is, if the names just mentioned be correct, one of the five Cæsars, Julius, Tiberius, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero.

Further than this we can only proceed by conjecture; yet by conjecture so strongly supported that it is at least worth mention.

We have shown that the Beast is a symbol of double signification, which denotes the World-power as well as the eighth king. And, in considering the vision of the thirteenth chapter with a view to the former interpretation, we observe that he combines features taken from the other three monsters; for he has the body of the leopard, the feet of the bear, and the mouth of the lion. The peculiarity seems, as we have already stated, to set forth the last form of the World-power, when it will represent the totality of the four empires, and include within itself all that has ever belonged to them together with accessions of its own.

In working out this interpretation the heads cannot of course be individual kings, but must stand for seven

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH different forms of government, which is precisely the number indicated in the visions of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. They will be found to be as follows: the first is Babylon; the second Medo-Persia; the third Alexander's empire; the fourth the four kingdoms of his successors; the fifth the Roman Empire in its unity; the sixth the Eastern and Western Empires; the seventh the Ten Kingdoms.

Now, in analogy with the personal interpretation, we may suppose that one of those forms of government which have disappeared will be restored under Antichrist; and that one will doubtless be the Roman Empire in unity, or the fifth head, which will be revived when the Ten Kings surrender their power to the Beast, and so sink into the position of mere governors of provinces. Is it not possible that, in correspondence with this, the fifth king also will be the one who will ascend from the abyss? If so, provided the five kings be those whom we have just mentioned, Antichrist would be the re-incarnated spirit of the terrible Nero. Could there be found another instrument so fitted for Satan's purpose?

Should we admit this conclusion, we could certainly find startling corroborations of it in the history of Nero, as well as in the conceptions formed of him, and the rumours circulated, by his contemporaries and those who came after them, Pagans and Christians alike.

To begin with his acts, some of them were very suggestive foreshadowings of what Antichrist will hereafter do. For he was the first to wield the imperial power against the Christians, and the bitter cruelties of his persecution—among the victims of which was

Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles—were imitated too well by succeeding emperors. And again, it was Nero who sent out the expedition, under Vespasian and Titus, which ravaged Judea and ultimately destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.

Not less remarkable were the ideas prevalent respecting him in the Heathen world: for it was believed that he would be deprived of his power, and afterwards restored to it; nay, according to some soothsayers, Jerusalem was to be the capital city of his second Empire. The following is a passage from his biography by Suetonius.

"It had been long ago foretold to Nero by the astrologers that his fate was to be sometime forsaken of all. Hence that very famous saying of his;—

'Any land maintains an artist.'

And for this reason he was wont with greater indulgence to cultivate the art of playing on the lyre, an art which was pleasing to him as the first man of the state, and would be indispensable when he became a private person. Certain astrologers, however, promised him the dominion of the East after he had been forsaken of all; some, particularly, the kingdom of Jerusalem; a greater number the restoration of all his former good fortune."¹

Reports of these predictions spread far and wide, and abundant evidence may be found in the Classical writers of the deep and lasting impression produced by them. For instance, Suetonius, after mentioning the general joy at the death of Nero, adds;—

"And yet there were not wanting those who for a

¹ Sueton, Nero xl.

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH.

long time used to deck his tomb with spring and summer flowers; and sometimes they would put forth robed statues of him in the Rostrum, sometimes they would issue edicts, as though he were still living, and would shortly return to the great woe of his enemies.

"Moreover, Vologesus, king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the Senate to renew an alliance, urgently entreated this also, that the memory of Nero might be reverenced. Lastly, some twenty years afterwards, when I was a youth, a man of uncertain origin stood forth, and boasted that he was Nero. And so attractive was the name among the Parthians that he was strenuously assisted, and surrendered at last with reluctance."¹

Three times, in the reigns of Galba, Titus, and Domitian, the Parthians were on the eve of fighting for impostors who took the name of Nero. There is something striking in this: for although it seems necessary to the fulfilment of Nebuchadnezzar's vision that Persia should ultimately belong to the Fourth Empire, yet the Parthians, who were then in possession of that kingdom, successfully resisted all the efforts of the Romans to subdue them, and maintained their independence. If, therefore, Nero is to be Antichrist, there seems to have been an almost prophetic instinct in the respect which these sturdy warriors paid to his name, and in their willingness to follow him, as though they recognized a destined chieftain.

Tacitus mentions the incident related by Suetonius,² and also the subsequent disturbance of Achaia and Asia through a false alarm that Nero was alive, and on

¹ Sueton. Nero, lvii.

² Tac. Hist. i. 2.

his way to the East.¹ Similar accounts may be found in Dion Cassius, Zonaras, and other writers; but we have said enough to indicate the strange ideas respecting this emperor which were floating about in the Heathen world.

And if, again, we turn to the Christian communities, we shall be no less startled at the rumours which everywhere meet us. For there was a common belief in the early Church that Paul, when speaking of the "Man of sin" and the Lawless One, pointed to Nero the reigning emperor, though he would not mention his name. Hence arose the opinion that Nero was the head of the Beast which had been fatally wounded; and that he would, therefore, be raised from the dead, and be the last great persecutor as he had been the first. Lactantius² and Augustine³ both mention this idea as being prevalent in their respective times, but do not subscribe to it.

It is, however, adopted without hesitation in the earliest Apocalyptic commentary which has come down to us, that of Victorinus of Petau, who adds the following remark;—"For it is plain that, when the cavalry sent by the Senate was pursuing him, he himself cut his throat. Him, therefore, when raised up, God will send as a worthy king; but worthy in such a way as the Jews merited." Commodianus also, when treating of Antichrist, affirms that he will be Nero raised up from Hell, and in describing the last seven years of the age says;—"But Elias shall occupy half of

¹ Tac. Hist. ii. 8. The appearance of a third spurious Nero, in the reign of Titus, is mentioned by Zonaras (xi. 18).

² Lactant. De Mort. Persec., cap. ii.

³ August. De Civit. Dei, xx. 19.

THE SEVEN KINGS AND THE EIGHTH.

the time, and Nero shall occupy half. Then, the whore Babylon being reduced to ashes, its embers shall thence advance to Jerusalem; and the Latin conqueror shall say, 'I am Christ Whom ye always adore.' Lastly, Sulpicius Severus mentions the opinion of many in his days that Nero is yet to come as Antichrist, and explains thus;—"It is uncertain whether he destroyed himself. Whence it is believed that, although he may have pierced himself with a sword, yet he was saved by the cure of his wound in accordance with that which is written, 'And his deadly wound was healed.' At the close of the age he is to be sent again, that he may exercise the mystery of iniquity." Similar statements may be found in the Sibylline prophecies, and in many other ancient writings.

Such, then, are specimens of the ideas prevalent among Heathens and Christians respecting Nero, from his own times until the fifth century. That they are very remarkable and interesting, and seem to accord more or less with Scripture, must be admitted; that they may prove true in the main is by no means impossible; but further than this we cannot go.¹

¹ Soon after the issue of our first edition Canon Farrar published his "Early Days of Christianity." We much regret the rationalizing theory which he has applied to the interpretation of the Apocalypse, but the following passage is curious and interesting.

"So died the last of the Caesars . . . but . . . his history does not end with his grave. He was to live in the expectation alike of Jews and Christians. The fifth head of the wild beast of the Revelation was in some sort to re-appear as the eighth: the head with its diadem, and its names of blasphemy, had been wounded to death, but in the Apocalyptic sense the deadly wound was to be healed. The Roman world could not believe that the heir of the deified Julian race could be cut off thus suddenly and obscurely, and vanish like foam upon the water. The Christian felt sure that it required something more than an ordinary death-stroke to destroy the Antichrist, and to end the vitality of the wild beast

XI.

THE OVERTHROW OF ECCLESIASTICISM BY SECULARISM.

BEFORE the interpreting angel discloses the manner in which the alliance between the Woman and the Beast will end, he pauses for a moment to explain an obscurity in his description of the Woman. He has called her "the great Whore that sitteth upon many waters," and it is necessary to inform the apostle that these waters signify "peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." Now we must remember that, since she herself is the mystic Babylon, the waters upon which she sits must be the mystic Euphrates: therefore this often cited river is no symbol of the Turkish empire, as so many have expounded, but represents the peoples over which the Babylonian system has dominated since its establishment at Rome: it does not signify Moslem power—which, with all its faults, has ever been the enemy of Babylonianism—but the kingdoms of Christendom, those countries which have bowed to the sway of the false Church, but will shortly welcome the rule of Antichrist and his Ten Kings.¹ from the abyss, who had been the first to set himself in deadly antagonism against the Redeemer, and to wage war against the saints of God."

¹ We have already expressed an opinion that the drying up of the Euphrates in Rev. xvi. 12 is to be understood literally, and not figuratively as in xvii. 15. If this point be conceded, the river cannot in the former passage signify the Turkish empire. Nor, indeed, can it if we prefer a figurative interpretation; for in that case, since the drying up of the Euphrates is the consequence of the sixth vial, and the fall of Babylon follows the outpouring of the seventh, there is a manifest allusion to the capture of the great

OVERTHROW OF ECCLESIASTICISM.

After this preface—by which the angel probably intended to indicate with greater clearness the nations involved in the prophecy—the scene is changed, and we see before us the terrific struggle between Ecclesiasticism and Secularism for which all Europe is manifestly preparing, and in which one of the contending parties will be the Romish Church, and all who have imbibed her ecclesiastical principles, while on the other side will be ranged the daily increasing forces of Socialists, Communists, Nihilists, Positivists, Agnostics, and Freethinkers of all kinds. In every country of Christendom men are even now rapidly filing off to one or other of the two great camps, and the final struggle is not likely to be long delayed. But its issue has been already decided. Ecclesiasticism city by Cyrus, which was a subject of prophecy. And it is well known that the Persian leader turned the stream of the Euphrates, and so dried it up, not absolutely, but only in regard to Babylon. He was thus enabled to march through the channel of the no longer opposing river, and gain access to the city. See Isa. xlv. 27—xlv. 3; Herod. i. 191; and Xenoph. Cyrop. vii. 5. Hence it would appear that the sixth and seventh vials are related to each other as cause and effect.

In applying this to the figurative interpretation, it will follow that the mystic Euphrates must be some active power which protects the mystic Babylon. And since, in Rev. xvii. 15, we are told that it represents peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues, these must be the peoples which support the system of Babylon, whatever that may be. If, then, we allow the system to be Romanism, the peoples must be the nations of Christendom.

As to the meaning of the drying up of the waters, since in the actual siege the volume of the river was not diminished, but only turned away from Babylon, so as no longer to protect it; similarly in the figurative application we must understand, not the ruin of the nations of Christendom, but only their alienation from Ecclesiasticism, which would render the destruction of the Woman by the Ten Kings an easy task. Such seems to be the fair method of interpretation for those who insist upon taking the passage figuratively.

will be destroyed with fearful bloodshed, and Satan's delegate will sit upon the throne of this world as king and god, and receive that adoring homage of its peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues which was formerly given to the Woman.

It may be that Rome's influence is already waning to its end; that the shocks which she has been continually sustaining since the commencement of the great French revolution have so shattered her that, when the Ten Kings appear, she will need but a final stroke. On the other hand, it is possible that the time of her power is not altogether exhausted. In some quarters she is showing signs of renewed strength, especially in England and Germany; and we may yet see a sudden, though very short-lived, reaction setting in throughout Europe. She may for a moment find herself again firmly seated upon the Beast, and, by taking advantage of her popularity to renew her old policy of persecution, become once more drunken with the blood of the saints. And it may be that her bloodthirstiness will cause that revulsion of feeling and intense hatred in which she will be consumed.

The fact that none but the Ten Kings are mentioned as the agents of her destruction, and that they will effect their purpose with extreme violence, would seem to imply that she will be in full vigour when they fall upon her. And it is in analogy with other dealings of God that the hardened criminal should meet his doom while red-handed with a last crime. So Jerusalem, which had already killed the prophets, and stoned them that were sent unto her, was permitted to persecute the Lord and His disciples also, that upon her might come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, the son of Barachias.¹

Should this last view prove correct, there would yet be two great persecutions before the appearing of the Lord, one by the Harlot, and a second by the Beast. And who can look around on the corrupt and inert masses of professing Christians without admitting that they have in truth need of cleansing fires, if they are ever to join the purified and white-robed company which shall appear with the Lord in glory?

XII.

FROM the time when Faber suggested it, there has been a gradually increasing opinion that Napoleon Buonaparte was the seventh king, and that the eighth will also emerge from his family. That there is some ground for this opinion cannot be denied: it is well, therefore, that those who would understand the signs of the times should keep watch in the direction indicated. But, since the evidence is not irresistible, to dogmatize is foolish, to point out any particular member of the Buonaparte family as Antichrist is far worse. For certainly it is unbecoming in Christians to slander any man, and much more so to accuse him of being the great enemy of God and His Christ, when there is no proof whatever of the assertion. And it would seem that Antichrist cannot be revealed until the Church has been taken away, and even then none may point out the Lawless One until the last head of Roman power has been seen to arise from comparative obscurity

¹ Matt. xxiii. 34, 35.

by overcoming three of the Ten Kingdoms, and establishing himself as emperor over all of them; has been heard denying the Father and the Son; and is known to have made a covenant with a majority of the Jewish nation for seven years. While these things remain unaccomplished, whatever may be our suspicions, we have nothing more than possibility, or at the most probability, on which to rest, and must not forget how little we really know, how eager we, unconsciously, are to translate prophecy into the history of our own times, and how easily we may be deceived.

With this preface we will mention some reasons which make it probable that the first Napoleon was the seventh king, and seem also to point to his family as being that from which the eighth is likely to arise. These reasons are briefly as follows.

I. Napoleon effected an important change in the Roman Empire by putting an end to the line of emperors which had come down in direct succession from Augustus.

II. He transferred the imperial dignity from Germany to France; and, since the latter kingdom, by the revolution of 1789, began to spread the principles of that anarchy out of which Antichrist will arise, it does not seem improbable that the great king himself may be a French monarch.

III. He aimed at the restoration of the Roman Empire, under his own sway, in the precise manner in which it is predicted that Antichrist will restore it.

IV. He tampered with the Jews, and suffered them to flatter him in such terms as to provoke the suspicion that he would eventually have declared himself to be their Messiah, if he had retained his sovereignty.

V. He displayed the names of blasphemy, and desired to be thought more than human.

VI. His Greek origin may possibly satisfy the prophecy contained in the eighth chapter of Daniel.

VII. His name is remarkable, and his insignia are such as would well suit the pretensions of the last head of Roman power.

In fine, the ideal of the first Napoleon clothed him with a startling resemblance to the Antichrist of Scripture; but he failed to realize it. Now the tenacity with which his family cling to their traditions is well known: it does not, therefore, seem impossible that one of them may succeed in carrying out the gigantic scheme of their much-revered founder. And should this happen, the event need not in any way clash with what has been previously said respecting Nero. For it is only the spirit of Nero which could ascend from the abyss; the body in which it would take up its abode is not indicated.

We will now in a few words explain the reasons just enumerated.

I. Napoleon put an end to the succession of emperors which had descended in a direct line from Augustus. To understand this we must briefly trace the vicissitudes of the Empire, which for three centuries was united under one head. The first to divide it was Diocletian, who gave up the Western territories to Maximinian, the joint emperors assuming respectively the names of Jovius and Heraclius. But even this partition of the cares of government did not sufficiently lighten them; and so two other associates, Galerius and Constantius, were also appointed, but at the same time were considered to be inferior to Diocletian and

Maximinian, the latter taking the title of Augusti, while their younger colleagues were called Cæsars. This division was effected in A.D. 292, and while each of the four emperors was supreme in his own district, their united authority extended over the whole Empire.

About thirty-two years later the government was again centred in one man, Constantine: at his death it was divided among his three sons. Then Julian, and after him Jovian, were sole emperors; but Valentinian, who came next, bestowed the East upon his brother Valens, retaining the West for himself. And from that time, if we except the reigns of the Theodosii, there were always two emperors until A.D. 476, when the Western Empire fell, and the Eastern alone remained to support the dignity of Rome.

But in A.D. 799, the West, which had hitherto owned allegiance to the East, revolted, and the Holy Roman Empire was formed. The primary cause of alienation was the Iconoclast controversy; and when a woman, the Empress Irene, was permitted to usurp the throne of the East, the indignation of the West rose to its climax, and Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of Rome. Thus there were again two distinct Empires until A.D. 1453, when the Eastern was overthrown by the Turks. And from that time, unless the claim of Russia be admitted, the Western Sovereign remained the sole representative of Rome; until, in A.D. 1806, Napoleon compelled Francis II. to renounce the title of King and Emperor of the Romans, and formed some of the countries.

Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the Emperor Francis II. had announced to the Diet his resignation of the imperial crown, there were probably few which had constituted the Holy Roman Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he made himself Protector.

Thus, according to the interpretation which regards the heads of the Beast as forms of government,¹ he destroyed the sixth head and established the power of the seventh—an achievement which seems to point to him as being also the seventh king.

II. In the manner just related the headship of the Roman Empire was transferred for the second time to France. Now that country is the mother of modern democracy, and frightful were the birth-throes when she was delivered of her child; for in the revolution which commenced in 1789 no less than two million persons were slaughtered, so that at one time the very rivers ran with blood, and even stained the waves into which they flowed. Then out of the sea of raging anarchy arose the great emperor. But the prophecies of God indicate that these scenes will shortly be repeated on a far larger scale: it may be, then, that the crown of Rome has been given to France because she, who has hitherto played her part so well, is also destined to be the centre of the greater movement.

III. Napoleon wished to restore the Roman Empire in the precise manner in which it is predicted that Antichrist will restore it. On the 2nd of December, who reflected that the oldest political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium," Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire."

¹ See p. 144-5.

1804, he caused himself to be crowned emperor of the French at Notre Dame, the ceremony being performed by Pope Pius VIII., whom he had induced to visit Paris for that purpose. His idea of his Empire is revealed in the fact that he had procured the iron crown of Charlemagne for the coronation, although at that time a large portion of the dominions of Charlemagne owed allegiance to the emperor of Austria. But in 1806 he made use of his victory at Austerlitz to wrest these provinces from the protectorate of Austria, and to unite them to his own sway under the title of the Confederation of the Rhine. At the same time he was arranging to establish some of his brothers and generals as vassal kings over other countries of Europe. His intentions in so doing are thus explained by one of his latest biographers.

"He proposed to make a radical transformation in the whole European system. When, at the commencement of the empire, he was heard to evoke the name and memory of Charlemagne, he had been thought to make a fanciful comparison, using words for the sake of effect—words which had no real connection with the facts. After Austerlitz, it was evident that he had meant something else than a mere chance expression. Not that the federation of kingdoms, by which he had wished to surround himself, had in reality anything in common with the ancient Carlovingian federation. What he had in view under the name of federation was the strictest and most absolute unity. The vassal kings were to be nothing more than the humble instruments of his own domination. They were a disguise to which he had recourse, because the pure and simple acknowledgment of his projects would have made him too many enemies in the actual state of European conquest. . . . But under the imposing titles of kings, princes, dukes, grand and petty feudatories, all these men were mere servitors subservient to an iron centralization."¹

Thus far, then, Napoleon aimed at the restoration of the Western Empire in the form in which Antichrist will hereafter effect it, that of confederated kingdoms under himself as emperor. In a despatch to the Pope during the same year he thus expresses himself;—"Your Holiness is the sovereign of Rome, but I am her emperor." In 1809 he annexed the

Papal States, and styled Rome the second city of the

Empire; and in 1811 he chose the title of King of

Rome for his infant son.

But his ambition aspired to yet greater power.

Since the division of Rome into the Eastern and

Western Empires, her standard had been the twoheaded eagle, still borne by some of the European countries which formerly belonged to the Western

Empire, and by Russia, whose Czar, or Cæsar, claims to be the head of the Eastern. But Napoleon boldly resumed the single-headed eagle, and thereby revealed his design of once more uniting the divided Empire under his sole sway. And Alison, in speaking of the

Russian invasion, remarks;—

"The principal reason which directed the mighty conqueror to Moscow, instead of St. Petersburg, was the secret project which he entertained of turning his victorious arms, after the subjugation of the Muscovites, to the Southward, and placing on his brow the diadem of the Eastern Empire."

¹ Lanfrey's "Napoleon," vol. ii. p. 531

This project he had in view from very early times, and is said, when only a subaltern officer of artillery, to have nourished the hope of being king of Jerusalem. Strange that he should have wished for that which Heathen soothsayers predicted as the destiny of Nero. Satan will never rest until he has insulted and profaned the city of the Great King by making it the throne of the Beast. And at last he will succeed; but his success will fill up the measure of his iniquities.

Napoleon appears to have accepted the command of the Egyptian army in the hope of establishing an Oriental dynasty, and, after the failure of one of his assaults upon Acre, delivered himself to his secretary Bourrienne in the following extraordinary terms;—

"That miserable fort has indeed cost me dear; but matters have gone too far not to make a last effort. If I succeed, as I trust I shall, I shall find in the town all the treasures of the Pasha, and arms for three hundred thousand men. I shall raise and arm all Syria, which at this moment unanimously prays for the success of the assault. I will march on Damascus and Aleppo; I shall swell my army, as I advance, with the discontented in every country through which I pass; I will announce to the people the breaking of their chains, and the abolition of the tyranny of the Pashas. Do you not see that the Druses wait only for the fall of Acre to declare themselves? Have I not been already offered the keys of Damascus? I have only lingered under these walls because at present I could derive no advantage from that great town. Acre taken, I will secure Egypt; on the side of Egypt cut off all succour from the Beys, and proclaim Devaix general-in-chief in that country. I will arrive at Constantinople with armed masses, overturn the empire of the Turks, and establish a new one in the East which will fix my place with posterity; and, perhaps, I may return to Paris by Adrianople and Vienna, after having annihilated the house of Austria."

In this exposition of his vast schemes, it is interesting to mark how the thoughts of Napoleon centre upon Constantinople, the ancient seat of the Eastern Empire, and the house of Austria, which at that time held the titular headship of the Western. But the bravery of the Turks under English guidance, and the plague which his troops had brought with them from Jaffa, cut short his purposes, and forced him to retreat with the conviction that he was relinquishing a throne, and, as he often afterwards remarked, that Sir Sydney Smith had made him miss his destiny.

But it was not only in his gigantic project for uniting the whole Roman Empire under himself, and governing it by means of vassal kings, that Napoleon developed the scheme which Antichrist will yet carry out: he also felt the need of a prophet—like the second Beast—to strengthen his power, and endeavoured to supply the want. He forced the Pope and his cardinals to move to Paris, conveyed thither the archives of the Vatican, the tiara, and all the insignia and ornaments of the Pontifical state, and attempted to settle the Papacy in France. His purpose in so doing is thus explained by Lanfrey;—

"It was to be a sort of Oriental patriarchate, in which the Pope, swearing allegiance to him, paid and inspired by him, would be nothing but a grand functionary of the empire, a colleague of Cambacérès, a species of ecclesiastical arch-chancellor. 'What a lever!

what a medium of influence over the rest of the world!' he afterwards enthusiastically exclaimed, when reviewing his favourite ideas of that period on the subject of the Church. 'I should have made an idol of the Pope; he should have remained near me. Paris would have become the capital of the Christian world, and I should have governed the religious as well as the political world. . . . I should have had my religious sessions as well as my legislative sessions. My councils would have been the representation of Christianity, of which the Popes would have been only the presidents.' All the notes, letters, and acts, of Napoleon at this period prove that this was, in fact, the ultimate aim of his projects in the matter of religious organization. The Church once the slave of his will, disciplined like a regiment, and the two powers merged in the person of the Emperor—there is no doubt, considering the infinite perfection to which he had already brought his despotism, that this system would have produced the most absolute tyranny the world has ever seen; a scourge compared to which the abuses of the temporal sovereignty were as nothing."¹

It thus appears that, if any member of the Buonaparte family should be able to realize the ideal of the first emperor, he would, in regard to the extent and arrangement of his dominion, civil and religious, exactly fulfil the conditions of Antichrist, provided that his vassal kingdoms should be ten in number.

IV. Napoleon made overtures to the Jews, and took them, to some extent, under his protection. In July, 1806, he invited them to hold their Sanhedrim in Paris; and in March, 1807, seventy-one doctors and leading

¹ Lanfrey's "Napoleon," vol. iii. p. 563

THE NAPOLEONIC THEORY men of the nation assembled in that city, and formed themselves into a national council, the like to which had not been held for more than seventeen hundred years—not, indeed, since the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. The immediate cause of his interest in them may, no doubt, be found in his desire to conciliate the wealthy Jews of Old Prussia, Poland, and the Southern provinces of Russia. But they looked upon him as their deliverer, and styled him “the Lord’s anointed Cyrus”; and since we know his designs in regard to the East, we may be quite sure that he had also some ulterior plan for utilizing them in their own country.

V. He displayed the names of blasphemy. When he was in Egypt he openly regretted that he could not, like Alexander, give himself out to be the son of Jupiter Ammon.¹ But what he could do he did, as may be seen by the following proclamation, issued after the suppression of a revolt at Cairo.

“Sheiks, Ulemas, Orators of the Mosque, teach the people that those who become my enemies shall have no refuge in this world or the next. Is there any one so blind as not to see that I am the Man of Destiny? Make the people understand that from the beginning of time it was ordained that, having destroyed the enemies of Islam, and vanquished the Cross, I should come from the distant parts of the West to accomplish my destined task. Show them that in twenty passages of the Koran my coming is foretold.”

Throughout the whole of his career he showed a desire to be considered something more than human, and while many of the addresses presented to him recognised him as a sort of divinity, it is not on record

¹ Lanfrey’s “Napoleon,” vol. i. p. 283.

that he ever imitated the noble conduct of Canute. On the contrary, he excused many unscrupulous and outrageous proceedings by the assertion that he was acting as the arm of God; he loved to be addressed by the title of Votre Providence; and Lanfrey, after quoting one of his letters to the Pope, remarks;—"These singular expressions show that Napoleon already considered himself as something more than the Pope's suzerain; for he went nearly so far as to dispute with him his title of Vicar of God."

In the hall in which the Sanhedrim met at Paris, the cipher of Napoleon's name and that of Josephine's were blended with the name of God, and placed over the Ark of the Covenant! But a still more fearful instance of blasphemy is given by Madame de Remusat, in her "Memoirs."¹

"Some years later, at another file given by the city of Paris to the Emperor, the repertory of inscriptions being exhausted, a brilliant device was resorted to. Over the throne which he was to occupy were placed, in letters of gold, the following words from the Holy Scriptures: 'I am That I am.' And no one seemed to be scandalized!"

Surely the miserable man, by permitting so appalling a crime, denied both the Father and the Son, and showed a disposition to exalt himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped.

VI. We have already shown that Antichrist must, in some way, spring from one of the four kingdoms into which the Third Empire was divided; and the origin of the Buonapartes may, perhaps, satisfy this condition. In the "Memoirs" of the Duchess of

¹ Vol. i. p. 336

Abrantes their genealogy is traced back to the noble family of the Comneni, who "upheld for a while the sinking fate of the Eastern Empire," and of whom six ascended the imperial throne at Constantinople.¹ After the capture of that city by the Latins, they attempted to found a new empire at Trebizond, where they ruled until David II. surrendered to the Turks in A.D. 1461. Some of his family subsequently migrated from the shores of the Bosphorus to Mania in the neighbourhood of Mount Taygeta. But, after a lapse of two centuries, civil discords in Greece compelled them to fly from their country, and seek an asylum in Italy.

On the 1st of January, 1676, three thousand refugees under the leadership of Constantine Comnenus, who had been tenth Protageras of Mania, landed at Genoa. The Senate of the Republic received them with cordiality, treating the Comneni as persons of distinction, and, under certain conditions, ceded three districts of Corsica to them. The title of "Privileged Chief" was conferred upon Constantine, and the clergy were ordered to offer incense to him on his arrival, apparently as a recognition of his imperial lineage.

Of the sons who accompanied him, one named Calomeros² was subsequently despatched to Florence on a mission to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. But, upon the death of his father Constantine soon after his departure, the Grand Duke, who was greatly fascinated with the young man, persuaded him to renounce Corsica and fix his abode in Tuscany. After an

¹ One in the eleventh, and five in the twelfth century.

² That is, καλὸν μίρασ, the exact Italian equivalent of which is buona parte. The first member of the compound appears in Calo-Johannes, the name given to Napoleon's ancestor the Emperor John Comnenus (A.D. 1118).

interval, one of his descendants returned to Corsica, and became the founder of the Emperor Napoleon's family. He was received as a kinsman by the Comneni, who, however, in speaking of his line, always retained the Greek form of their name, calling them Calomeri or Calomeriani.¹

Doubtless it was the knowledge of this genealogy which inspired Napoleon, even in his youth, with a hope of reviving the Eastern Empire, and had he succeeded in establishing himself in the West, we should, perhaps, have heard more of his imperial descent.²

VII. Lastly; the name and insignia of Napoleon would seem to agree with what we are told of Anti-christ. The name will at once become Greek—the

¹ Of the correctness of the genealogy given above there can be little doubt, so far as the Comneni are concerned. Towards the close of the eighteenth century Demetrius Comnenus applied to the French Government for the restoration of his property, which had been appropriated by the Crown, and of his rank of "Privileged Chief," which had been abolished. The justice of his claims was admitted, provided he could prove his extraction. And "after an investigation before the king's council, a direct filiation from David II., last Emperor of Trebisonde, who was killed by order of Mahomet II., to Demetrius Comnenus was acknowledged, and confirmed by letters patent of Louis XVI., dated September 1st, 1783" (Madame Junot's "Memoirs").

² If it seems to any that this connection with Greece is too slight to satisfy the prophecy of the little horn which springs from one of the four, the writer has no wish to oppose them. Time alone can show the certainty of these things; and it is quite possible that the eighth monarch may be wearing the crown of Greece, or of either of the other three kingdoms of Alexander's successors, when he first appears upon the stage of Christendom. Yet the fact that the Napoleons are a Greek family is certainly somewhat significant, and of course a scion of the family might hereafter be chosen as sovereign of the land of his origin. It should be noticed that the eighth king has no necessary connection with the seventh; and, consequently, that any objection to the arguments of this book respecting the former does not affect the identification of the first Napoleon with the latter.

language of the New Testament—by a mere change of the letters (Ναπολέων), and its meaning will then be "the lion of the thicket." This may be no more than a coincidence: nevertheless, it harmonizes very remarkably with the great prophecy of Jeremiah;—"The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way: he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant." ¹

But a still graver mystery seems to be hidden in this name when we discover that its dative case—Ναπολέοντι—the case which expresses dedication or devotion to, yields the exact number of the Beast, the ominous six hundred and sixty-six.

The emblems of the Napoleonic dynasty are equally remarkable. They are the eagle, the violet, and the bee, which were all included in one of the presentations made at Chislehurst to the late Prince Imperial, when he attained his majority. It consisted of an inkstand shaped like a beehive, surmounted by an eagle, and set around with amethysts, which are used to represent the violet. And the meaning of these devices seems to be as follows:—

The single-headed eagle puts forth the union of the whole Roman Empire, Eastern and Western, as the traditional aim of the family.

The violet—usually represented by the Oriental amethyst, or violet sapphire, which is said by Pliny to have in perfection the very richest shades of purple—may be intended to mark the Napoleons as the imperial family of the Roman Empire.

¹ Jer. iv. 7. The Septuagint does not, however, use the word νάπη, or νάπος, in rendering this verse.

But there is far more significance in the colour than at first appears. In the directions given for the preparation of the Tabernacle, we find frequent mention of "blue and purple and scarlet," and it will be noticed that the middle colour is produced by the blending of the two outer. Now the blue seems to symbolize the heavenly origin of the Lord Jesus, and the scarlet His human nature of flesh and blood; while the purple signifies the blending of these natures in Christ Incarnate, the God-man. A similar meaning appears to attach to the imperial purple, the wearers of which were styled "divi," and adored as deities. During the early persecutions the test usually proposed to Christians was that they should offer frankincense on the altar before the emperor's bust. And God's revelation of the future tells us that in this matter also history shall repeat itself, that "the thing that hath been, it is that which shall be."

In regard to the last symbol, the same noun is used in the Chaldean language to signify both "a bee" and "a word." Consequently, the bee was adopted by the initiates as an emblem of "the Word," or "the Revealer of the Godhead." And hence the god Mithras was sometimes represented in Persian mythology as a lion with a bee in his mouth. The lion distinguished him as the sun-god, the lion being the astrological house of the sun; while the bee in his mouth indicated that he was the Word of God, the Enlightener. How well this device would suit the pretensions of Antichrist is sufficiently obvious.

Such, then, are some of the reasons for regarding the first Napoleon as the seventh head of the Beast, and for supposing that the eighth may also arise in his family.

They do not amount to an absolute demonstration of the second point, though it must be admitted that even there they are not to be lightly thrust aside. But in regard to the first Napoleon, we confess that the testimony of history appears to us complete and decisive.

And if this be the case, the inference is most grave; for then the seventh head has fallen, and the eighth may appear at any time. But, as we gathered from the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the Apocalypse, before the latter can ascend from the abyss, the summons, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God must be heard, and the waiting believers, whether living or dead, be conveyed from the doomed earth into the presence of their Lord.

XIII.

THE Woman called Mystery Babylon represents, as we have already seen, that great Society founded in connection with Nimrod, which has ever played a leading part in the drama of mankind, and has done so during the Christian era, and in the West, chiefly by manipulating the Church of Rome.

But in the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse we find something quite different: there a literal city is depicted, the commercial centre of the world. And the error of those who attempt to identify it with the Woman will appear from the following considerations.

I. The subject of the seventeenth chapter is "Mystery, Babylon the Great."

That of the eighteenth is simply "Babylon the Great," or, "that great city Babylon."

THE GENTILES

II. Mystery Babylon is to be destroyed by the Ten Kings, "because God hath put it into their hearts to fulfil His will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the Beast."¹ Thus the Woman is put out of the way in order that her power may be transferred to the Beast: her end must, therefore, precede the reign of Antichrist.

But the great city Babylon meets with its doom under the seventh vial, which is poured out at the close of Antichrist's career.²

It thus appears that the catastrophes are distinct, and that there is an interval of not less than three and a half years between them.

III. The Woman is hated by the Ten Kings, who make her desolate and naked, and eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.³

But these same kings—for they are "the kings of the earth" at the time—bewail and lament for the fall of the city.⁴

IV. The human agency of the Ten Kings works the ruin of the Woman, and, apparently, by a lengthened process.

The city, on the contrary, perishes by some frightful and instantaneous judgment, is engulfed in a moment, like a mill-stone cast into the sea, and disappears amid the flames vomited forth by the yawning earth.⁵ And

¹ Rev. xvii. 17.

² Rev. xvi. 17-19.

³ Rev. xvii. 16.

⁴ Rev. xviii. 9. In chap. xix. 19 the Ten Kings are again called "the kings of the earth."

⁵ But, besides the earthquake of the seventh vial (Rev. xvi. 18, 19) and the burning (xviii. 8), plagues of "death"—that is, pestilence—"mourning and famine" are said to come upon her in one day (xviii. 8). These are, perhaps, induced, under the sixth vial, so unexpected, so signal, so appalling, is her end, that it causes the sailors and merchants, who are on their way to her, to halt at a safe distance in consternation and despair.

If, then, we find so many differences in the details given of them, it is clear that we cannot absolutely identify the Woman and the city. At the same time there is doubtless a close connection between them, the probable manner of which we will endeavour to describe.

In past time, as the reader already knows, the strange power which had affected the world from Babylon was transferred to Rome. In the future, and possibly in the near future, it would seem that Rome, or at least the Romish system, will be destroyed, and the centre of wickedness restored for a brief season to its earliest seat on the banks of the Euphrates.

For the predictions concerning Babylon are not yet accomplished. She has never been suddenly destroyed, "as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah"; nor has she, up to the present time, known complete desolation without an inhabitant. Captured but not razed, or even seriously injured, by Cyrus, the city was retained as a royal residence during the whole period of Persian rule. Alexander designed to lift it from the decay into which it had fallen, to restore its wondrous temple of Belus, and to make it again the capital of the world. Josephus and Philo tell us that by the drying up of the great river into which her sewerage flows, by a water-famine, and by the sudden cutting-off of the water-transit by which she obtains the supplies necessary for her vast population.

Isa. xiii. 19.

Isa. xiii. 20.

in their time it contained the homes of many Jews:

and, consequently, we are not surprised to find that

Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, visited it, and dated his first Epistle to the "strangers of the dispersion" from the city of Nebuchadnezzar.¹ Five hundred years after Christ it still reckoned large numbers of Jews among its inhabitants, and was the place from which the Babylonian Talmud was sent forth to blind still more the eyes and harden the hearts of the Lord's kinsmen in the flesh. And even now the flourishing town of Hillah occupies its site with a population of some ten thousand souls, and is surrounded with pleasant gardens and date-groves.

Thus the prophecies of the sudden and utter destruction of the wicked city, and of its perpetual desolation, do not appear to have been as yet fulfilled; and we should further notice that both in Isaiah and Jeremiah its unlooked-for catastrophe is closely connected with the final restoration of Israel. It would seem, then, that Babylon must be rebuilt, and become again the centre of the world and the glory of kingdoms, as we have it represented in the eighteenth chapter of the

Apocalypse.

Now, in connection with its restoration, there are three questions of deep interest, on each of which we must dwell for a few minutes.

I. Can we discern, in the revelations given to us, any cause which would impel Satan to instigate the rebuilding of Babylon?

II. Is there a probability of such a restoration from a purely human point of view?

III. Does Scripture contain any intimation that the

¹ 1 Peter v. 13.

centre of wickedness will be removed from Rome, and conveyed back to its original location on the banks of the Euphrates?

I. Now, in regard to the first question, it is God's Kingdom in mystery which is now on earth, and to this Satan opposes Mystery Babylon. The Spirit is still present in Pentecostal power: therefore, the worst manifestations of evil are restrained, and the Adversary is compelled to carry on his operations with craft and more or less of secrecy. Hence his great organization in the past has been a counterfeit Church, which he has not guided to an open denial, but to a pretended confession of the Father and the Son. With such a hypocritical creed the Babylonian Harlot, already settled at Rome, was disguised and tricked out as the Church of Christ. But she retained all her abominations, and especially her goddess, the Queen of Heaven, to whom, under the new name of the Virgin Mary, the worship due to the Father and Son was secretly diverted, until the time should arrive for an open denial of their Godhead.

Such has been the state of things in the past. But before the Ten Kings give their power to the Beast, the Church will be removed from earth, and the Spirit, Who now hinders the manifestation of evil, will also depart, and so be taken out of the way.¹

All restraint being thus removed, Satan will immediately raise the standard of open rebellion, for which the world is already prepared. His false Church will be of no further service; nay, will even prove an obstacle to his changed plans. Therefore, he will turn the hearts of the children of disobedience against it,

¹ 2 Thess. ii. 6-8 and incite them to the violent and cruel destruction of its organisation and its honest or prejudiced devotees.

But those who have secretly manipulated it for his purposes, and all who adhere to it from selfish considerations, he will move to change their front, to make international commerce and worldly prosperity the basis of their system, in place of religion, and to rebuild Babylon as the seat of their power.

For the return of the Jews, and other signs, will be testifying that God, having removed His Kingdom in mystery, is about to restore the manifested Kingdom to Israel; and Satan, on his part, will again have need of the old enemy of Jerusalem, the wicked city of the Euphrates.

II. As to the second point, the revival of the East is one of the most remarkable phenomena now before us; so many of its countries are awakening from their lethargy, and seem ready to open communications with the West. And there is, perhaps, no place more suitable for a central mart than the site of Babylon, with its great advantages, and its navigable river. Ever since 1850 a Euphrates Valley Railway has been in contemplation, nor is it likely to be much longer delayed. In speaking of the probable results of such an enterprise, W. P. Andrew remarks;—"It brings two quarters of the globe into juxta position, and three Continents—Europe Asia and Australia—into co-relation. It binds the vast population of Hindustan by an iron link with the people of Europe; it inevitably entails the colonization and civilization of the great valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the resuscitation in modern shape of Babylon and Nineveh, and the reawakening of Ctesiphon and Bagdad of old."¹

In 1850 the British Government thought so seriously of the project that they sent out General Chesney to survey and explore the river Euphrates, at a cost of over £30,000. Nor is England the only nation which has appreciated the value of this district: for the writer has lately received a letter from Mr. W. Greene, C.E., containing the following interesting information.

"About the year 1851, I was engaged by some eminent Parisian Bankers to examine the country between Madrid and Seville with a view to the construction of a Railway then in contemplation between the two cities. Since there was at that time, as indeed there is at the present, a great scarcity of good maps and surveys of the district, access was procured for me to the Department of the War Office in which were deposited all the valuable surveys made by order of Napoleon the First for the movements of his armies in Spain. With the assistance of a French draughtsman, who copied whatever I thought likely to be useful, I examined many documents prepared for the requirements of the great Emperor, and among them found a survey of the river Euphrates. It contained a plan for a new Babylon, with quays, river walls, and other arrangements necessary for a large commercial city. Evidently the vast schemes of Napoleon comprehended the Eastern as well as the Western side of the old Roman Empire, and especially that wonderfully fertile portion of the Euphrates valley in the neighbourhood of the site of Babylon."

From this it would seem that the mind of Napoleon

¹ "Memoir of the Euphrates Valley Route to India."

was set on the restoration of great Babylon, the capital city of Nebuchadnezzar and of Cyrus, the chosen seat of Alexander, and, in all probability, the destined royal residence of the Fourth Empire's mightiest king.

And thus both England and France have formed, in connection with the Euphrates valley, projects which, if they had been carried out, would have resulted in the rebuilding of Babylon; while the newspapers have lately circulated a rumour of a Russian intrigue to obtain the Porte's permission for the construction of a Railway through the same district. Surely a spot which possesses such attractions for the nations is not likely to remain long in the condition in which it is.

If, however, Babylon is to be rebuilt, we must not allow its restoration to clash with other predictions of Scripture by placing it between present time and the coming of the Lord for His Church; but must remember that the enterprise need not, necessarily, be taken in hand until after the first translation of the saints.

And with what rapidity it might be accomplished we are, perhaps, now able to understand. European Congresses are becoming more and more frequent; and, in connection with the present mania of the Great Powers for annexation, they seem to indicate that the separated parts of the Roman Empire are beginning to draw together again, and to assume the sovereignty which they must ultimately possess over the whole earth.

When they are more completely united, and more accustomed to act together, it is by no means unlikely, even from a human point of view, that some grand scheme of world-commerce may induce the Ten Kingdoms to rebuild Babylon as an international mart, situated, as it is, just between the civilized West and the fast reviving East. In such a case the construction of its own quarter of the city would probably be assigned to each country, and there would be a realization of Bunyan's Vanity Fair.

"Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold."

Undoubtedly the rivalry of the nations would stimulate them to set in motion the whole machinery of their vast resources, with a view both to rapidity of building and magnificence of architecture. And when we also remember that the attention of Satan and the whole Kingdom of Darkness would be concentrated upon the work, and all their power exerted to forward it, we may fairly suppose that the result would in some degree approach to the poet's fancy;—

"Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation."

Thus, just as Babylon—Satan's centre of the earth as opposed to Jerusalem—was originally built by a cosmopolitan effort upon which the judgment of God fell; so it would be resuscitated amid still grander displays of human power and pride, but only to be speedily and finally destroyed by the high hand and the outstretched arm of the Almighty.

III. Proceeding now to the third question, we seem to have a Scriptural intimation that the seat of wickedness will be transferred from Rome to Babylon in the fifth chapter of Zechariah. The prophet had been made to see three visions of the night, in the first of which the Lord showed him that Jerusalem, although at the time humbled, even as the myrtle bushes in a hollow, was, nevertheless, guarded by His angels and reserved for His purposes of mercy which were already beginning to work; in the second, that four hostile kingdoms must arise against Israel, but that God would find agents to terrify and cast them out; and in the third, that prosperity should finally return to Israel, so that Jerusalem should be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein, while the Lord would be unto her a wall of fire round about, and be the glory in the midst of her.

But the mind of Zechariah may have sought to know how the daughter of Zion could be cleansed and made fit to receive blessings so great; and an answer was vouchsafed to him in the following visions.

He was transported in spirit to the Holy of Holies, and there beheld the High Priest, Joshua, standing before the Mercy-seat on the great Day of Atonement. Instead, however, of the usual robes of pure white, Joshua was clad in filthy garments, which set forth his own and his nation's sin; and Satan was there to resist him. But the Lord, after rebuking the Adversary, both pardoned His people in their representative, and provided a righteousness for them.

Thence the prophet seems to have passed into the Holy Place, where he saw the result of the favour which had just been granted: for the Jewish candlestick was burning brightly through the ministration of the Spirit by the Two Witnesses.¹

Thus he learnt in what way God would cover the

¹ Compare Zech. iv. 11-14, and Rev. xi. 4.

THE RE-BUILDING OF GREAT BABYLON. 179 iniquity of the remnant of His people, according to the words of the angel to Daniel. And in the following visions of the Flying Roll and the Ephah, corresponding respectively to the two which precede them, he was made to understand the sin of the corrupters of the earth, its final development, and its punishment.

For, proceeding, apparently, into the outer court, he beheld a Flying Roll,¹ passing over the face of the whole earth, in order that it might enter the houses of sinners, and destroy themselves and their dwellings. And the sinners are classified as thieves and false swearers, offenders against the second and the first tables.

Again Zechariah lifted up his eyes, and saw an Ephah “going forth.” Now the Ephah, which is the largest of Hebrew dry measures, is often used as a symbol of commerce, and such is doubtless its meaning in the vision. When, therefore, the angel explains, “This is their appearance in all the earth,” he means that the thieves and false swearers who will be destroyed by the Roll, are those who are dishonest and perjured in commerce, and that, at the time of the vision’s fulfilment, the world will be full of such men. Just as Babylon of old made all the nations drunken so the corruption wrought by this Ephah of iniquity will be universal. Its principles have already been adopted by the false Church which has made merchandise of everything—of sacraments, of masses for the dead, and of the souls of men—but now it is “going

¹ Perhaps its dimensions, since they are the same as those of the floor of the Holy Place in the Tabernacle, indicate that the prophet saw it issuing from thence. Or they may signify that it punishes according to the measure of the Sanctuary forth." The expression is peculiar, and is more than once used in the Old Testament of those who are forced by the pressure of foes to quit their own city.¹ And a similar meaning may attach to it here: the calamity at Rome, and the destruction of the Romish Church, has compelled those who were directing the system of wickedness to flee from their city and to change their tactics. Accordingly, the prophet sees the Ephah coming from the West and proceeding to the Euphrates in the East.

As he looked on, its leaden cover was removed, and lo! a Woman was sitting in it, who seems to have immediately raised herself. "This," said the angel, "is Wickedness;" and, as he spoke, he thrust her back into the Ephah, and cast the leaden cover upon her. She was to be conveyed in secrecy to Babylon: none should know that she was the spring of the new system, until in changed form she should be manifested in the land of Shinar, and the Ten Kings, who hated and destroyed her as the Church of Rome, should love her again as the Babylonian Harlot of Commerce.

Again the prophet lifted up his eyes, "and behold there came out two women, and the wind"—or "the spirit"—"was in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the Ephah between the earth and the heaven." He inquired its destination, and was told that it was being borne to the land of Shinar, where a house should be built for it, and it should be established, and set upon its own base.

What the women represent is not easily determined. But the work in which they are engaged is that of Satan, and since the execution of God's judgments by

¹ Jer. xxxix. 4; 1. 8.

spiritual powers from His presence is set forth in the next vision,¹ it may be that these women are the spiritual agents of Satan who will bring about the transit of the Ephah. At least there is something very ominous in the description of their wings, if we remember three characteristics of the stork mentioned in the Bible.

For according to the Mosaic law it is an unclean fowl. And yet the name—chasid—by which it was known among men signifies “the pious bird.” Hence it seems to symbolize something which is good in the eyes of men, but abominable to God. May we thus find a hint that, in the conveyance of the Ephah, the angels of Satan will so act that men will suppose them to be angels of light? And is there a similar meaning in the lifting up of the Ephah between the earth and the heaven? It is quite possible that there may be some flaunting of pious principles while Wickedness still lies in concealment, but, upon her manifestation, they will quickly disappear.

Again; we are told of the stork that “the fir trees”—or rather, “the cypresses,” that is, the tall towering trees—“are her house.”² That which she represents rests upon the established powers of earth. She is as those fowls of the air which devoured the good seed, but found shelter in the mustard plant when, by a monstrous and unnatural growth, it had become a tree.³

Lastly; “the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times . . . but My people know not the judgments of the Lord.”⁴ Even the children of this world

Zech. vi. 5.

See Part III, chaps. iii. and v.

² Psalm civ. 17.

⁴ Jer. viii. 7.

are wise for their generation, much more so are the spirits of evil. They are well aware when they may act, and understand their seasons, so that even while they believe and tremble they are yet able to say;—

"Art Thou come to torment us before the time?" Accordingly, they recognise their opportunity, and at the fitting moment carry back the Harlot enclosed in the Ephah to her own place.

Thus the women may represent the Satanic agencies by which the relics of the system destroyed at Rome will be conveyed to the land of Shinar. And by its new development the last universal rebellion will be brought about on the very spot where men first conspired against God

I.