countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand." (Dan. viii. 20-25.)

I do not waste your time by establishing and identifying every symbol in the passage. I assume that the identification of Bishop Newton, of Elliot and Mede, and many other distinguished interpreters of prophecy, is correct. Indeed, I have no doubt of it. First, the ram is represented and proved by them to be the Persian power. The two horns are two dynastic branches, or the Median and Persian kingdoms, shooting from one head, or grafted into the one great national power. For fifty or sixty years, that is, from the accession of Cyrus to the Greek expedition under Xerxes,-no national power, westward, northward, or southward, was able to stand before it. This is the literal history of the progress, the triumphs, and successes of the Medo-Persian kingdom. The goat that appears in the fifth verse, as Macedonian coins still testify, was the Macedonian power. The notable horn-the remarkable or illustrious horn between the eyes-has been identified successfully

as Alexander the Great, who, in the language of verses 6 and 7, rushed against the ram, broke his horns, or destroyed the Persian kingdom, added the empire to his own, and so swelled his imperial supremacy to the highest possible pitch, and became politically “notable.”

This great or notable horn broke down in its meridian: that is, Alexander the Great died in his prime, and in the midst of his victories, a melancholy proof that victory is vanity. The four horns that succeeded on the division of the empire, were the four Macedonian kingdoms, formed under the four generals of Alexander, after the battle of Issus. These are the outlines of the passage I have read. Historical facts thus fill up prophetic outlines.

The subject that specially concerns me in this investigation is the rise, locality and date, of what is here called "the little horn," described by the prophet in the most graphic terms. It was, I conceive, the representative of the Turkish and Mahometan power. First, it springs out of one of the four Macedonian kingdoms at its close. Secondly, the character of its chief is, "a king of fierce countenance, disclosing dark sentences," or a military prophet propagating strange or portentous revelations. Thirdly, his success, that he should wax exceeding great towards the south, the east, and the glory, or Jerusalem, used here in all likelihood to represent the professing Christian Church. Fourthly, the effects of his progress shall be, that he shall cast truth to the ground, cause craft to

prosper, take away the daily sacrifice, and cast down the place of Jehovah's sanctuary, that is, depress Christendom. Fifthly, he shall stamp upon the mighty ones, or secular powers; and the reason of his judging them or visiting them in his wrath is their apostasy, or the standing up against "the Prince of princes," that is, the Lord Jesus Christ; and at the end of 2300 years, according to the prophecy of this book, the sanctuary shall begin to be cleansed, or, in the language of the sixteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, the Euphratean flood, as I shall show you by and by, will begin to retire, or to evaporate and cease.

Having thus briefly given the outline of the prophetical record, let me now identify its features by stating the historical fulfilment of it, as attested in the annals of Asia and Europe. The Turkish power arose east of the Oxus, in Chorassan, a territory of the Cyro-Macedonian horn or kingdom. At that time a Turkman tribe revolted against the Sultan of Ghizni, elected Toghrul Beg for its chief, and asserted for itself the dignity, the position, and the prestige of a ruling power, though comparatively then a "a little one." Toghrul was invited by the caliph at Bagdad to help him against Persia. The Turkman chief obeyed the request, and in the language of the prophecy, advaneed southward. Toghrul was next raised to the dignity of chief general of Islam; afterwards he married the caliph's daughter, and so became the powerful and fanatical missionary of Mahometanism through

eastern lands, and Greek Christendom; and not only Judea, but Asiatic Christendom, was gradually subdued by him. Gibbon, the best commentator upon past prophecy, as a daily newspaper is the best commentator upon existing and fulfilling prophecy, thus describes the victorious progress of this Turkman chief, in words almost the very echoes of Daniel's prophecy:-"From the Chinese frontier in the east, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction to the west and south, as far as the neighbourhood of Constantinople, the holy city of Jerusalem, and the spicy groves of Arabia Felix;" or, in the language of prophecy, of which Gibbon was the unconscious expounder, he "waxed exceeding great toward the east, and toward the south, and toward the glory." Daniel says, he waxed great to the host of heaven, cast the stars down and stamped upon them; and the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of the Lord's sanctuary was cast down. Gibbon thus describes the Turkish progress:"By the choice of the Sultan, Nice was preferred for his palace, and the divinity of Christ was denied and derided in the same temple in which it had been first pronounced by the first synod of Christendom. On the hard conditions of tribute and servitude, the Greek Christians might enjoy the exercise of their religion; but their most holy temples were profaned, and their priests and bishops. were insulted." The idolatry and apostasy of its professors having come to the full, in the language of Daniel, they were thus punished by the scourge,

sent forth in the providence of God to chasten the apostate and the guilty nations of Christendom. The "dark sentences of Daniel are thus translated by Gibbon, though unconscious that Daniel had so written :-"The Koran is full of endless, incoherent rhapsody and fable, sometimes crawling in the dust, at other times lost in the clouds." The fierce countenance of this predicted king, which is the picture of Daniel, is described by Gibbon, when he uses the expressien in his magnificent History, "He was fierce as a Turk." "The Turks breathed still all the fierceness of the desert." The fierceness of the Turk became at last a proverbial expression throughout Christendom. The angel in the prophecy asks how long this absolute eastern domination shall last, and the answer given, as I have stated, is 2300 years. The first question is, What is the date of the commencement of that epoch? It cannot be previous to the year 536 before Christ, because then the two-horned kingdom was in existence. It cannot be after the defeat of Xerxes in the year 480 before Christ, for then the chief glory of the Persian empire was gone; but in 480 before Christ, immediately previous to the last catastrophe of the Persian empire, Xerxes made his triumphant march into Macedon and Greece, and thus the tide of its glory was at its full, just before its ebbing. Dating, therefore, the 2300 years at that period, the Crescent, if the date be correct, should begin to wane in A. D. 1820; the Euphratean flood should then begin to evaporate,