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 for ever."

As soon as Daniel was brought into the royal presence, he undauntedly (but with becoming modesty and respect) made a suitable answer to the stern interrogatory of the desput," art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof," being so young a stripling, and the thing such as none of the wise men of the kingdom have been able to do?Daniel told him, that the nature of the thing he had required of the wise men was such, as was impossible to be accomplished by any wisdom of theirs, or by any natural means of information attainable by him; for the thing could only be revealed by immediate inspiration of the God of heaven, to whom all things, the future, as well as the present and the past, are perfectly known. That God had been pleased to favor the king with

.

a dream of profound and vast prophetic import, in which the fates of his empire, and of the whole world were involved; in order that by the interpretation thereof, which heaven had commissioned its prophet to communicate, more humble and rational ideas should be suggested to his too aspiring mind, and in so impressive a manner, that they might not easily be forgotten. And, in short, to give him a true representation of the instability of that greatness and present extensive dominion, to which he had falsely affixed a conception of eternal duration,

"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a GREAT IMAGE, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form thereof was terrible. The image's HEAD was of fine gold, his BREAST and his arms of silver, his BELLY and his thighs of brass, his LEGS of iron, his FEET part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest till that a STONE was cut without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and break them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay,

the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, 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."

King Nebuchadnezzar could not but be struck with astonishment, when he perceived the subject of his dream circumstantially reported to him, and a vivid impression of it revived upon his imagination by this ingenuous youth, as well as the previous thoughts which had engaged his attention. For the case was such, as would not admit of a possibility of applying here any of the usual arts to which interpreters of dreams have recourse, to work upon the imagination, and impose upon the credulity of their employers. This circumstance consequently prepared him to give implicit belief, and to expect with augmented curiosity, the interpretation promised; which the prophet thus delivered.--

"This is the dream, and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. 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 the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. THOU ART THIS

We must consider this address of Daniel to king Nebuchadnezzar, in the zenith of his power and glory, as framed according to the lofty stile usual in prophecy, and particularly, as being conformable to the manners of the court in which the prophet had received a great part of his education. It must not, therefore, be taken in geographical measurement, as a strict literal description of this mighty monarch's dominions, but as the usual way of speaking of them in the Babylonian court. And Nebuchadnezzar certainly had, at that time, subdued almost the whole of the then known world, and held in his own

hands the destinies of many nations. Yet in the midst of this courtly language, Daniel still preserves the dignity of a prophet of the most high God. He reminds the king of the greatness, and glory, and universal extent of his empire, in order to inculcate from thence a noble lesson of the folly of polytheism and the reigning idolatry, by instructing him that the great God who now sent him this wonderful communication, and foretold to him, agreeably to his wish, what should be hereafter, even to the most remote periods of the world; was the only God which could do this, and consequently, that all other gods were imaginary vanities. That it was he alone who held all power in heaven and earth in his own hands, and gave to whomsoever he would, a delegated portion of his own authority. That upon him it had now seemed good to the almighty God to place the diadem of an universal dominion, and that it was God who had given victory to his sword, which way soever he himself had sent it, even against his own people, Israel, and his own city and temple; and had