The "times of the Gentiles" is the Lord's own expression for the whole period of their divinely appointed supremacy over Israel (Luke 21:24). It is the period, therefore, of Israel's rejection nationally, and begins with Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the temple and city when Judah was carried away captive into Babylon, and ends with their deliverance from the assembled nations by the coming of the Lord from heaven (Zech. 14:3, 4, 9). It is the time of the four Gentile empires seen in the visions of Daniel and the king, with a noteworthy exception which we find in the book of Revelation, that there is a time in which the last empire "is not" (17:8), before its final appearance and complete overthrow. In this gap we stand, for none of the great world-empires exist, and all the political effort of the present is to prevent any possibility of the revival of such a thing. Napoleon's history is a warning of how easily God can break through these human counsels, and bring about what He has ordained.

For the history of the times of the Gentiles we are dependent largely upon prophecy, even although much of this be now historical fact. But the history of the Old Testament almost ceases with the subversion of the kingdom of Judah, and no mere human hand can supply the deficiency. It is God's view of things we are seeking, and "the Lord seeth not as man seeth." Thus man's history would be likely by itself to lead us only astray from the divine view, which alone has any real significance. We should hold fast, then, to prophetic scripture as to our sure guide through the mazes of human history.

But prophecy, while it throws light upon the darkness of the present, hastens ever onward to the accomplishment of God's counsels in the time before us, and indeed mainly in revealing this declares the present to us. The end is the time of manifestation, for the tree is known by its fruit. We misjudge constantly by anticipating this, mistaking the true harvest-time which it is the glory of Him who knows the end from the beginning to make certainly known.

This will prepare us for a character of prophecy to miss which will leave us in continual perplexity. All prophecy connects with the end, and by this means with every other prophecy. None is its own interpreter, as that passage in the second of Peter, so commonly perverted, really means.* *"No prophecy of Scripture is of separate"-literally, "its own"-"interpretation.*" And why? "For prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." It is all one plan, one counsel. To separate one part from the rest would be to make a rent in a seamless robe. Every seeming by-path connects at any rate with some road that ends not save in the city of the Great King. And as we approach this, the highway widens, the view lengthens, road after road comes in and pours its contribution into the swelling stream that hastens onward whither all ends- at the feet of the King Eternal.

It is to prophecy that we mainly turn, then, and for our present purpose especially to Daniel and its complement, the book of Revelation. And the fact that the history is at the present time prophetic has a significance which we must now consider.

With Israel in the Old Testament man's history morally ends. The law has given its judgment as to him. "There is none righteous,-no, not one" is the verdict it renders. If true of the favored nation, true then of all, for "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man."

There is indeed another trial to be made here, but for which we must pass on to the pages of the New Testament. Will he not, now convicted and exposed, be ready for grace when it is offered him ? Will not the prisoners of hope turn to the stronghold,-to the Mighty One on whom God has laid help? The answer to this is but the cross; and in this the full and final judgment of the world is found. In the meanwhile, the law has already, and to leave him thus shut up to grace, given its verdict. Man's history closes with Israel's ruin. The record closes. God may predict the future of him with whom He has now parted company; but He has parted company.

It was the throne of the Lord upon which Solomon had sat (I Chron. 29:23), and the ark of the "God of all the earth" had long before passed through the dried-up Jordan to the place of His rest. But now the glory of God had passed from the mercy-seat, and Ezekiel had seen, its lingering sorrowful departure from the city (Ezek. 11:23); and now God's title is in the books which speak of this time, the "God of heaven" (2 Chron. 36:23; Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel). The God of heaven gives Nebuchadnezzar the kingdoms of the earth, and the Gentile kingdom widens out soon into an empire such as never had been seen in Israel. Nebuchadnezzar is thus a king of kings,- a petty image again of Him who will be the "King of kings and Lord of lords;" somewhat also in the absolute authority possessed by Him. But there the resemblance ends. How different the character of the one who possesses this power, and how rapid the degeneration of it!

To him whom God had raised up He appears, that he may know the hand that had raised him up; making him debtor too for the interpretation of his dream to one of the scanty remnant of the people he had overthrown, that he may learn the vanity of his false gods in the presence of Him to whom they are opposed. This dream makes him aware of the fact that He who had placed can displace, and of the continual degradation of power in the kingdoms which succeed his own until at last they all together come to an end, smitten by a kingdom which becomes really world-wide, and which stands forever. About this final kingdom little is said; only that it is of no human shaping, but set up in a peculiar way by the God of heaven Himself, that it destroys all others, and abides. It is the vanity and corruptibility of all mere earthly power that is insisted on:a homily against pride and independence of heart read to one who is in the greatest need of it.

In this view of the kingdoms, the debasing of material shows the decay of power in the successive forms. The Babylonian was the head of gold, owing no allegiance save to God Himself. In the Persian-the silver.-the law when made, although the king might make it, could not be altered even by himself. The kingdom of Alexander-the "brazen-tunicked Greeks"-had risen on the ruins of a pure democracy, of which it retained many elements; while Rome, which succeeded this, though strong as iron, was in principle entirely such, the power of the emperors being gained by their assuming to themselves a number of democratic offices. Finally, in the latter days of the divided empire, the inroads of barbarian nations mixed the iron with clay. There was no real cohesion, and the heterogeneous elements falling apart, the kingdoms of Europe arose out of this division. Cut this was not the smiting of the image with the stone. This belongs to a still future time, as we shall see, if the Lord will, as we proceed.

The next four chapters of Daniel show, step by step, the character which these world-powers assume, and are the preface to the seventh chapter, in which they are viewed prophetically in their history as before God, the history in which these features are manifested. The third chapter shows the assumption of control over the conscience, which has characterized man's rule wherever he has had the necessary power. Nebuchadnezzar's image is marked as that which he has set up. To refuse to worship in the prescribed way is rebellion, therefore, against himself. How invariably, we may say, has the civil power assumed to be the religious also, wherever it could. Liberty of conscience,-precious as the boon is,-is in our days the sign of the decay of absolute authority, and it will not last, but give way finally to the worst form of spiritual despotism which the world has ever seen. But this, as in the case before us, surely leads into opposition to God in the persecution of His people. Others may escape by submission, but not they; although the Son of God is with them in the furnace.

The fourth chapter is the descent of the kingdoms from what has at least the form of a man, as in the second chapter, to the beast-form in which they are seen in the seventh. It is the pride of power which forgets God which levels man with the beast which has none. Nebuchadnezzar claims the great city over which he rules as built by his own power and for his own glory. In the same hour he is driven to the beasts, until he has learnt that the "Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will." Then he is restored, but the lesson remains, not, alas! to avert the doom of the Gentile empires, but as a note of warning for him who has the secret of the Lord.

The fifth chapter shows us the moral declension still progressing unchecked. Belshazzar openly lifts himself up against the Lord of heaven, exalting above Him the senseless idols of silver and gold, and fingers of doom come forth and write his sentence before his eyes.

Thus the Babylonian empire runs its course, and is followed by the Persian; but the Persian we see also, in the next chapter, brought in to complete the terrible picture of decline, ending in complete apostasy. The king exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, making a decree that for thirty days no petition is to be asked of any god or man except himself. That Darius himself is not the real author of this decree, and is personally very different from what it would imply, does not alter the significance of this terrible act, -the presage of that last antichristian blasphemy for which the Gentile powers come to an end, while Israel, like Daniel, is delivered from the paw of the lion.

The seventh chapter now gives these empires, seen in the prophetic vision, as four wild beasts. But attention is concentrated upon the last, and that, too, as seen at the time of the end. It has already its ten horns, corresponding to the ten toes of Nebuchadnezzar's image, and then there arises another little horn, on account of whose blasphemous words, the beast is destroyed, and his body given to the burning flame. But the kingdom now becomes His in whom meet the characters at once of the Son oi Man and of the Ancient of days; and "His dominion is an everlasting dominion, that shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed."

Thus when Israel's course is ended for the present in utter ruin, God takes up the Gentiles, (not as yet to reveal Himself in Christ to them-that is another and totally different thing, as will, I trust, in its due place appear,-but) to give them their trial also. This will seem strange and contradictory at first sight, for has it not been just said that with Israel in the Old Testament man's history morally ends? That is surely true also. In all this history of the Gentiles, there is no fresh stirring of that question. No law, no moral code, is given to them. No revelations at all are made, save only Nebuchadnezzar's vision; although Cyrus speaks of a charge which God had given to him to build Him a house in Jerusalem. This he might readily have found in Isaiah's prophecy (chap. 44:28), and probably was shown it there. At any rate, the founders of the first two empires were made perfectly aware from whom it was they had received their greatness. Here all personal communication ends. God does not bring them nigh, as He had brought Israel. He has significantly left the earth, putting It afresh, in the most decisive way since Noah's time, into man's hand, but with scarcely a word as to its government. There was His written Word, indeed, if they had heart for it; for ignorant He took care, as we see in Cyrus, that they should not be. And there He leaves it. ( To be continued.)