beasts are a well-known figure; and I am not aware of any case in which they are not a temporal power; so that we have here a temporal power subsisting along with the great general power who had Satan's throne. This is nothing surprising, as we know horns or kings will so subsist who give their power to the beast. This is different, it is true, but it is a temporal power. It had two horns lamb-like. The Lamb is not Christianity but Christ. This beast, then, in the form of its power resembled Christ, but its language was the full character and pretension of Satan: its speech dragon-like. This is evidently a remarkable character, a form of power like Christ, a language like Satan, not in deceit merely, but in public pretension. It is not as a serpent but a dragon -a royal Christ-like power with Satan-like language. But the power of this beast is exceeding great, though that of Satan: he exercises all the power of the first beast before him; he does not take it away at all from the former, far from it; but he exercises it all-the essential energy of evil is in him, though the other may be clothed with it. He makes the earth and its inhabitants worship him who was publicly on Satan's throne, whose deadly wound was healed. But his energy of evil was not only in the exercise or administration of another's power: he acts in intrinsic power as a prophet. We shall see another character of this power in a moment; but I confine myself to this passage now. The character of the display of this power is frightful. What the prophets of Baal could not do, and what Elias did, as a contrasting proof that Jehovah alone was the true God, this beast does, at least in the eyes of men, besides other great signs. He seduces and deceives the inhabitants of the earth through the signs he was given to do before the beast. The beast would be content enough to have such an energy to sustain and support his throne, and exalt and adorn his authority in the eyes of men-authority which rested only in deceit and delusion of mind or persecution. This seducing prophet and power leads them on to idolatry also, and gives breath to the image of the beast so as to speak, and have those killed who did not worship it. Thus, while sustaining the throne of Satan in the world,

this second beast, while Satanic in his language, speaking like the dragon, has the form of royalty and prophecy established by signs, and such signs to the eyes of men as had erst sufficed to establish Jehovah's sole name and authority in the mind of Israel to the destruction of an incapable Baal. The aim, however, of all is the recognition of Satan's authority in him whom he has placed on his throne; but the energy which produces the effect in the minds of men is in the second beast. While exercising power and bearing its form, a beast with horns, still religious seduction, and properly such as connects itself with ancient Jehovah-testimony, is what characterises this second beast: he is spoken of (Rev. xix.) as the false prophet. The first beast is evidently the great imperial Gentile power, to whom the empire is given in the accustomed terms of Scripture; but with its healed head, in its last blasphemous state, admired and owned by all not kept of God in sovereign grace, and hating and blaspheming them who had their tabernacle in heaven. His rise, as that of other beasts had been, is out of the general mass of men-the Gentile world at large-out of the sea, as it is expressed. Besides this, we have inhabiters of heaven. What, then, is Earth out of which the second beast rises? There is no longer any pretension to heavenly association: all that is blasphemed. This religioprophetic influence will have its character and origin within the system and order of what subsists where Satan is and yet rules, this earth-but such position and relationship, when assuming a religious character, however blasphemous or seditious, is Jewish. It is the religion of the earth, and, viewed as rejecting Christ, must be false. Such, I apprehend, is the character of the seduction of the second beast-heavenly neither in reality nor pretension, but an exhibition of present power, here in the sphere to which Satan is now limited. He is the proper present energy of Satan, to lead the world to recognise the throne which he has been able to set up here in the first beast, which had its origin providentially in the world like other previous beasts. The second beast is earthy and Jewish in its character. But it is by present power, signs, and delusions (not, as is evident,

by the law and the testimony) that he acts. I would now turn to another passage, where the last form of evil is spoken of, and see what is its character there (2 Thess. ii.). Here we can hardly doubt, on reading the 9th verse, that there is a connection with the false prophet. But the question may arise, if it is not merely to characterise the time and reign of the beast, or if "whose coming" means that he himself is known by these signs. That is, is it generally characteristic, the first beast or the second?

But let us examine the passage. There is a falling away down here, as there is a gathering together in heaven, on the other hand, to Christ of the Saints. The heavenly Church takes its own place as gathered up to its Head; and the falling away or apostasy takes place upon earth. The result is the manifestation of the man of sin, the son of perdition. The removal of the Church and the Apostasy give room to this. In this chapter it cannot be questioned, that a religious character also is displayed, however wicked and audacious. Secular power is not spoken of, but first its impious and then its seductive character. He is characterised as the Man of Sin, and the Wicked One whom a mystery of iniquity has preceded. It does not appear to me that verse 4 gives another idea, or that of secular power; it is moral opposition to God and insult to him. It is true that the beast of Rev. xvii goes into perdition; but this does not alter the character here given: the two (Rev. xix.) perish together. The falling away, it is evident, refers to that which had the name of Christianity, though it goes much further than its mere rejection. There is an active energising personage bearing the title of Judas, who resists, opposes, and exalts himself against all called God or which is an object of veneration. He is an ardent antagonist of Divine authority, and sets up as Adam to be God, and more, he wills our ruin.

I think I see, then, in the third and fourth verses, the moral character of this wicked power acting upon others, and shewing the energy of his will in hostility, and setting aside of God, rather than the object of deference or honour on the throne. He is what fills the scene

morally when the apostasy takes place the active energy which works in man. It is the Man of Sin-man against God, and pretending to be, or shewing himself as though he were God upon earth: the contrast of Christ, who was so, but was the man of obedience, righteousness, and humiliation, submitting to everything when it was not disobedience to God His Father. This man was a thing to be revealed. Meanwhile a certain mystery of iniquity was at work-the principles of lawlessness of the independence of man, and the acting of his will, but in mystery only; there was a restrainer until it should be taken out of the way, and then the lawless one would be revealed. But if he were the lawless selfexaltation of man's will, that was not all. His presence or coming was according to the energy of Satan; and if we have found in the second beast the terrible analogy with the case of Elias in deception, here we have perhaps the yet more frightful one with Christ. The terms by which are expressed what he does in falsehood, are the same as those by which, in the Acts, Christ has been shewn a man approved of God (Acts ii. 22); and as Christ was in truth of righteousness, he in deceit of unrighteousness to the aπoxxvμévois who were given up to be lost, as Christ was to the owloμévois, to such as should be saved. The true Christ will come from heaven, a heavenly man: this an earthly man, with all the pretensions which could belong to, and the proofs, to those given up to judgment, which would demonstrate his title to glory, but in an entirely earthly way and self-exaltation. God sends an energy of error that they should believe a lie. It is evident that the point of departure is Christendom naturally as writing to Christians, but the manifestation not connected with it, because, though no date be given for that, the saints are viewed as gathered up, the rest as apostate. This, though the character be blasphemous, man, would throw it, in its deceptions most especially, among the Jews, though it is here as man, and as to men who have not received the love of the truth when it was there, but have had pleasure in iniquity;-whatever partial moral accomplishment (for there were even early many Anti-Christs) this may have had in Christendom,

VOL.I. PT.III.

12

taking the apostasy in its full sense, the temple of God acquires a character quite evident.

Let us

consider

We may now turn to other passages. Daniel xi.: “The king shall do according to his will." We find a king in the land (uninformed whence he came, for though it is a continuation of the history of the king of the North as being found in that territory, yet the previous verses had carried us on to the time of the end), lawless, self-exalting, magnifying himself above every god; yet this (which might seem to have put a contrast between the characters of 2 Thess. and the second beast) does not hinder, after all, his setting up idolatry—that unclean spirit now gone out of the Jews, but to enter in with seven others worse. "The God of his fathers," as strong a claim on nature as we know, and owned in Judaism— "nor the desire of women," that posterity naturally wished for, but of which Christ was the centre of hope among the Jews, for in this verse it evidently refers to religio-traditional objects and influence-none of these things have any influence over him; he uses idolatry only for his convenience, and divides the land as recompence, causing them (his followers I suppose) to rule over the mass of the Jewish people. Here we have, then, a royal power in Palestine doing as he pleases there, having, as to self-exaltation and blasphemy, fully the character of 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4, and disposing of the Jewish people, while rejecting his traditional God, and blaspheming the God of gods-the dragon-voice and character, I judge. I may say here, that the antiChristian power will not be imitation of Christ, save as being king and prophet, but opposition to Christ; for to a Jew, having form of Jewish holiness, blasphemies could not recommend: but they are given up to delusion, the dragon-language is taken with the rest, as is idolatry, which will clearly take place. The Lord characterises it as one coming in his own name. This is the Jewish part of his history in connection with the territorial limits of the Grecian empire. You may find "the king" again Isaiah lvii. 9, and xxx. 33, where read "for the king also it is prepared.”

and

I now turn to another passage where we have a power