VII.] Symbol of the Lion. evil from the north, and a great destruction. 213 The 5 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 "." Again, in the prophecy against Edom, the Chaldean invader is described as coming up "like a lion from the swelling of Jordan against the habitation of the strong *;" and elsewhere by the same prophet the title is applied to the kings and conquerors of Nineveh and Babylon, almost as a distinctive appellation. "Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and then the king of Babylon hath broken his bones "." And again in another passage, where the mention, immediately following, of Egyptian enemies, makes the symbolical designation of the kings of Assyria and Babylon the more striking. "Is Israel a servant? is he a home-born slave? why is he spoiled? The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste: his cities were burned without inhabitant. Also the children of Noph and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head "." The reference here to the conquerors of the East, as distinguished from the Egyptians, is the more manifest, from the mention made, in the same chapter, of these two great powers of the ancient world between which the chosen people lay, and which were alike the causes of Jerusalem's sin and the instruments of her punishment. "What hast thou to do in the way of Egypt, to drink the waters of Sihor? or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria, to drink the waters of the river?" "Thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria"." 214 8 Symbol of the Calf, or Ox. [LECT. And if the lion was the emblem of Assyria, and of the other monarchies which inherited the same seats of dominion in the Eastern world, the calf, or the ox, was not less appropriate as the emblem of Egypt. And the image is so applied, in the same prophetic volume of Jeremiah, in a passage which Bishop Warburton has pointed out as a striking instance of symbolical language. "Egypt is a very fair heifer; but destruction cometh; it cometh out of the north. Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fatted bullocks: for they also are turned back, and are fled away together "." The Psalmist likewise, in a passage already referred to, employs the same imagery, where, among the nations that were to be subdued by the Divine power, Egypt seems to be especially alluded to'. "Rebuke the wild beast of the reed, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver; scatter thou the people that delight in war. Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God 2." With regard, indeed, to this second symbol it may be remarked, that the kingdom of Egypt is not one of the four which are symbolically delineated in the visions of the book of Daniel, and which are commonly called the four great monarchies. But, though it did not occupy a place in the succession of empires which followed the Babylonian, in that series which continued onward to the times of the Gospel, yet in the wider survey of the ancient world, in its subordination to the universal sway of God's › Divine Legation, book iv. Sect. 3. Works, vol. iv. pp. 95, 96. "Jer. xlvi. 20, 21. 1 Cf. sup. p. 186. 2 Ps. lxviii. 30, 31. Assyria and Egypt. 66 215 VII.] Providence, Egypt would naturally stand side by side with Assyria. And the imagery of the prophet Ezekiel, who describes the Assyrian and the Egyptian as the two fairest and loftiest cedars in the garden of God, "the choice and best of Lebanon," it has been well observed by an able lecturer on this foundation, has in it "the accuracy of historical truth, as well as the beauty of a poetic, and the force of a moral representation.” Originally," as Mr. Davison remarks, Egypt "was the most prosperous, opulent, and powerful of kingdoms; till the growth of the Assyrian power divided with it its glory, and then together they were the two foremost nations of the ancient world +" And they were the nations, moreover, by whom the fortunes of God's chosen people were specially affected, and whose power and idolatries most endangered their safety; while, at the same time, they gave occasion for the most signal displays of the supreme deity of the God of Israel. And hence with peculiar significancy would the symbols of Egypt and Assyria be seen, in the earlier ages of the Divine dispensations, sustaining the footstool of His throne "who sat upon the Cherubim." It would lead us away, however, too far from our immediate subject, into the minute examination of the descriptions given of the living creatures, or cherubim, in the Old Testament, were we to enter fully on the grounds for this application of them to the several kingdoms of the ancient world. I may state, however, that I believe this interpretation will be found to remove some difficulties, and reconcile apparent discrepancies not otherwise of easy solution. It is not till the visions of Ezekiel that we 3 Ezek. xxxi. 2, 3. 16. 18. 4 Davison on Prophecy, p. 481. 216 Greece and Rome. [LECT. find explicit mention made of the two symbols which stand last in order in St. John's description, viz. the face of the man and that of the eagle'. The former of these two, it may be observed, appears more prominently in Ezekiel's description of the restored temple; which circumstance would agree well with the application of these symbols, respectively, to the two last kingdoms,—namely, the Greek and the Roman,-of those same four which, as we have seen, appear to be symbolized by the four chariots in Zechariah's still later vision. The human form would fitly represent the pre-eminent civilization of Greece, and the superiority which, by this right, it claimed over the barbarians around, corresponding with that which belongs to man over the beasts of the field and the forest. And the eagle would be the not less appropriate emblem of the Roman conquests, the well known military standard of a people in whom, as it would appear, was accomplished fully the threatening which was pronounced upon the people of Israel by their great lawgiver, and which the Chaldean had partly fulfilled. "The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth"." It may be regarded, perhaps, as confirming this interpretation of the last-named symbol, that, in a subsequent chapter of this same book, where the vision seems to refer to the time when, by God's overruling Providence, the Roman empire lent its power to the protection of His Church, it is said that 'there were given to the woman two wings of the great eagle" (for so it should be rendered"), "that she 66 VII.] Difficulty of the inquiry. 217 might flee into the wilderness ;" and it may also serve to explain the description of the fourth of the four living creatures, in the vision before us, as "like a flying eagle," if we apply it to a power which, at the time when the Apocalyptic vision was seen, was in the midst of its career of victory and dominion. In vindication, if need be, of the considerations which I have ventured to suggest towards the interpretation of symbols confessedly obscure, I would plead, in the words of a learned writer on the same subject, that, “of the many conjectures which have at different times been hazarded, there are none but what have their difficulties and embarrassments," and yet "none of them have been otherwise than well received, when they have been modestly propounded; when no singular stress has been laid upon them, and nobody required to acquiesce in them, to the exclusion of all other expositions 2." The spirit in which such subjects should be approached is one anxious, indeed, to understand, so far as may be permitted, what God hath revealed, but, at the same time not impatient of obscurity; willing rather, if so be, to be enabled to discover only thus much, -that there is, in the words of Inspiration and in the scenes which it unfolds, a depth of meaning, and comprehensiveness of application, which is beyond its own skill to discover; while yet the investigation of them may have served the salutary purpose of leaving an impression, elevating yet humbling, of the vast and illimitable range of the Divine dispensations, and of "the manifold wisdom of God." We have seen that there is some intimate consertation on the Cherubim, p. 363. 1 Rev. xii. 14. 2 Archdeacon Sharp, Dis |