bolical personification of the collective body of the serpent's seed, then the Devil also, far from being a mere abstraction or a purely spiritual entity, is but the symbolical title of a vast society of wicked men, pervaded and imbued by the spirit of rancorous hate towards the entire corporation of the righteous, and in that form waging an incessant war against them. Consequently we arrive at the conclusion, that the foul and disastrous machinations of the Devil, so far as he is to be conceived of abstractly from the system which he actuates, has been in all ages directed not merely against the souls, but against the bodies of men; that he has come upon them not merely in the character of an inward tempter moving and enticing their minds to sin, but that he has employed a system of agencies with a view to the infliction of various physical evils bearing with tremendous weight upon their individual and social state. Consulting the records of the human race in the pages of history, we learn that it has been by means of an array of organized instrumentalities in the form of tyrannical governments, backed by false religions, that the seed of the serpent have waged their unhallowed warfare against the seed of the woman, the sons of sanctity. It has been through the agency of despotic kings and bigoted priests, -of monarchies and hierarchies,—that the grievous and untold sufferings of the mass of men have in all ages been visited upon them. This assuredly has been the grand character of the satanic devices. This has been the master-plot of this arch-contriver of political and moral mischief to the human race. From the days of Nimrod, when that mighty hunter erected, on the plains of Shinar, the ancient Babylon as the metropolis of an intended universal monarchy, the greatest scourge which has rested upon the earth, that which has breathed with most effect its blasting mildews over the harvest-field of the human mind, has existed in the form of great consolidated gov

ernments, founded upon despotic principles, enforced by gloomy superstitions, and upheld by the terrors of the sword, the rack, the block, and the dungeon. The Devil has inspired these governmental fabrics as their prompting genius, and in the language of prophecy has given them their denomination. He has ensconced himself behind the political outworks. He has plied the secret machinery of the imperial engines, and has been to them in fact in all ages precisely that which the soul is to the body.

We hesitate not, therefore, to consider the Dragon of the Revelation as a standing symbol of Paganism, including in that term the twofold idea of despotic government and false religion. Can a lingering doubt remain of the justness of this interpretation when we advert to the peculiar costume of the image? "And behold a great red dragon having seven heads and seven crowns upon his heads." Is not a crown the symbol of sovereignty? And what can be understood by the seven crowned heads, but seven imperial kingdoms which exercised, at different periods, an oppressive domination over the church? We say, 'at different periods,' because, as the symbols here employed are not to be restricted to any one point of time, but are to be conceived as spreading over a long period, we are forced to regard these seven heads as representing seven successive reigning powers, coming one after another into existence by gradual accretion through the course of centuries, till at the date of the vision the Dragon had received his entire complement of heads, and in the Pagan Roman Empire stood forth to the eye of the Prophet in the full maturity of his age, and in the highest vigor of his action. The exact specification of the number seven in regard to these emblematic heads is indeed a matter of some difficulty; but as this number is repeatedly used in the sacred volume in an indefinite sense, implying the sum total, the universality, the perfection of the things spoken

of, so in the present instance it may simply be intended to denote all the despotic and oppressive civil powers which, anterior to the age of the prophet, had put their yokes upon the necks of the peculiar people. In this enumeration we cannot mistake in reckoning Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. And if fuller details of ancient history had remained to us, we should probably be able at least to complete the catalogue. From the fact that John saw each of these heads actually wearing a crown, whereas, at the time of the vision, only the Roman head was in reality in being, it is evident that he was favored with a lengthened survey of the chronological career of the Dragon, comprising the whole term of the disastrous dominance of his heads. In the subsequent vision of the Beast, the Dragon's successor, the crowns had passed from the heads to the horns, indicating that that sovereignty which had formerly pertained to the seven successive Pagan empires had now become concentrated in the ten independent governments, symbolised by the horns, into which the Roman Empire in its latter stages had become divided.

That this interpretation of 'heads,' as a prophetic symbol, rests upon something more than mere conjecture will appear from a consideration of the nature of symbolic language. "We must note," says Daubuz, "that the governing part of the political world appears under symbols of different species; and that it is variously represented according to the various kinds of allegories. If the allegory be derived from the sensible world, then the luminaries denote the governing part; if from an animal, the head or horns; if from the earth, a mountain or fortress ; and in this case the capital city, or residence of the governor, is taken for the supreme; by which it happens that these mutually illustrate each other. So a capital city is the head of the political body; the head of the animal is the fortress of the animal; mountains are the natural for

tresses of the earth; and therefore a fortress or capital city, though set in a plain level ground, may be called a mountain. And this by the rule of analogical metaphors, the terms of which mutually illustrate each other. Thus head, mountain, hill, city, horn, and king are in a manner synonymous terms to signify a kingdom, monarchy, or republic united under one government; only with this difference, that it is to be understood in different respects; for the head represents it in respect of the capital city; mountain or hill, in respect of the strength of the metropolis, which gives law, or is above the adjacent territories; and the like. Thus in Is. 2: 2, And it shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the tops of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.' This needs not to be proved to signify the kingdom of the Messias. So a capital city is a head, and taken for the whole territory thereof, as in Is. 7: 8, 9, 'For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin; and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son.' Is. 11: 9, 'They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,' that is, in all the kingdom of the Messias, which shall then reach all over the world, for it follows: The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.' Mic. 6: 7, 8, Contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice: hear, ye mountains, the Lord's controversy.' The commentators here say: 'Montes hic vocat principes et proceres'—he here calls princes and potentates mountains, citing for it Ps. 72: 3. Is. 2: 14. Habak. 3: 6. So the whole Assyrian monarchy is called a mountain in Zech. 4: 7. 'Who art thou, O great mountain? before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain;' and in Jerem. 51: 25, a destroying mountain.' Thus also in Dan. 2: 35, 'The stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the

whole earth;' that is, the kingdom of the Messias having destroyed the four monarchies became an universal monarchy, as it is plainly made out in v. 44, 45. Again, Is. 41: 15, Thou shalt thresh the mountains, and shalt make the hills as chaff.' Targ. 'Occides populos, et consumes regna, quasi stipulam pones eos'-thou shalt slay the people, and shalt consume the kingdoms; thou shalt make them as stubble.'* Heads and mountains therefore being synonymous symbols, the seven heads of the Dragon are seven monarchies. This is strikingly confirmed by a reference to Rev. 17: 9, 10, where the prophet gives a description of the Beast which succeeded the Dragon, and whose power territorially considered was commensurate with that of the Dragon, so that the heads in each are a symbol perfectly equivalent, and which is thus explained by the interpreting angel: 'Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings.' The translation here is unhappy. By the sentence being closed at the word 'sitteth,' and the next made to begin thus: 'And there are seven kings,' the seven kings' are separated from their antecedents, and the verb 'are' from its nominative, and the reader is led to suppose that the words 'there are seven kings' have no particular connexion with the seven heads in the preceding verse. Whereas it is clear from the original, that the seven heads are the antecedent both to the seven mountains and to the seven kings, and the nominative to both the verbs which precede the words ' mountains' and 'kings.' A literal translation would render the passage thus:-'The seven heads are seven mountains where the woman sitteth upon them, and they are seven

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* Perpet. Comment. p. 507.

† Αἱ ἑπτὰ κεφαλαὶ, ἑπτὰ ὄρη εἰσὶν, ὅπου ἡ γυνὴ κάθηται ἐπ ̓ αὐτῶν, καὶ βασιλεῖς ἑπτά εἰσιν.