Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. I Saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagles' wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it. These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.—Dan. vii. 2, 3, 4. 17. This vision of Daniel occurred about forty-eight years after that of Nebuchadnezzar. It embodies substantially the same great truth; carrying it, however, to a much greater extent, and setting it forth with wonderful minuteness of detail and brevity of expression. It embodies volumes of history in a single verse. Daniel dreamed, and the angel interpreted his dream. He saw four great beasts arise out of the sea. Each of these symbolized a kingdom; as each one of the four parts of the image had done. We have the same truth in each vision; beginning at the same kingdom; running through the same course; and ending at the same time. In each vision, we 48 THE SYMBOL SEA. meet four'distinct and universal kingdoms. In each we are taught that there shall be only four, until the God of Heaven sets up His kingdom. We cannot, therefore, err in determining what kingdoms are here pointed out. Besides, in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, the first kingdom is expressly named. No possible difficulty, therefore, can occur in pointing out the others. And, in this vision of Daniel the task is about as easy. Here the fourth kingdom is not named, indeed, but so minutely described, that it would be like arguing against the sun, to dispute its application. The angel interprets ...