Again, the four divisions of King Nebuchadnezzar’s wonderful image was explained by Daniel as signifying four universal monarchies and the ten toes as signifying the ten minor kingdoms which grew out of the fourth; while the stone that was cut out of the mountain without human intervention he interpreted as signifying the divine kingdom of God.  Dan. 2.  The two-horned ram of Daniel’s vision (chap. 8), according to the explanation of the angel, symbolized the Medo-Persian empire, its two horns signifying the two dynasties of allied kings that composed it.  The he-goat signified the Greco-Macedonian empire; his great horn, its first mighty king; and the four horns that replaced the great one when broken represented four kings under whom the empire would eventually be divided into as many parts.  In the Apocalypse itself we have a number of symbols divinely interpreted, “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.”  “The seven candle-sticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.”  “The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings.”  “The waters which thou sawest ... are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.”  “The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth,” etc.

It will be seen that the great underlying principle or law upon which symbolic language is based is analogy.  An object is chosen to represent not itself, but something of analagous character.

Webster defines symbol as follows:  “The sign or representation of any moral thing by the images or properties of natural things.  Thus, a lion is the symbol of courage; the lamb is the symbol of meekness or patience.”  Home, in his Introduction to the Study of the Bible, says:  “By symbols we mean certain representative marks, rather than express pictures; or, if pictures, such as were at the time characters, and besides presenting to the eye the resemblance of a particular object, suggested a general idea to the mind, as when a horn was made to denote strength, an eye and scepter, majesty, and in numberless such instances; where the picture was not drawn to express merely the thing itself, but something else, which was, or was conceived to be, analagous to it.”  The main idea, then, as expressed in the foregoing definitions, is the representation of an object, not by a picture of itself, but by something analagous, such as the exhibition of moral qualities by images drawn from nature.  But the use of symbols is not confined to the representation of moral subjects alone.  Anything may be symbolized to which a corresponding analagous object can be found.