Prophecies relating to the days of the Messiah are introduced in other more indefinite ways, thus:  “Behold the days come” (Jer. 23:5; 31:31; etc.):  “And it shall come to pass afterward” (Joel 2:28); “In that day” (Isa. 4:2, Jer. 30:8; Ezek. 39:11; Amos 9:11, and elsewhere); or they are sufficiently indicated by their contents, as Isa. chaps. 40-66.

These prophecies naturally fall into two classes:  those in which the succession of events is distinctly indicated, and those which give only general views of the future, without any clear order of succession.

4.  To the first and smaller class belong especially certain of Daniel’s prophecies.  The four great monarchies, for example, that are to bear rule over the earth are symbolized first by a great image (Dan. chap. 2), then by four beasts rising out of the sea (Dan. chap. 7).  Of these monarchies the fourth, represented by the legs of iron and feet part of iron and part of clay (Dan. 2:33), and by the fourth beast with his ten horns (Dan. 7:7), belongs in part to the latter days of the Messiah.

The fourth kingdom, represented by the “legs of iron and feet part of iron and part of clay,” is at the beginning “strong as iron” (chap. 2:40); afterwards it is “partly strong and partly broken” (ver. 42); it is, moreover, the last great monarchy that oppresses the world.  All these characters point to the Roman empire, first in its pagan, afterwards in its papal form.  From the nature of the symbol, the prophet sees the whole image standing till it is smitten in its feet of iron and clay.  This does not mean that the four monarchies are contemporaneous, but that they constitute one great system of oppression, in which the power passes successively down from the head to the feet.  It is in its feet that the stone smites it, for it is in this its last form that the kingdom set up by the God of heaven shall encounter and destroy it.  The toes, part of iron and part of clay, well represent the kingdoms that grew up out of the old Roman empire, with an intermixture of the northern nations.  These could never unite into a compact whole, like the original pagan empire, yet they constituted a continuation of it in a divided form.

That the fourth beast again (chap. 7:7-14, 19-28) represents the same Roman empire appears from the following considerations:  (1.) Both here and in the second chapter a succession of four great monarchies is represented, of which the first three are admitted to have been universal.  It is altogether reasonable, therefore, to look for a universal empire in the fourth; but that empire can be no other than the Roman. (2.) The fourth beast is represented as the strongest and most terrible of them all, which cannot apply to any other than the Roman power. (3.) All its characters agree with those of the Roman empire, and cannot be made to agree with those of any other power.  Those who understand by the little horn of the