permanent settlement *: the planting of the tabernacles of palaces signifies fixed dominion. And the prediction is amply verified in the event. The Turk has already held the imperial metropolis, and profaned the holy sanctuary, for nearly four hundred years.

The fate of this seat of empire was as nothing in the eye of prophecy, when compared with the ruin of eastern Christianity, which attended on its fall. "Constantinople, which had defied the power of Chosroes, the Chagan, and the Caliphs, was irretrievably subdued by the arms of Mahomet the Second. Her empire only had been subverted by the Latins: her religion was trampled in the dust by the Moslem conquerors." The sceptical historian unconsciously employs the language of the prophet Daniel, concerning this very desolation; which was "to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot."

The prophecy of the king of the North, and the vision of the little horn, seem alike to con

* Psalm 1xxx. 8. Jer. xviii. 9. xxiv. 6. xxxii. 41. Isaiah, xl. 24. Hosea, ix. 13. Amos, ix. 15. These references might have been spared, had not the commentators on Daniel, especially Bishop Newton, by neglecting the invariable figurative force, in Scripture, of the phrase to plant, as denoting permanent habitation, gone altogether astray, at this place, from the just interpretation. According to Bishop Newton, this prediction remains yet to be fulfilled, by the Turk literally forming an encampment in Palestine !

clude with intimations, that the fall of the antichristian power, typified by these symbols, shall be the work, not of man, but of God. The one foretells that "he shall be broken without hand :' the other, that "he shall come to his end, and none shall help him." Both predictions, we may observe in conclusion, remarkably consist with the present tottering condition of the Turkish empire; which now appears to stand, not by its own strength, but in virtue of the political jealousies of the Christian powers of Europe. When its appointed time shall have come, and a controlling Providence shall cause these needful jealousies to cease, this last and fiercest head of the eastern Antichrist, so long irresistible by the arm of man, gives every promise of crumbling by its own weight, though retaining, to the latest gasp, its spirit of intolerance and persecution.5

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SECTION III.

PROPHETICAL ANTICIPATIONS OF THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MAHOMETANISM; AND PROPHETICAL PARALLEL BETWEEN MAHOMETANISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

THE prophetical anticipations of the Mahometan apostasy, contained in the Old Testament, are materially cleared and confirmed by those predictions of its rise and progress, which, as all the best authorities agree in maintaining, occur in the New Testament.

Indeed, the admission, that Mahometanism and the Saracens have a place in the former revelation, involves the presumption, if not the proof, that they must also occupy a place in the latter: an inference palpably suggested by the fact, that, in almost every ascertainable example, the great predictions of the one Testament are found to be reflected by the other. '

We, accordingly, now proceed to connect those remarkable prophecies of the book of Daniel, which have been applied to Mahomet and his followers in the preceding section, with the strictly parallel, and still ampler predictions,

delivered concerning them in the Apocalypse of St. John.

"In the prediction of Daniel," observes a learned writer of our own times, "Mohammedanism alone is spoken of: its two principal supporters, the Saracens and the Turks, are not discriminated from each other: a general history of the superstition, from its commencement to its termination, is given, without descending to particularize the nations by which it should be successively patronized. In the Revelation of St. John this deficiency is supplied: and we are furnished with two distinct and accurate paintings, both of the Saracenic locusts under their exterminating leader, and of the Euphratèan horsemen of the four Turkish Sultanies.” * 2

With one slight correction, this statement may be received as a just representation of the case. Daniel, we have seen, had already described the two distinct powers in question, under the titles of "the king of the South," and "the king of the North." But his descriptions want characteristic national traits, to bring them home to the Saracens and Turks; which traits, as might reasonably be expected in a revelation so much nearer to the event, the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse appears to embody in its symbols.

* Faber.

Interpreters are justly struck with the historical

exactness of these delineations: but none have done the subject more justice, in the expression of their admiration, than the late learned and exemplary Dr. Zouch. "The prophetic truths comprized in the ninth chapter of the Apocalypse are, of themselves, sufficient to stamp the mark of divinity upon that work. When I compare them with the page of history, I am filled with amazement. The Saracens, a people which did not exist in the time of St. John, and the Turks, a nation then utterly unknown, are there described in language the most appropriate and distinct.” *

Without further preface, I shall lay the words of this prophecy before the reader.

REVELATION, ix.

"1. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. † 2. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon

* See Zouch on Rev. ix. Works, vol. i.

†The sword was the key by which Mahomet himself professed to unlock the kingdoms of light and of darkness. And he has appropriated to himself the prediction, Rev. ix. 1., by his famous declaration, "The sword is the key of heaven, and of hell." See Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 297. Khaled, the most formidable champion of the Koran, received from Mahomet the title of "the sword of God."

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