preserves the exactness of its chronology; though, in pursuance of the plan adopted by its author, it suppresses, between Cambyses and Darius-Hystaspis, the name of Smerdis the Magian impostor, because his reign did not extend to a complete year: but the latter wholly omits him, between Lohrasp and Gushtasp, without any assignable reason save that he was an impostor and an usurper.

1. The first of the three predicted successors of Cyrus was Cambyses or Lohrasp. He was the son of the great founder of the Medo-Persian Empire: but, as he performed no deed peculiarly worthy of notice, his place in the succession is simply mentioned

2. The second was Smerdis, the Magian impostor. He also is dismissed with nothing more than a bare enumeration.

3. The third was Gushtasp or Darius-Hystaspis. He married the daughter of Cyrus, and was a great and powerful prince: but as his expedition against Greece was less remarkable than that of his son Xerxes, he is merely inserted in the general catalogue of kings, which brings us down to the most. eminent struggle between Persia and the Hellenic States.

4. The fourth was Xerxes, the son and successor of Darius. This sovereign, as it is well known, agreeably to the prophetic description of him, was richer than all his predecessors: and, in his fruitless attempt upon Greece, he stirred up against it the whole civilised world. For, not content with the forces which Asia could produce, he engaged also

the Carthaginians in his alliance ; that, while he was overwhelming Greece, they might fall upon the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily: and, for this purpose, the Carthaginians not only raised all the troops they could in Africa, but they likewise hired a vast number of mercenaries in Spain and Gaul and Italy; so that the three grand divisions of the then known world, Europe and Asia and Africa, may be said to have been banded together against the single realm of Hellas.

In the less accurate Persian list of the Caianian kings, it is remarkable, that Xerxes is wholly omitted : for Cai-Ardeshir or Artaxerxes-Longimanus is made the immediate successor of Gushtasp or Darius-Hystaspis. The cause of the omission I take to have been this. Darius and Xerxes resembled each other in the most prominent feature of their respective reigns, an unsuccessful attack upon Greece. Hence, by the later Persians, the two seem to have been confounded together and to · have been set down as a single person by the name of Gushtasp.

II. Persia having now come in contact with Greece, and the remaining successors of Cyrus down to the reign of Dara or Darius-Codomannus having performed nothing worthy of prophetic notice, the angelic revealer passes at once to the rise of the Macedonian Empire under Alexander the great or Secander Zul-Karnein.

The account given of this event is, that a mighty king shall stand up, and shall rule with great

dominion, and shall do according to his will. Yet, when he shall be established, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; not however to his posterity, nor according to the sway with which he ruled: for his kingdom shall be plucked up, and shall be for others rather than for those.

After this follows a long and very particular narrative of the wars and intermarriages of the king of the South, who is said to be one of his princes, with another king who is denominated the king of the North: and that narrative is continued, until a certain mighty Power, described as the seed or offspring of the Italian Chittim, is brought very conspicuously upon the stage.

1. I need scarcely remark, that the division of Alexander's Empire toward the four winds of heaven, though not to his own posterity, was accomplished, soon after his death, by his four principal captains; a circumstance, which had been already foretold symbolically by the rise of the four conspicuous horns of the Grecian he-goat.

(1.) In the west, Cassander reigned over Greece and Macedon.

(2.) In the north, Lysimachus reigned over Thrace and Bithynia.

(3.) In the south, Ptolemy reigned over Egypt. (4.) And, in the east, Seleucus reigned over Syria and its dependent provinces.

2. But, though the Empire of Alexander was thus divided into four kingdoms, toward the four

winds of heaven, yet not to his own posterity; two only of them, Egypt and Syria, are specially noticed in the remainder of the prophecy.

These two were by far the greatest and the most considerable : these two were, at one period, the only remaining kingdoms of the four; the kingdom of Macedon having been conquered and annexed to Thrace by Lysimachus, and the united kingdom of Macedon and Thrace having been afterward conquered and annexed to Syria by Seleucus : these two likewise continued distinct kingdoms, after the others had been swallowed up by the growing power of the Romans. For such reasons, and from the additional circumstance of these two kingdoms alone having been connected with the affairs of Judèa, they only are peculiarly noticed by the Spirit of prophecy. Accordingly, in geographical reference to the land of Palestine, Egypt is throughout denominated the kingdom of the South, while Syria bears the appellation of the kingdom of the North.

Instead of superfluously pointing out the wonderfully exact completion of the prophecy in the various wars and alliances of these two principal Greek kingdoms, a task which, after Jerome, has already been most amply performed by Bishop Newton; I shall rather pass on to that part of the prediction, which gives the anticipated history of AntiochusEpiphanes : because the Romans then first come in contact with the Syrian monarchy, and are immediately afterward introduced to our notice as the paramount Power of the prophetic world.