1. In the figurative language of the Apocalyptists, of whom the writers of Daniel and of the Revelation are the greatest, a striking part is played by the conception of wild beasts as the symbols of empire. Their language is often grotesque and incongruous. Utterly lacking in a knowledge of technique, hardly venturing to look at a Greek god or goddess, deficient in the very elements of art, the Jew painted his word pictures as he had seen the uncouth monsters of Egypt and Assyria. His symbols became strange creatures with eagles' wings and lions' bodies, legs of brass, and feet of clay. Unity was as lacking in the composition of his pictures as in their units. Bulls and buffaloes and sheep and goats and birds and shepherds jostled each other in his visions, and the fixed order of nature was unhesitatingly reversed.
But the lessons conveyed by this naïve symbolism are often profound. The author of Daniel is not a careful student of history, and his knowledge is not seldom defective. But in his comparison of the kingdoms-or, as we should say, the empires-of this world to wild beasts, he indicates not only his sense of their terrible power, but also his righteous scorn of the hateful principle that might is right. The lion with four eagles' wings, the bear with three ribs between its teeth, the leopard with four wings and four heads, and the nameless monster with devouring teeth of iron and feet that stamp and crush, had their counterparts in the history of the ancient Orient. The little horn which had eyes and a mouth speaking great things was known to every brave and faithful Maccabean. And the purpose of the author of Daniel is to impress upon the minds of his downtrodden and persecuted countrymen the truth that all power belongs to the Most High, who had hitherto delegated it to one empire after another, and permitted His own people to suffer, but who was now about to give the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven, to His saints. And His Kingdom would be an everlasting Kingdom; all dominions will serve and obey Him.
Writing to his friend J. M. Ludlow, one of the founders of the Christian Socialist movement, Maurice says: “The Kingdom of Heaven is to me the great practical existing reality which is to renew the earth and make it a habitation for blessed spirits instead of for demons. To preach the Gospel of that Kingdom, the fact that it is among us, and is not to be set up at all, is my calling and business. Because I have preached it so uncertainly-like one beating the air-I have had an easy, quiet life; far too much of the good opinion of my friends; merely a few lumps of not hard mud from those who, now and then, suspect that I have hold of something which might make me their mischievous enemy. But if ever I do any good work, and earn any of the hatred which the godly in Christ Jesus receive, and have a right to, it must be in the way I have indicated, by proclaiming society and humanity to be divine realities, as they stand, not as they may become, and by calling upon the priests, kings, prophets of the world to answer for their sin in having made them unreal by separating them from the living and eternal God who has established them in Christ for His glory.”1 [Note: Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, ii. 137.]
2. It is announced that this Kingdom will be inaugurated by one who comes with the clouds of heaven and who is like a son of man. As the former kingdoms are earthly and bestial, the eternal Kingdom of the saints is at once purely celestial and perfectly human and humane. The rendering of A.V., “the Son of man,” is quite untenable; the expression of the original is indefinite, and denotes simply, in poetical language, a figure in human form. What the figure is intended to represent can be properly determined only after the explanation in verse 16 ff. has been considered. If the terms of verses 18, 22b, 27 are to be taken as deciding the question, it would seem that it must describe the ideal and glorified people of Israel. The difference between a devouring wild beast and a human being made in God's image is not greater than the difference between the monarchies which are the incarnation of brute violence and a theocracy which is the embodiment of the mind and will of the living and true God. This idea is fully developed in the New Testament revelation.
The beast is the brute in human life, the inhuman, the mere force or power, to which all others are but victims and food, that rends and devours. Whatever we can say of the world, let us make sure that the victory is being won, at least, in our own hearts; that the spirit of the beast-the false thought that ministers to it, and the love of worldly dalliance and delight-is being driven out by the spirit of the Lamb that was slain.2 [Note: A. B. Davidson, Waiting upon God, 377.]
3. The Hebrew ideal of nationality is the supremacy of righteousness, the triumph of the saints. Plato desired that the reins of government should be in the hands of philosophers; the Hebrew seer would put them in the hands of the saints. Saint is a word net easy to define, and there is a world of difference between the canonized saints of the Roman calendar and the un-canonized who fought under Judas the Maccabee and Cromwell the Protector, saints with “a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the nations, and punishments upon the peoples; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgment written” (Psa_149:6-9). There is always a temptation to abuse power, and even the great Maccabean and the greater Puritan did things of which the Christian conscience cannot approve. But every Christian believes that the eternal Kingdom is the dominion of Him who was called the Son of God.
The precise form of the final judgment and future government of the world we cannot predict; but from this statement [of St. Paul, that the saints shall judge the earth] a bright ray of light shoots into the darkness, and shows us that the saints, i.e., the servants of Christ, are to have the responsibility of pronouncing judgment on character, and of allotting destiny, reward or punishment. We shrink from such a thought; not, indeed, that we are slow to pronounce judgment upon our fellow-men, but to do so officially, and in connexion with definite results, seems a responsibility too heavy for merely human judges to sustain. But why men should not judge men hereafter as they do judge them now, we do not see. If we, in this present world, submit ourselves to those who have knowledge of law and ordinary justice, we may well be content to be judged in the world to come by those whose holiness has been matured by personal strife against evil, by sustained efforts to cleanse their souls from bias, from envy, from haste, from harshness, from all that hinders them from seeing and loving the truth. Holiness, or likeness to God, assimilation to His mind, formed by the constant desire to judge of things in this world as He judges, and to love truly all that He loves, this quality is surely worthy to be at the head. In that future Kingdom of God in which all things are to have their proper place, and are to be ranked according to their real worth, holiness must come to the supremacy.1 [Note: Marcus Dods, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 113.]
