Daniel received a vision of four great beasts, which were interpreted to symbolize four universal monarchies. Verse 17. These were the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greco-Macedonian, and the Roman. The fourth beast possessed ten horns, which were explained to signify ten kingdoms to arise out of the fourth empire. This is identical with the dragon of Rev. 12, except the latter possessed seven heads not mentioned by Daniel. In the midst of the ten horns (ten minor kingdoms) grew up a _little_ horn, which soon assumed greater proportions than his fellows, taking the place of three of the original horns, and into his hand the saints of the Most High were given for "a time and times and the dividing of time," or twelve hundred and sixty years. This eleventh horn differed from the ten in that it possessed a mouth speaking great things, and the eyes of a man. A horn with eyes and mouth in it is a very unusual thing, yet it is just such a combination as we might expect when we possess a correct knowledge of symbols. Being drawn from two departments--human life and animal life--this double-symbol directs us to a politico-religious system that came up among the ten horns that grew out of the old Roman empire. We instantly identify it with the growing Papacy, which arose to a position of great authority in conjunction with the new Roman empire. Three of the horns, or temporal kingdoms, were overthrown in order to give room for the complete development of this politico-religious power. Since great changes have frequently occurred among the nations of Europe originally embraced in the ten minor kingdoms, different powers have been referred to as the three described in Daniel's prophecy; but the most satisfactory explanation to my mind is that of the three kingdoms in Italy that were overthrown as if to give the hierarchy room for development, and that gave the Papacy its _first_ temporal sovereignty, thus completing the symbol by constituting her a civil as well as an ecclesiastical horn. Odoacer, in A.D. 476, overthrew the old empire of the West and established the kingdom of the Heruli in Italy. Seventeen years later it was subverted by Theodoric, who established the kingdom of the Ostrogoths, which continued sixty years; then it, in turn, was overthrown by Belisarius, but was soon succeeded by the Lombards. The Lombard kingdom was subverted by Pepin and Charlemagne, who, as champions of the church, gave a large part of their dominions to the See of Rome and thus favored the Papacy with her first temporal power. Thus were the kingdoms of the Heruli, Ostrogoths, and Lombards plucked up by the roots upon the very territory occupied first by the Papacy as a temporal power, and as if to give it room.