The history of the four great monarchies of the world was typified, in the prophetic dream of the ancient Babylonish king, by a colossal image, “terrible in its form and brightness,” of which the “head was pure gold,” the “breast and arms of silver,” the “belly and thighs of brass,” and the legs and feet “of iron, and of iron mingled with clay.” The vision in which it formed the central object was appropriately that of a puissant monarch; and the image itself typified the merely human monarchies of the earth. It would require a widely different figure to symbolize the great monarchies of creation. And yet Revelation does furnish such a figure. It is that which was witnessed by the captive prophet beside “the river Chebar,” when “the heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God.” In that chariot of Deity, glowing in fire and amber, with its complex wheels “so high that they were dreadful,” set round about with eyes, there were living creatures, of whose four faces three were brute and one human; and high over all sat the Son of Man. It would almost seem as if, in this sublime vision,—in which, with features distinct enough to impress the imagination, there mingle the elements of an awful incomprehensibility, and which even the genius of Raffaelle has failed adequately to portray,—the history of all the past and of all the future had been symbolized. In the order of Providence intimated in the geologic record, the brute faces, as in the vision, outnumber the human;—the human dynasty is one, and the dynasties of the inferior animals are three; and yet who can doubt that they all equally compose parts of a well-ordered and perfect whole, as the four faces formed but one cherubim; that they have been moving onward to a definite goal, in the unity of one grand harmonious design,—now “lifted up high” over the comprehension of earth,—now let down to its humble level; and that the Creator of all has been ever seated over them on the throne of his providence,—a “likeness in the appearance of a man,”—embodying the perfection of his nature in his workings, and determining the end from the beginning?