the Huns, Lombardy, from the Lombards, France from the Franks, and England from the Anglo-Saxons.  These ten kingdoms being denoted by the ten horns of the leopard beast, it is evident that all the territory included in these ten kingdoms is to be considered as belonging to that beast.  England is one of these ten kingdoms; France is another.  If therefore we say that either of these is the one represented by the two-horned beast, we make one of the horns of the leopard beast constitute the two-horned beast.  But this the prophecy forbids; for while John sees the leopard beast fully developed, with his horns all complete and distinct, he beholds the two-horned beast coming up, and calls it “another beast.”  We are therefore to look for the government which this beast symbolizes, in some country outside the territory occupied by the four beasts and the ten horns already referred to.  But these, as we have seen, cover all the available portions of the eastern continent.

Another consideration pointing to the locality of this power is drawn from the fact that John saw it arising from the earth.  If the sea from which the leopard beast arose, Rev. 13:1, denotes peoples, nations, and multitudes, Rev. 17:15, the earth would suggest, by contrast, a new and previously-unoccupied territory.

Being thus excluded from the eastern continent, and impressed with the idea of looking to territory not previously known to civilization, we turn of necessity to the western hemisphere.  And this is in full harmony with the ideas already quoted, and more which might be presented, that the progress of empire is with the sun around the earth from east to west.  Commencing in Asia, the cradle of the race, it would end on this continent, which completes the circuit.  Bishop Berkley, in his celebrated poem on America, written more than one hundred years ago, in the following forcible lines, pointed out the then future position of America, and its connection with preceding empires.

“Westward the course of empire takes its way;
  The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
  Time’s noblest offspring is the last.”

By the “four first acts already past,” the bishop had undoubted reference to the four universal kingdoms of Daniel’s prophecy.  A fifth great power, the noblest and the last, was, according to his poem, to arise this side the Atlantic, and here close the drama of time, as the day here ends its circuit.

To what part of the American continent shall we look for the power in question?  To the most powerful and prominent nation certainly.  This is so self-evident that we need not stop to pass in review the frozen fragments of humanity on the north of us, nor the weak, superstitious, semi-barbarous, revolutionary, and uninfluential kingdoms to the south of us.  No; we come to the United States, and here we are held.  To this nation the question of the location of the two-horned beast undeviatingly leads us.