Thoughts on the Book of Daniel.
By Uriah Smith
VERSE 43. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. With Rome, fell the last of earth’s universal empires. Heretofore the elements of society had been such that it had been possible for one nation, rising superior to its neighbors in prowess, bravery, and the science of war, to attach one after another to its chariot wheels till all were consolidated into one vast empire, and one man seated upon the dominant throne could send forth his will as law to all the nations of the earth. When Rome fell, such possibilities forever passed away. Crushed beneath the weight of its own vast proportions, it crumbled to pieces, never to be united again. The iron was mixed with the clay. Its elements have lost the power of cohesion, and no man, nor combination of men, can again consolidate them. This point is so well set forth by another that we can do no better than to quote his words:— “From this, its divided state, the first strength of the empire departed—but not as that of the others had done. No other kingdom was to succeed it, as it had the three which went before it. It was to continue, in this tenfold division, until the kingdom of stone smote it upon its feet, broke them in pieces, and scattered them as the wind does chaff of the summer threshing-floor!” Yet, through all this time, a portion of its strength was to remain. And so the prophet says, “And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.” (Verse 42.) How in any other way could you so strikingly represent the facts! For more than fourteen hundred years, this tenfold division has existed. Time and again men have dreamed of rearing on these dominions one mighty kingdom. Charlemagne tried it. Charles V. tried it. Louis XVI. tried it. Napoleon tried it. But neither succeeded. A single verse of prophecy was stronger than all their hosts. Their own power was wasted, frittered away, destroyed. But the ten kingdoms did not become one. “Partly strong, and partly broken,” was the prophetic description. And such, too, has been the historic fact concerning them. With the book of history open before you, I ask you, Is not this an exact representation of the remnants of this once mighty empire? It ruled with unlimited power. It was the throned mistress of the world. Its scepter was broken; its throne pulled down; its power taken away. Ten kingdoms were formed out of it; and “broken” as then it was, it still continues—i. e., “partly broken.” For its dimensions still continue as when the kingdom of iron stood upright upon its feet. And then, it is “partly strong”—i. e., it retains, even in its broken state, enough of its iron strength to resist all attempts to mold its parts together. “This shall not be,” says the Word of God. “This has not been,” replies the book of history.
“But then, men may say, ‘Another plan remains. If force cannot avail, diplomacy and the reasons of State may—we will try them.’ And so the prophecy foreshadows this when it says, ‘They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men’—i. e., marriages shall be formed, in hope thus to consolidate their power, and, in the end, to unite these divided kingdoms into one.
“And shall this device succeed? No. The prophet answers: ‘They shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.’ And the history of Europe is but a running93commentary on the exact fulfillment of these words. From the time of Canute to the present age, it has been the policy of reigning monarchs, the beaten path which they have trodden, in order to reach a mightier scepter and a wider sway. And the most signal instances of it, which history has recorded in our own day, is in the case of Napoleon. He ruled in one of the kingdoms; Austria was another. He sought to gain by alliance what he could not gain by force, i. e., to build up one mighty, consolidated empire. And did he succeed? Nay. The very power with which he was allied proved his destruction, in the troops of Blücher on the field of Waterloo! The iron would not mingle with clay. The ten kingdoms continue still.” “And yet, if, as the result of these alliances, or of other causes, that number is sometimes disturbed, it need not surprise us. It is, indeed, just what the prophecy seems to call for. The iron was ‘mixed with the clay.’ For a season, in the image, you might not distinguish between them. But they would not remain so. ‘They shall not cleave one to another.’ The nature of the substances forbids them to do so in the one case; the word of prophecy in the other. Yet there was to be an attempt to mingle—nay, more, there was an approach to mingling in both cases. But it was to be abortive. And how marked the emphasis with which history affirms this declaration of the Word of God!” Yet with all these facts before them, with all these plain declarations on the sacred page, asserting their power through the overturns and changes of centuries, the efforts of warriors, and the diplomacy and intrigues of courts and kings, some modern expositors have manifested such a marvelous misapprehension of this prophecy as to predict a future universal kingdom, and point to a European ruler, even now of waning years and declining prestige, as “the destined monarch of the world.” Vain is the breath they spend in promulgating such a theory, and delusive the hopes or fears they may succeed in raising over such an expectation.*