Neither do I think it worth while particularly to examine the assumption of Dr. Wylie, and I hold it to be a pure and gratuitous assumption, that the 1260 days during which the saints of God in Gospel times were to suffer for righteousness' sake, has any relation whatever, as a half period, to a whole, symbolised by the "Seven times" that passed over Nebuchadnezzar when he was suffering and chastened for his pride and blasphemy, as the representative of the "world power." *
* The author does not himself make the humiliation of the Babylonian king a type of the humiliation of the Church. How then can he establish any typical relation between the "seven times" in the one case, and the "seven times" in the other? He seems to think it quite enough to establish that relation, if he can find one point of resemblance between Nebuchadnezzar, the humbled despot, and the "world-power" that oppresses the Church during the two periods of "seven times" respectively. That one point is the "madness" of the one and the other. It might be asked, Was, then, the "world-power" in its right mind before "the seven times" began? But waiving that, here is the vital objection to this view: The madness in the case of Nebuchadnezzar was simply an affliction; in the other it was sin. The madness of Nebuchadnezzar did not, so far as we know, lead him to oppress a single individual; the madness of the "world-power," according to the theory, is essentially characterised by the oppression of the saints. Where, then, can there be the least analogy between the two cases? The "seven times" of the Babylonian king were seven times of humiliation, and humiliation alone. The suffering monarch cannot be a type of the suffering Church; and still less can his "seven times" of deepest humiliation, when all power and glory was taken from him, be a type of the "seven times" of the "world-power," when that "world-power" was to concentrate in itself all the glory and grandeur of the earth. This is one fatal objection to this theory.