First, this kingdom was of Divine origin. Second, it was small at first. Third, the more it fights the more it grows. Fourth, it breaks in pieces this image, beginning at the feet. It is in fact the sworn enemy of all the four kingdoms. Fifth, it is to fill the world and thus become a universal kingdom and monarchy. In this latter sense it will be a fit type of the kingdom of Christ.
Just such a kingdom as this did God repeatedly promise to Abraham and his descendants. David’s throne and seed royal are to be established before Him for ever. He promised to David’s throne perpetuity, and that David’s seed should always be on the throne—not in a spiritual sense as some think—but naturally and actually in this world.
God promised to Israel, as a people and a kingdom, such pre-eminence in origin, power, and growth. The answer, then, is simple and plain—England, as representing the Lost Tribes of Israel, and Queen Victoria being a direct descendant from David. For she came of James VI., of Scotland—he from Bruce and Duncan, and Malcolm, and Kenneth, and Kenneth through the kings of Argyleshire, Alpin, and Donald, and Fergus. Then through the long line of Irish Kings from Earca to Heremon, of Tara, and he married Tea Tephi, the daughter of Zedekiah, who, through Jeremiah the prophet, had been hid from the destroying vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. He killed all her brothers and kindred, and put out the eyes of Zedekiah and took him a captive to Babylon, where he died.
Look also at the British nation, learned as they are, yet no historian can tell who the English were originally. Sharon Turner, the best and most trustworthy on the origin of the Saxons, fails to solve the question. He traces them into Central Asia, but there he stops. They here form part of the Aryan race, speaking the Sanscrit language, from which came the Greek and Latin. And from this place and people came forth the Goths and their language, and also the Saxons and their language came to view here. The German and Saxon both seem to have come forth from the Aryan stock.
The very place the Saxons came from is the very place where the Lost Tribes were carried captive to by the King of Assyria, about 725 years before Christ, as we read in the second book of Kings, seventeenth chapter. Take the very word Saxon. This word comes from the Sanscrit: Saka Suna. Saka means
era, epoch, or date, and Suna means void, without. Hence the word Saxon means a people whose origin is unknown—void of date. True, Nebuchadnezzar saw no hands cutting the little stone out from the mountain. The origin of the English nation is hid because God cast away His people for a time—not for ever. It is this view of the stone kingdom that corresponds to the prophets, to history, especially to the English history.
The very island itself is insignificant, and no doubt was once joined to the continent of Europe. The formation on both sides of the English Channel—that is, on the French and English coasts, are the same—namely, chalk. The ocean in time past washed through a passage, and thus prepared a place for exiled Israel to rest in, and renew their strength.
Why should this small island and a few and scattered people become so powerful, so as to sweep the sea, and dictate on land, constantly engaged in war, and though small, winning victory upon victory, and like the stone, growing stronger and stronger, after fighting the whole of Europe, giving liberties in religion that oftentimes imperilled her safety at home, opening her ports to all the world, and venturing to compete in trade with all nations?
How came they to take India, a country of so vast an extent, so powerful, rich, and chivalrous a country, at that time composed of sixteen separate and powerful nations, speaking thirty-six different languages, and numbering in population some 200,000,000?
With all her faults, still to her the world owes much. She has stood for liberty in person and conscience. The world has little to-day which ennobles men and nations but what she has produced or aided in producing.