Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/171

 other, the victims of his rapacious ambition: and though for a season his rapid progress was checked by the crusades, it was but a momentary pause in that fearful career of conquest; for while to these holy expeditions, replete as they are with poetic and chivalrous interest, we may trace the ultimate safety and independence of Latin Christendom, they signally failed in their immediate object, and the ill success that attended them, did but force the whole world to cry out, as the Prophet foretold it would do, "Who is like unto the beast, and who shall be able to fight against him?" Nor were the terrors of Christendom groundless, for as St. John goes on, borrowing almost the very words of Daniel in his previous description of the little horn, "There was given unto him" (Apocalypse, xiii. 5) "a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies: and power was given unto him to do" (that is to carry on his career) "two and forty months." That is, the whole duration of Mahometan blasphemy shall be for the space of forty-two months; we have already seen in another prophecy that it was to last for the prophetic space of 1260 days, and if you reduce these forty-two months to days, according to the duration of Mahometan months, it also makes the exact number of 1260 days, or, as we have