otice that this also agrees both in the manner of statement and
in point of duration with the flight of the woman into the wilderness,
as described in Revelation 12. She was to be nourished for "a time,
and times, and half a time" (verse 14), which period is spoken of in
verse 6 of the same chapter as "a thousand two hundred and threescore
days."

The terms ordinarily used to measure the duration of time may be and
often are used in a symbolic sense; for time, as well as anything
else, can be symbolized. Thus days may properly symbolize years; for
they are analogous periods of time, the diurnal revolution of the
earth being taken to represent the earth's annual movement. Other
standards of reckoning may also be employed symbolically, but the one
here referred to is doubtless most frequently employed. Such a system
of reckoning time was known anciently. The Mosaic law recognized two
kinds of weeks, the first of seven days' duration, the last day of
which was a Sabbath; another week of seven years' duration, the last
year being a Sabbath of rest for the land. This fact explains such
expressions as "forty days, _each day for a year_" (Num. 14:34), and
"I have appointed thee each day for a year" (Ezek. 4:6).

There is no doubt that the year-day method of computing time is used
in the prophecy of Daniel 9, the sixty-nine _weeks_ reaching from the
time of the decree of Artaxerxes in 457 B.C. until A.D. 26, the year
when Christ was baptized and entered on his personal ministry.

[Sidenote: The correct starting-point]

Applying the year-day standard to the period of twelve hundred and
sixty days, we have twelve hundred and sixty years. The next question
to arise is, What date shall we select as the proper time from which
to measure this 1,260-year period? It is important that we correctly
solve this question. Expositors have selected different dates. They
usually point out some particular historical date having an important
bearing on Rome's development; as, for example, A.D. 606, when Phocas,
Emperor of the East, accorded the Church of Rome special recognition.
But the papacy grew up in the _West_. If we are to regard as of
unusual importance political recognition of the claims of the papacy,
why not give preference to imperial recognition in the very section
that constituted the home of the papacy?

Before considering further the relation of the growing papacy to the
imperial power in the Western Empire, I must call atte