voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels which are yet to sound."

With how much greater reason these trumpets and vials may be interpreted of events between which rolls an interval of many hundred years; or with how much nearer approximation to truth the desolations denounced upon a particular land may find their accomplishment in the woes and commotions which have fallen upon countries widely remote from each other, we must leave others to judge. Certain it is that neither Alaric, Earl Howe, Genseric, or Lord Nelson were at all aware that the scenes in which they played so conspicuous a part, were the subject of Apocalyptical prediction. Certain it is, that neither Attila, the Duke of Wellington, Odoacer, or Napoleon were in the least enlightened by the prophecies which had gone before respecting them. Now Josephus does say of Alexander, that when Jaddua, the high priest, showed him what was written in the book of Daniel concerning the King of Grecia's conquest of the realm of Persia, he at once saw the correctness of the application, and acknowledged the hand of God; but were it possible, on that elastic principle called the year-day system, for any common sense and reasonable man to extend that "half-hour," (which in these bustling times is all that can be given to such questions,) into "70 years of earnest and severe reflection, it is possible he might come to the conclusion that these names and events could have no more place in the Apocalypse, than the noyades of Nantes in the desolations of Judæa, or Madame Maillard in the visions of St. John.

Fie upon such nonsense, and upon those who are silly enough to believe it! As it may be taken for a settled axiom, that any man who attempts to foretel things to come is either a knave or a fool, so it may be believed that it is not a proof of superlative wisdom to accommodate the prophecy of past ages to present events. One step further, and we ourselves assume the prophetic garb, in such cases, O how truly "a rough garment to deceive." We may be sure that if prophecy were wanting to our superior dispensation, it would have been amply given; and to go back for the exercise of a gift no longer needed, seems to be a return from Christianity unto Judaism, from the higher privileges of the new and better

covenant into the lower mercies of an imperfect and decaying dispensation.

Such, then, the arguments upon which we build the theory that the Apocalypse has long ago received its accomplishment, and that trumpets and vials are predictive of the same desolating events. Neither let it be said, that the "most pregnant and startling changes in the world's history" hardly meet the grandeur of its expressions; for these expressions are limited by circumstances of time and place, so that whilst fancy or taste would lead us to refer them to the future, criticism and fact confine them to the past; and surely, if our aim be truth, we should be careful how far taste is admitted as an ingredient of biblical interpretation.

Besides which, the grandeur of the Apocalyptical symbols is not overstrained. Surely the coming of Christ, the gathering of the elect, and the desolation of the once favoured people, is a theme worthy even of its magnificent descriptions. Take, then, large views of the subject; divest your minds of the idea that we are speaking merely of the destruction of a particular city, or a particular people; such events have often happened in the history of the world. But no, we are speaking of the breaking-up of a dispensation- the close of a religion which for 2000 years was the only religion vouchsafed to man -a religion established by miracle, and by a thousand visible interpositions of Jehovah. The subject before you is the grandest event which has rolled along the stream of time1, and the evidence of its truth is the Jew as he is at this day - a never-dying witness that his temple, his city, his nation, his religion, have all perished, and have not been restored.

The Jew as he is at this day-the denizen of every land and of every clime — "drinking of the Tiber and the Thames, the Jordan, and the Mississippi," - a pledge to European and Asiatic, to African and American, that a new and glorious kingdom rose upon the ashes of Judaism.

The Jew as he is to this day. -the inveterate enemy and the

1 "The war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations."-Josephus, Preface to Wars of the Jews.

staunchest champion of Christianity; its undying adversary, and the imperishable monument of its triumph.

The Jew as he is to this day-the living miracle, the indestructible evidence that "Babylon is fallen, is fallen;" that the Son of Man has received the kingdom, and that he must reign for ever and ever.

Let us take heed, "lest he who spared not the natural branches, spare not us;" "let us not be high-minded, but fear; " let us learn the lesson conveyed to us in the history of this extraordinary people, of the "goodness and the severity of God on them which fell, severity, but towards us goodness, if we continue in his goodness, otherwise we also shall be cut off."

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of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.

9. And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

10. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails and their power was to hurt men five months.

11. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

12. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter.

We endeavoured, in the preceding lecture, to show the close agreement between the first four Trumpets and Vials. We called attention to the circumstance that the scenes which introduced them were confessedly similar; that they were "given" to the same agents; that these agents were, in either case, "The seven Angels, which stood before God; " that previously to their being sounded and poured out by these seven angels, the prayers of the martyrs arose like the "smoke" of the incense: "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth; "1 and that, in answer to these prayers, the judgments shadowed forth under both trumpets and vials were sent "into the earth" (Judæa);-that the contents of the four first were poured respectively upon similar objects of nature;-that each prefigured analogous scenes of desolation and slaughter; and that, under a variety of symbol and imagery, such as would serve to heighten the picture, and increase the interest, the events foreshadowed were substantially the same.

The first Trumpet and the first Vial sent upon the earth.
The second Trumpet and the second Vial sent upon the sea.
The third Trumpet and the third Vial sent upon the rivers and
fountains of waters.

The fourth Trumpet and the fourth Vial sent upon the sun.

1 Rev. vi. 10.