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armies, and her enemies keep her in on every side." Then was "affliction such as was not from the beginning of the world;" then "men sought for death, and did not find it, and desired to die, and death fled from them." Then "those that were already dead were esteemed happy, as being at rest already." Then did "those under torture in the prisons declare that those that lay unburied were the happiest." And the king who leads on this avenging host-" the angel of the bottomless pit,"—the "star 1 which fell from heaven to earth," whose name is Abaddon and Apollyon-so closely realises his title of a Destroyer, that he does not "leave in the city and temple one stone upon another which is not thrown down," and in Jerusalem one "human being to slay or to plunder."

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I feel I am not mistaken in the general features of this exposition. I seem to have that confidence which a view of the truth alone inspires, that I am not leading others astray by fanciful interpretations, and that I myself am not wandering in the region of romance and conjecture. It is very possible that I have erred, and yet may err, in the minor particulars of this interpretation, but on the great and essential points I have that persuasion and conviction of truth which seldom deceives.

I dare not say this Trumpet begins with A. D. 612 and ends with A.D. 762. I shrink from arbitrarily assigning the date of A.D. 1800 to the Vial. I look with fear and trembling upon such unauthorised assumptions, and I dread the consequences of these bold liberties taken with the Word of God. I fear (not so much because of the "stings in their tails" as because of the still sharper sting of ridicule which so crude an exposition might attach to sacred Truth,) to convert a scorpion's tail into the tail of a horse, and with another touch of barbarous mutilation both of quadruped and metaphor, to convert that tail into a Turkish standard. I can never believe that Pachas with one, two, or even three, tails would be likely to occupy a place in these symbols, and should the Turkish standard be unhappily lost in any future engagement, I do not.

1 Great and illustrious rulers are designated by this figure:- "There shall come a star out of Jacob," (Numb. xxiv. 17.); "How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning."-Isaiah, xvi. 12.

consider we should be warranted in looking for the prediction of such a mishap in the Apocalypse. I can see nothing to make me believe that Mahomet or Mahometanism ever entered into the mind of St. John; and I look with equal suspicion on the history of Napoleon marching the Pope to Paris. Surely, if the Pope must be introduced upon all occasions by theologians of this school, it must be on the principle that he is of some use "to gild the scene," for he certainly, as in the instance alluded to, takes no real part "in the ceremony."

I can fancy that some poor persecuted martyr of those days, answering for his life before Nero, or thrown to the wild beasts at Ephesus, would be inspired with a tenfold courage and a fearlessness which no torments of man could shake, by the glorious promise of the first resurrection, and of the speedy desolation of the enemies of the Church; but I cannot think that the prophecy of the irruption of the Mahometan locusts, or of the Pope's abstraction, would have given him much comfort at such an awful hour. One might as well have expected that our own Ridleys and Latimers would have been cheered at the stake with the prospect of the Russian invasion, or the French storming the gates of Rome. I can fancy that some "faithful Antipas," such as he who was "slain where Satan dwelleth," would have braved with greater intrepidity the axe and the sword, had he been aware that the vision had been seen of "a crown of life" glittering through the skies, and that the chant of a white-robed throng who had "come out of great tribulation" had been echoed back to earth; but I cannot suppose that his soul would have been braced to a more exalted courage, from the prophetical anticipation of the agonies of that Papal martyr whose ring was so violently "torn from his finger," and who, in "the darkness which subsequently came upon his kingdom," was compelled to make an involuntary exhibition of himself at Paris. Surely the brain that could bring such light out of "darkness" must itself be partially obscured, or else we must charitably conclude that "the smoke of the furnace" from whence the Mahometan locusts sprang impeded a clearer

vision.

Certain it is, that interpretations, lucid as these, do not commend themselves to minds of ordinary Baotian intelligence.

certain it is, that the cause of religion is not promoted by such fantastical speculations—certain it is, that Scripture, reason, and common sense alike condemn such flights of imagination, and yet it is much to be questioned whether prejudice and a dogged adhesion to previously formed opinions will not prove too strong for them all.

186

LECTURE IX.

THE SIXTH TRUMPET AND SIXTH VIAL.

REV. ix. 13-21.

13. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,

14. Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.

15. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of

men.

16. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone.

18. By these three was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

19. For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.

20. And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship

REV. xvi. 12-16.

12. And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.

13. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

14. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.

15. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.

16. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:

21. Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

THE period over which the Fifth Trumpet extended, according to Dr. Cumming, was 150 years. He says, "From A.D. 612, the date of its rise, to A.D. 762, the date of its decay, is a period of 150 years, or precisely the five prophetic months, or five times thirty prophetic days, that is, literal years of the Apocalypse." The next trumpet, the Sixth, according to the same expositor, does not commence until the invasion of the Turks, in 1063, when, we are told, "The Turks invaded Christendom, and commenced a war against it, under Alp Arslan, called the valiant lion; he crossed the Euphrates in the year 1063, at the head of immense masses of Turkish cavalry." Here is an enormous leap of 301 years, during which this chronological history of the world and of the Church is silent. Are we then to understand, that from the year 762 to the year 1063, no event took place worthy of being recorded in the Apocalypse; and are we to believe that in a prophetic history, such as this is supposed to be, a gap could intervene of such extraordinary dimensions?

As the prophetical record approaches nearer to our own times, these chronological omissions are no longer discernible. Thus, after an interval of 1800 years, the particulars of the French revolution are said to be predicted in the Apocalypse with minute exactness. The great continental victories of Marengo and Austerlitz are noted down with determinate precision. Napoleon and Nelson, Marat and Madame Maillard, are all but mentioned by name, and to such minutiæ does the prophecy descend, that a particular hail storm which deluged the south of France finds a place in the Apocalypse, and a diminutive frog, called the Tractarian heresy, is heard to croak.

Now, if I wanted a test by which to try the correctness of these marvellous expositions, I should find it in the unprece

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