significant meaning to him especially :- "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand." Rev. i. 3.

With this brief notice of the three first chapters let us proceed to examine chapters iv., v., and these can only briefly be touched upon, the real difficulty of the Apocalypse commencing with the opening of the first seal, chapter vi.

After the exhortation to the Seven Churches respecting the immediate advent of Christ, the nature of that advent is next disclosed to St. John. He is caught up to heaven, or rapt in a trance, and sees the vision of the Almighty, and hears the opening of the Sealed Book, which unfolds that advent under seals, trumpets, aud vials. "After this I looked and behold a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me, which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter."

There is a point of great moment with regard to the system of future interpretation, involved in those words which are translated by the word "hereafter." 1 The original is "μerà μετὰ Taura," "after these things." Now the question is not, what do these words signify as they stand in our English translation, but what do they signify in the sense in which they are used in the Apocalypse? In the very same verse, these words occur again, and they also occur frequently elsewhere in the Apocalypse, and they always have one and the same signification, and that is, they refer to something which was to happen consecutively and immediately.

The words, which in the beginning of this verse are translated, "after this," are the same which in the end of the verse are translated "hereafter." Should it be objected that the last clause translated "hereafter" is qualified by the expression "things which must be hereafter," the very same clause is explained in Rev. xxii. 6. as "things which must shortly be done." 2

1 "Postea inquit vidi; post ipsam utique visionem, se alteram memorat vidisse, non gestorum est diversum tempus sed visionum, ac siquis unam rem diversis modis enarret." Primasius.

2

Compare ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι μετὰ ταῦτα” Rev. iv. 1., with "à dei ye

Dr. Cumming tells us, that the whole of the Apocalyse was seen by St. John in one literal Lord's day of twelve hours, and that Lord's day, he says, was a "miniature chronology of the world." But if the words translated "after this" and "hereafter" are the same, as undoubtedly they are, we cannot interpret one of a period of twelve hours, and the other of period of 2,000 years.

a

In the very verse, then, in which the words translated "hereafter" are met with, we have the same words signifying an event which happened immediately, or at any rate at no great interval of time.

No argument can be built on the notion that the words translated "hereafter," mean events about to happen in future ages; on the contrary, they are always used in the Apocalypse to signify events immediately about to take place.

This cuts at the very root of that interpretation which supposes the Apocalypse to be a prophecy extending to remote ages; on the contrary, it asserts that it is the revelation of events soon about to take place it assists to overthrow the fallacy that because "the Church under the Christian dispensation is higher in dignity than the Church under the Mosaic economy," that therefore it ought to "enjoy equal counsel and consolation of a prophetical character." 1 But, it may be asked, if it was necessary in order to the perfection of the new dispensation that "it should enjoy equal counsel and consolation of a prophetical character;" why then does it not enjoy equal consolation of a miraculous character? How is it that miracles are no longer known, although prophecy is supposed to exist? How is it that "tongues" have ceased, although "prophecy" has not failed? What argument can be advanced to show that the exercise of one extraordinary gift should outlive the rest? If prophecy is not lost, then what has become of that angelic interference once so visible in the affairs of men, or of the voice of the Eternal, heard at intervals, amidst the hushed awe of wonder-stricken mortals? And above all, how comes it that these prophetical declarations were not understood in the ages to which they are supposed to have referred? One νέσθαι ἐν τάχει”. Rev. xxii. 6.; “ μετὰ ταῦτα εἶδον” —— Rev. vii. 9. ; “ ἔρχονται ἔτι δύο οὐαὶ μετὰ ταῦτα” Rev. ix. 12.

iWordsworth's Babylon.

would imagine the scope and aim of prophecy would be to give premonitory warning and consolation until fulfilled; and when fulfilled, to establish in the minds of those who witnessed its fulfilment a sense of the Divine power and wisdom which could "see the end from the beginning." But if the ages to which the prophecies of the Apocalypse are supposed to refer saw nothing of the adaptation of these prophecies to their own case; if, before their accomplishment, they neither answered the end of warning or consolation; if, after their accomplishment, they did not serve to manifest the prescience of the Almighty; if the Christians, who lived before the days of Luther, never discovered that the Beast was the Pope, or that Great Babylon was Papal Rome; if those parties, who ought to have been much more interested in the question than we can possibly be, knew nothing of the irruption of the Mahometan locusts, and of the Turks battering down the walls of Constantinople; if no one, nowhere, before the age of Bishop Newton, Mede, and the Elliotts and Cummings who have expanded them, had the slightest idea of that system of interpretation, which is unhappily so much in vogue in the present day, it may well be questioned whether such prophecy be not an isolation in the general tenor of Divine pre-communications, or whether such prophecy has answered the end that prophecy generally was intended to serve.

With the closing scenes of the Jewish dispensation, all extraordinary gifts, and amongst the rest prophecy, appear to have ceased. "The prophet and the unclean spirit" simultaneously "passed out of the land," Zech. xiii. 2. "The law and the prophets were until John, from that time the kingdom of God was to be preached." The Holy Spirit was to be given, not to solitary individuals at great intervals of time, but to be poured out upon all flesh, and on the disciples, among the rest, not with a view of making them prophets, but of bringing "all things to their remembrance whatsoever Christ had said unto them;" and of showing them things to come,' (Tà épxóμeva, the coming things,) John, xvi. 13. Saviour's prophecies referred chiefly to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the events which should accompany his coming. No such an idea appears to have entered his mind as to chronicle down in prophetic visions the fortunes of

Our

his Church to the end of time. Moreover, had prophecy been a characteristic of the New Dispensation, it would not have ceased with the predictions of the Apocalypse. A succession of prophets raised up from time to time, as under the Mosaic economy, would have been the guides and comforters of the Church. The foreshadows of coming events, as under the old dispensation, would have been prophetically announced by men who immediately preceded the times to which the events referred. Impending calamities and approaching deliverances would have found their contemporaneous predictors. A Jeremiah or an Ezekiel would have spoken of a captivity near at hand; or a Haggai or a Zechariah of a restoration soon to be accomplished. Adequate supplies of prophetic inspiration, suited to the times which called them forth, would have met national emergencies; and the fallacy need not have been propounded, which, claiming for the Christian Church "equal counsel and consolation of a prophetical character" with that of the Jewish Church, is driven to transmute a prophecy of "things which must shortly be done," into the history of the world and of the Church down to the end of time; and to claim for a highly allegorical book, like the Book of the Revelation, only intelligible when viewed in the light of a past economy, the unenviable and the unhappy distinction that it is the only "equal counsel and consolation of a prophetical character" which a superior dispensation is supposed to

possess.

I must now very briefly introduce the scene depicted in this vision, and a glorious scene it is. The first object whom St. John beholds is the Deity. "Behold a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne; and he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like unto an emerald.”

The jasper, a stone of various colours-purple, green, cærulean; the sardine, a blood-red stone; and the iris, or rainbow, round about the throne softening, by its many-coloured hues, the light which none might look upon. It is impossible for human language to describe more impressively the glory of the Godhead.1

"Round about the throne were four and twenty seats, and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold." But why twenty-four? Some say, because there were twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve Apostles; and the number twenty-four would represent the Jewish and Christian Church; some, because the worship of the Jewish temple was divided into twenty-four courses of priests, and the temple on earth was made after the pattern of the heavenly temple.

One point alone is clear: they owe their high position to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; for they are represented as saying, "thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." 1

"Out of the throne proceeded lightnings, and voices, and thunderings." The scenery is exceedingly grand and terrific; indicative of the glory and presence of God. So, when God descended upon Sinai, there were "thunders and lightnings," "and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud."

"Seven lamps were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God."

Some suppose that the Holy Spirit is here designated, "the number 7," as Josephus says, "being a number of dignity among the Jews." Others think they refer to the "seven angels which stand before God" (the angels alluded to by our Lord), "Whosoever will confess me before men, him will I also confess before the angels of God." So St. Paul to Timothy―"I charge thee before God and the elect angels." In the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, the angel Raphael says, "I am one of the seven angels that enter into the presence of the Holy One." "The sea of glass before the throne like unto crystal," the same as "the sea of glass mingled with fire," of chap. xv., is, possibly, the lucid and shining pavement before the throne. "There was under his feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire, and, as it were, the body of heaven in its clearness."

"And, in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts3, full of eyes, before and behind.”

1 Rev. v. 9.

3 Zwa, "living creatures."

2 Exodus, xxiv. 9, 10.