To the second, "a sword," he is to take "peace from the earth."

To the third, "a pair of balances," indicative of the of terrible famine following in the footsteps of war.

pressure

In the fourth, the horseman is Death on a pale horse, and hell (adns) follows him; "and power is given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

To whatever period these first four seals refer, they refer to a time connected with conquest, battle, famine, pestilence,to a period not separated by long intervals of time, for the first horseman goes out "conquering and to conquer, "1 i. e. to commence a series of victories which should end in triumph. Let us proceed to analyse the emblems of this first seal. "I saw, and behold a white horse."

Such em

The horse is emblematical of the Roman power. blems are common in Scripture. The emblem of Judah is a lion, of Persia, a ram, of Grecia, a he-goat. The national emblem of Rome was a horse. The Roman nation is called "Gens Mavortia," the people sacred to Mars, and a horse was yearly offered to Mars in the Capitol. Mr. Elliott gives a medal, with a figure of a horse and the word Roma un. derneath.

The colour of the horse,-white,-denoted conquest and victory. Kings and conquerors were drawn by white horses. Domitian rode a white horse at his father Vespasian's triumph. Josephus says, "he rode on a horse that was worthy of admiration."2

"He that sat on him had a bow." The bow 3

was a com

1 “"Iva vixýjoy.” A Hellenistic idiom-" that he should gain victory after victory."

2 Bell. Jud. lib. vii. cap. 5.

3 Mr. Layard thus describes Sennacherib before Lachish, as depicted in the Nineveh marbles: "The throne of the king stood upon an elevated platform ; in his right hand he raised two arrows, and his left rested upon a bow; over his head was written the inscription, Sennacherib, the great king, the king of Assyria, sitting in judgment on the city of Lachish, I give permission for its slaughter.'" In another passage, Mr. Layard connects the emblem of the bow in the king's hand with victory and triumph: "Behind them is the king, carrying in one hand his bow and in the other two arrows, the position in which he is so frequently represented in Assyrian monuments, and probably denoting triumph over his enemies."-Layard, vol. i. p. 334. Thus

mon emblem of a victorious warrior-particularly of a warrior devoting a city to destruction.

"A crown was given unto him"-his success would be rewarded with regal dignity.

"And he went forth conquering and to conquer"—to persevere in his victories till he should overcome all opposition.

Did such a conqueror proceed from the Roman power at that time? Josephus tells us, "that when Nero was deliberating to whom he should commit the affairs of the East, and who might be best able to punish the Jews for their rebellion, he found no one but Vespasian equal to the task-he was a man that had long ago pacified the West, when it had been put into disorder by the Germans; he had also recovered to them Britain by his arms, which had been little known before." 1

The crown given to him2 is explained by the extraordinary coincidence that whilst Vespasian, a Roman general, was fighting in Judæa, the Emperor Nero committed suicide at Rome, and Vespasian was declared emperor by the legions; and when he refused the empire," the commanders insisted the more earnestly upon his acceptance, and the soldiers came to him with drawn swords in their hands, and threatened to kill him, unless he would live according to his dignity, till he at length yielded to their solicitations, and allowed them to salute him Emperor.

Perhaps also there was some interposition of Providence which was paving the way for Vespasian's being himself Emperor afterwards." 4

"So Vespasian's good fortune succeeded to his wishes every

Jacob blesses Joseph, (Gen. xlviii. 22.), “I have given thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword, and with my bow." Should it be objected that the vision depicts a European and not an Eastern king, it must be remembered that the symbols are purely of Eastern origin.

1 Bell. Jud. lib. iii. cap. 1.

2 If it should be objected that it was not Vespasian but Titus who took Jerusalem, it may be answered, that the crown was given to Titus as well as to Vespasian; Titus was saluted emperor after the taking of the temple, and both Vespasian and Titus wore the imperial crown. Josephus admirably forestalls this objection, where he says: "That government which had been newly conferred upon them (Vespasian and Titus) by God."- Bell. Jud. lib. v. cap. 1.

3 Bell. Jud. lib. iv. cap. 10.

4 Ibid. lib. iii. cap. 1.

where; upon which he considered that he had not arrived at the government without Divine Providence, but that a righteous kind of fate had brought the empire under his power; for as he called to mind the other signals, so did he remember what Josephus said to him when he ventured to foretel his coming to the kingdom while Nero was alive." 1

His going forth "conquering and to conquer," is abundantly proved by Josephus, who has shown in his Jewish War, that victory everywhere followed the irresistible legions of Rome. The war from the commencement to the end was a succession of victories, closed at last by the destruction of Jerusalem. Those victories are commemorated to this day in the triumphal arch of Titus at Rome, and by the medal struck in honour of those conquests, representing a female figure weeping under a palm tree, with the motto, "Judæa devicta," Judæa conquered.

Observe then, at that time a mighty conqueror went forth from Rome on his mission of victory; the bow in his hand was emblematical of previous success, and also of his particular mission as the destroyer of a city" a crown was given unto him," for he was saluted Emperor" and he went forth" "conquering and to conquer," till Judæa lay prostrate at his

feet.

And this took place, not in the eighty-three years of the reigns of Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines; but in the three and a half years of the Jewish war.

SECOND SEAL.

"And when he had opened the Second Seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see, and there went out another horse that was red, and power was given him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another, and there was given unto him a great sword."

Dr. Cumming says:" In this seal also the Roman Empire, the horse, is the subject of description. Red is the symbol of bloodshed. The sword when presented to any one within a circuit of 100 miles of Rome, at the era referred to in this seal,

1 Bell, Jud. lib. iv. cap. 10.

was equivalent to his appointment or investiture to be Prætorian Prefect. This therefore would indicate that the agency employed under this seal was Prætorian.

The

"Killing one another,' is the language of civil war. peace taken from the earth has in the original the definite article1, and this shows that the commission issued to the rider was to take away the peace that was created or prevailed during the First Seal. Is there anything recorded in history which exhausts and illustrates these symbols? We appeal to Gibbon - he shows that the bright and happy era which we have just referred to was succeeded by intestine and incessant civil wars. Dion Cassius calls it a transition from a golden to an iron age.'

"The Prætorian guards, under their chief, murdered nine Roman emperors in succession, and during a period of sixty years, that is, from the close of the First Seal, A.D. 180, to the close of the Second Seal, A.D. 240, they exercised exterminating cruelties, and created a Roman reign of terror. Gibbon writes: Their licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman Empire.'

I shall explain this seal of civil war, but with a great variety of date. I have observed that the first four seals have one characteristic in common; viz., the symbol of a horse and horseman, which is the basis of each. We must look, then, for the interpretation in some events connected with the Roman conquest of Judæa.

The colour of the horse, red, is the colour of blood.

The sword in the hand of the horseman denotes slaughter, and the peculiar feature of this slaughter is, that it is to be domestic slaughter, civil strife,—that they should "kill one another.”

Now let us ask was this the case during the Roman invasion of Judæa? was peace taken from the land of Judæa? and did the inhabitants of the land kill one another?

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1 If the force of the definite article be so great with regard to the previously existing peace, what must the force of the same definite article with regard to "the earth,” “¿K Tñs yñs," the land of Judæa? Compare “ πᾶσαι ai pūλai rūs yñns," omnes tribus terræ Israeliticæ, Rev. i. 7.; "Baσideis τῆς γῆς,” principes Palæstinæ, Rev. vi. 15. ; “ Εσται γὰρ ἀνάγκη μεγάλη Eπi τns yns Kai ỏpyù iv tý Xay tourų,” Luke xxi. 23., where by the correlative phrase ο λαος τοῦτος, the ἡ γῆ is defined to be the land of Judaa.

Of all plain and well-known historical facts, this is the plainest; any one who has read the history of those miserable times knows that the principal feature in that history was the intestine factions and civil struggles which, more than foreign foes, annihilated the Jewish people.

I might quote volumes upon this subject. Josephus tells us: "There were three treacherous factions in the city, the one parted from the other. Eleazar and his party came against John; those that were with John went out with zeal against Simon."1 In their mad fury they destroyed all the corn laid up for the siege, and destroyed the "nerves of their own power."2

"Accordingly it came to pass that almost all the corn was burnt, which would have been sufficient for a siege of many years. So they were taken by the means of the famine, which it was impossible they should have been, unless they had thus prepared the way first by this procedure."

"And now, as the city was engaged in a war on all sides from these treacherous crowds of wicked men, the people of the city, between them, were like a great body torn in pieces; the aged men and the women were in such distress by their internal calamities, that they wished for the Romans, and earnestly hoped for an external war, in order to their delivery from their domestic miseries." "God," said Vespasian to his officers, "acts as a general of the Romans better than he could do, and is giving the Jews up to them without any pains of their own; that therefore it is their best way, while their enemies are destroying each other with their own hands to sit still as spectators, rather than to fight with men that love murdering, and are mad one against another." 3

We need not put this horseman's sword into the hands of

"Tres Duces, totidem exercitus: extrema et latissima monium, Simon, mediam urbem, Johannes, quem et Burgioram vocabant, Templum, Eleazarus, loco pollebat. Sed prælia, dolus, incendia inter ipsos, et magna vis frumenti ambusta."-Tacit. Hist. v. 12.

2 Josephus, Bell. Jud. lib. v. cap. 1.-"The corn burnt." Observe, the seal denoting famine follows the seal emblematical of civil war. Had they not burnt their magazines of corn, and thus destroyed "the nerves of their own power," in the fury of their civil strife, this famine could not have taken place.