large the reasons on which I had formed my condnct, for I was almost driven into my own breast for support and justification. One friend, indeed, stood by me. He saw my plan and entered fully into it; and said such strong things on the subject, as greatly confirmed my own mind. The church of Christ,' said he, must sometimes be sacrificed for Christ,' A certain brother preached a charity sermon; and in such a style, that he seemed to say to me, Were I here, you should see how I would do the thing.' What good he did, I know not; but some of the evil I know, as several persons forsook the chapel, and assigned his sermon as the reason; and others expressed themselves alarmed at the idea of Methodism having crept into the place. It was ill-judged and unkind. He should have entered into my design, or have been silent.'

The question has repeatedly been asked, How far was Mr. C's course of proceeding right? and how far is it deserving of imitation? Nor is it easy to give an explicit and decided answer. On the one hand it has been said, 'This plan proved eminently successful, many of the old congregation remained, many became spiritual and lively Christians, and eventually the whole chapel was filled with regular and attentive worshippers." On the other hand there is reason to fear, that too many of those who remained at St. John's were very imperfectly acquainted with true religion, and rested rather in a hightoned morality than on that only foundation which God hath laid in Zion, even Christ Jesus; that a somewhat larger proportion of that congregation than is usually the case attempted to unite the service of God and the world; and that it was not until a late period of Mr.

Cecil's ministry that St. John's, Bedford Row, exhibited either that liberality to him as a pastor, or that enlarged benevolence in the promotion of Christian objects which might reasonably have been expected. It is a painful reflection that Mr. Cecil, unquestionably one of the most eminent ministers of modern times, possessing the utmost originality, vivacity, devotion to his work, occupying the largest episcopal chapel in London, and attended by crowds of hearers, distinguished at once by rank, wealth, and attainments, was yet left during almost the whole of his days to struggle with a continued series of embarrassing pecuniary difficulties. That great personal kindness was in numerous instances experienced by himself, and that his desolate widow and bereaved family eventually found many to comfort them, has been publicly and gratefully acknowledged; but kindness to a widow and orphans cannot compensate for the trials and privations, which the husband, the father, the minister, endured.

Towards the close of his career indeed Mr. Cecil seems to have himself entertained some doubts whether a more decided statement of the doctrines of the cross ought not to have been adopted. He was accustomed to urge young ministers to preach Christ, and to keep back nothing that was profitable; and not unfrequently maintained the comparative worthlessness and inefficiency of all other preaching, whether moral, literary, or philosophical, in comparison with the proclamation of full, free, entire salvation, through the alone merits and sacrifice of a crucified Redeemer; and during his last, long, and painful affliction, he often expressed his determination, that if permitted to preach again, Christ should be more his theme.

REV. viii. 13. ix. 1-12. "And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpets of the three angels, which are yet to sound. And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall

flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold, and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions. And they had breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of the chariots of many horses running to battle. And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, MAY 1831.

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. One woe is past: and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter."

The emphatic enunciation of woe by which the last three trumpets are introduced, obviously warns us of an important distinction between this triad and the four judgments preceding,-a distinction, however, merely consisting in the greater magnitude, as regards both intensity and duration, of the visitations of the last three trumpets, when compared with the former four, And we also gather from the words," One woe is past,—and there come two more woes hereafter;" a clear intimation that these three latter and greater judgments are not, like the former four, to follow each other in close succession, but will be found to be divided from each other by considerable interims of time. The facts of history exactly answer to each of these points. The four judgments already interpreted in our last two essays, are comprised in a space of about seventy years. They were severe, but rapidly passed over, and were each as speedily followed by the succeeding visitation. But the Arabian locusts and the Turkish horsemen were emphatically" Woes," both as to the extent of their devastations, and the duration of their oppressive. dominion. And, while they continued their inflictions through successive centuries, they were nevertheless followed by lengthened intervals of relief.

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These circumstances constitute so great a difference between the first four and the latter three trumpets, that it was clearly necessary that they should be stated in the

prediction. Without such an authority as the above-cited passages afford us, it would obviously have been impossible for any commentator to have imagined so great a distinction. Had not a vast discrepancy, in point both of duration and of succession, been plainly stated, we could not have ventured to give the first four of these judgments so small a space as seventy years (A.D.533-603.)—while we spread the fifth and sixth over more than eight hundred (A. D. 612—1453.) But now, by the plain meaning of the words of the prophecy itself, we are not only authorized but compelled to insist upon this vast difference. Mr. Faber, however, wishes to go one step further,―a step, we fear, beyond the authority or intent of the inspired writer. He observes this strong distinction which is drawn between the first four and the last three trumpets, and concludes from thence, that 'the trumpets of the second class bear a common character materially and essentially different from the common character sustained by the trumpets of the first class." The common character of the first four trumpets is, he judges, purely political,-while the characteristic peculiarity of the last three, the woe-trumpets, is that of hostility to true religion.

This supposition of Mr. Faber's, however, is clearly beyond the meaning of the words of St. John. The apostle states a difference, indeed, between the first four trumpets and the latter three; but that difference lies in their intensity, in their duration, in their less rapid succession,-not in their essential character.

And if the inspired apostle says nothing of an essential difference in character between the former and the latter trumpets, neither does history exhibit to us any such difference. Compare, for instance, the fourth trumpet with the sixth; -the invasion of the Persians under Chosroes, with the hostility of the

Turks. Mr. Faber says that the character of the first was purely political, while that of the latter was marked with the characteristic peculiarity of hostility to true religion. But history says no such thing.

Chosroes the Persian, and Othman the Turk (whom Mr. Faber takes to be the head of the Turks of the second woe-trumpet) exhibit not the least shadow of this characteristic difference imagined by Mr. Faber. Both were Asiatie barbarians, and both were terrible to the Eastern empire:-but that the warfare of the Persian was purely political, and that of the Turk a religious warfare, is an idea which finds not the slightest support in the page of history. In fact, the reverse would seem nearer the truth; for Chosroes, whose attack on the Eastern empire Mr. Faber describes as purely political, replied to the entreaties of Heraclius for peace, "That I will never consent to, till you renounce him who was crucified, whom you call Jesus, and with me adore the sun. While Othman, whose inroads are described as prompted by hostility to true religion, appears to have been a mere Tartar chief with a nominally Mahometan creed.

Having said thus much of the distinction drawn between the first four trumpets, and the three woetrumpets, as to their intensity, duration, and less rapid succession ; we now proceed to the consideration of the fifth trumpet, or first woe-trumpet, as described in the above-quoted passage from the Apocalypse.

Its interpretation may be considered to be, by the common consent of the great body of commentators, settled; at least as far as concerns the principal feature of it, the plague of the locusts, which is almost universally taken to signify the rise of the Saracen * Milner's Church History, vol. iii. p. 119.

empire, and its domination over the Eastern empire, and over some portions of the Western. On one or two minor points, however, a difference of opinion may be hazarded.

The Star which falls from heaven and opens the bottomless pit, is allowed to denote the apostacy of a leading Christian bishop. We have argued in our last essay, from this admission, that the same symbol must have a similar meaning, under the third trumpet. And as we judged the fallen star of that trumpet to denote the Roman bishop, we must conclude that the Eastern metropolitan is intended in the present case. Mr. Faber and Mr. Cuninghame, however, having otherwise interpreted the same symbol in the case of the former trumpet, prefer to assign the fulfilment of the fallen star in this, the fifth trumpet, to the Roman prelate. We are not bigoted on this point, but still we decidedly prefer our own view. The very passage quoted by Mr. Cuninghame and Mr. Faber from Gibbou, confirms this view, since it especially describes the state of religion in the Eastern church, at the period of the rise of Mohammedanism.

The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs and saints and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honours of a goddess.'*

And while this was the state of the Eastern church, we have abundant proof that the acknow

* Gibbon, chap. 50.

ledged head of that church had, by his apostacy from the allegiance due to Christ, become what is described in the language of prophecy as a fallen star.' It was just at this period that John, Bishop of Constantinople, surnamed the Faster, "disturbed the peace of the church by assuming to himself the title of Universal Bishop. The pride and arrogance with which he assumed it, was only equalled by the obstinacy with which he persevered." *

We need not follow very minutely the detailed description of the Saracens, as many of our readers must frequently have gone over this ground in the pages of our leading commentators. Suffice it

to say, that these locusts are described as being "like unto horses prepared unto battle," and the warlike strength of the Saracens lay in their numerous cavalry, and in their well-known skill in horsemanship. Their faces were as the faces of men, and their hair as the hair of women,"—and while the Saracens wore the beards and mustachios of men, they allowed their hair, like that of women, to grow to a flowing length. "The sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle," -a most vivid picture of the rapid and terrific manner in which the Saracens overran, in a few years, a large part of both Asia and Europe. They were "not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any tree," and in this point, also, the conquests of the Saracens, were distinguished from the judgments inflicted by the Bulgarians or the Avars; for their commanders were expressly instructed to spare the fruits and productions of the earth. Again, they were to" torment or plague the apostate Christians, but not to "kill them;" that is, they were to be a sore judgment to the Empire, but

* Milner's Church History, vol. iii.

p. 53.

not, like the next trumpet, the sixth, to put an end to its existence.

The continuance of this woe trumpet was expressly fixed. They were to "torment" the men who had not the seal of God on their foreheads, for "five months," which period, by the ordinary prophetic computation, is equal to one hundred and fifty years, reckoning a day for a year. It was in the year A.D. 612, that Mahomet began publicly to proclaim his mission ; and in A. D. 762, exactly one hundred and fifty years after, the Caliph Almansor founded Bagdad, as the capital of his now consolidated empire, and named it, the city of peace. From that time forward the Saracens no more "tormented" the Empire; but having reached the summit of their power, they began gradually to decline and grow feeble.

One other circumstance ought to be noticed, although it has unaccountably escaped the observation of commentators. Of the first six trumpets, the present, namely, the fifth, is the only one which is not expressly and solely directed against "the third part of men," or the Eastern empire. Throughout the whole passage describing the Saracens, as given above, this phrase does not once occur;-a remarkable instance of the exact correctness of the language employed in these predictions; and an additional proof, if such were needed, that the Saracens are intended by the symbolical locusts. For be it observed that this judgment was not in fact, like the first four, and the sixth, confined to the Eastern empire. Its main sphere of action was indeed found in the East, and thus the consistency and homogeneity of the prophecy is preserved; but it overran these limits. The Saracens spread from Africa into Spain, and Italy, and France, and maintained a footing for many years in each of these countries; and a great dominion, during centuries, in the

first. And for this reason we believe it to be, that the expression, the third part of men,' "" which would have limited the prediction to the Eastern empire, is not used in describing their conquests.

We now pass on to the sixth trumpet, or second woe-trumpet, which is thus described;

"And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. 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. And the number of the army of horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand and I heard the number of them. 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. 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. For their power is in their mouths and in their tails: for their tails were like unto the serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. 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 devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

In this, as in the former instance, there is little or no dispute concerning the main subject of the prediction. It is, by nearly every commentator, admitted to relate to the Turks. The Turkish power is