ish hierarchy are expressed in this strong language: And they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores.

But although they will be driven out of the strong position they held by their temporal power, yet they will hold on to their ecclesiastical system; they will struggle to keep up the church, although they are stript of their worldly power they repented not of their deeds. But it is not likely that a church which has from its first rise, been sustained by its connexion with temporal power, will long survive a separation from it. We shall see in a future chapter that it will not. The blow received from the circumstances of the fifth vial, so shattered its power that the whole system finally dies from the effects of it: Every living soul died in the sea when it became as the blood of a dead man. This will be the final result of the fifth vial.

The entire course of this vial will be political; and, amongst the circumstances which will mark its progress, will probably be measures of policy adopted by Protestant countries, to rid themselves of the interference of a foreign power, which, although ecclesiastical, may be found exerting a dangerous political influence.

The doctrine that the Pope is the spiritual head of the whole church on earth, requires the presence of his power and authority, in the person of some one or more of his various functionaries, wherever the Catholic Church exists; and, if the exercise of such power and authority was not permitted in Protestant countries-if ecclesiastical functionaries, deriving their authority from, and holding allegiance to, a foreign power, should not be tolerated in countries not under the spiritual dominion of the Pope, how soon his kingdom would be filled with darkness! Something will be done in the course of the fifth vial that will aggravate and afflict that church, even to the gnawing their tongues for pain.

But whatever those measures may be that will agonize the papal power, the prophet informs us that they will not have VOL. II.-3

the effect of changing or purifying its religion. They blasphemed the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.

The conclusion, I think, is unavoidable from the text, that papal power, under the fifth vial, will become very much restricted in its authority and limited in its existence.

We shall see in the events which some of the succeeding chapters unfold, how wonderfully that church, which once ruled all Christendom, will be reduced and brought down by the acts of those very kingdoms, and how deeply it will be made to drink of the bitter cup which it once pressed to the lips of Protestantism; but not in the same spirit of bigotry and bloody violence which it practiced,-this would be repugnant to the Protestant religion; but in the total loss of the confidence and respect of the powers of Christendom, expressed in the utter rejection of the faith and worship of the Romish Church. (See chapter eighteen.)

SIXTH VIAL.

THE END OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE !

Following up the series of events which mark the progress of time and illustrate the page of prophecy, we come now to consider one which, in its consequences, will reach and effect almost all nations of the earth, while it cannot fail to impart a thrill of joy to every Christian's heart.

The scenes of this vial are not connected with any elements of terror and violence. There is no fire nor blood mentioned as the concomitants of this plague. A great change is effected without the interference of any of those agents of terror and commotion it is the gradual and final extinction of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turks drove the Christians from Jerusalem, and planted the crescent on its ramparts and its temples. The land of Judea and all Palestine fell under their dominion, and

at a later period they pushed their victorious arms into Europe by the conquest of Constantinople.

All Europe was struck with dismay, and was in constant dread of these invaders. Their ferocity was equalled by their indomitable courage; and wherever the scimeter was unsheathed, humanity afforded no protection against the violence and horrors of their sanguinary warfare.

Christianity was the scorn of the Turk, and the Jew was no less the object of his brutal animosity. And yet this power, with all its fearful might and merciless passions, is to pass away and disappear, like the dreaded icebergs when they dissolve under the genial influence of a temperate zone.

This vial is poured out on the great river Euphrates, and its waters were dried up. How simple and how quiet is the progress of this great change!

The reasons for considering the Euphrates as the emblem of the Turkish Empire have been already assigned.

The successful marches and rapid conquests of the Turks left them no reason to distrust the invincibility with which fanaticism had covered their arms. The boasted superiority of their religion over the religion of all other people, and their national pride, which led them to scorn and despise all who did not embrace the koran, were the chief causes of their ferocious and sanguinary principles of warfare.

But this proud disdain of all Christendom began to be checked by occasional victories obtained over them, and they were finally subdued and tamed by the battle of Navarino, where their powerful fleet was entirely lost, their ships were burned, sunk, and captured, and this great arm of their warlike achievements was irretrievably broken.

This blow had the effect of humbling the proud temper of the Turk, and brought him to regard Christian nations in a more favorable light. It led also to intercourse and commercial relations with the European powers, and ultimately obligations of a more friendly nature towards other nations assumed the form of treaties.

This commercial intercourse with other powers has worn off to a great extent the ferocious temper of Turkish pride, and, by bringing them to a better acquaintance with the rest of Europe and America, has at the same time shown them their great inferiority to almost all other nations, and has produced that conviction, spoken of by traders as being entertained by the Turks, "that their empire is destined, ere "long, to utter and inevitable dissolution." In the language of the prophet, the great river will be dried up.

This drying up of the Euphrates has been going on rapidly and sensibly to the eye of the observant politician for the last twenty-five years; and indeed nothing has delayed its entire evaporation but the use that other powers of Europe have made of Turkey to preserve the balance of power. So soon as she is no longer necessary as a make-weight in the great scale of European politics, she will sink under the paralysis of her own enervating and debasing religion.

The drying up of this river will be an event of vast consequence to the world, in a moral and political view, even if it stood alone; but that which is to follow it, and to which it is only introductory, is the subject which will fill the world with amazement, and all Christendom with joy. The design of drying up this river is, that the ways of the Kings of the East may be prepared; or, in simple and direct terms, without the use of metaphor—that the way may be opened for the return of the Jews to the land of their ancestors!

Whoever has attentively perused the prophetic writings of the Jewish scriptures, could not have failed to be struck with the frequent, clear and joyful annunciations of this event, by the several prophets of the Jewish Church. Our prophet glances at it as a circumstance connected with the drying up of the great river, and then retires from the subject, as if he said: "Their own prophets have fully pro"claimed this grand event, and I can add nothing to the “ vivid and magnificent imagery in which they have presented "it." We shall, therefore, take leave of our prophet for a

short season, and follow his elder brethren, in their prophetic description of this glorious recovery of God's ancient people.

THE RESTORATION OF THE JEWS.

The term kings, as employed to distinguish those whose way is prepared by the drying up of the waters of the great river Euphrates, is not intended to convey the idea of positive royalty. It does not mean persons who wear the crown or wield the sceptre of empire; it is employed to express quality, or preeminent excellence of character, arising from their former rank and station in the world.

Taken in this sense, the appellation of Kings of the East will be readily understood, from its correspondence with the names or titles which God himself and the ancient prophets, and more recent apostles, applied to the Jews as a nation. See Exodus, 19 chap.: 6: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. Deuteronomy. 7 and 26 chap.: 6 and 19: For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are on the face of the earth, and to make thee high above all nations, which he hath made, in praise and in name, and in honor. Jeremiah, 11 chap.: 3: Israel was holiness unto the Lord and the first fruits of his increase: all that devour him shall offend; evil shall comé upon them saith the Lord.

These are some of the evidences taken from the sayings of their own prophets, which show the exalted station the Jewish nation held in the estimation of God. As the king is superior to and above all his subjects, so the Jews were superior to and above all other nations of the earth. The title of Kings of the East is in accordance with this high rank of national supremacy, and with the superior wisdom of the people. The East, in ancient times, was proverbially the seat of wisdom. Wise men came from the East to pay suitable honors to the new-born King of the Jews.