the earth. At this day it gives some of its colouring to the conversaziones of coteries, and to the talk of the streets. It still enters palaces with the majesty of a queen, and descends into cottages with the cordiality and kindness of a mother or a sister. It mingles with our griefs, and waits upon our sicknesses. It hallows the ties of marriage, and mitigates the separation and the sorrows of the grave. It is the joy of the good, the strength of the feeble, the hope of the wise, the glory of saints-and, blessed be God, it shall know no end; its "silver cord" never shall be loosed, its "golden bowl" shall never be broken.

Beneficent as the gospel is, it is painful to learn, that its least victories have been the fruits of tears and

suffering. It " came by blood," and by blood it has been perpetuated. But it has been found, as it has been clearly shown in every cycle of its progress, that the truths thus written in blood have been more widely read, as well as more enduring, than if engraven with the point of a diamond on the rocks of every quarter of the globe. From Pope Pharaoh to Pope Pius IX.from the College of Baal to that of the Congregation of Sacred Rites at Rome-from the massacre of the innocents at Bethlehem to that of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian Vespers-the meek-hearted followers of the Cross have been " sawn asunder," and burned, and endured "cruel mockings;" but all this and incalculably more persecution has failed to arrest its progress. It has rather fanned its hallowed flame. It has blown far and wide the ashes of the martyrs over many a land, there to take root and grow up and bear Cadmean harvests of yet more holy, more undaunted men.

Philosophy, with its cobwebs, tried to perplex its witnesses; and Power, with its weapons, strove to extirpate them. Vial after vial was poured out upon the meek confessors of the Christian faith, constituting a series of successive persecutions, unparalleled for cruelty in the history of mankind. But the death of the martyr was not the destruction of his creed. On the contrary, his blood fell as dew upon the truth, and made it flourish the more. The air became as the trumpet of jubilee,

and the winds of heaven as winged angels, wafting the tones of the gospel from sea to sea. Opposition served only to brighten the hallowed lights, or to concentrate their scattered rays into an intenser focus; rendering more visible, and thereby more glorious, the sainted ones that suffered-and more monstrous still the surrounding grim and spectral superstitions of the earth. The gospel, in spite of opposition, was eventually throned above the Cæsars.

The trees of the forest have fallen, but the Vine brought out of Egypt has been rooted by the tempest. Its branches have been swept by successive storms, and its boughs have been hewn and trodden down by the Cains, and Herods, and Neros, and Hildebrands of the earth; but, like the Banyan tree, it has only multiplied. its roots and spread the more. The philosophical mythologies of Greece, and the warlike rites of Rome, have passed away; the priesthood of Levi, and the flamens of Quirinus, have retired from their altars, and the wide earth scarcely renders back one echo of their voices; but the gospel endures-nay, it flourishes, deriving fresh strength from the wrecks of error, and new beauty from the contentions of truth.

In the worst of times, and in the most terrible apostacy, God has a people. In the most unfavourable circumstances, and in the least suspected ages, they are and have been found; bleak indeed must that desert be in which there is no oasis, and Alpine snows must have more than Alpine cold amid which no floweret blooms; we may not see them, but God does; and even we, dim as our vision is, if we will only look below the turbid and agitated surface, shall see a silver stream that flows onward in beauty and in splendour to the main. We see at every stage of the providential dealings of God, punishment seizing on priest and people the moment they apostatize from the gospel of Jesus. We have, in those early instances in the history of Europe, a rehearsal on a greater or smaller scale of the future history of Christendom, we have the lesson writ on ruins, on battlefields, that it is an evil and a bitter thing to depart from God.

What a monument of this truth has Britain been! When the continent of papal Europe was overrun by the ruthless conqueror-when its cities were turned into barracks for his troops, and its cathedrals into stables for his cavalry; when national destruction swept them with its besom, England was spared, like Judah amid the tribes. Pestilence, famine, war, lowered in the far distant horizon, but dared not converge. She alone prospered. Her sun set not. Her renown went forth among the nations. The sword that was invincible every where had no edge when lifted up against her. This was owing to nothing but her Protestantism; her recognition of the God of truth-her grasp of the Bible— her prevailing protest against Popery, were her strength, her glory, her palladium, and her shield. Let us be faithful, even if all around should become apostate-let us cleave to truth, even if kings should come down from their thrones to patronize, and prelates from their palaces to consecrate a lie, and when other Alarics and Attilas shall come forth at the bidding of God, to scourge the apostate, either we shall be preserved amid the desolation, or, like Augustine, we shall be removed from it to the realms of eternal peace. Our only safety is our highest duty. Faithfulness to truth is our only defence: we are here for this end. To protest against error-to stand up for the gospel-to spread it at all sacrifice-to be pioneers, and thus prepare the way of its progress, if we cannot be missionaries and preachers-to be the salt that unobtrusively leavens, if we cannot be the lights that visibly illuminate to have no aim paramount but the glory of God-this is Christianity; this is privilege ; this is peace.

"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 who 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, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of 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, 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."-REV. ix. 1-11.

THE great body of professing Christendom had become more and more almost entirely apostate, its career

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was retrograde every hour, its corruptions rose to the heavens, and the successive Gothic judgments had failed to exert upon the system any purifying power, or upon its agents and emissaries any awakening impression. God, therefore, according to a plan frequently illustrated in the history of his dealing with churches and nations, as may be seen in Amos iv. 6-12, proceeded with other and more startling judgments to smite them yet more severely.

Accordingly we read in the passage we have quoted, the history of one of the most overwhelming woes that had yet fallen upon apostate Christendom-a woe big with exterminating calamities-menaced long, and long disregarded. It descended on the sounding of the fifth trumpet, and may be ascertained by analyzing the peculiar hieroglyphic, or Apocalyptic symbols, used to describe it.

These symbols, as Mr. Elliott has shown, are invariably to be explained on the principle of local, historical, or national allusion. This, in fact, is the key to all the symbols of Scripture. The fig tree and the vine, for instance, are the emblems of Judah; the reed and the crocodile, of Egypt; the willow denotes Babylon, the wild ass Ishmael, the eagle Edom, and the ship Tyre. It is by following out these precedents of interpreted symbols already set us in Scripture, that we arrive at a consistent exposition of the symbols used in the Apocalypse.

The composite character of the locust creature employed in the description of this woe, violating, as it does, all the facts of natural history, shows plainly that it is a symbol, and as such is to be explained. The locust symbol indicates that the invader of the guilty lands, marked out for punishment, would rush forward in countless swarms after the manner of locusts. The horse-like appearance denotes that the invading forces would consist mainly of hordes of cavalry. The lionlikeness intimates their daring and irresistible ferocity, and the scorpion sting, which does not kill the sufferer, indicates the torment they would inflict on those whom