had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour" (Rev. viii. 1).

Their attitude is like that described in Ps. cxxiii. 2, "Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until that He have mercy upon us."

The Holy Ghost seems to be represented in the next verse as "the seven angels which stood before God"i.e., "the seven lamps of fire" in Revelation iv. 5. The Blessed Spirit's official position in the economy of grace is one of willing subordination. "Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak: and He will show you things to come" (John xvi. 13).

The trumpet voice of the Spirit is equivalent to "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches:"-" And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets" (Rev. viii. 2).

Jesus himself is then seen in His office as Intercessor "And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him. much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand" (Rev. viii. 3—4).

He is an angel-i.e., the angel of the covenant.

He stands at the altar of incense. "To Him was given much incense"-i.e., the office of Intercessor was the Father's gift to Him. It is that intercession which makes the prayers of all saints acceptable. But now we have an awful view of coming judgment-precatio becomes imprecatio. "And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake" (Rev. viii. 5).

This is parallel with Ezekiel x. 6, 7, where fire is brought from between the cherubim to be poured over Jerusalem. The Spirit then begins His trumpet-tongued judgments upon guilty Christendom, which had corrupted Christ's truth.

THE FIRST FOUR TRUMPETS.

THE first four trumpets are chiefly, although not exclusively, on Western Christendom. They have no chronological marks. They are simply successional. From the first irruption of the Goths into the Roman Empire down to Momyllus, in derision named Augustulus, there may be traced four distinct judgments upon the empire :

These are the subjects of the first four trumpets. The Goths overran the third part of the empire, spreading desolation wherever they went. The Huns were still more terrible. Attila was rightly called the Scourge of God. The Vandals were nominal Christians, but really Arian heretics and bitter persecutors of the truth. They were only too successful in propagating the heresy. Hence they are compared to wormwood poisoning the waters. The Heruli extinguished Rome as the Western capital, and although the Western Empire was in a sense reconstituted under Clovis, Rome never again became an imperial capital. Hence it is said that "the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so as the third part of them was darkened."

THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE THREE WOE TRUMPETS.

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THESE judgments upon Western Christendom were very heavy, but they were to be succeeded by something far The irruption of the barbarous nations resulted in a flourishing state of society after a considerable period of anarchy. Now, however, the Mohammedan plague was to fall upon men, introducing a system of government, as well as a falsehood in religion, which was to be destructive from the beginning to the end of its devastating course.

Hence the words, " And I beheld, and heard an angel

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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 trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!" (Rev. viii. 13).

The first woe was the Saracenic conquests.

The second woe was the Turkish ones.

The third belongs to the close of the times of the Gentiles, from the beginning of the sounding of the seventh angel, down to the time when the purified Israel will be replaced in his own land.

THE FIRST WOE TRUMPET.

THE SARACENS.

"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, 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. One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter" (Rev. ix. 1–12).

The first thing to which our attention is called here, is that which gave opportunity to the Saracens to go forth, The expression το φρέαρ τῆς ἀβύσσου—the well of the abyss-occurs only here, and is of difficult interpretation. The abyss is a name given to the sea and to the agitation of nations. In the latter sense we have it as applied to the revived Western Empire in Revelation xvii. 8::"And shall ascend out of the abyss." In Romans x. 7, the apostle employs it for the state of the dead. This passage appears to throw light upon its use here. Scripture nowhere speaks of the devil and his angels as being now in the place of torment. They are wicked