dom has been taken from thee; thou hast been weighed in the balance, and found wanting.'

VI. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.'

That we have here the hint of some visitation which affects the internal life and health of nations as that we spoke of last affected their intercourse with each other, most, I think, will agree. I do not know that we should gain much if we could interpret the special points of the description more exactly. The wormwood which makes waters bitter, and destroys life, would be an apt and no exaggerated symbol for miseries that have befallen countries in the East and the West, at various times; that such would have been felt among the other woes that were afflicting the world in the disastrous years preceding the fall of Jerusalem, we may well believe, if we had no testimonies to the fact. What concerns us is, that the calamity was a message to the Jew. It told him that he was the Jonah in the vessel. It was another blast of the trumpet, which declared that the walls of his city were to fall flat.

VII. And the fourth angel sounded, and 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, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.'

It would be easy to take this as a description of a moral and not a physical darkness. But I believe we shall be departing from the general purpose of these revelations, and violating the consistency of them, if we adopt that interpretation.

The sounds of these first four trumpets all point, it seems to me, to the connexion of physical life and physical decay with moral life and moral decay; to the way in which physical agents become the instruments of punishing moral transgression; to the truth that earth, and sea, and rivers, and sun, and moon, and stars obey eternal laws; but that they are laws given them by Him who has created voluntary beings, and whose highest kingdom is over them. These were the truths which the Jewish nation had been called, out of all nations, to declare by its words, its services, its continual life. These are the truths which it was to declare by its ruin and death.

But if I say this, it is not because I doubt that there are evils far more portentous than any which earth, or sea, or air, or sun and moon can inflict, or that these

were at work when Jerusalem fell, and were causing her fall. Such darker evils, I believe, are pointed at in the words which follow.

VIII. And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets which are yet to sound!'

The

That these trumpets point to moral sins, to spiritual wickedness, and to their political consequences, I cannot doubt. The inhabitants of the earth had need to know that such woes are the greatest of all woes. heathens had as much need to know it as those to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the promises, of whom as pertaining to the flesh Christ came, who is over all God-blessed for ever.

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If any can need it more than they, it is those who have inherited a better Covenant, a fulfilled law, a higher promise-the members of Christ's body, the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. May He who caused the deaf to hear enable His Church to take in His message! May He who caused the dumb to speak enable His ministers to deliver it!

LECTURE IX.

THE LATTER PLAGUES.

REV. IX.

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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. 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 the 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 mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto 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 mot 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 murders, mor of their sorceries, mor of their fornication, nor of their the ris

A VOICE from Heaven told St. John that the woes which would follow the blasts of the three last trumpets would be far more terrible than those which preceded them. This language. I thought, intimated that they would be of a different kind: that there would be in them more of moral and spiritual, loss of merely physical misery. Let us see whether the description which is given of the first of these woes confrms this opinion.

1. And the with angel sounded, amà I saw a star fail from heaven unão the earth.” I do not say that these words are decisive as to the nature of the approaching calamity. Taken alone they migla denote some mischief rikà ran affect the earth, as such like the one we heard of when the first tumper Blow. But I link we should feel the symbol to be $r less violent, far more like those to which we are accustomed in prophetical