world shall believe that the Father hath sent the Son. And the glory which the Father has given the Son, the Son has given them, that they may be one, even as the Father and the Son are one; the Son in them, and the Father in the Son, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that the Father has sent the Son, and has loved them, as He has loved the Son. This is the concluding petition of the Saviour's intercessory prayer:-" Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." (John xvii. 24.) "To him," then, "that overcometh, will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches."

These epistles are addressed unto all churches and all christians in the present day, in every land. Let none despise what the Lord hath caused to be written. Let all suffer the word of exhortation. But they have various applications: they predict the history of the church from the time they were written down to the present day. They are also so written that they exactly meet the present state of the European churches, which have been, and still are to be, the peculiar stage upon which God will display His glory. It was the doctrinal disputes, the angry strifes and contentions of primitive christians, that occasioned their fall from their first love. Nominal professors were permitted to multiply among them, which occasioned much tribulation to the true worshippers. Their blasphemy the Saviour knew, and because of it, when the fulness of the time was come, in

the year 303, the Diocletian persecution was permitted to overwhelm and almost destroy the visible church. The tribulation was to continue ten days, that is ten years, and so it did. For although Constantine appeared in the year 306, and Galerius Maximianus, (the son-inlaw of Diocletian,) who was chief agent in procuring the imperial edicts against the christians, died in the year 311, and before his death issued a decree which restored peace to them, still it was the year 312 before Constantine vanquished Maxentius at the Milnan bridge near Rome; and it was the year 313 before the christians were restored to a full and well defined liberty, by a new edict of Constantine and Licinius, drawn up at Milan. And it was the year 313 in which Maximin, who reigned in the east, and was projecting new calamities for the christians, was vanquished by Licinius, and put an end to his own life by swallowing poison at Tarsus. (Mosh. Ec. Hist.) The christians being in poverty were exposed by Satan to temptation. Constantine was taught the doctrine which Balaam taught Balak, and cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, causing them to eat things sacrificed unto idols and to commit fornication. "He gave to the clergy the former privileges of the pagan priests, and allowed legacies to be left to the churches, which were everywhere erected and enlarged. He was gratified with seeing the bishops assume great state; for he thought the more respect the bishops commanded, the more inclined the pagans would be to embrace christianity; and thus he introduced the love of pomp and display among the clergy." (Mosh. vol. i. p. 294.) Christians thereupon began to learn and to hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes; and thus becoming gradually more and more corrupt, were at length, in the

year 606, ripe for the setting up of that woman Jezebel, the man of sin, the son of perdition. Many centuries of gross darkness passed over the church, but the time of deliverance came. The candlestick had been removed out of its place, and was being set up among a people who would at the appointed time shine as a light in the world. The falling away from first love was occasioned by doctrinal controversies; and the snare in which Satan entwined the early church was its poverty after much persecution. These same weapons, by which he accomplished the destruction of the early church, were turned against himself; his own delusions were chosen; the impoverished treasury of Leo X. occasioned his unlimited license to sell indulgences; and the effrontery of Tetzel, one of his agents in their sale, revived the doctrinal controversies of early days. In these things originated the reformation of the sixteenth century. The first public testimony for the truth was the act of Luther on the 31st October, 1517, in nailing to the door of the church at Wittemberg his ninety-five theses or propositions; and the first public testimony against the man of sin was on the 10th December, 1520, when Luther, in order to proclaim his secession from the Romish church by a public act, caused a fire to be kindled without the walls of the city, and in the presence of a vast multitude of spectators committed to the flames the bull which had been issued against him by the pope, on the 15th June in the same year, together with a copy of the pontifical canon law. (Mosh. vol. iii. p. 109.) The Lord then came forth and fought with the sword of His mouth, and from that period up till the present day, the true Israel have been emerging from the darkness and corruption of popish superstition and delusion; journeying back by

the very path along which it travelled originally to the city of destruction, and destined once more to occupy the lofty position, yea, a far more exalted one than the church of Ephesus,-for Christ's body in the present day shall be rooted and grounded in love-and all saints shall comprehend, so far as it is possible on this earth, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and shall know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, and shall be filled with all the fulness of God. The reformation began in Germany and in Switzerland chiefly. The English nation are a mixture of English or Britons and Saxons, and were called the AngloSaxons. From Germany came in part originally the natural seed of the English. From Germany again, at the time of the reformation, came the seed of truth; so that Germany is called Edom in prophecy, being in a double sense the elder brother of England, who was Jacob, but will soon be called Israel, because as princes they shall have power and prevail with God in

prayer.

France co-operated with the pope in the year 596-7, in the attempt to establish the christian religion, as taught by Rome, in England. From Normandy, a branch of France, came William, duke of Normandy, in the year 1066, and conquered England. Under the sovereignty of his son, William Rufus, in the year 1106, England conquered Normandy; and in the year 1417, king Henry V. of England invaded France, which resulted in the treaty of Troye in 1419, which, among other things, stipulated that "France and England shall for ever be united under one king."

From Switzerland the seed of truth was brought to Scotland; and the peculiar tenets of Calvin, the Geneveze

reformer, are still held, and taught, and practised almost universally throughout that country.

Now the seven epistles are so written as to be applicable to the present condition of these several nations. Be it observed, in the first three, the promise to him that overcometh follows the words, "He that hath an ear, let him hear." In the last four, the promise precedes these words. The design is to teach that the first four are specially applicable to one nation. The altar of God has four horns; so there are four epistles to this one nation, corresponding with the four horns. Great Britain is at present the peculiar temple of God, in which land the altar will now, on a large scale, be first erected. The work, the great work of evangelizing all nations, will begin in Britain; from it are to flow out the streams of living water; from it the law shall proceed. America cannot be excluded, for it is the offspring of Britain chiefly, in its population and institutions, and will no doubt be associated, and its christians will heartily cooperate in the great work. Still prophecy is limited, as

to particular events, to the continent of Europe and the western portion of Asia. England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland are the four horns in a political sense. But Great Britain and Ireland are truly but one kingdom now, and as one nation they can only have two horns. when they are like the Lamb. These two horns are its figurative heaven, the church; and its figurative earth, the state. These shall be made to conform to the image of the eternal counsel of God. But it has many dependencies or possessions which are called its colonies. In every quarter of the world Britain has a colony. In these then it will be the privilege and the duty of this nation to set up the two horns of the Lamb-the church