trary, and commanded by His revealed will and plea

sure.

The identity, then, of the number of the lamps and of the days of the week was a manifestation that His church, with its universal and signal characteristic, the Sabbatical institution, should endure for ever—and that His holy Spirit should abide therewith, a light to lighten mankind through all time.

The sea before the throne represents the laver in the court of the tabernacle: (RIZMU MINE SEARA

"Thou shalt put water therein; for Aaron, and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet thereat: when they go into the tabernacle of the congregation, they shall wash with water, that they die not; or when they come near to the altar to minister, to burn offering made by fire unto the Lord; so they shall wash their hands and their feet that they die not: and it shall be a statute for ever to them, even to him and to his seed throughout their generations." (Exod. xxx. 18, 19, 20, 21.)

The laver and its co-type, the baptismal sacrament, through which admission is given into the christian church, symbolise the purification of regenerate man, through which alone he can be permitted to draw nigh unto God--that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

The sea was of glass, transparent as crystal-an obvious symbol of durability and perfect purity.

In close contiguity with the throne the prophet beheld four living beings or animals, ¿a, which the authors of the established English version have strangely mistranslated into beasts. This perversion

is the more unaccountable, as the authors appear in all other particulars to have followed with servile adherence the Latin vulgate, which properly translates the word into "animalia." This error would be of comparatively little consequence if, in the subsequent part of the narrative, they had not frequent occasion to translate the term Inpiov, as they have done correctly, into beast. To guard, therefore, the English reader from the error of supposing that the four beings in contiguity with the mystic throne are denominated by the same term as the seven-headed, and ten-horned, and the two-horned beasts, which occupy such an important portion of the remainder of the Apocalypse, I will henceforward cite the former by their proper name of " animals."

These animals, analagous to the cherubim on the ark, represent, as the functions subsequently performed by them plainly exhibit, four great dispensations of Divine Providence:* they are full of eyes before and behind, to signify that they are instruments or agencies of Him to whose all-seeing eye, at once retrospective and prospective, the infinite past and future compose but one time present-one in

stant.

* The cherubim on each of two opposite sides of the mercyseat on the ark, were types of the two great dispensations, the Mosaic and Christian covenants; the separation of those dispensations, as well in point of peculiar nature, as of time, is denoted by the space on the ark that intervened between their typical representatives; the concurrence of their direction to the same common object, the manifestation of God to man is signified by their relative positions.

Each of the four animals had six wings, to signify

that no distance of time or of space can obstruct the ministers of the divine will; "and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come;" because the dispensations of providence are continued manifestations of the glory of the eternal Omnipotent. "And when these animals give glory, and honour, and thanks to Him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created," because the children and servants of God, recoiling from the impious presumption of bringing any divine dispensation to the bar of human reason, and of there sitting in judgment upon it, to try its wisdom or goodness by any test or process which such a tribunal can supply, require only to have any of God's ordinances made known to them, to bow down their minds before it with unmurmuring submission and unhesitating adoration.

CHAP. V.

1. "And I saw in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne, a book written within and on the back side sealed with seven seals."

We are to consider this book as resembling in form the ancient manuscript rolls; it was written on both sides to shew the abundance and importance of the matter comprised in it; it was sealed to signify that it related to things not yet disclosed, in other words, that it was a prophetic history; the number of the seals on it was seven, to signify that it contained a narrative of seven signal dispensations of Divine Providence.

The mystic volume, the " scripture of truth," is in the right hand of Him that sat on the throne, to signify that it relates to the providence of Him in whose hand are the destinies of nations, and by whom all things are immutably ordained.

2. "And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof.

3. "And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. 4. "And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

5. “And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven. seals thereof.

6. "And I beheld and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four animals, and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven

eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth unto all the earth.

7. "And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne."

The book is taken and opened by the Lamb of God, bearing the semblance of the wounds wherewith it had been slain, to manifest that the prophetic volume relates to the christian church; the lamb stood in the midst of the throne, and of the four animals, and of the elders, because Christ and his church are the great objects to which all the divine institutions and dispensations are directed, like the radii of a circle to their common centre; the lamb had horns, the symbols of power;* and eyes, "the spirits of God sent forth into all the earth," the symbols of that intelligence, from which, pervading all space, nothing is hid. Horns and eyes signify together a powerful and wise government; the lamb has seven of each, because the events ordained by God to lead to the victory of Christ over all his enemies, and to the triumphant universal and eternal

* These scriptural emblems of power are as old as the pentateuch. Of the tribe of Joseph it is said by Moses, "his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth." (Deut. xxxiii. 17.)

On the head of the Egyptian Jupiter Ammon, the supreme authority of the father of gods and men was typified by the horns of a ram, of which a representation in gold composed the ancient Persian On the head, in the later coins and medals of Alexander, they commemorate both his alleged descent from Jupiter, and his acquisition of the Persian throne..

crown.

Spanheim says, that in all the oriental languages every term