establishment of his kingdom, are the subjects of the several compartments of the seven-sealed book, or perhaps, because the christian church is the antitype or fulfilment of the revelation symbolised by the mystic seven-branched candlestick, which God commanded to be placed in the tabernacle.

The mystic lamb is denominated also "the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David,” to denote that the Mosaic and Christian dispensations are ponent portions of one continued revelation, constituting one collective church of God.

St. John exhibited intense anxiety to learn the contents of the book which he was aware comprised a prophetic history of that church, concerning which he was then in such afflicting tribulation; he wept much, “because no one" (the term "man" introduced into the English version has no synonime in the original) "because no one was found worthy to open and read the book, neither to look thereon."

expressive of sovereign power has its root in some word signifying a horn.

The symbol is evidently derived from pastoral life. Over a flock of sheep their ruler and guardian, the patriarchal ram, lifts, with an appearance of much dignity, his armed and ornamented head. He appeared to Homer the image of regal sovereignty.

Αὗτος δε, κτίλος ὣς, ἐπιπωλεῖται τίχας ἀνδρῶν·
Αρνειῷ μιν ἔγωγε εΐσκω πηγεσιμαλλῳ,

"Ος' δΐων μέγα πῶν διέρχεται ἀργενναων. (3 Π. 196.)

Nor yet appear his care or conduct small :

From rank to rank he moves and orders all.

The stately ram thus measures o'er the ground,

And, master of the flock, surveys them round. (Pope.)

From the unworthiness of every being whatever, except the lamb, to open the sealed book is obviously to be inferred that to a right understanding of any part of the Apocalypse an unlimited faith in Christ is the great essential requisite; the lamb is the representation of the christian church, and to every created being whatever, not a member thereof, the sacred record must be for ever a sealed book.

On those alone who do not presume to draw nigh unto the oracles of God, otherwise than with the humble docility of a dutiful child, and through the baptism and blood of Christ, and faith therein, will the Holy Spirit pour that light without which the brightest of created intellects must be, as to all spiritual things, for ever in thick darkness. Only the children of light are deemed worthy even to look on the mystic book; to them only is given to view it with the holy reverence so awfully due to it.* Infidels and sceptics are condemned to scoff and scorn it-hardened in their ignorance of religious truth, and in their insensibility to its evidence, its beauty, and its abundant blessings (of which wretched ignorance and degrading insensibility they are so, at once, ludicrously and pitiably proud), to them the Apocalypse will be "foolishness"-to the cold and nominal professor of Christianity it will be, if not "a stumbling-block," a subject of neglect or aversion. All such unhappy persons stand eternally excluded from any partici

*

Prophesying serveth not for them that believe not, but for them which believe. (1 Cor. xiv. 22.)

pation in the peculiar blessing emphatically pronounced on him "that readeth, and them that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein."

The remaining seven verses of this chapter (5th), to which the reader is requested to refer, are a sublime and joyful attestation of all the host of heaven to the glory of Christ, and to the truth that the seven sealed book contains a narrative of events terminating in the ultimate and universal triumph of his church, and in the eternal establishment of his kingdom.

CHAP. VI.

The Lamb having taken the book “out of the hand of him that sat upon the throne," the prophetic history which it contains is revealed in a series of mystic visions that occupy the remaining seventeen chapters of the Apocalypse.

Prophecy, or anticipated history, is one of the instruments wherewith God hath revealed to his church his special superintendance of it, and at the same time his prescience and power in his exclusive government of the whole world.

The deluge, that awful demonstration of his physical and moral attributes, was predicted by him to Noah. From Noah to Columbus the church was confined to the eastern hemisphere. From the calling of Abraham, to the death of the last of the Greek emperors, its history is connected with that of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Macedonian, and Roman empires. All of them were

cruel oppressors of God's church and people. The ruin of each of the first three was circumstantially predicted by his prophets at the period of its highest prosperity. In the meridian splendor of the Babylonian greatness, its destruction and the rise and fall of the last three empires, together with the prophecy that the last should be succeeded by the eternal kingdom of the Redeemer, were written with wonderfully compendious precision by the inspired pen of Daniel. When the Roman empire was at its utmost magnitude of territory and power, and was directing all that power to the extirpation of the apparently feeble church, the downfall of the empire, and the history of the concurrent and subsequent progression of the church to its eternal state of glory were revealed by Christ to his beloved disciple.

Of the many reasons, conceivable by human intelligence, for which God may have been pleased that Daniel's prophecies concerning the last three empires, together with the prophetic part of the Apocalypse, should be veiled in symbols unintelligible, until after the occurrence of the greater number of the predicted events, I will not detain my reader by stating more than one.

It is a common observation that prophecy causes its own fulfilment; in other words, that men would not have performed a certain act if they had not been persuaded that it was predicted that they should perform it. But the manifestation that God is the supreme and exclusive governor of the world, and that in his government he uses the volitions of men as

his instruments, not as voluntary contributions of their assistance, requires that there should be no intentional cooperation on their part in producing the predicted events. In truth, that performance of an act, which is induced by the persuasion that it was divinely predicted, appears like such a voluntary obedience to a command as would imply that the fulfilment of the prophecy was entirely optional on the part of the performer.

Besides, although Christ has declared (St. Matt. xviii. 7.) "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh," nevertheless, the pretence to justify crime by the plea that it was predicted is not uncommon. The papal power continues to this day its horrible oppression of the Jews in Rome, and I have frequently heard intelligent and educated members of the Roman church attempt to palliate the tremendous guilt of that iniquity by the observation that the pope was only dutifully fulfilling a prophecy!

In the sixth chapter the first six seals are opened, and the several symbols, significant of the events to which they severally refer, are successively presented to the view of St. John.

I must here take occasion to guard my readers against a common error, fatal to any attempt to expound the Apocalypse, that the number of the seals signifies only a chronological division of the history into so many distinct periods. The division relates rather to the nature or character of the several dispensations, each of which is included under a sepa