broken. Then self-willed power having passed through its different stages, and having exhausted itself, was reaching its natural consummation. There would be a judgment. It might end and a new circle begin. But a doom is now awaiting not the world's city, but God's city; that which has been set as a witness to the world against its idolatries, for the dominion of the righteous King. Such a downfall, comparatively insignificant in the eyes of the rulers of the earth though not quite so insignificant to them, is nothing less to the prophet than the end of an age or dispensation. It is the greatest catastrophe that has yet befallen the universe. There is silence in Heaven in the contemplation of it.

I. "And I saw the seven angels that stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets."

In no part of the Apocalypse are the allusions to the Old Testament so numerous as here. You must turn to the sixth chapter of Joshua for the meaning of these trumpets: "Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in. And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thy hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns. And the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout. And the walls of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him."

The story preserved in that sacred book which told

of the conquest of Canaan by the little band of slaves that had come out of Egypt must have fixed itself strongly in the imagination of every Jewish child. A strange sense of invisible, mysterious power, which could overcome the strength of walls and the force of armed men, will have been mixed with a feeling that their fathers were a set of righteous men, favourites of Heaven, who punished the wicked and accursed people of Canaan. The rabbinical education will have done little to distinguish what was right from what was wrong in these early impressions. It will have confirmed the wonder at the events that happened in the old time into a superstition; the exultation in the glories of the one nation into pride and contempt of other nations. The Jew escaping from that education; conversing and trading with foreigners; discovering that he was inferior in outward position to them, and not better than they in inward character; suspecting that the like was true of those whom Joshua led; acquiring a respect for ordinary discipline, material strength, the resources of an empire; learning that the heathen claimed more miraculous interpositions on behalf of their ancestors than had ever been claimed for his; would be likely to distrust in his heart, if he did not scorn with his lips, the lessons which he had inherited. In that unbelief, or in a violent effort to suppress it and to crush those who gave any signs of it, a majority of Jews were probably living in the days of St. John. There were those before and since who were more truly little children than they had ever been, and that because they had put away the mere childish things of the fancy, and risen to the thought and reflection of men. They had found in the account of the fall of Jericho.

the witness of a God who was not more the God of their fathers than of them; who in different methods, suited to different periods, was always asserting the subjection of material power to spiritual; who was always dooming cities to perish that stood upon a false foundation, be their apparent strength what it might; who had chosen a poor Syrian tribe, not (so their old lawgiver and prophet continually assured them) for their righteousness, but as witnesses of His righteousness; to put down races which were setting laws at defiance and polluting the earth with their crimes. Surely, if it were so, He would not treat that tribe upon any different maxims from those which He had applied to the tribes of Canaan.

There were such Israelites. St. John was one of them. And no one knew better than he did what worshippers of material force, what disbelievers in spiritual might, his countrymen had grown to be. Though living away from the holy city, he was aware that it had become an accursed city, given over to strife and hatred, probably to as much fleshly wickedness as had brought down the judgment on the Canaanites, certainly to a spiritual wickedness which they had not known. Yet he needed a special revelation to convince him that the same sentence which had been executed on Jericho was to be executed on Jerusalem; that the trumpets were sounding around her; and that they were blown not by mortal priests, but by the angels which stood before God.

I take this to be the simple interpretation of this vision; that which connects it most naturally with the one immediately preceding and with the one which follows. Holding that opinion, I cannot assent to any of the more ingenious explanations of the trumpets

which transfer them to a later period, or to a series of periods, even if I thought they could be thus applied more directly to Christian uses. But I have no such thought. Let us hear what these trumpets said to the Israelites; then we shall listen with purged and open ears to the sound of any that may be uttering their warnings to us.

II. "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. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it on the earth; and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake."

If the former words recall the ministry of the priests before Jericho, these recall the ministry of the priests in the tabernacle. That ministry transferred to the temple had been an abiding one. Jews did not merely read of it in a book, they saw it with their eyes. The altar and the sacrifice, and the incense and the daily prayers, associated themselves with the earliest thoughts of those who dwelt at Jerusalem; were probably more impressive still to those who only visited it at the solemn festivals. These too, like the historical record, must have had a twofold effect on the frequent or the occasional beholder. The acts of worship spoke of a communion between the visible and the unseen world. God was meeting men at the mercy-seat. The priest was the continual witness of the communion. But it was the worship of Jews. God had spoken to their forefathers.

I

They had been told what He was, and how they ought to approach Him. Amazing gift! What nation had ever such a gift bestowed upon it! The growing boy was taught formally what the child had learnt with its heart. The awe of the service was changed for him into a kind of terror; that which he wanted in sympathy was supplied by appeals to his awakening pride. "The heathen know nothing of the right way of serving God; their priests are altogether wrong in the sacrifices which they offer. Their sacrifices will never be accepted." Then must have come, in ten thousand instances, the revulsion of the mature Israelite against this indoctrination, or a cold inward indifference to it. "Why is one sacrifice better than another? Why may not their priests be as wise as ours? Why may not both be deceivers equally? How do we know that any intercourse with beings above ourselves is possible? How can we tell that they are the least affected by our propitiations? How can we tell that there are such beings at all?" And here also there was a passage through the struggles of manhood back to a truly infantine faith. "My prayers are not only worthless; they are often impossible. I cannot pray. But I want to pray. An irresistible impulse draws me to make the attempt. My sacrifices; what are they? Worse than beggarly. They seem wicked. I have no My mind is wrong, and I am trying to make God's mind bend to it. And yet ought I not to make sacrifices? Ought I not to be a sacrifice? What if God is Himself moving me to pray, not against His will, but that His will may be done? What if He is stirring me to offer sacrifice, not that I may get something by it, but that I may be delivered from fhe greatest of all burdens-the burden of my selfishness? What if

right to offer them.