:

XI. Six trumpets then have sounded. We ask, what effect did they produce on those who were living under the sound of them? How did they influence the heathen world? How did they influence the Jewish world? The seer makes answer: 66 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not 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, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts." So it was in the beginning, so it will be to the end. All outward plagues, all outbursts of moral evils, all apostasies in Divine Societies, were and are trumpets of God; those who acknowledge His goodness and truth will tremble and rejoice that He is speaking to them; that He is calling them to repent; that He is preparing the way for a manifestation of Himself. But these trumpets, let them sound as loud and long as they may, seldom stir a man who disbelieves in a living and good God to confess Him. The terror which is in them stupefies rather than quickens. The slumberer is half roused out of his dream; is bewildered; takes a fresh opiate; flies to the gods that neither see, nor hear, nor walk; flies from Him whom he has only recognised in thunderings and lightnings. The sentence is everlastingly true that not the fire, nor the earthquake, nor the blast rending the mountains, but only the still small voice reaches the heart, and compels it to bow. The Jew and the Heathen alike hear the notes of approaching doom, and are unmoved. Both alike shall at last look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn as one mourneth for her only son.

LECTURE X.

THE OPEN BOOK.

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: and he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.-REV. X.

I. WE were told in the fifth chapter how the Prophet 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. The seals have been broken. This book is now open. The mighty angel whose face is as the sun, holds it in his hand. I said we could not give a name to the book till we knew something of the contents of it. Are we able to name it now? First, we have heard that no one in heaven and earth, except the Lamb who was slain, had power to open it. The Lamb who unites the highest power with the highest suffering; the Lamb in whom is all the glory of Him that sits upon the throne, in whom is all the sorrow of man; He can read it, and enable us to read it. Here at least is one indication respecting the book. It must concern the relations between heaven and earth. It must tell what separates them, and whether they can ever be brought into reconciliation. Secondly, when the first four seals were broken, the four living creatures, the lion, the calf, the man, the eagle, each shewed us some power going forth on earth, not to bless but to destroy. Each of the earthly powers corresponded, it seemed, to one of these heavenly powers. Each was an aspect of God, divided from God, perverted into idolatry. The book, then, must shew us how earthly power has become severed from righteousness; whether it is ever to become the servant of righteousness. Thirdly, we heard of martyrs beneath the altar, who were crying for deliverance from the self-willed powers, who were confessing the self-sacrificing power. The book must be a book of the wars of those who have fought for good and truth against triumphant evil and falsehood, who have not lost their faith that what is weakest in the sight of mortals is strongest in the sight of God. Fourthly, we have the vision of a great convulsion,

which made all the powers of the earth that seemed to be supreme tremble, because they knew that the avenger was come, that the sufferer was indeed the king. The book then is to interpret those puzzling passages in human history which exhibit periods of revolution and anarchy. It shews them to be the necessary results of previous tyranny and defiance of law; it shews that there is a Divine purpose in them, and a Divine blessing to come out of them. So far I find everything in this book which answers to the Scriptural idea of prophecy, almost nothing which answers to the heathen idea of prediction. It is an unfolding or discovery of the meaning and purpose of the eternal God. It explains the principles of an unchangeable government. It exhibits a law working in the very vicissitudes and caprices of self-will. It applies, then, to the ages that had past before John came into the world; it applies to the time in which he was living. If, as St. Paul and the writers of the New Testament affirm, the ends of the ages were meeting in that age, the book must have a peculiar reference to it. By interpreting the century after the coming of Christ in the flesh, it throws back a light on all the centuries before He came in the flesh.

The passages which follow clearly identify the book as a book of judgment. And they do not leave that word "judgment a vague one, such as it is apt to be in our minds. We are told what is judged; what cannot perish, what must perish in the judgment; what are the signs of judgment; how far God judges men and punishes men; how far men judge themselves and punish themselves. The subject of the judgment is a Nation. The vision of the sealed tribes taught us that there was an order in the nation

to be judged, which must survive any destruction of its outward forms. The vision of the company which no one could number, assured us that the existence of the nation did not interfere with the existence of a society that had no boundaries whatever. That the city or polity which was doomed, and round which the angel's trumpets were blowing, was that of Jerusalem, the direct language of the book led us to suppose. That would be the natural conclusion, supposing there were no stronger reasons on the other side. I have hinted at two reasons which have mainly influenced readers in rejecting this opinion, and adopting one that is more far-fetched. First, they have decided that the Apocalypse was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore that the trumpets of coming doom must point to some other city than that; next, they have regarded the more obvious meaning as poor and jejune, one which must rob the Apocalypse of all its instruction for later times.

To the first objection I answer, that if the traditional chronology of the Apocalypse, which assigns it to the reign of Domitian, can be maintained against the judgment of some of the most eminent of modern scholars-if it was not written, as those scholars suppose, in the time of Galba-the argument is still of no worth, except to those who identify prediction with prophecy. The Jews who lived after the temple had been destroyed, even after the ploughshare had gone round the walls, and the name of the city had been changed-events which did not happen till the time of Hadrian-still needed to understand what that great overthrow meant, what the Divine signs were which announced it. The Jew needed this illu