antagonism to the Gospel proclamation; The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Mr. Clifford has at any rate the courage of his convictions, and, little meaning it, has done us essential service. The bold bald atheism which he has professed, and the bare dry desert which his materialism makes of life, have startled and shocked not a few." ("Our Theology," pp. 15 and 16, by J. Baldwin Brown.)

Whether or not Napoleon Bonaparte was the one head "as it were wounded unto death, whose deadly wound became healed (Rev. xiii. 3), we neither presume to say or think conclusively, but the same power that he represented, we expect to see rise up out of the sea of revolution, clamouring again for liberty, equality, fraternity, and receiving power from the dragon, then cast out into the earth (Rev. xii. 9; xiii. 2), his success will become so rapid and so complete, that all the world shall wonder after the beast, and "all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." (Rev. xiii. 8.)

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But we must now take note of "the two witnesses " foreshown in Rev. xi. For it would seem that at the commencement of the period, we have been considering two shall arise, like unto Moses in their power to smite the earth with plagues as often as they will, and, like unto Elijah in their power to shut heaven that it rain not in the days of their prophecy. And with the promise in Malachi, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord," we have no difficulty in identifying their appearance as its fulfilment. And when we consider Rev. xi. 4, in relation to them as a quotation from Zech. iv. 14, in connection too with the further promise in Malachi concerning Elijah, "He shall turn (or as we understand it, seek to turn) the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers" (insubordination having become the rule of social life), we cannot help thinking that the primary work of these two witnesses will be, for a brief while, testimony to a long-suffering God, not willing even then that all should perish in the impending judgments. But, rejecting this last testimony, and seeking to slay the witnesses, his long-suffering shall have an end, and he will through them, fulfil his threat: "I will come and smite the earth with a curse.' "For, behold, the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly shall be stubble, and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." (Mal. iv. 1.) Many have been the conjectures of commentators as to who these two witnesses should be, some even suggesting that Enoch and Elijah-having been translated that they should not see death-shall appear on earth again as men in the flesh, to receive eventually the crown of martyrdom. With such interpretation, however, we have no sympathy. That

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they will be men in the flesh we have no doubt; that they will be two exceptionally choice spirits, having had their training in common with all the children of men among the inhabitants of Gilead" somewhere, or at "the back side of some desert;" neither do we doubt that when the church shall be caught away, they will be left to fulfil their life-work as anointed ones, "standing by (or before) the God of the whole earth." Endowed with supernatural powers, they shall not flee before their enemies as do the remnant of the woman's seed. (Rev. xii. 14.) "For if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies." This may be but figurative language, showing that by a word they shall be able to strike dead their enemies as Annas and Sapphira were smitten to death by the word of Peter. But, "when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them, and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." How much of fact and how much of figure here also we have, the day must declare; but wherever the Antichrist shall have his metropolis, there, we see no reason why so explicit a statement might not have a nearly literal fulfilment. Sodom and Egypt are doubtless typical names for apostasy and captivity; and if by this time Jerusalem shall have been rebuilt as the capital of Palestine, and become the seat of the beast, it will be literally "where also our Lord was crucified."

But not long do the enemies triumph over these two witnesses, for "after three days and an half, the spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and they heard a great voice from heaven, saying unto them, Come up hither; and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them." This resurrection to life, and rapture of these two witnesses, leads us to think, if not to conclude, that at the same time there will be a second resurrection of more if not all the righteous dead, and a second rapture too of all that are alive and remain as overcomers of the beast, his image, his name, and the number of his name. Many, doubtless, will have been persecuted to death under the reign of the beast, who will thus soon be raised again, while some may yet remain alive as overcomers, and these must be changed and caught up together with the two witnesses to join the Lord and his bride in the air, for the two witnesses and the overcomers of the beast, must form part of that bride, and so be called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Rev. xix. 9.)

It appears to us certain, that all who will in any sense or degree, see or share millennial glory, must then, if alive, be changed; if sleeping in the dust of the earth, arise. Whether believers who have persistently opposed--and some have even ridiculed--premillennial truth; whether those who have lived selfish lives, and so living have so died; and whether those who have failed to stand

the test to which they have been exposed under the reign of Antichrist, will be raised or changed at this period, is, to say the least, extremely doubtful. According to Daniel xi. 35, "Some of them of understanding shall fall to try them, and to purge, and to make them white;" and according to Rev. xviii. 4, doubtless some will and some will not have obeyed the call, "Come out of her, my people, that ye partake not of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." The purged and separated ones will doubtless participate in the second rapture, so as to be safely housed with the Lord in the air before the final crash and overthrow of Babylon, as recorded in this Rev. xviii.

Now, if our reading of Rev. xvii. be correct, we see the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, whose forehead is inscribed " Mystery, Babylon the great," to be identical with the beast of Rev. xiii. 11, coming up out of the earth, which had two horns like a lamb, and spake as a dragon. As also we see the beast that rises up out of the sea in Rev. xiii. 1, identical with the scarlet coloured beast in Rev. xvii. 3, carrying the woman. As then in Rev. xiii. 5, we find power is given to the beast to continue forty and two monthsthe mystic period before named-it is found that during that time he grows weary of his rider, turns round upon her, hates her, makes her desolate, eats her flesh, and burns her with fire. The "horns" are said to do it, and therefore we read, Rev. xvii. 17, "For God hath put it in their hearts to fulfill his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled." Something of this kind has been seen in the past, and will be seen again in the near future, in the appropriation of Church revenues for secular purposes by act of Parliament in our own and other countries. When infidelity has grown rampant it will make short work with church property. Illgotten gain,-as much of it has been from the first, the lapse of centuries has not sufficed to make it good, and wrested from the people by the force or by the fraud of a crafty and covetous priesthood, the people will but recover their own, as it shall seem to them. And if the Commons willed it, what power would the Lords have-for long-to hinder it? Already the growing power of the Commons, and the waning power of the Lords spiritual and temporal, in this and other countries, points in that direction.

Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Spain are ripening for action in opposing the priestly domination in the respective governments. And surely its arrogance and folly in opposing popular measures, is serving to help along its downfall. For still she-this woman Babylon-" saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore, shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. For in her is found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth." (Rev. xviii. 7, 8,

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and 24.) Who Rome accounts Babylon, we are not aware, but since the Reformation, Protestants have been unanimous in accounting Rome to be Babylon; in later days Nonconformists have included all State Churches under the term Babylon; in later days still, Plymouth Brethren and some others have included all sects but their own in the term Babylon. We have learned to account all as Babylon who have confused and confounded Christ with Belial, bearing the name of Christ, while either destitute of, or uncontrolled by, the Spirit of Christ.

The men who quote Scripture while yet a lie is in their right hand, are in Babylon, whatever their ecclesiastical surroundings may be, and unless delivered from it, must perish in its overthrow, however flattering themselves, or flattered by their fellow men.

A counterfeit of the Bride, the Lamb's wife, is this mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, and drunken with the blood of saints as John saw her, well might he say, "I wondered with great wonder" (see Alford). And in the beast that carries her awhile, and afterward destroys her, we see the kings of the earth with whom she has committed spiritual fornication, so long as they could promote each other's interest, and serve each other's ends; but eventually they become mutual enemies. So long as Victor Emmanuel conceded temporal sovereignty to Pius IX., the Pope blessed the king; but the states of the church annexed, the blessings became succeeded by curses. This little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, is without doubt, precursor of the approaching storm.

And thus God will judge and destroy the harlot by the beast that carried her; and the beast with the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, God himself judges and destroys finally, Rev. xix. 20; but this their end is not yet; "judgment must begin at the house of God."

For first we have to consider two notable events which now rise to our view, and we confess to some difficulty felt as to which shall have the precedence. For cogent reasons we sometimes feel compelled to place in point of time, the marriage of the Lamb before the judgment seat of Christ; but again, for other and still more urgent reasons, we decide the reverse; and seeing allusion to that judgment occurs in Rev. xi. 18, whereas the marriage supper no mention until Rev. xix. 7, we decide to consider next, the judgment seat of Christ distinctly set forth by the apostle, Rom. xiv. 10; 1 Cor. iv. 5; and 2 Cor. v. 10.

has

Since writing one of our latest pages, wherein we anticipate the formation of an international league, the aim of which will be to subvert all existing governments and dynasties that oppose it, with the professed object of instituting that universal brotherhood of nations which shall put an end to war; that power, already widely spread in Europe, has, by one of its agents, smitten well nigh to death the Emperor of Germany, and while we write it seems un

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certain if he will recover from the stroke of the assassin. circumstance has stricken with awe not Germany alone, but other nations in such degree as to divert the attention somewhat from the Congress assembling at Berlin, with its momentous issue of peace or war, as if a graver peril having graver issues might be at hand, which no Congress could ever settle. From the special correspondent at Berlin of one of our leading daily papers we quote these ominous words, written the same week as the Emperor's attempted assassination: "The spreading of social democracy's destructive doctrines, and the growth throughout the lower classes, in Prussia especially, of a mental condition which may be described as the recklessness born of desperation, have inspired in the breasts of German statesmen and business men, landowners, financiers,—in fact, of thinking patriots and well-to-do people of all classes, apprehensions of the most painful nature as to what may be the internal convulsions reserved for New Germany in a by no means remote future. These apprehensions have been stimulated by recent and most deplorable events into a genuine panic. The terrible monster whose voice has made itself heard in menacing growls throughout the length and breadth of Germany almost continuously ever since the meeting of the three Emperors at Berlin-which was interpreted to the working classes by their oracles as the outward and visible sign of an imperial conspiracy against oppressed nationalities and popular liberties, has now shown its claws and teeth, and with such appalling effect that every man of rank and fortune, every personage born in the purple, or occupying a position of distinction, is for the moment stricken with consternation, and, shuddering at the horror of what has happened, asks himself, What will happen

next?"

Speaking of the assassin, the article goes on to say: "The man was a typical specimen of the flower of social democracy, of an organisation counting millions of adherents, and thousands of acolytes, as intelligent, instructed, and fatally resolved as himself, which regards regicide and the despoiling of the rich as the highest of human duties, and which succeeds in imposing upon its disciples an obedience as absolute and a self-devotion as utter as does the papacy itself. When such a man shoots his emperor, and then himself, on purely social democratic principles, we catch an awful glimpse of the abyss of crime, misery, and horror into which society may find itself hurled at any moment, at the bidding of the occult and mysterious hierarchy that disposes of the forces exemplified by this calmly murderous and conscientiously merciless Doctor of Philosophy." A few days later, we read in the same journal, and from the same pen, the following: "German Social Democracy is incorporated destructiveness, not merely theoretical, but grimly, fatally practical. It is a grisly monster with sharp claws, trenchant teeth, and a furious temper knowing no pity, forlorn of pity for anything beautiful, lofty, or spiritual, moved by one engrossing,